H&A Summer Break on Fiver

[jldraw]

I take back what I said about Angie not getting in her stride yet, she's perhaps more interesting now before she descends into panto villain territory yet you can see the seeds of what she became, in retrospect she's obviously manipulative and seems borderline hysterical when things don't go her way.

I'm racking my brain trying to remember wasn't there an episode towards the end of Angie's tenure, where her son Dylan mentions that his mom has some kind of mental disorder that causes her to act the way she did? Was the name of the mental disorder ever revealed? Obviously she had some severe control issues and exhibited high levels of narcissism but I'd be interested to learn if anything was ever revealed about her mental state.

I think a mental disorder was mentioned but I'm pretty sure it was never named. Probably because I can't think of any diagnosable mental state that would cause someone to turn into Angie. I think late 2002 was Angie's best time. As RR said, in 2003 she did have a tendency to turn into a bit of a panto villain, but 2002 was perfect. Basically everyone (except Rhys) knew she was an insincere cow, but hey there's no law against that, and she was treated as such. When it got to the point where she was responsible for everything bad in Summer Bay and where literally everything she did had an ulterior motive, it was a bit much.

Thanks for all the responses gang

I think you pretty much nailed it right there ebret. If there was any flaw as far as the development of the character of Angie it was that I think they almost threw too much against the wall. I liken it to what "The O.C." did with the Oliver Trask character in which they took a great antagonist and gave him almost every stereotypical symptom of well known mental disorders so that the mental disorder eventually became more important than the character. In most cases once you reach this point the character moves from having an identity of it's own to becoming a parody. I'm not sure if H&A ever got to that point with Angie but I agree it's rather hard to believe that one person could be as bent as Angie was and at the same time still able to function in society.

The other thing with Angie that I remember so well is that at the time on the various newsgroups that followed the show there was a tremendous amount of support for both her relationship with Rhys and her relationship with Nick. I'm not sure if that was the writers' intent but it is interesting where a lot of the viewers minds were and what they wanted to see. I'll leave the Angie/Nick (older woman/younger guy) relationship alone for now but I really think that Shelley Sutherland got on a lot of people's nerves back then. There weren't a lot of fans that I was aware of that were sympathizing with her plight.

[beanieking02]

Here's some more episodes

Monday 16th August: -

6.00 - Sarah arrives back in Summer Bay and is determined to make the residents pay. Dani and Scott make a shock decision. Jesse gets some stunning news.

6.30 - Sarah goes on the rampage with tragic consequences, while Peter's revelation will change Leah's life forever.

Tuesday 17th August: -

6.00 - Summer Bay reels after a murderous rampage, while Shelley and Rhys wreak havoc in the Bay. Meanwhile, what is Scott's amazing proposal to Dani?

6.30 - Belle is stunned when she finds out who her mother is, Rachel tries to work through her grief, and there's bad news about the hospital helicopter.

Wednesday 18th August: -

6.00 - After the helicopter crash, everybody comes together to search for Kim, Martha, Robbie, Belle and Kit. Meanwhile, Tasha goes into premature labour, and Sally worries about Cassie.

6.30 - Jack helps the panicking Tasha calm down, the search for the crash victims continues, and Ric's life is in danger.

Thursday 19th August: -

6.00 - Macca saves Ric's life, Cassie makes a difficult decision and Amanda rejects Kitty's offer of help.

6.30 - Alf refuses to give up hope, Amanda and Kitty move towards a reconciliation and Tony comes back from the search with bad news.

[Pierced Musie]

Here are some more...

20th August

6.00pm - Martha and Irene do their best to run Jonah out of town. Morag outsmarts Jazz, and a disgusted Drew turns his back on his mother forever. A terrified Martha is trapped with Jonah in a deserted mineshaft.

6.30pm - Jack's divorce is postponed again. Alf and Irene lead a search to find Martha, whose life is in danger as she confronts her worst nightmare.

23rd August

6.00pm - Martha's life hangs in the balance. Rachel's purse goes missing. Sally, at her wits' end, finally gets some help.

6.30pm - Jack and Martha tie the knot. Elliot kidnaps Nicole. Will Geoff save the day?

24th August

6.00pm - Doctors try to revive Martha after her collapse. A search party is sent out to look for marooned Geoff and Nicole. Roman wakes to find himself in a precarious situation.

6.30pm - Roman is caught in an explosion. Geoff and Nicole share a passionate embrace. Nicole's health deteriorates.

25th August

6.00pm - Nicole and Geoff are rescued. Aden holds Rachel and Larry captive. Belle makes a shocking discovery.

6.30pm - Kirsty has some bad news for Kane. Melody wreaks havoc at the school dance. Will Jack's investigation into Angelo prove fatal?

