cymbaline

Nick Parrish: He went off on a trip to find himself and decided that packing his own things was so last year. He simply rang Fisher to tell him he wasn't coming back, and that was the last we saw of him. Marilyn Chambers: (1st exit) This one has aged like milk, knowing what we do now... Alf wasn't wrong when he expressed his doubts about her hasty engagement to a much older man. When Heather showed up, he probably wondered had he sustained one too many head injuries over the years. Lachlan Fraser: The rigmarole about sending him to the USA for treatment for his brain tumour, then having him run off with someone else just felt a bit too tortured. Carly Lucini: Was Carly really heading off to her "happy ever after"? Even if you don't subscribe to the theory that Ben was an abuser, it's safe to say life with him would never be easy. Carly herself was taking a huge step into the unknown and perhaps felt forced into going with Ben. She had long hated all things army, yet was now going to have to try being an army wife. She was still very young and now found herself pregnant but with no family to support her. Grant Mitchell: Grant's final months had more starts and stops than a beginner learning how to drive a manual car. First he went off to help wean his sister off her drug habit, then he went away and came back from Timboon, then he got a job and lost a job at the school. Perhaps the moral of the story is don't cast somebody who wants to be a pop star?

Unless you're Alf, characters come and go on Home and Away. Some vanish without any explanation, some fizzle out, some have a good send-off, others are a bit underwhelming, others exit in a wooden box. Do you have any notable ones, or ones you'd like to quibble with? Best (in no particular order) Haydn Ross (as a main character): I like this one because it was a slow build. Haydn's relationship with Michael had been deteriorating over time, and there was no obvious way their deadlock could be resolved. Even after he left, it took a while for the scales to fall from Michael's eyes re. Lois Crawford. Sophie Simpson: This was another slow-burn and all the better for it. I wonder did the writers know Rebekah was planning to leave when Sophie had her baby? She always struggled with being a single mum, despite Pippa's efforts to help out. Before she left for her new life in Perth, she got to say goodbye to the most important people in her life. Blake Dean: It was nice to see his sister Karen again, and for them to rediscover the closeness they'd once had. It made sense that he'd try to get her back onto the straight and narrow after all that had happened. Dodge: Although he was never in the main cast, Dodge is one of the most memorable recurring characters from the early years. It's fitting that his body was never found following his tumble off the cliff with Steven. It's highly unlikely he'll ever be resurrected but I like to think of a parallel universe where he shows up yet again to cause trouble for Stevo. Adam Cameron: Adam was something of a pointless character by the time they wrote him out. But they gave him a good exit when the time came for him to move on. It felt right that he should save young Sam from a fire as one of his final acts before he left the Bay. Worst Finlay Roberts: Finlay is a textbook case of a teenage character running out of road once they've left school. Her exit feels very rushed, as if the producers had suddenly noticed she was still hanging around for no particular reason. Her departure was worked out over the course of just one episode. She received a letter near the beginning of the episode, informing her that she had been accepted onto a course (elsewhere, naturally). By the time the end credits rolled, she was gone. Greg Marshall: This exit feels a bit pointless because Nicolle Dickson (Bobby) had departed just one month before Ross Newton. And if anybody can remember back far enough, they'll recall Greg being very eager to get to know his son Sam. He even tried to gain sole custody of him. Roll on 2 years, and suddenly he has his wish. Only what does he do? Almost before Bobby's cold in the ground, Greg's gone back to driving long-distance trucks and Sam has been fobbed onto Fisher. Curtis Reed: In 1995 Curtis embarked on a brief, passionate relationship with daredevil Italian student Laura Bonetti. It ended in tragedy when she came off second-best in an encounter with a speeding train. 2 years later, a woman who looked exactly like Laura came to Summer Bay and Curtis fell for her. They left together but it's hard not to think it was all a bit messed up. Sarah Thompson: Sarah was the most grounded and sensible teen from the early years. Apart from a brief fling with bad boy Nathan Roberts, she never really caused many problems for anyone. After failing to keep a close eye on young Duncan while she was studying for her HSC, she fell out with Alf. Even though she was near her exams, she had to hurriedly return home to her father's farm and sit her exams elsewhere. A sorry end for a nice girl. Angel Parrish: Even though I quickly tired of "Shangel" and feel they cannibalised the show, I've added Angel's departure to this list. We had to endure the ups and downs of Shane and Angel's romance for 2½ years, until its tragic demise. Shane was barely cold in his grave before she had her bags packed and was heading off to the UK to start a new life with a new beau.

2 new posts about bikinis. Your username is apt, that's for sure!

Going back to the early years, Blake and Sam were surfers

If I remember the details right, Ailsa briefly dumped Alf after her "Bobby in the fridge" breakdown. When he tried talking to Michael about his troubles, Michael told him he wasn't the easiest bloke to talk to. That could also be described as the kettle calling the pot black!

