adam436

I can't remember how long Pippa was in hospital for (as a 8 year old, it felt like ages), but they obviously needed someone to "fill in" at Summer Bay House, and I doubt there would have been many other alternatives that wouldn't have felt too jarring/obvious. Bert returning as he did would certainly have been preferable than a fully-able-bodied Danny returning in the same capacity.

I forgot about that one actually. Either way, the writers are more likely to create a new ex-husband from Roo's absent years than they are to bring back Frank

I think the attempt was definitely to recreate Scott and Charlene. Charlene and Bobby were both tomboy-ish and upfront, and Scott and Frank were both dull male "hearthrobs". I never found Frank that attractive in all honesty. Having just rewatched 1988, Martin Dibble is more physically attractive to me, but obviously his character was written as a comedic fool, not a male romantic lead.

There was Narelle he could have been paired off, but she left pretty quickly. I didn't think much of her as a character either though. And Carly, but that would have been a little ick, since Carly and Frank had been foster siblings since they were both young. I'd say it would have had to have been a new character. I doubt he has, given the producers reluctance to celebrate the past. There is also another Morgan in the show now, which may confuse viewers who aren't aware who Frank is.

Re-watching the 1988 season on 7Plus, I'm really not liking or buying them as a couple at all. It could because that I know what's coming for them in 1989 though? The chemistry between Alex and Nicolle feels more like that of best friends than two characters madly in love. I actually find the romantic chemistry between Frank and Roo much more believable. I've just watched the episode where Frank doesn't want Bobby to go to uni and instead stay at home and "look after the family". The episodes are dated in terms of societal views, but Frank comes across as really chauvinistic and arrogant in those episodes and makes me realise how much he dragged Bobby down. He made it sound like his career and future was more important than hers, despite her having more study opportunities. I'd be curious to know what would have happened had Alex Papps not quit the show? The marriage fizzling out as it did play out would have been much more believable, but I imagine the producers probably had high hopes for them as a "Golden Couple", which I struggle to imagine due to the lack of romantic chemistry. What are everyone thoughts on the pairing?

I agree. At least in the first season it was all fresh, amusing and somewhat realistic. The examples you mentioned, especially the pop group and the fish funeral, seemed a bit ridiculous. Perhaps it wouldn't have been so bad if they were 1-2 episode comedy B plots, but the pop group and hot dog stand story seemed to go on for way longer than they should have. I'm not sure if it was a coincidence or not, but for those stories they were paired up with other characters who were on their way out - Celia for the hot dog stand and fish funeral and Stacey for the pop group. I suspect her purpose in the early days was mostly just to shake up the Lance/Martin dynamic by making them a trio, and perhaps to a lesser extent give Morag someone to bounce off, who would have otherwise primarily just been at loggerheads with the rest of the cast. The producers must have thought the character was worth keeping around (and were forced to flesh her out after losing Morag, Lance and Martin), because it would have been much easier for her to go in the late 1989/early 1990 clear out too.

From what I remember of 1996/1997, he came to stay at Summer Bay House when Pippa was in a coma and developed a relationship with Donald's mother Isobel. I've not seen the episodes since they aired and I was about 8 years old, so my memory is a little hazy, but surely he wouldn't have come to stay and help out at Summer Bay House without Pippa around if he was still suffering from the memory loss?

In many ways, Celia is such a sad character. She lost her fiance at a young age and threw herself into religion and community work. Had Les survived, she would have a large family and as a mother, would have been a completely a different person. Instead, she's often a source of a ridicule for the younger characters and often the butt of many pranks/jokes. I'm currently watching the episodes in which Craig Barnett comes to stay with her which I think sums it all up. Celia is excited and enthusiastic about having him him stay and wants to cook him a full breakfast and had plans of all the fun things she wanted to do with him, which probably how she imagined her own life panning out with children, but instead he and Steven are scheming to get Craig kicked out.

The writers became too reliant on each other from a story perspective. Even when Marilyn was introduced, they became a trio rather than trying to develop Martin and Lance as individual characters. That would have been the perfect opportunity for both characters to develop and "grow up" - Lance in a long-term relationship and Martin perhaps with some more serious storylines. I'd rather have had him over Adam as the hapless larrikin always looking for the next big get-rich-quick scheme. Both characters showed promise - Lance had a great "big brother" relationship with Sally and definitely had more of a conscience, whereas Martin was smarter and easier into integrate into the younger cast at the time (i.e. living with Frank and Narelle, working at the Macklins). The scene in which Martin tries to "break up" for Lance because he thinks just brings Lance down shows the depth of Martin's character.