26th August

6.00pm - Fire engulfs the school hall during the annual dance. Will Kane survive his terrible injuries? Tony makes a horrifying discovery.

6.30pm - Martha is grief stricken. Kirsty is distraught over Kane's life-threatening injuries. Belle is treated for burns.

27th August

6.00pm - Geoff and Nicole run into a strange man on the Island. Trey takes an unhealthy interest in Kirsty. Jack's life insurance comes through.

6.30pm - Nicole fears that she and Geoff are doomed. Tensions rise between Kirsty and Miles after Miles learns Kirsty is tutoring Trey. Leah goes on a date with George.

[ebrett84]

I take back what I said about Angie not getting in her stride yet, she's perhaps more interesting now before she descends into panto villain territory yet you can see the seeds of what she became, in retrospect she's obviously manipulative and seems borderline hysterical when things don't go her way.

I'm racking my brain trying to remember wasn't there an episode towards the end of Angie's tenure, where her son Dylan mentions that his mom has some kind of mental disorder that causes her to act the way she did? Was the name of the mental disorder ever revealed? Obviously she had some severe control issues and exhibited high levels of narcissism but I'd be interested to learn if anything was ever revealed about her mental state.

I think a mental disorder was mentioned but I'm pretty sure it was never named. Probably because I can't think of any diagnosable mental state that would cause someone to turn into Angie. I think late 2002 was Angie's best time. As RR said, in 2003 she did have a tendency to turn into a bit of a panto villain, but 2002 was perfect. Basically everyone (except Rhys) knew she was an insincere cow, but hey there's no law against that, and she was treated as such. When it got to the point where she was responsible for everything bad in Summer Bay and where literally everything she did had an ulterior motive, it was a bit much.

Thanks for all the responses gang

I think you pretty much nailed it right there ebret. If there was any flaw as far as the development of the character of Angie it was that I think they almost threw too much against the wall. I liken it to what "The O.C." did with the Oliver Trask character in which they took a great antagonist and gave him almost every stereotypical symptom of well known mental disorders so that the mental disorder eventually became more important than the character. In most cases once you reach this point the character moves from having an identity of it's own to becoming a parody. I'm not sure if H&A ever got to that point with Angie but I agree it's rather hard to believe that one person could be as bent as Angie was and at the same time still able to function in society.

The other thing with Angie that I remember so well is that at the time on the various newsgroups that followed the show there was a tremendous amount of support for both her relationship with Rhys and her relationship with Nick. I'm not sure if that was the writers' intent but it is interesting where a lot of the viewers minds were and what they wanted to see. I'll leave the Angie/Nick (older woman/younger guy) relationship alone for now but I really think that Shelley Sutherland got on a lot of people's nerves back then. There weren't a lot of fans that I was aware of that were sympathizing with her plight.

What you're describing is why I hated Aden's abuse storyline so much. It started out well but then they threw every possible abuse victim syndrome at him. He has sexaphobia! He beats up other would be rapists! He tries to kill his father after he finds out he knew about it (even though he already knew that his father knew about it)! He became so screwed up that it was impossible to believe a guy like that could function in normal society. Then they gave him community service for attempted murder and kidnapping, and 2 weeks later made him magically cured once the writers got bored. Remind me again why people think that storyline was so great .

Were people really supporting Angie and Nick? I loved watching Angie totally screw with his mind in a trainwreck sort of way (unlike Penn and Nicole today which is just boring), but I certainly didn't want them to end up together. As for Angie and Rhys, that was a bit different. I wouldn't have minded them getting together. I mentioned earlier that I liked the Sutherlands, but Shelley was the one I never really cared for. It seemed like the writers wanted her to be this loving, warm earth mother type but to me she always seemed a bit cold and snappy with her kids.

[Red Ranger 1]

Oh no, no, no!I'm looking at the list of Best Cliffhangers episodes in despair.First week and a bit's okay, three episodes from the 2004 Olympic Cliffhanger, five from the helicopter crash in 2006, three of Martha and Jonah/Michael trapped down a mineshaft from 2007...all fine.But then what do we get?Nine episodes from the last two years, most of them culled from last year's Disasters fortnight and the Best of 2009 run.Including Aden turning into an evil sociopath who thinks because he was abused he can torture his fellow victim and keep an innocent woman locked in a shed for two days, an action which instead of being punished with jail or being sectioned indefinitely sees him back in town in a few weeks with everyone patting him on the back and saying how good it is to see him while Irene cares as much about what he did to Belle as Ruby cared about what Hugo did to Charlie.Oh-and Melody being character assassinated.I'm going to do my best to avoid most of that week.