Nice find Any time I hear Debra talking about her career in general, her pragmatism about money comes through. It's understandable when you consider what a precarious profession acting is, and how erratic the industry is in Australia. I think she values her time on Home and Away more for how it benefited her private and professional life than the role of Pippa itself. Dennis being gone probably made it easier for her to leave, but I don't think it made a huge difference to the timeline. I believe her when she says she wanted to spend more time near her mum (sometimes people spin yarns like this to cover up other issues). Perhaps her daughter starting school, and the hope that she would finally have another baby were also on her mind. I find her move to London for a year to be quite interesting too. That's quite an adventure for somebody of her age.

I'll never unsee the sight of Tom and Sam fighting while wearing obscenely skimpy shorts. It wasn't a pretty sight, and I'm a straight woman!

When I was a teenager I didn't get Celia at all. Rewatching years later when I was a middle-aged adult myself, I began to see her in a much more sympathetic light. Celia is an underrated character, as are Fiona Spence's performances. I too see her as a sad character and as someone who lost her way. I'm not up to date on her later appearances but I'd like to think that in the Summer Bay afterlife, she has finally met someone. I wonder will they bring her back as a guest when Ray decides to call time on Alf? I hope so. If Tom had stuck around for longer, would he be remembered less fondly? He certainly had his moments and he could be very hard on Pippa at times. Did Roger Oakley's natural charm smooth over the cracks? I see Alf and Michael as two quite similar characters. Both were grumpy and impatient and quick to jump to conclusions. Yet at the same time, they could be surprisingly tender and kind. The difference is, Ray had the Alfisms

It could well be. I was impressed that the car started at the first time of asking, despite being parked up in a garage for goodness knows how long.

Her car was from another era too. We can be confident that no funny business occurred in the back seat of this passion wagon Google Lens suggests this is a Humber Super Snipe

https://archive.is/YLSpV

Jack wasn't the most likeable of the teens but I would never describe him as unmemorable. I'd forgotten about Selina but I would rate her above the early twentysomethings.

Even still, it was the teens who were given more interesting things to do. Nick was mostly one leg of that tiresome triangle with Lucinda and Ryan. Then Shane came along and we all know where that went. I'm pretty sure if you asked people to name characters from the early years of Home and Away, Nick and Matt and Rob and Luke won't be the first ones they think of. Were they really bigger stars than Bobby, Sophie, Blake, Shane, Angel, Jack or Shannon?

The actors the producers didn't want to lose were the younger ones. It was the teens who became the show's breakout stars, not the ones who were a bit older. It's telling that Matt, Nick and Rob all left without a goodbye scene. Finlay wasn't one of the stronger teens and my guess is that most people remember her these days for her outfits.

That 2005 return is sooo Home and Away. They go to the trouble of bringing back an old character and then trash them or turn them into a psycho. Flawed and all as 1988 Brett was, I can't see him wanting to kill his own child.

Does anybody have a favourite Mike Perjanik underscore? There's a playlist of them on Youtube. Bobby's Theme is probably my favourite. The comedy ones on the other hand...let's just say they haven't aged well.

I wonder what the pay is like now? Are the older actors, in particular, still laughing all the way to the bank? They don't get much to do most of the time either.

None of those big name hires went too well, did they? Craig McLachlan didn't hang around for too long either. Even at that, his tenure was broken up by him trying to launch a music career. Richard Norton, also poached from Neighbours, turned out to be a damp squib as well. Neither Viv nor Emma are particularly memorable characters. It's hard to know if they'd have done better if they'd been introduced at a different time.

Yes that makes sense. If you think about it, Michael is a character we learned very little about. They gave him enough backstory to get him going (i.e. the divorce, the kids, the failed business) and then there was little more. Did he ever mention his parents or any siblings, for example? I wonder too if there were ever plans to bring in Kate, his estranged daughter? The writers seemed to forget about her once Michael resumed his relationship with Pippa. I've never been able to believe that the two Pippas are the same person. Even if I sort of managed that, I couldn't see VanPip being with Michael, nor DebPip with Roger. Both actors worked well with their version of Pippa so that was a job well done. Recently, I stumbled across a podcast that Debra and Dennis did with Cameron and Daddo last year https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/does-keeping-the-romance-alive-matter-debra-lawrence/id1463023422?i=1000653111872 Dennis was quick-witted and funny on it. It's a real shame that that side of him never really manifested itself on Home and Away.

Debra Lawrance has been pretty open about how good the pay on Home and Away was. I've heard her describe getting the job as "winning the lottery" and that Pippa "paid for the real estate". If you take those comments at face value, it looks like she and Dennis (presumably) benefitted from the better pay rates.

