"More character driven show"

[ste]

I'm all for the big disasters and drama but there is only so much we can take. The past two years have had so many disasters that it is verging on the ridiculous. I am looking forward to a more character driven show.

We only need to look back at the 2004 season to see how it works. That year was very character driven and it worked brilliantly. We had the Sally/Flynn/Leah saga, the Sally/Floss story, the Kirsty/Kane shenanigans as well as the Rhys/Shelley/Beth drama. These were all great storylines without any bombs or plane crashes. Granted we had the Sarah Lewis story towards the end of the year but this worked well as it was the only big event of that year and her the only real villain. I always say Sarah worked better than Zoe as there was more thought put into her character and she was the original.

Completely agree with that! If the show is anything like it was in 2004 I'll be very happy. It had the perfect mix of drama and emotion.

[Ryan]

I think that's right, what we don't want is something where nothing happens, what some of us are looking for are where things happen, dramatic things, to fuel storylines for a period of time.

If you look at the 2002 season, the bus crash happens at 3235 I believe, and no other character has a life threatening storyline with the exception of Kirsty's drug taking for the next 50 episodes.

The bus crash leads around to Nathan's rehabilitation, we have Nick having to deal with the fact that he may never walk again, we have Jade's devotion to Nick, we have the introduction of Paris because of failings in Don's headmastering, we have the person who feels responsible for the accident have a small breakdown, it helps build the Seb/Don relationship and also the introduction of June.

Now that was a relatively small disaster, the actual episodes involving the crash lasted 1 1/2 episodes. However the rippling effect of that event could be felt until about two to three months later when again there was another event that helped shake things up again.

We had the boat sinking, and that created the KK relationship, it threw Sophie and Blake together, it showed a bit of depth to Martin and Lance, that they weren't wholly comedy characters, it saw Shelley realise she had been neglecting her family, Alf's injuries during the search saw Jude and Shauna reunited and I could add on a few more things, but you get the picture and this held most of the stories for the next few months, probably till Charlotte died which provided the storylines for a few weeks, replaced by Angie and Alf's storylines.

I think if you look at the 2006 season, whilst there were good bits, the events seem to have turned into attempts, more or less to gain a large audience the following week than to maintain an audience through a period with storylines originating from a certain event.

For example the Dan/Leah break-up storyline saw in 80 episodes this year saw 4 other relationships, 3 comas, a near drowing, a misccarriage, a punctured lung (which granted sort of drew into the Charlie storyline, however that saw a death, a couple of hostage situations and eventually someone to be decided to be clinically insane etc etc), is that rather than letting things flow, each episode seems to have to be ended on a dramatic cliffhanger.

I mean, Flynn couldn't just die, he had to be electrocuted two weeks before his death and then instead of just dying, it is brought forward by him following being pushed down a flight of stairs.

I notice that I'm now beginning to rabble so I'll try and get back to point.

On one of the director commentaries (something I hate is when they put the five main young stars on a commentary which are usually nothing more than an uninteresting rabble, but that's for another day), when creating a storyline which involved a school shooting, when he went to the head honchos he made it clear what he wasn't interested in was sending someone to the school "to shoot the place up".

If we use a similiar event in H&A, the wedding explosion, you get the feeling that Dan Bennett simply did it "to blow the place up".

It was almost forgotten about wihin a week with a chopper crash to sink our teeth into.

[ter06]

I'm all for the big disasters and drama but there is only so much we can take. The past two years have had so many disasters that it is verging on the ridiculous. I am looking forward to a more character driven show.

We only need to look back at the 2004 season to see how it works. That year was very character driven and it worked brilliantly. We had the Sally/Flynn/Leah saga, the Sally/Floss story, the Kirsty/Kane shenanigans as well as the Rhys/Shelley/Beth drama. These were all great storylines without any bombs or plane crashes. Granted we had the Sarah Lewis story towards the end of the year but this worked well as it was the only big event of that year and her the only real villain. I always say Sarah worked better than Zoe as there was more thought put into her character and she was the original.

Completely agree with that! If the show is anything like it was in 2004 I'll be very happy. It had the perfect mix of drama and emotion.

Yeah, I think 2004 was probably my favourite year.

[alexx]

To me, the first half of 2004 seemed a bit messy and fast paced.

[ste]

I think when most people are talking about how they liked the character driven 2004 they are talking about the latter half.

[Ryan]

That would be the Coral part.

I believe by that time Coral was suffering what I like to call "4th Season Syndrome", because I feel, that by the time many shows have drifted off their initial premise and have become just a random series of events having came so far from their initial ideas.

At that point Coral had ran out of ideas IMO.

[emmasi]

I find that shows go downhill when there's an overwhelming conspiracy involved. I base that on the X-Files. It was once about two FBI agents investigating paranormal activity of all kinds - ghosts, mutants, random abductions and the like... then it became aaaall about the aliens and the government and blah blah blah... Not sure what this has to do with H&A... oh, well I guess the ongoing Felix/Sarah/Zoe/Tracey thing is a form of conspiracy... Maybe that's the reason it's been going off track lately. Too much dependance on a single plot line.

[Ryan]

Since I never liked the X Files in the first place I guess that happened a few series into the shows run, when there sort of running out of ideas.

[ste]

I find that shows go downhill when there's an overwhelming conspiracy involved. I base that on the X-Files. It was once about two FBI agents investigating paranormal activity of all kinds - ghosts, mutants, random abductions and the like... then it became aaaall about the aliens and the government and blah blah blah... Not sure what this has to do with H&A... oh, well I guess the ongoing Felix/Sarah/Zoe/Tracey thing is a form of conspiracy... Maybe that's the reason it's been going off track lately. Too much dependance on a single plot line.

Yeah I loved the X Files when it was about entirely different stories each week with only a vague continuing background plot but then the background plot about the government took over and I got extremely bored with it.

That's actually quite a good comparison to make to H&A. Loved the Sarah storyline, liked the original stalker storyline, was extremely bored by the stalker sequel!

[Ryan]

There's another problem I see is that as the storylines continue, those "things" have built up.

Kim has been involved in 3 car crashes and 2 plane crashes and then there's the paternity storylines.

In OTH, by keeping murders under wraps, we now have 2 murderers on the show .

With the current storyline, Sally has been held at gunpoint, been held in a factory, had a ladder pulled from underneath her and been blown up.