Neighbours Update

Previously on Neighbours ...

Susan and Karl got a divorce and Karl sloped off with Izzy like the cowardly, weasel-faced weasel that he is. Despite Izzy’s best efforts (murdering Darcy) Karl discovered that the baby she lost wasn’t his and kicked her to the kerb. She shacked up with Paul Robinson, and he mooched around the place looking depressed and forming Oodles and Noodles with Ned Boringbelly. The actor playing the shirtless, beer-gutted wonder, apparently came second in Australian Idol. He’s just about uncharismatic enough for that to be true.

Meanwhile, Susan, after a lot of soul searching and an ill-starred relationship with Father Tom Scully the Catholic priest, began a serious relationship with widowed father-of-two Alex Kinski, who not only gave Susan a new lease of life, but also allowed the script‘writers’ to draft in two new teenage characters to propel the yoof-driven storylines. Alex – yet another middle-age, middle-class character with old-fashioned sensibilities – was obviously surplus to requirements so was promptly diagnosed with a rare, fatal form of Leukarpenter and just as promptly died. He had planned to marry Susan, and kept his disease from her in order that she would go ahead with the wedding and thus secure the future of his children. He hadn’t counted on the dubious ethics of ‘Doctor’ Karl Kennedy, who can turn his hippocratic oath on and off and so was able to inform Susan of her husband-to-be’s terrible prognosis. Susan forgave Alex and married him, thus becoming custodian of the two kids when he died. Which explains the presence of Zeke-the-freak and Rachel in her house.

Meanwhile, half the cast of the show (including Susan and Alex) were involved in a plane crash. Fortunately, the crash only killed the perennially unpopular David, Liliana and Serena. I was a little disappointed: I wanted David to go on a killing spree, firing randomly at his neighbours with a shotgun. Ah, well.

Everyone whose surname wasn’t Bishop was perfectly content to float around in the sea until they were rescued. Dylan and Connor were washed up on a desert island, and took the opportunity to fake their own deaths, but eventually came back to face the music. The side-effect of this necessary cull was that Jelly Belly’s entire family (with the exception of granddaughter Sky) was wiped out. He responded, as any of us would, by turning evil and trying to strangle Paul Robinson. He’s fine now, of course, and no one mentions his dead family, or, indeed, the plane crash. On the plus side, it meant that Jelly Belly now has house room for Lou Carpenter. Now they can share even more screen-time together! They’re also joint owners of the General Store. They’re like the original odd couple. Obviously, one of these days, they’re going to get married.

The reason that Jelly Belly blamed peg-legged Paul Robinson was that it was his son Robert (the Evil Twin) who planted the bomb in an attempt to murder his father. Cameron (the Good Twin) was in a coma, thus allowing Robert to switch places with him and hatch all sorts of nefarious and plot-driving schemes, each more tedious than the last. He kidnapped Katya Kinski, a nurse, sometime porn star, and Zeke and Rachel’s elder sister. Her response on being rescued by Toadie was to become phobic of all men except for the carcinogenic Max Hoyland, with whom she formed a special bond. Eventually, owing to a spectacularly inept sting operation by Steiger (he didn’t even secure the perimeter – the entire Hoyland family was able to just wander around willy-nilly) involving a fake marriage between Robert’s parents, Robert was caught. Meanwhile, Cameron had come out of his coma and by dint of one of the stupidest, most contrived plot twists I’ve ever seen, had been mistaken for Robert. On Robert’s arrest, he was freed and went to live with his Dad and sister (Elle). All was well, until the imbecilic Steiger told Paul that Robert had escaped when, it turned out, he was just hiding under his bed. Max saw Cameron, who was supposed to be away, talking to Katya. He thought it was Robert and so hit him with his truck. As you would. Cameron later died. With Robert in prison, this means that we don’t have to look at his stupid face anymore. Paul blamed Max, but then started going to therapy and dating Lyn Scully (who he unaccountably made his PA) and now seems to have turned his life around. They are currently in New York doing something or other. I expect that she has taken her extraordinarily ugly baby with her, because I haven’t seen him around for a while.

Elle didn’t take her brother’s death quite so well and contrived to send Max Hoyland mad. He’s now run out on his wife, son and baby and has gone on a bus to somewhere. Steph and Boyd (and his wife Janae) have gone in quest of him leaving Toadie quite literally holding the baby.

