Looking back at page 1 of this thread, I see I first posted my Patricia Hutchence factoid there! I'm up to Episode 13 and it's great stuff. I'm liking the homely, supposedly dull domestic scenes in Melbourne a lot more this time around. Apart from Susan, who's kind of lifeless, the Palmers are great.
I found these notes I wrote about some later episodes during my last (aborted) re-watch nearly ten years ago! I think I've probably mellowed a bit since then:
Episodes 41/50
Bill goes on trial for the murder which took place in Episode 1. Having done a spectacularly crap job of testifying in his own defence, he is found guilty of crimes against acting and given a life sentence. The whole thing's over in an episode and a half, and the main point of interest is that his lawyer is played by Steven Morrell, Patricia's next husband.
Charlie is as terrible as I remember--she has a habit of singing her lines as if they were jingles--but she does provide Patricia with a sounding board and makes her laugh, which gives her (Patricia) another, more human dimension.
David, subconsciously envious of how well Pat's done for herself, grows discontented with his lot and wants to move to a bigger house. This makes Beryl - essentially Val Ewing trapped inside Kath Brownlow's body - insecure. Isn't our life of domestic drudgery and the occasional box of squashed marshmallows enough? she argues. Almost, but not quite, he replies.
John and Angela come clean to David about their incestuous feelings. He takes a couple of minutes to adjust, but then he's absolutely fine about it.
Kevin and Lynne marry, which is nice ... and boring. Mostly boring. Lynne is pretty, but boy is she moany and droney in the way that only women in cheap Australian soap operas can be. Speaking of which, that Susan's a miserable cow: So your new husband's locked up on a murder charge and never wants to see you again - get over it. Angela's a good egg and I can tolerate Jill, but overall the girls on SONS AND DAUGHTERS don't have the fizz and pep that Kylie and Plain Jane would have on NEIGHBOURS only a few years later. The S&D chicks just sort of lumber around, whining.
Wayne's accident has left him paralysed. An odd choice on the part of the writers perhaps: it seems a bit soon to disable your main bad boy.
The writers come up with the ingenious idea of a nationwide transport strike that affects all the characters--the Hamiltons in Sydney, who employ a transport division (or something), and the Palmers in Melbourne, dependent on David's job as a trucker. Interestingly, the bad guys, Patricia and Wayne, are revealed to be anti-union, while everyone else is more sympathetic.
With David out of work, Fiona suggests Wayne employ David as a labourer on the new riding school he is building at Woombai. David agrees, ostensibly to provide for his family, but really to be near Patricia.
Patricia celebrates the fiftieth episode by inviting the good guys--David, John and Fiona--over for a barbecue. This brings David and Gordon face to face for the first time. There is tension between David and Gordon because of Gordon's decision to employs scab workers during the strike, albeit with a heavy heart. John also strongly disapproves. Meanwhile, Patricia must decide whether or not to wear her sexy new dress (a gift from Charlie) in order to seduce David. A last-minute attack of conscience puts her in frumpy slacks. Gordon is unaware of this but nonetheless rounds off the party by asking Patricia for a divorce.
51/60
It's interesting how much more reactive Patricia is in these early episodes: it's Gordon who initiates the divorce and David the affair. And it's surprising how close she and Wayne are, considering they'll end up trying to kill each other on a weekly basis. Wayne doesn't want her and Gordon to split, and so suggests she come with him and John to Woombai to oversee the riding school project, in the hopes that a bit of distance between her and Gordon might change his mind about the divorce. After Sydney and Melbourne, Woombai is the third key location on S&D - a sort of rural neutral ground where disparate characters can interact.
Woombai is also home to Rosie the housekeeper, played by the reliably irritating Ann Haddy, aka Granny Helen from NEIGHBOURS. For one surreal moment, I was sure Haddy had blacked up to play Rosie as an Aborigine, but it turned out to be the outdoor lighting. It's at Woombai that Patricia really comes into her own as a ball breaker. In order to assert her authority over the workmen (which include David), she compensates for her lack of experience by cracking down hard on them, sacking the first bloke who wolf-whistles at her. Meanwhile, working together at Woombai allows David and John to do some father-son bonding for the first time.
