Bartlett and Kirsty

[beau_t]

Remember when Bartlett had that weird obsession with Kirsty? Was it ever explained what that was all about? I am sure something was mentioned about Kirsty reminding him of his daughter, but what was the story there? Was it ever explained or was it just another case of crappy continuity like most of late 2008?

[ebrett84]

IIRC, it was never really explicitly explained. I can remember Kirsty went over to his house and saw a photo on his mantlepiece of someone who looked quite a lot like Kirsty. I can't remember who it was and it was never really followed up on, I don't think. So I guess it was mentioned a bit, but they could have done a lot more with it.

[devon]

I thought the photo was of his wife??

Yeah, it looked like they were setting up an interesting back story for Bartlett that they would explore, then they got rid of him for Gina

[beau_t]

Oh was it his wife? I thought I read somewhere it was his daughter. Well they dropped the storyline a good while before they wrote him out for Gina. He just went back to being Kirsty and Miles' boss for ages and all the stuff about his daughter/wife was forgotten like it never happened.

All the adults were very poor in late 2008 after such a great start to the year. Morag and Ross had a shockingly bad wedding and then Ross suddenly developped dementia in a way that simply does not happen. Oh and Morag completely forgot the fact that she had taken care of her father who had Alzheimers. Irene went from being pivotal in Kane and Kirsty's return to forgetting they even existed. Christine Jones went from a strict unreasonable mother (not a very nice character but they do exist) into a raving cartoonish loon. And Bartlett went from being a nasty (remember his face-off with Sally Fletcher in the hospital?) selfish man into a bit of a stalker and then into a friendly neighbourhood principal with no real explanation.

[Red Ranger 1]

I'm not really sure I agree with that.I guess Martin followed the character arc of his predecessors Donald Fisher and Barry Hyde by starting off as a fairly straightforward strict disciplinarian and then gradually becoming more complex.He could be nasty and selfish in the early days but it was pretty early on that he was offering Miles a chance to get back into teaching and putting aside his differences with Sally to admit she'd had a positive effect on the students.I wouldn't call him a stalker, he fancied Kirsty, he tried his luck a bit, she chose Miles instead, he took it badly and behaved in a somewhat unprofessional manner towards her before eventually realising he was in the wrong.

Christine Jones was always a loony:She came in burning books and by the time she was ranting at Miles at the meeting, saying he was disgusting and shouldn't be allowed near children, she was obviously unstable, it was when they brought her back in 2009 and went "Oh, no, she's nice now" that it went wrong.Irene did fade into the background a bit during late 2008 but she still had quite a few scenes with Kirsty and she was the first person Kane contacted when he got out of jail.Morag and Ross' wedding was appropriate for the characters, they wouldn't have had a big white wedding on the wharf.Not sure how realistic his rapid onset dementia was but it was a disappointment that they couldn't be bothered to play the storyline out and had him disappear for a year instead.

[alexx]

Morag and Ross' wedding was appropriate for the characters, they wouldn't have had a big white wedding on the wharf.

I thought Morag and Ross' wedding was one of the most poorly written storylines. They could have married in the same church as Shane and Angel and I would have felt the same, the point is it wasn't character focused at all. There is a mock wedding episode written at Summer Bay Journal by a fan who wrote what would have been a absolute classic and far more fitting - this is Morag we are talking about, its not like we are used to seeing her in a romantic situation let alone getting married - this should have been a huge turning point for the character and written that way. Instead it was 'just another wedding' full of cliches, it was boring and the focus was on the event rather than the characters.

[_chris70_]

I thought Ross and Morag's wedding was appropiate, unshowy yet powerful in the way Morag had founbd love again. I was disapointed how they packed them off soon after Ross' storyline, but then again he did make a reappearance (actually as a plot device for Ruby and Charlie's storyline), but still they did do him justice by going through the emotional side of him losing his temper and dealing with a loss of confidence.

I was disapointed with Christine Jone's descent into madness; she was possessive and preachy, but not a looney. But perhaps in the pursuit of ratings, she became crazy. I liked her appearance in 2009 with her own mother, it worked very well alongsie the perhaps over emphasis placed on the Kirsty and Miles storyline.

[Red Ranger 1]

I agree about Morag and Ross but not about Christine.Seriously, the woman wasn't just possessive and preachy, she was someone with a fragile grip on reality who couldn't stand anything contradicting her myopic view of life and the world.So it's no surprise that everything that was happening with Melody around that time, which she flatly refused to deal with except in her own twisted way, pushed her over the edge.The storyline with her mother was appalling with the typical Home and Away dubious morality which suggested that because her mother was a bit mean to her it was all right for her to treat Melody a lot worse.