In other baby news, Sky managed to get herself pregnant by her boyfriend’s brother. She told Dylan and he left her in disgust. Stingray (the actual father) is struggling with alcoholism at the moment and is wracked with self-doubt. Sky was so stressed about the whole business that she’s been hospitalised. The woman in the bed next to her sold her own baby (with Carmella’s help) and now has designs on Sky's. She’s not a permanent cast member, so I can’t be bothered to remember her name. I call her the Baby-seller. Sky, by contrast, is the Baby-cellar. She grinds the babies out and her roommate sells them. Like a salt-cellar. Actually, I don’t think that a salt cellar is used for grinding. I think it’s just a pot. But you get the gist.

A whole raft of new, pointless yuppie characters has moved into the House of Trouser, one of whom is Carmella’s sister, and another, boringly enough, is Steiger’s daughter.

Gilbert-and-Sullivan-loving Ned Boringbelly (who’s Stuart’s brother from Bendigo) is caught up in a love triangle with Carmella and Katya. Carmella, of course, used to be like a privileged Meadow Soprano, went out with Connor “Where’s Connor?” O’Stereotype, and then became a nun. She confessed to her baby-selling indiscretion and is now taking time out from the convent to reassess her life. Katya ‘Kinky’ Kinski dressed up like a nun for a sex game and Carmella, in turn, dressed up like a nurse. It all depends now upon which of Ned Boringbelly’s uniform fetishes is the stronger.

Karl mistook Izzy for Susan after taking too much magic potion and slept with her. Now, of course, she’s pregnant. She left Ramsay Street, but, I suspect, that storyline is not over yet. Neither is the story of what happened to Connor, last seen accidentally revealing to the murderous Evil Twin that he knew too much. I thought for ages that he was buried under a tree outside the House of Trouser, but that was just a cryptic clue as to his whereabouts. His wallet turned up in Beijing. Now, no one – no one! – seems to care what happened to him. He hasn’t even been mentioned for months. God, I hate this show.

TODAY ON NEIGHBOURS:

I watched the show at the gym, where there are multiple other screens, each showing something more interesting than Neighbours, so my attention wandered occasionally. Apologies for any gaps.
The Baby-seller finally lays her cards on the table. She tells the Baby-cellar that she wanted to adopt her baby. She’ll probably just sell it and then it will die. She can’t be trusted with babies. Don’t do it Sky! Phew, she looks creeped out by the suggestion and says that she would never give up her baby. I’m going to stop writing the word ‘baby’ now.

Granny Timmins (who’s only recently appeared on the show) asks Stingray how his AA Meeting went. Yesterday, we saw him duck out of going in, so we know he’s lying when he tells her it was fine. Tut, tut. I notice there’s a programme on UKTV History about some sort of space balloon and the music channel is doing “movie songs that made us cry”. Idiots. Back on Neighbours the sinister didgeridoo of moral ambiguity is whining away as the camera comes in for a lingering close-up of Stingray’s troubled visage.

Lou and his new squeeze Janelle Timmins are in the kitchen of the Timmins nest, where Bree is sulking because Zeke is considering going out with someone more attractive than her. Possibly, her name is Madison. Lou dishes out some advice, but keeps using hip ‘slang’ and Bree and Janelle keep telling him to stop it. So do I. I’m getting some funny looks from my fellow gym users. I think this is the ‘comic relief’ scene. It could be worse. Once, Lou challenged Harold to a foot-race around Erinsborough. And, yesterday, the reunited Susan and Karl were plotting to get Katya back together with Ned and grinning like goons. It is the ‘comic relief’ scene. The keyboard demo-track of humour has just kicked in. Lou’s advice to Bree, despite his desperate jargon-dropping, was apparently good. Bree thanks him and Ginelle gazes at him with admiration. Gah.

Stingray is looking at a book that’s called something like “Fatherhood for Dummies 4” and then tosses it aside. The Sprog-Seller’s Machiavellian plotting has obviously got to him. The book hits the minibar. The bland, generic wailing song of sadness plays. If I watch the screen showing the music channel, it looks like Bryan Adams is singing the bland, generic wailing song of sadness. Heh. Stingray calls room service and tells them to restock the minibar (he’s previously poured all the booze down the sink), but not to put it on his bill. He doesn’t want Granny Timmins to find out. A concerned Sky calls his mobile and leaves a message. Apparently, she’s not upset that he blew off her antenatal class for his grandmother. She doesn’t know that they went to AA. The Offspring-seller looks smug and triumphant.