I think it's fine for soaps to evolve - they have to to stay relevant. I know that H&A will never go 100% back to its roots, however it's a shame that that legacy has been lost entirely. It honestly wouldn't hurt to replace 2 or 3 of the twentysomethings with teenagers (there are so many right now, you'd barely notice!) to provide some balance, even though it will never return to a full-on teenage soap again. Whether I enjoy the current show or not, it is still chugging along, which it probably wouldn't be otherwise. I've not watched any of the UK soaps except Hollyoaks, but I understand Emmerdale has changed it's premise too, and Hollyoaks, which was originally about a group of teenagers in college, has evolved into being about an entire village of characters of all ages.

We've definitely had the fostering element in the show since 2011. Obviously John and Marilyn/Gina have had their share (all guests, except for Raffy and Jett!), Roo and Harvey had Maddie and Spencer, and Leah and Zac had Matt, Evie and Oscar (the latter two being his niece and nephew), and Irene had Bella. I can't remember how many of them were official fostering though. Fostering has been a slow decline since 2000, with the introduction of a nuclear family into Summer Bay House over maintaining a foster family. It was all but done by 2019/2020 though.

Did she perhaps stay long that she had become synonymous with Bobby? We hadn't really had long-running soaps in Australia at that point, so Bobby's stint would have been considered long-running by Australian standards in that time. We had dramas A Country Practice as a drama that ran for 10+ years, but other successful soaps such as Sons and Daughters, The Sullivans, The Young Doctors tended to last about 6-7 years. Weirdly, pretty much all of the younger original cast didn't really stay in the industry after leaving H&A. Justine Clarke has become a household name, and Alex Papps has had a long run on Play School, but otherwise all the other original younger cast appear to have left the industry entirely. Many have obviously returned for brief stints and Adam Willits for a regular stint, but none of them have have stayed in the industry in the same way that many of the Neighbours cohort of the same era have.

Funnily enough, Emily Symons requested that Marilyn be killed off when she left in 1999, but the producers said no. I'd be curious to know the reasoning there - maybe the producers didn't want Fisher as a single father of a baby or maybe after Bobby, they didn't want to close the door completely. Either way, it worked out well for Emily that the producers didn't go with her request. If Bobby had not killed off, she definitely would have returned at some point. She would have been back for the big events like Sally's weddings, Sally's departure, Steven's wedding (which Carly returned for), the 2002 reunion episodes, episode 4000 and some of the big Ailsa and Fisher related moments too like his wedding to Marilyn, his 2003 exit, Seb being Alan's son and Ailsa's accident in 1999. I also would have expected her to be considered for a full-time replacement for Pippa or Sally too, since the producers at the time seemed to care for the show's past.

It really is. When we think of the "Early Years" of H&A, fans tend to genralise 1988-2000 in one heap. Cast changes aside, the early years can almost be broken down into three separate eras with John Holmes, Andrew Howie and Russell Webb all making their eras very much distinguishable: 1988 to mid/late 1989: the original format (Holmes) late 1989 through to early 1995 - the Andrew Howie years (described above) 1995 - 2000: the highstakes drama era (Webb) If we wanted to, it could almost be broken down further if we wanted to include transition periods (i.e. late 1989 - early 1991) and periods of change due to cast departures (i.e. Pippa vs Post Pippa, and the different teen gangs in 1995-1999).

It definitely happened with Phillip Matheson back in the eighties. I feel like some of the younger characters are killed off because they are "expendable" for the sake of drama (i.e. Stephanie Mboto, Charlotte Adams, Denny Miller, Mason Morgan, Hannah Wilson, Oscar Maguire), but I can understand the actors of some of the more popular characters like Bobby and Neighbours Todd Landers and Kate Ramsay requesting to be killed off.

Do we know if that was Debra's choice? I'm not sure what parental leave laws were in 1992, but I'm curious as to whether they didn't want Pippa off-screen for too long so that was all she could take. Debra said in the podcast interview that she offered to leave and the producers said they would find a way around it so she didn't have to. Ada Nicodemou and Emily Symons had longer absences, but obviously parental leave have changed since then and they also weren't lynchpins of the show in the same way Pippa was.

