"No irony, my love for neighbours is genuine, I have been watching for literally as long as I can remember...so that's about 16 of my nearly 20 years!As for the society. It was set up through the genuine appreciation of the show shown by the students as far as I know...the Facebook discussions are lengthy and insightful. However, I'm sure we can all appreciate the tongue-in-cheek-ness Neighbours and her fans have a mutual understanding of!"
I didn't mean to criticise, or condescend to, students. I was being ironic when I said "this isn't irony." I think it's more or less impossible to watch Neighbours unironically - to do so, you'd have to completely disengage your critical faculties. Having said that, Rosie's probably being ironic here. These days, no one really knows if anyone's being sincere or not. I blame the nineties. All those knowing allusions and arched eyebrows. The eighties' Thatcherite ideal of "Greed is good" persisted, but was studiously ironised. Everyone was aware of it, but it didn't really matter, because nothing did. Meanwhile, Oasis were busy referencing the Beatles with a Britpop sheen, Damien Hirst was cocking a snook to the art world and Quentin Tarantino, Kevin Smith and the Coen Brothers were being so terribly, terribly droll and derivative in film. Net result: A generation (myself included) that only knows how to express itself by recourse to irony and popular culture.
Actually, having said that it is virtually impossible to watch Neighbours and be completely po-faced, this guy seems to have made a pretty good fist of it. He must have hated the anniversary special when Harold stood up and said "That's when good neighbours become good friends."
I'm in a bit of a bad mood today and I need something to rail against. What's this I've got recorded? It's Tuesday's Neighbours. Perfect.
Today's gimmick - Does anyone remember Life Mechanics? It was that 'dangerous' cult Stuart got involved with, which basically consisted of speaking using metaphors about cars and journeying and engines. I shall pay homage to the subtle art of Life Mechanics with this instalment.
Neighbours 29/01/2007
The previouslys show us that we're going to get more of Rosetta and Will; Steph and Toadie; and Carmella's maiming. Good-oh. I've revised my theory as to who it is who now has the baby. I think it might be Max Hoyland. He already approached Stingray once, so might have found him with Kerry. Also, he's probably missing his own baby and is less than mentally hinged. I think I might have cracked it.
The title of the episode is 'Whatever Happened to Baby Kerry?' That's a reference to Robert Aldrich's 1962 film Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? Good title. Better than Monday's at any rate.
Will, you're a doddering old woman on a zebra crossing on Carmella's highway.
Hospital. Will is in Carmella's room. She's trying to get up again and he's restraining her. "You need a rest," he tells her firmly. He offers to help. "If you wanna help me, you'll leave!" says Carmella groggily. Will sadly acquiesces. Cut to:
The corridor outside. Will stands outside what I assume is the door leading into Carmella's room. Enter Rosetta. "How're you doing?" asks Will. "How'd you think?" replies Rosetta sniffily. Steady on, Rosetta, it was a fair question. "I thought you'd be pretty stressed. I thought maybe I could shout you dinner ..." Rosetta interrupts him: "I just want to see my sister. Alone." She didn't let him finish. He was going to say he wanted to shout "Ye dinna knae where the stowp be hid, and the gowans fine, but we've wandered many a weary fit, sin auld lang syne! Ach aye!" Since he wasn't allowed to paraphrase Rabbie Burns at the top of his lungs, Will peevishly says: "I think it's best [Carmella] spends some time on her own. She's pretty fragile right now." Just because she wanted you to leave Will, doesn't mean she's fragile, Will. If you were in a room with me, I'd ask you to leave as well. Rosetta is sceptical and barges on in regardless.
Carmella took the wrong exit at the Selling-Someone-Else's-Baby Roundabout.
"Are you responsible for selling [Teresa's] baby?" Silence. "Tell me it's not true!" Carmella looks pensive.
Frazer shouldn't be allowed to ride shotgun in Pepper's life-car.