Lou and Janelle and Harold and Granny Timmins go out on a double date. To the Scarlet Bar. Where else? Apparently, Jelly Belly is very nervous about it. Two or three of his chins are literally wobbling with worry. Really, of course, the women are rather extraneous; they’re just there to provide an excuse for the deeply repressed Lou and Harold to date each other. Lou and Harold go off somewhere. They are ostensibly buying drinks, but they’ve been gone rather a long time. I think they’ve probably sloped off into the gents for a bit of how’s your father. Cripes, I think I’ve turned into Sid James. Janelle is talking about Lou and her relationship with him. She’s talking about the age gap. Mark my words, we’re just a few short steps away from dodgy jokes about Viagra. I’ve cycled about four kilometres since this tripe started! The hill’s getting steeper now though, so I think my rate will slow and ... holy crap, is that Mishka!? Now, that will put the cat among the pigeons.

Mishka, of course, was Lou’s mail order bride, with whom he fell in love and whose name is tattooed on the back of his neck. Then, he followed her to Russia to rescue her from an abusive husband and she pushed him down the stairs, giving him amnesia. Janelle is his rebound woman. Next we’re treated to one of those sequences that Neighbours loves so much, where one conversation is intercut with another and there’s all kinds of wonderful dramatic irony established. Janelle reckons that Mishka will “be trying it on with Lou” and cracking out all kinds of clichés. And, lo and behold, she does. She also keeps calling him Lou-bear which is profoundly annoying. That scene would have been a thousand times better if Mishka had walked in on Harold bent over a chair in a gimp suit and Lou standing over him with a whip. Janelle would have been knowingly talking about all the tricks that Mishka would be using, and then we’d cut to Mishka just standing there flabbergasted as Lou had his wicked way with Harold. Maybe I’ll suggest the scenario to the story-editors.

Stingray turns up at the hospital drunk and has an altercation with the Offspring-cellar. She almost, but not quite, twigs what the malevolent Spawn-seller is up to. Damn. I was hoping the storyline would be resolved today. I’m fed up with it. I should have known better though. The Neighbours writers can make any idiotic storyline last for months. The Newborn-cellar is concerned and phones Rachel, who’s trying to sabotage Zeke’s relationship with Madison by telling her he has a worm farm and all the worms are named after Greek gods. She answers the phone by saying “Worm Farm” or something similar, and then her face falls and she rushes off out the door.

When next we see her she’s confronting the drunken Stingray amid the debris of his wild night in. This scene isn’t worth recapping, because it’s just a rehash of their break-up scene from last week. I think they’re using the same script. Good as the scene was (by Neighbours standards) it isn’t worth seeing twice. I watch Sky News instead. Stingray shuts the door in Rachel’s face. She’s better off without him. An alcoholic teenage father-to-be has no place dating a fourteen year old girl. There, I’ve said my piece.

I thought that was going to be the cliffhanger at the end of the episode, but it’s not because (joy of joys!) here are Dylan and Elle. Elle seems to have hired a PI to find Max. What larks. I forgot to mention that Dylan now owns 9% of Lassiter’s thanks to Granny Timmins, who has 40%. She did it to stop him leaving for WA, whatever that means. Jointly, the two Timminses own as much as Paul Robinson. The remaining 2% belongs to some mystery investor. Probably, it will turn out to be Jelly Belly. The bogan Timminses are blocking Elle and Paul’s plan to commence work on Cam’s plan to add to the complex. So the two percent is going to be vital. This really is big business for dummies. Anyhow, Elle and Dylan are talking now. She’s upset that he’s dishonouring her dead brother, and he’s upset that she pretended to be dying in order to keep him away from the putative mother of his baby. Considering that he faked his own death, he’s living in a glass house and should be careful about throwing stones. “You’re right,” says Dylan mystically, “we did have something good. About a hundred years ago, before everything got messed up.” Give him a cigarette and a trilby and he could be Philip Marlowe. Elle and Dylan kiss, I vomit and the credits roll. Praise be.