New posts

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mel O&#039;Drama" data-source="post: 385113" data-attributes="member: 23">Episodes 251 - 260 25 March -  1985 continued Meanwhile, back at the Church, light relief comes in the form of Karen and Damon attempting to keep their respective contusions hidden from everyone around them.Karen has a hickey on her neck - a present from her latest boyfriend. Plus a fading bruise on her cheek - a present from the departing boyfriend. The scene of violence was interesting partly for being a triple slap (during a heated discussion where she laid some unpleasant home truths in a bid to drive Andrew away, he slapped her, she slapped him back and he slapped her once more), but mostly for the reactions. Bobby was furious and making threats, but later infuriating Karen by telling her she had it coming (or words to that effect).For me, though, it unpeeled a fascinating layer of double standards, since we’ve seen Bobby strike his children numerous times by now, and usually with more force than Andrew used. Even in this run he’s threatened Damon with the back of his hand for making implications about Bobby’s relationship with his colleague Janet (something Karen, too, has been doing).Damon, meanwhile, has two black eyes: the first from being punched by Lesley Anne Sharp for nicking his bin bag sale round, and the second from falling over a dining chair while trying to hide his first black eye from his parents. Simon O’Brien has clearly been up to the challenge when it comes to delivering effective physical comedy without a safety net or a stunt double in sight.There’s a terrific visual moment in the church where the Father - as part of the service - praises what fine people they’ve grown into, and we see a two shot of Damon and Karen in their pew, shifting uncomfortably and adjusting their clothing to hide everything that might suggest otherwise.Elsewhere, Damon has been roped into Pat’s new gorillagram service, but ended up with sore balls after trying to prank people. First Lesley Anne Sharp kneed him as he tried to exact revenge using the costume, then Harry Cross did the same as Damon tried to frighten him.I’d (probably understandably) forgotten this storyline, and was here in blissful ignorance thinking Clive Gibbons had done it first, but this preceded this by almost a year (on Neighbours’ home turf. Probably two and a half years by UK transmission). The parallels between the two are a little uncanny, since Damon, like Danny Ramsay, is the younger son of the series’ key working class family.Doubly tying this in with Eighties Neighbours, Pat’s service includes stripograms, but here it’s (again) politicised, with Kate and Sandra’s reproaches both coming from a feminist standpoint, but  with different perspectives. Kate doesn’t approve, but makes the “naughty nurse” uniform for a colleague because, with Pat not profiting, the only beneficiary will be a woman. Sandra, meanwhile, takes a stance that what has happened fuels the objectification of women in general and female nurses in particular. Adding another dimension, the unapologetic female colleague who has taken the job rebuts Sandra’s arguments by saying that she has more in common with the men on her estate who - like her - are desperate for cash than she has with most women.This segues into discussion of two equality strands - race and sex - when Sandra asks Kate if she’d have been so quick to help make a golliwog costume (this line, presumably, contributing heavily to this episode being the first I’ve noticed to carry a specific warning about “racial attitudes”), and Kate has a passionate spiel about being noticed and judged for her race first and foremost, and for her sex second. It’s a pleasingly meaty series of heated discussions that’s come out of an ostensibly silly “filler” storyline.Heather is certainly playing the field at the moment. I’ve lost track of the various men in her life, and it seems she has to some extent: hiding a new lover in the kitchen as she dumped another more long term lover who’d shown up at her home. And that’s not counting the workplace dalliances, the sexual harassment at work and the car salesman whose wife turned up just as Heather invited him to mount the stairs for the first time.There’s been the vindication of her return to work following her previous ignominious departure (the allegations towards her had been that she was a predator when, in fact, all she’d done was turn town a colleague’s advances). Upon her return, we saw her at her prickly best when she made life difficult for said colleague with unreasonable work demands, before basking in the moment of gloating with a look that spoke volumes as he left after being sacked.Her psychology continues to fascinate. She’s so contradictory in so many ways and it’s been quite a journey.Take the situation with the wife turning up. This led to an impassioned and emotional monologue from Heather about her experience of being the wife, knowing she’s speaking to the mistress but having to maintain a dignified exterior while she crumbles inside. She tells him that what he did to his wife, Roger has done to her.It’s satisfying that the ghost of Roger continues to haunt Heather. She’s never fully managed to recover, or certainly never forgotten the experience that changed her. But as she tells Tom Curzon (currently in pole position as her man of choice), it’s not just marriage and divorce that’s changed her. It’s things that have happened before and since.Almost bizarrely, Heather and Tom’s carefree spontaneous trip to Portugal has been characterised by a whole lot of rather self-indulgent navel gazing on Heather’s part. We’re currently getting almost bipolar mood swings and contrariness. She wants to be independent and liberated, but she’s pressing him to commit to her. She makes the moves and then regrets it and takes it out on him. She’s stressed that she values openness and honesty above all, and Tom has been very clear that he’s not interested in committing, but she keeps coming back to that and getting huffy about it. It’s almost as though she’s regressed emotionally, but at the same time it’s right in character because it also brings to the surface a side of Heather that is entitled and quite self-centred.It’s interesting to see her with Tom in particular because, just like Heather, he’s essentially another Type-A who needs to be in control. They share many traits from being cool-headed and assertive to dynamic, go-getting and often brutally frank. But in this situation it’s leading to a power-struggle and currently Heather is losing. The less interested he seems, the harder she tries. The harder she tries, the less interested he becomes. I’m really interested to see where this goes, even though it’s bringing out some very unattractive colours in Heather and I’m sure it won’t end well.Meanwhle, wreck-it Ralph continues to encourage Edna’s gambling, their latest bet almost winning them £10,000 which the bookie gets out of on a technicality. Susan Twist - later Rosie Banks in dire Nineties Brookie - is the bookie’s assistant who gets sacked for trying to help and is now doing all she can to assist Harry. It’s a small role, but she fits in well to this era. I find Susan endearing as she reminds me very much of the mum of a schoolfriend when I was young.Meanwhile, the person giving Harry and Edna legal advice is Alan Rothwell. He’s unnamed in his first episode, but I’m hoping (since I know he comes along soon) that this is an early appearance for one Nicholas Black. Because then I’ll know I’m coming into the era where I first discovered Brookie.</blockquote>

Verification: What month follows July?