House of Trouser. Steph's handing Poo Poo Stinker some invoices to give her Mum. She's carrying little Charlie around again. I think she must pick him up from the props table before she comes on set. Poo Poo suggests that Steph gives the invoices to the ex-Mrs Steiger herself, although that would mean not being able to perform a secret house inspection, for which there should have been written notice. You don't need written notice for a secret house inspection, Pepper. So long as it remains a secret, then you're fine. Steph looks flummoxed. It's obviously a fair cop - she's acting at Toadie's behest. She leaves.
Enter Zeke. He's carrying a shopping bag and some flowers. "Ezekiel, you're back!" says Poo Poo, pleased. I think that she's allowing Zeke to get too close to her. She's in danger of violating the wonted propriety of the student-teacher relationship. Remember what happened between Libby and Taj? Apparently, the shopping bag contains candles and the flowers were Zeke's own idea. The flowers cause paroxysms of ecstasy in Poo Poo, who treats Zeke as if he's a genius for having bought them. Enter Frazer. Poo Poo animatedly tells him that she is planning a Thai dinner for the two of them. Frazer loves Thai. However, he rounds on Poo Poo for her insensitivity: "Friends of yours are going through a truckload of grief! You might want to think about that, instead of your stomach!" Whoa. That was an overreaction. Carmella seems fit enough, they don't know Sky that well (if at all - she's been in the hospital since they were bussed into the series, evicting Toadie, to transform the House of Trouser into the House of Hotties) and Rosetta seems to be dealing with the situation pretty well. And even if the truckload of grief touched Pepper more nearly, her not eating wouldn't help anything. And she's not just thinking about her own stomach, but also about Frazer's. And about his penis. What's his mental trauma? "I'm sorry ..." says the chastened Poo Poo. At which point Zeke gives Frazer (and us) his twopenny worth: "She's just done something really nice for you. Why don't you give her a break!" Even though he's right, it's really none of his business and he should butt out. He stomps off.
Convents are the multistorey carparks of life.
Hospital. Corleone sisters. Rosetta is giving Carmella what for. Immorality in Neighbours is punished by tongue-lashing after tongue-lashing by any character who can be legitimately roped in to do it. "Here I was thinking you'd grown up, that finally you'd stop being so selfish." But she's been proved wrong. "Yeah ..." says Carmella, "I made a mistake - I'm trying to make up for it." "How?" sneers Rosetta. "By running away to a convent? You thought a few hail Marys would absolve you?" Her and the Catholic faith, Rosetta. She's not the only one who believes in true repentance and the infinite compassion and the tremendous capacity for forgiveness of God. She thought she was acting in Teresa's best interests and in the interests of the child. It was a difficult situation and a tough call. Unselling the baby was nigh-on impossible. And she could hardly have brought the baby back to life. Get off your high horse. "You're pathetic!" Rosetta tells Carmella, helpfully. On her way out, to put the icing on the cake, she tells Will to stay away from her sister as she's "nothing but trouble."
Loris just cut Lyn up in her life-car and then flipped her the bird.
Scarlet Bar. Elle and Loris. Elle leaves to get drinks. Enter Lyn. She's really glad that the Timminses have moved in to her old house. She likes the idea of them all being under one roof. Not all, says Loris. Boney's still in prison. My heart sinks every time mention is made of more Timminses. I think there are already too many of them to be easily sustained by the series and I don't think that the writers will be able to resist introducing more. Lyn has retrieved her sprinkler off the Timmins' front lawn. "That's pilfering," says Loris curtly. Lyn says that it's certainly not covered by Section 32. Lyn doesn't know what she's talking about, Section 32 of the Australian Sale of Land Act plainly doesn't have anything to do with who owns the sprinkler. Loris is on firmer legal ground: She holds that if it's on "my property, it's mine." They tussle for it and Loris wins out. The extras in the background exchange puzzled glances. Elle returns with two glasses of white wine. All the sheilas in Neighbours drink white wine and all the bruces drink beer. "Were you fighting?" asks Elle. "More of a debate really," says Loris. If it had stayed on the plane of debate, Loris would still have won, because Lyn didn't have a legal leg to stand on. Bafflingly, Lyn says "I'm just ... just ... powdering my nose." She isn't. She's just standing there. She leaves. While she's still in earshot, Loris says "Hope she's got an awful lot of powder." If Lyn had an unusually large proboscis, this would be a good insult. Since she doesn't, it's meaningless. And I thought "powder my nose" was a euphemism for going for a wee. "You shouldn't be so hard on people just because you've got problems," says Elle sternly. Loris doesn't take kindly to the advice: "Oh is that what I was doing?" she says sarcastically, "how incredibly insightful of you!" Elle has "no right to criticise, because [she hasn't] been exactly constructive [herself]." "Yes I have," says the petulant Elle, and then fails to back up the assertion. Loris upbraids Elle for not being able to make Dylan come home. "Get on that phone right now and talk some sense into him," she commands.