I liked Michael and was sorry to see him go. Having said that, I have no strong feelings about whether killing him off was the right or wrong decision. If you look at Michael when he first came along and Michael by the end, he's a very different character. He was more likeable and funny at the beginning. Perhaps he was written as a sort of romantic lead so that Pippa and the audience would take to him. Once Haydn left, he began to lose his purpose and never really got it back. By the time they wrote him out, he wasn't as important a character as he once was. Life went on in the caravan park and then, Pippa moved on. When you look at the timescale now, killing him off was a bit pointless. Debra/Pippa decided to leave the year after and they created a new love interest to send her on her way. Dennis not being there probably made it easier for Debra to quit, but I think they would've moved back to Melbourne sooner rather than later. My theory is that their hand was forced re. the creation of Michael. They would've got away with having one foster parent in the Fletcher's if Vanessa had stayed around. Oh, to have been a fly on the wall in the production office when she handed in her notice! Losing both foster parents and expecting audiences to believe Debra was the same person as Vanessa was quite a stretch. They needed to steady the ship after losing two of the most important characters on H&A in such quick succession. They felt they needed to have two parents back in the caravan park house, restoring the status quo. It certainly would explain why they had Pippa 2 marrying Michael exactly a year after Tom died. Would they have left the door open to his return? Who knows. It seems to be a tactic that rarely works. Bobby Ewing's return to Dallas is the most high-profile example of that going wrong. Dirty Den's return to EastEnders doesn't seem to have been a success, though, of course, that's now clouded by Leslie Grantham's webcam antics. Bobby came back through Ailsa's fridge, so perhaps they gave some consideration to which household appliance Michael could manifest himself through. It'd have to be Pippa's oven.

I would rather have seen Chris Hale being given a more prominent role in the 90's, rather than Nick. He was far more believable as a policeman than Nick ever was, and he wasn't too hard on the eyes either. That isn't to say that Bruce Roberts wasn't likeable or good at what he was given. Equally, he could just have easily been a teacher or a mechanic or whatever other jobs were going around in those years. Maybe I found him less policeman-like because he was the first police officer to become a main character. We saw more of him off-duty than we did with his uniform on. Like Dee Smart's Lucinda, they under-used Nick and saddled him with that dreadful love triangle. He was more interesting before and after Lucinda. His relationship with Shane was a highlight of his time on the show and it's a pity that Bruce left when he did. It might have partially stopped Shangel cannibalizing the show for the next couple of years.

This is the article which mentions it. I had the details slightly wrong - no mention of Frank in it. I have my doubts about some of the finer details in this. The article refers to "...the time the Bobbys (Nicolle Dickson) and the Roos (Justine Clarke) were leaving" but that makes no sense. There's a gap of almost 4 years between Justine and Nicolle leaving. By the time Nicolle called it quits, the show was in a very different place to where it had been in the first couple of years. While Bobby being killed off was a significant event, it wasn't seismic. That's probably why I misremembered the story and named Frank instead. I'm inclined to think that if this actually happened, it was in the Frank & Roo/Frank & Bobby era rather than in 1993. https://www.news.com.au/entertainment/tv/eddie-mcguire-rove-mcmanus-top-tvs-rich-list/news-story/39aaa1c5e52cd51b612dc6e6b9cbe3a0

I have some older relatives who used to watch Corrie religiously and rarely missed an episode. A couple of them have given up watching altogether. Another one is just tuning in out of habit but says it's not very good these days. Maybe Corrie's producers don't want 70somethings watching any more but if they do, they're doing something wrong. Trying to churn out 4-6 episodes a week with a large cast is quite the undertaking and I can't see it being sustainable. Home and Away's tighter ship looks like it's standing them in good stead. The golden age of soaps is long gone and none of them will ever get the audiences they once had. Corrie could do worse than to return to its roots and become a smaller, better-written character-based drama. Already this year, Neighbours has been canned (again), and the BBC has axed River City. Perhaps having Stefan Dennis on the books is a bad luck thing. I can see other smaller soaps being cancelled over the coming years. I don't care for modern-day Home and Away but the producers are obviously doing something right. It's the ultimate shape-shifting soap which isn't tied to a formula as such. Maybe that's what keeps it relevant to its audience.

The relationship between Carly and Andrew seems creepier to me now than it did then. Perhaps it's because the 80's was a simpler time. All that saved it from being really icky was Andrew's oddly childlike way of behaving. I don't know who Carly was best suited to, but she deserved better than the awful Ben. It's a nailed-on certainly that Ben and Tom would have butted heads if the two men found themselves living under the same roof. In that case, I would have been 100% on "Team Tom".