I've also noticed that Tom and Pippa shifted to becoming supporting characters towards the end of 1988 too, with Bobby, Frank, Carly and Roo taking centre stage. I guess Tom and Pippa's role became somewhat reduced when they went from six foster kids to four (Lynn left, Frank moved out), and the producers clearly realised how popular their breakout stars were so those mentioned above started getting more screen time. Given Bobby also moved out in early 1989 and Carly became an adult, I wonder why the producers didn't introduce more regular foster kids at that point to bolster the Fletcher family. Instead, the Stewarts and Fisher picked up Emma and Viv respectively.

I agree. Either of those situations could have worked though from the sound of it, it sounds like she deserved better than a happy ending with Greg, and she never would have left Sam. I guess they could have reversed it and had Greg die and Bobby and Sam move away, but fewer characters would have cared about the fallout from his death. Given how long the characters closest to her - Fisher, Sally, Ailsa, Pippa and Sam - remained in the show after she died, she could have returned several times over the years too.

I'm going to say no, given how very little happened in the early nineties as a whole. I've not seen much of H&A from mid 1990 through to late 1994, but from what I gather, the big stories were few and far between. Other than the two you mentioned, which were both influenced by external events, the only big ones I am aware of are David's death and Sophie's subsequent pregnancy and Meg's death. The later half of the nineties felt very more high-stakes drama with Saul's cult, Justine accused of killing a baby, Steven and Selina's relationship, the Robert Perez stuff, Chloe's rape, the earthquake, the cyclone, the fire in which Fisher lost his home and Nelson was injured, Sally going missing in the river, the deaths of Stephanie, Michael and Shane, plus iconic weddings like Shane and Angel, Don and Marilyn. As I've mentioned, I've not seen too much of the early nineties, so my memory may be biased because I've seen these episodes.

I listened to that Debra Lawrence interview mentioned earlier and she said she was told about 7 months into her real-life pregnancy. She also said the producers didn't want to or couldn't keep the baby in the show, which is why they went down the SIDS route. I guess the only other option would have been a stillbirth. Knowing the baby wouldn't be around, the producers must have known much earlier otherwise it would have made sense to not write the pregnancy into the script at all and just strategically hide it like they did with Marilyn and Leah. Debra Lawrence was the first actress to get pregnant while working on the show though, so maybe they didn't fully think it through.

Did H&A ever have any big affair storylines in the early years? Other than Roo/Frank once he'd married Bobby (which was used to facilitate Frank and Roo's exits), I can't really recall any. I think Lucinda cheated on Nick with Ryan, but they weren't really a core couple of the show. There was also Joel and Natalie in 2000, but again, that was just used for Natalie's exit.

I assumed most, if not all of them were axed but I don't know for sure. It would make sense that one or two of them would have had to be sacrificed to make way for the Nash family kids. It seems unfair, since their predecessors were so popular that it was always going to be an uphill battle. Looking at it in the wider H&A timeline, the 1996-97 teen group feels very much like an unintentional stopgap teen group, between the hugely popular predecessors and their successors (see below). The group that followed them seemed to be much more successful IIRC, which perhaps might have attributed to them being more successful: Justine, Tom, Tiegan and Joey. Tom rounded out the group of "survivors" of the clearout. Gypsy and Will Mitch, Hayley and a now-teenage Sam. There was also Peta and Edward (I can't really remember where they fitted in, but I suspect it was Gypsy and Will's year?), and the recently-recast Duncan in the junior years of high school, who didn't get his own teen group until most of those had departed or graduated school.

Or maybe Pippa also got a new heart in 1990 with her new head I'd imagine given that the writers didn't plan the pregnancy (it was written in when Debra fell pregnant), they wanted it to have minimum disruption already-planned stories as possible. Plus, the drama all came afterwards with Dale's death.

To be fair, most of those characters were written out after a year or so, so didn't really have a chance to gain a fan following. Many characters, particularly teen ones, take time to make an impact and I think some of these would have done given a chance (particularly Tiegan, who I loved!). To make a comparison with other teen characters, if the likes of Blake Dean, Curtis Reed, Kirsty and Jade Sutherland or Matilda Hunter were written out after a year or so, I doubt they would be well-remembered either because they didn't really make an impact straight away. Joey Rainbow was also part of that teen group, as was Justine Wells towards the tail end, and they stuck around for a decent time and are fondly remembered. I first started watching H&A in "real-time" in mid 1996 (I have seen most episodes prior to that during reruns), so I have some nostalgia about that teen group because of that, perhaps moreso than the characters themselves.

And do what with him? Other than power games with Donald (which would have got old quickly), I can't really see what him being a regular character would have really added to things.