Dylan is driving his own drive.
Dylan is motionless, just staring at something just behind the camera when his phone rings. He answers it swiftly. I think it must have been clipped to his belt. "We've been over this," he says, "me coming back won't help any." Jump cut back to Scarlet Bar. Loris snatches the phone from Elle. "Bobby," she says, "it's Nan." Back to Dylan. He hangs up and tosses the phone away. And resumes his creepy, improbable motionless stare.
Toadie is sugaring Rosetta's success-engine.
Hospital. Toadie and Zeke. What are they doing at the hospital? Toadie is clutching a twenty dollar bill. "Parting is such sweet sorrow," he says mournfully. He's alluding to Romeo and Juliet II, ii, 185. Juliet's not saying goodbye to a twenty dollar note though. I think Iago's repeated refrain of "put money in thy purse" from Act One, Scene Three of Othello would serve him better, if he's scratching around for an appropriate Shakespearean phrase. It would add an air of mercenary ruthlessness and conspiracy to the proceedings, instead of conjuring a hackneyed, weedy sense of wistfulness and loss. "A bribe always cheers me up!" he says, shaking himself out of his funk. Zeke tells Toadie that the House of Trouser is "pretty tidy." Toadie wants more info for his cash. He tells Zeke that Steph is "useless at espionage. She has no subtlety. No finesse." In the Previouslys, he told Steph that she would need his help "finessing" their design to make Summer go back to Music School - it must be his word of the moment. Maybe he has that "Expand Your Vocabulary" toilet paper. Apropos of nothing, Zeke bursts out with "It's Miss Steiger! She's wasting her time with Frazer ..." "Whoa, whoa, whoa," pleads Toadie. "A bit less Dr Phil and a bit more Martha Stewart!" Does he want Zeke to fail to declare the twenty dollars and then be indicted for tax fraud? "Why should you care [about the state of the house]?" asks Zeke. "You never looked after the place." He turned the house into a wrestling arena once and knocked holes in the walls. Toadie didn't care back then because he "was living there." Well, duh. Rosetta walks past. Toadie tells her that she's just walked past Carmella's room, where he and Zeke have just been. Rosetta isn't there to see Carmella. She's going to visit her cousin. Teresa's still in the hospital? Why? There's nothing physically wrong with her and she's already escaped from the psych ward once. Shouldn't she be under lock and key in the police station? Toadie dismisses Zeke. He wants to have a word with Teresa. "You should have consulted me before taking on Teresa's case." Here we go. Already, the two lawyers are fighting over territory. There's only room for one permanent character from each profession in Neighbours - one doctor, one teacher, one policeman, one mechanic, one entrepreneur. This is one way they establish tension between the characters. There'll be trouble between Janae and Steph as to who will be the sole female mechanic, between Boyd and Karl as to who will be the doctor and between Paul Robinson and Loris as to who will be the magnate.
Rosetta wonders why she should have consulted with Toadie. "Because you're too close to the others involved in the case. Teresa is entitled to impartial and professional representation." Fair point. It's never stopped him from representing his friends and neighbours in the past though. "You think it's beyond me!" says Rosetta. Well, obviously. He just said that pretty much exactly. "Rosie," says Toadie slowly, "you're an article clerk. I'm not saying that's not important, but this is a really tough case." What would Carmella think if Rosetta represented the woman who threw boiling water in her face? Rosetta doesn't care what her sister thinks. She's defending Teresa and can handle it herself. She can't do any worse than Toadie, whom must rank among the world's worst lawyers.