David and Patricia do all that "fighting their feelings for each other" stuff until the transport strike is called off and David prepares to return home. But the sight of him swimming in his underpants proves too much for Pat and their affair finally begins. We start seeing a more vulnerable, unguarded side of her as she and David fall in love all over again. Ahh. They even have a game of table tennis--can you imagine Joan Collins playing ping pong? Back in Melbourne, Beryl, blissfully unaware of Patricia's presence at Woombai, inadvertently facilitates the affair by suggesting David stay on a while longer to spend more time with John.
Running alongside all this juicy drama is a subplot about Mick Taylor arranging for his sick kid to meet a man in a kangaroo costume. This feels kinda weird: So far S&D has focused on the intertwining Palmer and Hamilton families, but now it randomly expands to include Mick, his kid and his permanently bad-tempered estranged wife, played by the original, boggle-eyed Pippa from HOME AND AWAY. Suddenly it seems like anyone who has a son or a daughter or has ever
been a son or a daughter, is eligible for inclusion in the drama.
Who cares about some terminally ill kid who's obviously going to make a miraculous recovery when there's so much other juicy stuff going on? But then all the natural laws of soap opera are broken when the boy abruptly dies on the operating table. And if this were not shocking enough, the doctor who fails to save boggle-eyed Pippa's son is played by boggled-eyed Pippa's first HOME AND AWAY husband Tom.
Having started to put two and two together about David and Patricia, Beryl unchains herself from the kitchen sink long enough to visit Woombai to investigate. She even rides a horse! While Patricia plays the perfect hostess in front of her, David all but goes to pieces with guilt. One glance at the two of them together tells Beryl all she needs to know - but she keeps quiet about it. Eventually, in a very exciting scene, she confronts Patricia who finally stops playing nice and reveals her ruthless side.
Without letting on to David that she knows the truth, Beryl heads home to bake cakes and wait for him to choose her out of love. Patricia immediately starts scheming and manipulating to make David choose
her. When Charlie suggests she ask for Woombai in the divorce so that she can use it to attract David, it all starts getting very Abby and Gary (even though Abby wouldn't have wanted Gary if he was a mere truck driver). Back in Sydney, Gordon and Barbara - whose unseen husband is conveniently overseas -- start gravitating towards each other.
In other news, Wayne has impotency issues, but it's hard to get excited about that. Ironically enough.
Episodes 61-70
After being really upset about his dead kid for a whole two episodes, Mick is given a good talking to by Beryl. This cheers him up and he leaves the show.
Meanwhile, everyone else ricochets between Melbourne, Sydney and Woombai: Patricia sends John back to Sydney so she can be alone with David at Woombai; David chooses Beryl over Patricia at the last minute and returns to Melbourne (a good thing too as Beryl's had her hair done and wiped down the kitchen surfaces especially); Gordon then goes to Woombai where Rosie tells him about David and Patricia's affair; Angela, depressed about the dead kid in Melbourne, returns to Sydney hoping for some low-level incest with John, which coincides with Gordon sending Patricia back to Sydney in disgrace. Angela freezes Patricia out (although she knows nothing of her affair with David) and feels excluded herself by John's relationship with Barbara's posh niece Prue.
Then Fiona comes to Melbourne to stay with the Palmers after splitting up with Comb-over Guy (an old flame and the father of her baby who supposedly died), and Kevin overhears her and Beryl talking about David's affair with Patricia. He's gutted. "Buzz off or I'll flatten ya!" he tells his dad.
While visiting Woombai, Barbara receives word that her husband has died of a Hugh Mortimer-style overseas heart attack. Luckily, Gordon is on hand to provide a sympathetic moustache. Back in Sydney, Patricia vows to get back at David for dumping her and schemes to keep her kids by her side. In an excellently uncomfortable scene, she drunkenly tries to persuade John not to go back to Woombai and Angela not to return to Melbourne. She's such a complex soap villainess: smarter than Sue Ellen, more vulnerable than Abby, more sympathetic than Alexis.