Finding the conversation above interesting.I think if I hadn't seen the early stuff from 2000 and 2001 I'd be thinking I remembered Shelley wrong.I always thought of her as a warm and caring person who suddenly became selfish and a bit snobby when she got changed from a regular to an occasional guest.But looking at the episodes they repeated from 2002 she seems to be already halfway there, alienating her children and mishandling crises, although that might be because we're seeing the dramatic stuff instead of the bread and butter.I still preferred her to Angie though, although I didn't mind Rhys and Angie hooking up after she'd gone, mainly because they weren't hurting anyone else and that was Rhys' look out.I find it odd that anyone was rooting for Angie and Nick because that was a seriously twisted relationship, none of them cared about or were even particularly attracted to the other, it was just a power game.As a Nick/Jade fan, the episode where Angie's invited him around for a full-on seduction and instead he realises he doesn't actually want her and goes for a walk with Jade on the beach was punch-the-air fantastic.I agree there's a kind of ambiguity about the character in the early days which was lost once her true true colours were exposed, a feeling that she's obviously a cow but is she really nasty enough to do something like that:Did she really hire a hitman to kill Shelley or Morag and then bump him off or not?We were never really sure.

Going back to my latest rant about Aden, I think ebrett's comments about Kane kind of apply to him but more so.With both those super couples, they seemed to perpetuate the myth of the bad boy who treats him girl like a princess.Given how many girls swooned over them and wished they had a boyfriend like that, you wonder how many abusive teenage relationships the show is responsible for. (In fact, wasn't there a government campaign about it last year?)I was rolling my eyes a few days back when I looked in the Aden/Belle thread and found everyone going "All these family storylines and innocent teen romances they have these days are dull, why don't they do anything good like Aden's abuse?"Because that storyline summed up just why they shouldn't do storylines like that because they often end up making a mess of it and far from being the best it was probably the worst. It's been interesting seeing the early stuff again and seeing the direction the writers at the time probably intended to take Aden in:Still surly and prone to nasty comments but beginning to realise that there's a better way and to form genuine attachments to people, including his father. Then a new writing team came in and apparently decided that a nice Aden was boring so they kept him as a nasty piece of work and correctly guessed everyone would be too busy fancying him or feeling sorry for him to care.

[jldraw]

Were people really supporting Angie and Nick? I loved watching Angie totally screw with his mind in a trainwreck sort of way (unlike Penn and Nicole today which is just boring), but I certainly didn't want them to end up together. As for Angie and Rhys, that was a bit different. I wouldn't have minded them getting together. I mentioned earlier that I liked the Sutherlands, but Shelley was the one I never really cared for. It seemed like the writers wanted her to be this loving, warm earth mother type but to me she always seemed a bit cold and snappy with her kids.

Yeah if my memory serves me correctly there was a grouping of fans back then who thought that the Angie/Nick interaction was pretty "hot" (for lack of a better term). The only thing I can think of is there are people out there who like the older woman/younger guy relationship. I didn't feel either way about it actually, I wasn't outraged by it nor did I necessarily want to see them end up together.

As far as Shelley goes, I think Paula Forrest was a pretty solid actress and her scenes with Mick Beckley during this period were I think some of the most emotional scenes I've ever seen on this show. The unfortunate thing was although as good as the acting was the whole downfall of the Shelley/Rhys relationship was a huge failure in my eyes for two reasons. First (from the episodes I've seen) it seemed incredibly forced. I don't recall if Shelley and Rhys were having marital troubles prior to Angie turning up but for me I never bought that their marriage could end so quickly. To me it's almost as if Shelley just gave up on her marriage and her family without a fight which brings me to my second point which is I thought the point of this whole storyline was to make Shelley a sympathetic character. Instead in my eyes Shelley came off looking extremely unsympathetic once she abandoned her family. I think Kirsty has a line in one episode where she's speaking to her mom who is trying to get her to move to the city with her and Kirsty tells her "Why would we want to move with you? Why would we choose you over dad? You left us". Indeed.

I don't know if all this was just a result of them trying to wrap up Shelley's storylines as Paula was leaving the show as a regular but the whole deterioration of The Sutherlands in my opinion had several holes in it from a writing standpoint and these were covered up somewhat by tremendous acting by Mick and Paula who really sold the material they were given.

[Ryan]

I think from probably mid-2002 they seemed to be pushing Shelley more and more towards the edge. First of all there was Kirsty/ectasy storyline, a mustn't watch for epileptics, then the fact that Kirsty continued to be deceiptful, first going on the Mirigini, and then by seeing Kane, and then by keeping that all from Dani, she began to lose her trust and then they kept on throwing more and more at the family.

ebrett, yeah, Jade's bulimia storyline wasn't particularly good, merely skirting around the issue it seemed than actually tackling it. Partly this might be because bulimia/anorexia aren't subjects I'm interested in that I didn't give it the full level of my interest , but their other storylines were really Childrens TV stuff, whether it be Kirsty's triathlon, Kirsty's belly piercing etc.