Carmella is worried that the upholstery of her life-mobile is not comfortable enough for Will.
Hospital. Will and Carmella. Will proffers Carmella a drink and instructs her to keep her fluids up. "Your wasting your time," rasps Carmella. Will is having none of it. He considers himself a pretty good judge of character and insists that he won't buy into her "I'm not good enough for you," shtick. She can play the "undeserving card" as much as she likes. She tells him that the situation is complicated. I'm going to add "bad judge of character" to my itinerary of Will's character.
Katya's been committing grand theft auto both figuratively and ... er ... literally.Scarlet Bar. Katya's on the phone. "That is absolute crap, Guy!" she says. "I don't owe you anything. There's no way I'm stealing any more cars." Enter Ned Boringbelly with beer and white wine. The camera pans across to Lyn and Elle. "What time do you pick up Oscar from the party?" asks Elle. "It's a slumber party," says Lyn ridiculously. "For three year olds?" deadpans Elle. "I'd hate to be that parent." What a stupid exchange. Couldn't Lyn have just said "five o'clock" or something? A slumber party for three-year olds is ludicrous and Elle, the writers and I all know it. Enter Toadie. He wants to know where Steph is. She's in the office. Exit Toadie. Lyn looks across at Loris. "She had no way to treat me like she did!" she says in that tremulous way of hers, which is supposed to pass for anger. Or distress. Or pretty much any emotion. Get over it, Lyn.
Steph's chassis needs cleaning. Or, rather, she needs to sort out the accounts for the Scarlet Bar.
Office. Toadie and Steph. "Scaddling man paperest," says Toadie as he enters. I replayed that line several times and still couldn't make head nor tail of it. Toadie's sorry. Apparently that gag (if it was a gag) wasn't one of his finest. Steph is wading through the accounts, which Max seems to have left in disarray. Toadie offers to help him out. He keeps saying "subtlety and finesse". Just repeatedly saying the words, doesn't automatically mean that you magically possess those qualities Toadie.
Loris keeps loosening the lug-nuts on the wheels of Lyn's reality. Surely, that's bad car-ma?
Scarlet Bar. Loris, Elle and Lyn. Lyn demands an apology from Loris and to her surprise gets one. She also gets the precious, precious sprinkler back. The victory is mitigated, however, when Loris tells her that she can also retrieve her "ghastly drapes and awful light fittings." Lyn looks disproportionately offended by this slur on her taste. Elle has been on her mobile phone. It was the co-ordinator at the hotelier's conference where Dylan's supposed to be. That's the first I've heard of it. The co-ordinator was wondering where Dylan is. "He's been lying to me all this time." Sobs Elle. Could be worse Elle, he could have feigned a serious illness in order to manipulate you. Why would the co-ordinator of the hotelier's conference care where Dylan is? And why would he phone Elle's mobile? I fear that these are questions which will be forever shrouded in mystery.
Pepper offers Frazer the automobile of her love, but he is reluctant to enter into any sort of hire-purchase agreement.
House of Trouser. Frazer and Poo Poo are eating their Thai food. She's lit those candles that Zeke bought for her and the flowers he brought are in a vase on the kitchen side. Good continuity. Pepper sneezes. Apparently it was brought on by the lemon grass. Possibly that was a joke, because her name is Pepper, and pepper has a propensity to make people sneeze. I'm going to reserve my judgement on that. "If I'd known this was in store, I never would have got on my high horse," says Frazer. What? A meal of Thai food. Pepper told you what to expect. Idiot. "We've still got to eat," rejoins Poo Poo. She kisses him. He's not happy about it. They have a business agreement. They shouldn't let romance pollute their friendship. Poo Poo won't let him alone. He agrees to sleep with her, as long as there are no strings attached. I think that's a bit of a fond hope, Frazer.
Steph wants Toadie to be the driving instructor for her life without Max.
