Neighbours 17/01/07

The Previouslys seem to indicate that we're going to get more of Lou and Mishka and Elle and Dylan. Great. Also Karl Kennedy is such a fuddy duddy. He tells the House of Trouser mob to stop playing their bland, generic music in the middle of the day. Title music.

We're in Casa de Bishop and Lou and Mishka are talking. Apparently, Mishka has a tattoo as well and Igor saw it. She pushed Lou down the stairs because otherwise he would have been killed, but she didn't mean for him to fall. Right. So, she was just going to give him a girly little shove to warn him of his impending death. I can see how that would have worked. Lou says "You must think I'm some kind of fool." Yeah, she does and, what's more, she's right. I don't know about anyone else, but whenever Mishka says 'Igor' I picture the butler from Count Duckula. He was pretty mean. Mishka's Igor was planning to feed Lou to the pigs. "He'd have shopped me to the police," wonders Lou quite reasonably. No. Apparently Igor's brother is a pig farmer. And Lou would have quite literally been fed to his pigs. Nice and not at all unbelievable.

Karl, Susan, Rachel and Bree are standing around in the Kinski kitchen. They're talking about Mishka. Bree makes some remark about how her Mum is not at all jealous and insecure. For some reason, Karl and Susan look gormless. Now that they're back together, they always have to be in the same shot, so they're standing unnaturally close together. A word of praise: Susan's facial expressions during this scene are something to be beheld. She hasn't got a lot to do, and she's trying really hard. I'm going to watch this scene again on mute to enjoy the range of her emotions to the full. Ah - I see. They were gormless because they didn't understand that Bree was being ironic. Bree tells them so, with an irritating flourish. I think that Bree might be the single worst actor in Neighbours, but, then again, I haven't seen Lyn Scully for a while. I'm thinking about mailing Janet Andrewartha a copy of Stanislavski's An Actor Prepares to improve her technique, if anyone wants to chip in.

Rachel decides that she's too young to cope with adult issues. She pretty much said this already when she dumped Stingray, but I suppose you've got to fill a twenty minute episode somehow. She tells Karl and Susan that "they were right yet again" about her and Stingray. Karl looks surprised: This is the first time he's ever been right. Susan looks sanguine. Pepper comes in and causes a lot of raspberry noises. She calls Karl a fuddy-duddy. Oh my God! That's exactly what I said when I saw Karl in the Previouslys! Maybe I should write for Neighbours. That whole scene was, needless to say, pretty funny.

Lou and Harold talk about Mishka's return. Lou is worried that his emotions are still locked up like his memory used to be. Ah, the mysteries of the human mind!

Lassiter's. Elle and Dylan drone on about something or other. More kissing. Yuck. Probably going to sleep together in a bit. And, since this is a one night stand, she'll almost certainly fall pregnant. The rule of Neighbours is that longterm, committed relationships induce sterility, while promiscuity increases fecundity.

Lou and Ginelle in the maison de Timmins. Ginelle says "Igor - sounds like some sort of a bad horror flick." Thankfully, she doesn't mention Count Duckula. That would have been too creepy. Ginelle thinks that Lou is going to break up with her and go back to his Russki. Lou says he doesn't want to dump her. To which she sagely replies "no one does it just happens." That made SO MUCH SENSE. She agrees to give him some space for a bit.

Scarlet Bar. Janae is still filling in for Boyd. Of Mishka, she says "She's got guts to cut my mother's grass." Well, quite. Weren't we all thinking that? It seems that everyone today is providing a moral commentary of Mishka. That is to be the way that Neighbours is working at the moment: One character acts and everyone else sits back and speculates as to whether their actions were just or not. It's been Sky's turn to be the dynamo of late. Now, it's Mishka's.

Mishka is wearing her air stewardess uniform. She is asleep on some napkins. Harold asks her if she didn't ought to be at work. She replies that the company she works for (which is almost libellously homophonous with 'Aeroflot') doesn't have a rostering system. Now I don't know a lot about the airline business, but that sounds like something of a logistical nightmare to me. Janae's boss comes into the bar (Steph got her a job as a mechanic at the garage). Apparently, she doesn't mind that Janae skipped work. She's a friend of Steph's. What was the point of her coming into the bar then? That was conflict/resolution in a second. If only all Neighbours storylines were like that. Mishka is getting all soppy about her big, soft teddy bear to Harold. Jelly Belly looks wistful. He wishes he could give Lou a big squeezy hug.

Dylan and Elle are in dressing gowns. She's pregnant, but doesn't know it yet. Blah, blah, big mistake, blah, blah, one off. Usual stuff. They might as well be improvising, no one's listening.