[jodlebirger]

Oh no, no, no!I'm looking at the list of Best Cliffhangers episodes in despair.First week and a bit's okay, three episodes from Going back to my latest rant about Aden, I think ebrett's comments about Kane kind of apply to him but more so.With both those super couples, they seemed to perpetuate the myth of the bad boy who treats him girl like a princess.Given how many girls swooned over them and wished they had a boyfriend like that, you wonder how many abusive teenage relationships the show is responsible for. (In fact, wasn't there a government campaign about it last year?)I was rolling my eyes a few days back when I looked in the Aden/Belle thread and found everyone going "All these family storylines and innocent teen romances they have these days are dull, why don't they do anything good like Aden's abuse?"

Nobody in the Aden/Belle tread said that. One was saying that the current teens are shallow, and Adens abuse storyline got her/him interested in the beginning... and I said that I think the current teens are shallowed (and some of them have even been changed by destroing a departing character this year, just to fit into the new direction of storylines - portraying the teens like their parents want them to be, but that is a discussion for an another tread). I don't want a new abuse storyline. never!!! Because they have proved by this one, that they are not capable of doing a sensitive storyline in a decent way, but dragging to the extreme just to make them sensational. And Adens storyline was not the only one, even that storyline is the one who certain people have been complaining over. Melody's was just as bad... a lot of the storylines in late 08, and 2009 were like this. But I do think that Adens made most damage to the real life victims. Unfortunately. Watching these eps over again have reminded me about that.

I am not in UK at the moment, but these storylines are airing in Norway right now too...

[Slade]

I'm really pleased about the conclusion to the Sarah Lewis storyline but I can't believe they're showing the end of 2008 again didn't they show that at Christmas?

Anyway, I'm really glad they showed the last four episodes. The first three in particular. For me that was during the height of the Sutherland era, personally my favourite period of Home and Away. Angie was a psychotic b*tch but I loved her. I was gutted after Kane dumped Kirsty but when she came along shortly afterwards it felt like she revived the show again and I thought she carried it for months. They missed a few episodes in between but I think they just wanted to show the reveal to Shelly about Dillon being Rhys's son at the time (we all know that in the end he wasn't). We didn't get to see Dillon copping off with Kirsty, Rhys come storming in manhandling Dillon and throwing him out. Also when Rhys came home from work and saw Shelly chatting with Angie fearful Angie would reveal the truth. I thought the episodes were intense but I really liked the acting. I've noted comments before which have mentioned that Shelly as a person was quite cold. At the time I thought they were a bit harsh but looking at her in these two episodes I'm inclined to agree.

Even though it was only brief it was also really good to see Dani. I was a massive Kirsty and Kane fan but she was another character that I loved - one of my all time favourites in fact. Come to think of it bar Kane the last four episodes they've shown have contained 5 of 6 all time favourite characters.

Again good to see Flynn. The original one that is (not the fake Flynn even though I liked him too). I liked the way he always tried to defend Jesse and always saw the good in him. Sally did as well. I could never understand what Noah's problem was with Jesse at first. Was it because of their first meeting where if my memory serves me correctly it was something regarding Noah's bike and Jesse threatened him?

I remember Alf's brain tumour quite well. I even remember when he started seeing Alisa again and Morag came in tried to play along, pretended to sit down on the couch and talk to Alisa and Alf thought his sister was crazy because Alisa was standing right next to him, so Morag couldn't have been talking to her.

I've seen the last episode they showed on Friday quite a few times. I stopped watching Home and Away around early 2005 but Amanda was the main reason I started watching it again. I loved her and Peter together. Even though Amanda was another massive favourite of mine I have to admit every time Ethan and Kelli blackmailed her I found her shock horror reactions and Ethan and Kelli's smug self-satisfied expressions most amusing.

[jldraw]

I think one of the main flaws with The Sutherlands was also what made them kind of cool. They were this little family unit which brought an interesting dynamic to the show after the years of revolving doors of foster children. However realistically how much could happen to one family? Illegitimate children, children switched at birth, all this other malarkey. The overall soapy quality of the storylines eventually just got too much in my opinion when it came to The Sutherlands.

Now that Amanda has been brought up it brings to mind another question I had. I remember reading (I think it was on these forums too) that a lot of Amanda's storylines were originally written for Josie Russell? Is there any truth to that or is that some fan's fantasy?