Don Fisher storyline dropped in 2015-2017 (more details)

[adam436]

8 hours ago, Dag Dog said:

Isn’t it funny how different people view different eras? I believe mid2015 to late 2017 was one of the strongest eras in recent decades! 

There were certainly some good moments in there. The show felt like it was getting back to its roots to an extent in 2015. Zac, Leah and their makeshift family had moved into Summer Bay House, the first time we'd had a large family unit in there since the days of Sally and Flynn, but it all fell apart pretty quickly after some exits. Then John and Mariyln were fostering at that point still, but with the exception of Sky, who was meant to be around for 3 years, and Raffy, who they were sharing with the Morgans, it was all guest characters. 

It's hard to pick the strongest points of the show in the last 15 years so, as they all have some really strong and really weak characters and stories. I wasn't a fan of Kat or Ash, and there were certainly at the forefront of the 2015-2017 era, and the Mick saga was happening around the time too, but equally I liked characters like Evie, Oscar, Matt and early Brody, who were around at the time too. 

[j.laur5]

Glad this did not happen as I don’t like them bringing back past characters just to kill them off.

Was it mentioned later on that Donald got back together with June?

[Red Ranger 1]

11 hours ago, Dag Dog said:

Isn’t it funny how different people view different eras? I believe mid2015 to late 2017 was one of the strongest eras in recent decades! 

Oh boy, you really do not want to set me off and yet you have.The cavalcade of ideas that should have been brilliant but were utterly botched and ideas that were terrible in the first place meant that I was spending all my time ranting at the show and other people and really not in a good place emotionally to the point that I just had to withdraw from the forum almost completely halfway through 2016 when the show seemed to hit a new low point on almost weekly basis. It took months for me to even be able to voice an opinion on the show again, and months more for me to dare to look at other people's opinions.

The lowlights:
* The utterly botched return of Olivia: Aside from namedropping Chloe and James every now and then, there was nothing to suggest she was actually who she was supposed to be, none of the storylines and scenes that her returning should have resulted in ever happened, and she wasn't even a particularly good or likable character.
* Making Hunter a regular after months of portraying him as an irredeemable psychopath, who firebombed and permanently destroyed one of the show's longest-standing locations, which was just brushed under the carpet. And then they announced he wasn't even Zac's son!
* The terrible exit of Kyle, while genuine dirtbag Brax gets a happy-ever-after ending.
* The terrible-for-the-exact-opposite-reason exit of Josh and Andy, which seemed to be so unpopular that the show ended up backtracking like mad. (During Dan Bennett's temporary departure?)
* Making John and Marilyn foster parents, introducing three teen characters who would have been absolutely brilliant long-term characters (Skye, Jordan and Ty) and writing every single one of them out after a matter of months or weeks, and instead having them take Raffy off the Morgans for absolutely no reason and pretend she was their daughter. (The fact that one of the actors went on to be one of the best recent additions in Neighbours showed how terribly short-sighted it all was.)
* Breaking up Maddy and Oscar, one of the best teen couples in years, sticking Maddy with Matt of all people, and then killing Oscar in an insultingly off-handed manner.
* The ridiculous Mick retcon, which they decided to double down on by trying to make a serial rapist a sympathetic character.
* Spending six months building up VJ and Billie as a couple with bags of long-term potential and then just killing her off for shock value, a terrble decision which pretty much derailed the whole of 2017.
* Having VJ lose custody of his daughter to Ash of all people, which it felt like we were meant to be pleased about. (Again, the show ended up backtracking big time on that one.)
* The Astonis were pretty much universally terrible in 2017, a paint-by-number cliched set consisting of permanently angry knuckle-brained dad, snooty and arrogant mum, whiny and self-centred older daughter, and whiny-and-self-centred-in-a-slightly-different-way younger daughter: It took Maggie's 2018 cancer storyline to rescue them.

I need to lie down.

[CaptainHulk]

Let's remember thst Kyle wasn't exactly angelic when he entered, tied his own (step) brother (no angel either) to a vehicle in the desert and left him to die like a dingo....

Also the Billie false rape accusations story chafed me.

[homeandawayroxsomuch.]

13 hours ago, Red Ranger 1 said:

* Making John and Marilyn foster parents, introducing three teen characters who would have been absolutely brilliant long-term characters (Skye, Jordan and Ty) and writing every single one of them out after a matter of months or weeks, and instead having them take Raffy off the Morgans for absolutely no reason and pretend she was their daughter. (The fact that one of the actors went on to be one of the best recent additions in Neighbours showed how terribly short-sighted it all was.)

I suppose they'd adopted Jett and had him with them for a few years, but then with Jett having left to go to the military school, their house was going to be empty.  I can't say it suited Marilyn, but it might have made sense to the writers to keep John and Marilyn in that area.