Office. Steph and Toadie are getting through the accounts. She wants Toadie to show her the ropes so that she can learn to do all the stuff that Max used to do, in case he never returns. And he wouldn't forgive her if she let the business go under. She and Toadie share some laughs over the invoices that Max wrote. For example: "If there was a moron tax, then this [delivery] guy would be paying extra!" Ha, ha, ha. What a funny guy. There's another one, which Toadie shows Steph, but which is too rude for our innocent ears. That "I've never been to Cuba" song is playing on the backing track again. I'm starting to loathe it.
Katya is letting Guy have complete control of her steering wheel.
Exterior. Ramsay Street. Lyn and Toadie are talking about something or other. Enter Katya, jogging. Guy texts her. He wants to know if she's checked her mail today. She's distressed by this and Toadie notices. He asks if all is well. It is. She's just got her "morning head on." Toadie knows what "morning head" feels like. I snigger like a puerile adolescent. Zeke is checking the Kinski mailbox. There's a package in it with his name on it. Katya snatches it from him, coming up with some cock and bull story about a mail order company getting their names confused. Zeke buys it like the credulous fool that he is. He goes inside. Katya opens the package. It's a videotape. She destroys it. She calls Guy and tells him that he wins.
Ned's looking at a BMW convertible. We see that Katya's sitting in it. He asks her how much money she's making. She tells him that it belongs to a surgeon and that she's picking it up for him. Why, then, does she need a street directory. Er ... she's going to take it for a spin first. Ned thinks this is a great idea and suggests that he drive.
Pepper's emotional need for him is the caravan attached Frazer's Robin Reliant.
House of Trouser. Frazer is cooking breakfast. Enter Poo Poo. "Something smells good," she says. "Sure ain't me," is Frazer's response. I don't think she thought it was you, Frazer. She was talking about the breakfast. Pepper suggests they do something together. Frazer thinks that by so doing they risk going from casual to couply. Pepper insists she's not clingy. Frazer's relief is palpable. Pepper looks sad.Ned and Katya's relationship is like a stolen luxury car.
Cruisin' in the BMW. Ned and Katya. Ned pulls into a carpark. "Ned," asks Katya, "why have we stopped?" By way of answer, Ned kisses her. She gets a text message from Guy asking where the money is. She tells Ned it was from a company selling ringtones. Ned resumes canoodling. She claims to be shy. His response? He puts the roof up. Um. Ned, you know there are still windows in the car, right?
Dylan's going to need a baby-seat in the four-by-four of his life.
Scarlet Bar. Loris and Elle. Elle has been trying to get hold of Dylan. Enter Lyn. She still resents that comment that Loris made about her drapes. Loris breaks down and apologises for her behaviour. Everything she does is a smokescreen to hide what a monster she truly is. She's an appalling grandmother and is Kerry's disappearance is some sort of karmic punishment for this fact. At last. Someone mentioned Kerry. It's surprising that in an episode entitled "Whatever happened to Baby Kerry?" the baby-snatching plot hasn't advanced one iota. We segue to Dylan. He has got Kerry. So, my Max theory was wrong. Ah, well. Flashback. Dylan finds the baby in a bush and picks it up. It's night. That blows my putative timeline out of the water and means either that Kerry was left alone for ages, or the nurse carried an empty crib into Sky's new room without noticing that there wasn't a baby in it. Maybe I've got my wires crossed. The chronology of the kidnapping is a real puzzle.
Credits.
I'm enjoying this baby-abduction storyline so much, I was moved to write a sonnet.
KERRY
Why, oh why did things go awry? Poor Sky!
Depriv’d of maternal comfort, of toothless mouth
At tender breast. Her warmth, her smell, her cry,
Lost – lost! – to Sky. By hand of ruthless lout –
Of father! – from love, from safety is she torn.
Through smokefilled halls wends her drunken captor.
This new Persephone through flames is borne.
Thus unsteadily begins her life’s first chapter.
Bacchus beckons, the grateful Stingray heeds,
Stumbles into a grove, from Lethe drinks,
Sleeps oblivious to frail Baby’s needs.
Lo! The grease-haired brother comes, pauses, thinks.
Gathers hapless helpless Kerry into his arms
And cossets her from threats and from alarms.
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