Home and Away 2004 Cliffhanger/Noah's Death - 10 Years Ago

[CaptainHulk]

I still point the finger at Dani for Noah dying!

[James Martin]

The episode was shown on (Channel) 5 on Good Friday 2005. Noah died for Sarah's sins, or something.

It is still, IMO, the best episode of Home and Away ever. Brilliantly plotted and written, and actually felt more like a movie than a soap opera. I know it got a bashing from the regulator down under as the show was still classified U back then, but they felt it was borderline M (yet went out - uncut - at 6pm here!) but I just remember watching it with lights off and the sound up.

The tension, the countdown, the car chase, the shots then Dani's final NOOOOOOOO! as the action faded to black.

Just the perfect cliffhanger episode. The Rambo thing for Beijing 2008 just paled in comparison.

[jodlebirger]

The episode was shown on (Channel) 5 on Good Friday 2005. Noah died for Sarah's sins, or something.

It is still, IMO, the best episode of Home and Away ever. Brilliantly plotted and written, and actually felt more like a movie than a soap opera. I know it got a bashing from the regulator down under as the show was still classified U back then, but they felt it was borderline M (yet went out - uncut - at 6pm here!) but I just remember watching it with lights off and the sound up.

The tension, the countdown, the car chase, the shots then Dani's final NOOOOOOOO! as the action faded to black.

Just the perfect cliffhanger episode. The Rambo thing for Beijing 2008 just paled in comparison.

I have never been a fan of the dramatic cliffhangers, but I think that some of them have had good elements. And those are OC 2004, OC 2008 and year end cliffhanger 2008.

What I liked with 2004 OC was that it had a lot of consequences for the involved, especially when we can see the characters growing and changing naturally over time. But I wasn't a fan of Sarah/Lewis storyline in general.

t think that 2008 olympic cliff was good in some ways and far over the top in others, but I was not a fan of Rambo storyline, or the "i want to kill my father"- part of Adens breakdown. And the aftermath was not up to 2004's standards, but still very good if you compare it to 2010-2014 happenings.

I also liked end of 2008 cliffhanger, because I like the lead up to it, better than the OC 2004 and OC 2008. End of year 2008 had multiple cliffhanger and Angelo (a regular character) killing of Jack was also a shock, the fire at the school formal was also good in several ways. But then, I wasn't a fan of the end of the development site and how they treat the murder of Jack afterwards (like it wasn't a crime at all).

But what those three have in common; the emotional effect on several characters - that is what I like with all of those.

The Cliffhangers 2009-2013 have not the same character development in it, and they were more "mouse and cat" storylines. And the characters aren't as human as they were before the end of 2009..

[James Martin]

My least favourite cliffhanger was the 2003 mineshaft collapse. Good on paper but there was little follow through.

That said it wasn't all great days back then. Twin swap, anyone? Yes, we got some fantastic acting from the girls, and Bevan Lee even managed to bring Laura into his tenure by sitting Kirsty's HSCs for her, but it should have never been attempted and I think it did the viewers a bit of a disservice.

I have to say that I felt the Stalker storyline of 2005 kind of cheapened the 2004 storyline in some ways. Even though I enjoyed both stories very much, in different ways. And I did like how it actually explained how Sarah escaped (something that had never been addressed before). And I liked how they cleverly inter-cut footage of Sarah and Zoe/Eve together. I wonder how early this storyline was planned. I mean, Bevan knew he was only coming in temporarily until Daniel Bennett took over in 2005. And Daniel was (I believe) working on the show, in a lower-ranking position, up until then. Was the entire thing planned between the two of them?

Not sure, but Dan Bennett wrote the actual script for the Olympic Cliffhanger episode. He was on the show for years before taking over and was very much Coral Drouyn's protege in a way. I remember he was fantastically retentive when it came to continuity, which was great in giving us such a nostalgia laden 4000th episode shortly into his tenure.

I also remember from this forum two weeks of people analysing the famous promo with Kate Alexa's song Always There, trying to make out who was missing in the long shots of the funeral. There was a lot of speculation that Beau Brady was leaving but I don't think anyone knew for sure we was going to die. I remember reading in a soap mag in the UK three weeks later that "Beau Brady's character has been killed off to keep ratings high down under. He will leave in a Who Killed Noah type plot." Good old SoapLife.