With Raffy, I think it was to give her a more stable home-life.  The Morgans were still finding their feet with living in Summer Bay and the witness protection stuff ending just as they found out that Raffy was their sister and Raffy's dad/the witness protection officer/Not Luke had just died, and then 2017 was when Brody had his drug addiction and Mason his car accident, so things were pretty wild in the Morgan household.

[adam436]

On 19/03/2022 at 12:30, Red Ranger 1 said:

* Making John and Marilyn foster parents, introducing three teen characters who would have been absolutely brilliant long-term characters (Skye, Jordan and Ty) and writing every single one of them out after a matter of months or weeks, and instead having them take Raffy off the Morgans for absolutely no reason and pretend she was their daughter. (The fact that one of the actors went on to be one of the best recent additions in Neighbours showed how terribly short-sighted it all was.)

The irony is that Skye was meant to be a long-term foster child for John and Marilyn, yet barely spent any time with either of them. Emily Symons was on maternity leave for most of Skye's stint and Shane Withington was absent for quite a while too if I remember correctly. Unless Shane's absence was unplanned, it seemed like an odd decision to introduce a foster child for them just as both John and Marilyn would be taking an extended break from the show. 

Dan Bennett did explain his reasons why Skye was dropped so early on, but you do have to wonder if things might have been different had Skye actually spent some time with her intended foster parents and had the chance to develop a rapoort/relationship with them. 

[Sunny Girl]

This. So much, indeedly. 

[Red Ranger 1]

13 hours ago, adam436 said:

The irony is that Skye was meant to be a long-term foster child for John and Marilyn, yet barely spent any time with either of them. Emily Symons was on maternity leave for most of Skye's stint and Shane Withington was absent for quite a while too if I remember correctly. Unless Shane's absence was unplanned, it seemed like an odd decision to introduce a foster child for them just as both John and Marilyn would be taking an extended break from the show. 

Dan Bennett did explain his reasons why Skye was dropped so early on, but you do have to wonder if things might have been different had Skye actually spent some time with her intended foster parents and had the chance to develop a rapoort/relationship with them. 

Yes, in fact Skye's introduction was so badly timed that she and Marilyn never met: She came and went during Emily Symons' maternity leave. I'd always thought that was the reason that she was dropped with the vague "she wasn't hitting the right beats" explanation, because it seemed like every character she built a relationship with suddenly had nothing to do with her: Jett was gone again by the end of 2015, John left town for weeks if not months right after she moved in with him (and when he did come back, their initial bond had disappeared and they just argued about Tank), and even her friendship with Oscar just seemed to get dropped, leaving her living with Irene just because there was a spare room and hanging out with Olivia, VJ and Hunter by default because they were in her age group.

So I found it rather disappointing to be told that she was dropped not because of that combination of circumstances and poor character development, but because someone didn't like the actress, when the casting seemed to be one of the most successful things about her! 

[CaptainHulk]

19 hours ago, Red Ranger 1 said:

Yes, in fact Skye's introduction was so badly timed that she and Marilyn never met: She came and went during Emily Symons' maternity leave. I'd always thought that was the reason that she was dropped with the vague "she wasn't hitting the right beats" explanation, because it seemed like every character she built a relationship with suddenly had nothing to do with her: Jett was gone again by the end of 2015, John left town for weeks if not months right after she moved in with him (and when he did come back, their initial bond had disappeared and they just argued about Tank), and even her friendship with Oscar just seemed to get dropped, leaving her living with Irene just because there was a spare room and hanging out with Olivia, VJ and Hunter by default because they were in her age group.

So I found it rather disappointing to be told that she was dropped not because of that combination of circumstances and poor character development, but because someone didn't like the actress, when the casting seemed to be one of the most successful things about her! 

 

In Palmer's Defence, Tank did do some pretty s***ty things.

[cymbaline]

On 14/03/2022 at 09:06, Red Ranger 1 said:

Whilst I share the disappointment in the network refusing to acknowledge the show's past outside of nostalgic documentaries, I can't say I'm particularly up in arms about the fact that they weren't able to bring Don Fisher back just to put him through more pain and misery and then kill him. Are they incapable of coming up with a return storyline that isn't depressing?

They rarely grant any character a "happy ever after", do they? The writers like to split up characters who'd left the Bay happily paired off. Or if they don't kill them off, they trash their characters. I think they did enough harm to Donald's character in later years without ending his story with this. 

A dementia/euthanasia storyline could work but it'd be more effective with a current character who the present-day audience is more familiar with. Perhaps it has been done - I rarely watch Home and Away these days. Emmerdale wrote out Ashley (who had been the village vicar for years) with a long-term dementia storyline. It was well done and won awards at the time. I fear that if they'd brought Donald back, it would've been the soap version of a cheap gag.