School field. Pepper is a PE Teacher. Susan introduces her. Karl's no longer attached to her. They must have had surgery to separate them. Pepper says "I used to be a student at this school" and Bree says "Who cares?" Quite. That was a bit near the knuckle perhaps, when the scriptwriters are trying to make you care about a new character. Zeke is perving over Pepper. Good to see that he's moved on from 'enjoying' Toadie's porno mags. Bree and Rachel are nonplussed. In order to get out of the cross country run Rachel and Bree claim to have "crabs". Hang on. I'll rewind that. Oh - they said "cramps". I think that crabs might have worked better as an excuse, she is, after all, a female PE Teacher. They're not terrified of "women's problems" and consequently don't put up with that kind of crap. Pepper makes them go on the run.

Ginelle and Dylan in the Timmins domicile. Loris who, apparently, has "more eyes than a blowfly" has spotted Dylan snogging Elle. Ginelle insists that he has nothing more to do with her. "You can't trust her". Blah, blah, blah. By far the most interesting thing about this scene is Dylan's drink. He gets a bottle with an orange label from the fridge. It contains a purple liquid. Fair enough, maybe the Timminses have recycled an old orange squash container and put apple and blackcurrant in it. Dylan then pours the liquid out of shot and, when he raises the glass to his lips, the liquid is vibrant blue. What is it?? That was either a baffling continuity error, or a drink I'd like to try.

Exterior garage. Janae's returning Karl's car to him. The cross country run passes, Karl has a quick perv at Pepper. Probably thinking about leaving Susan for her. Bree and Rachel hang back and run into a burger bar, much to Janae's delight. She wants to remain the slim sister. The boss tells her that there will be a photo shoot later that day for the 'Erinsborough News' which wants to cover the all-female garage. Janae immediately takes a break.

Scarlet Bar. Ginelle threatens Mishka by saying "Biffo from the Russki." She then reveals that she and Lou are not just friends but they are friends. She asks Mishka if she understands and Mishka says "Da." I'm surprised. I would expect even a naturalised English speaker to struggle with Ginelle's gobbledygook. Mishka's lip trembles.

Back at the school. The cross country runners arrive back. Bree and Rachel chuckle that the run was "a piece of chocolate cake", but forget to be inconspicuous and out of breath when they rejoin the others. They are given detention. Susan will not be pleased and Bree will die of heart failure at the age of forty-five.

Garage. Roger the photographer has arrived and Janae returns from her break tarted up like a French prostitute. The boss is not happy. She accuses Janae of making the mechanic profession even more difficult for women, and avers that her attire behoves rather the calendar girls who traditionally decorate garages, than the professionals who fix the cars. She has a point. Newspapers, however, generally only print pictures of "top totty" and "fruity girls", and I rather suspect that the "Erinsborough News" had soaped up ladies in skimpy outfits in mind when they commissioned the shoot. Maybe I'm being cynical. Janae is sent home in disgrace and Roger the photographer is told that the shoot is off.

The Scarlet Bar. Karl and Susan are talking to Mishka. They're joined at the hip again. Lou is the subject of the discussion. Mishka wants to "make love to him like Cossack". If she didn't like Shane Warne (who he? The guy who won X-Factor?- I'm still bitter about the Ashes and am, consequently, trying to corrupt Shane's legacy) so much, she'd be a stereotype. Susan and Karl respond by telling her to be "Gentle, calm and patient" six or seven hundred times. Seriously. If someone had said "Gentle, calm and patient" one more time I think I'd have thrown the SkyPlus remote at the screen. Mishka says "There's more than one way to skin a fox." She means "cat".

General Store. Elle is sitting 'working' at one of the tables. Enter ... guess who? Yep. It's Dylan. The father of her unborn child (and this one is certainly not really Stingray's, although he could be next...). He admits to voting against her just to spite her in that Lassiter's business meeting yesterday (yeah right - his gran's got him by the balls) and offers her an olive branch in the form of his looking over Cam's proposals and reconsidering his decision. Elle tells him that "anger is boring". It's not as boring as "puzzled and constipated" which is the only thing that she seems to be able to emote.

Scarlet Bar. Janae is using Mr Muscle to clean the tabletops. I wonder if that was product placement. She didn't turn to anyone and say "Wow, this really does love the jobs I hate" so I guess it wasn't. Her boss walks in and hugs Pepper, who, seemingly, has been waiting for her. I have a horrible suspicion that Janae's boss is going to turn out to be Pepper's mother - Mrs Steiger. Janae disagrees with me, and leaps to the conclusion that they're a pair of lesbian lovers. It transpires that I am right - Janae is left with egg on her face and looks surprised to find out that feminism is not necessarily tantamount to lesbianism. She leaves. I don't know who in the Neighbours 'writing staff' thought that the character of Steiger was worth investing more time in, but, I for one was perfectly happy for him to remain a tertiary character. Looks like he'll get his time in the Sun now, with a daughter and an ex-wife. Sigh. Apparently, Steiger has run a check on the bloke who Pepper's going out with, or pretending to go out with, or whatever the hell. And he doesn't exist. Credits.

What a rubbish cliffhanger. I know I will watch tomorrow anyway...