[Trudy Heine]

What about Tasha being Angie's daughter in the same episode as the mineshaft? Or Alf's 60th and Jack and Martha's wedding reception?

[joany208121]

So the episode has Scott knowingly lead Sarah to his friend, a massive moral awkwardness than was never addressed:The script seems to insist he had no choice but the moment Sarah left Dani behind she had no bargaining tool, yet Scott carries on doing what she says anyway.It's one of those frustrating situations when if they'd tweaked it slightly it would have worked, if Sarah had taken Dani along as a hostage so Scott had a reason to co-operate,

Sarah has a Gun pointed at Scott the whole time he is driving, and he did try to stop by pulling the car over. I think there was a throwaway line that made me believe that if Scott stuffed up, Sarah would come back for Dani. 

I absolutely loved this ep, one of if not my favourite ep ever. 

[Red Ranger 1]

So the episode has Scott knowingly lead Sarah to his friend, a massive moral awkwardness than was never addressed:The script seems to insist he had no choice but the moment Sarah left Dani behind she had no bargaining tool, yet Scott carries on doing what she says anyway.It's one of those frustrating situations when if they'd tweaked it slightly it would have worked, if Sarah had taken Dani along as a hostage so Scott had a reason to co-operate,

Sarah has a Gun pointed at Scott the whole time he is driving, and he did try to stop by pulling the car over. I think there was a throwaway line that made me believe that if Scott stuffed up, Sarah would come back for Dani. 

I absolutely loved this ep, one of if not my favourite ep ever. 

Maybe I'm being too hard on him but it came across as Scott putting everyone else's lives at risk, and ultimately getting Noah killed, just to save his own neck.A lot of people in his place would have done the same thing but it was massively unheroic and Scott's complete lack of guilt at his weakness made it very hard for me to feel sympathy for him.And yes, Sarah did say she'd go back for Dani but that felt like a bluff: Dani was in a house that was guarded by the police, even Rhys couldn't get in to see her without being stopped and interrogated.

[dee123]

Ah. Memories of when the show wasn't a chore to watch.

[j.laur5]

I must say the 2004 season finale was just nice to have a Cliff-hanger ending to year!.

But It was hard for PTB to have a season finale as they had decided to start the year without any drama.

Who remembers the season return in 2005?.

As I remember Tasha/Robbie and Kim all went camping. Alf moaning to Sally that he hopes they drive safely  It felt like he wanted to say that its been   months without anything dramatic happening in Bay and what's keep it that way!.  

[emmasi]

Was there a cliffhanger in the 2004 finale? I feel like things were pretty well resolved for a change. My main memory of it is Noah's ghost kissing Hayley as she slept. I know Ric was on the streets of Sydney and Flynn was looking for him, which was a cliffhanger for me, but Ric wasn't main cast yet so I don't know if that would have had much impact on most viewers. The promo of dramatic 2005 scenes did most of the suspense work, as I recall. 

2004 was a spectacular year. It was the year I started taping the show because I NEEDED to own it!! Unfortunately I started that very late in the year, and sporadically, so the best I have of the Sarah stuff is where she shot Jesse  The thing I always remember though is when she put some kind of acid on Hayley's soap, and also on the outdoor shower... The soap burned Hayley's hands, but they found the stuff on the shower before anyone used it. I loved that detail for the sheer horror of the implied carnage that it COULD have caused. Something so simple, so easily overlooked. It still makes me shudder thinking about it now.

It bothered me that Scott lead Sarah to his friends too. I wrote a fafic (although for the life of me I can't remember which one it was right now) where Scott drove Sarah out into the middle of nowhere, stopped the car, and threw the keys into the bush. She killed him for it, but she was stranded and couldn't get to anyone else. She might have even killed herself. I wrote that because I wanted to explore how the Hunters would've reacted to Scott's death. We got a taste of it when Sarah faked his death earlier on, and I liked the chaos that ensued just from the IDEA of that happening. So what if it happened for real? Noah was a great character and the Bay rallied around Hayley in her grief, but in the end, it was really only Hayley that was deeply affected by his death. Scott had a mother and a lot of siblings, and his death would've hurt Danni the most. Compared to Noah... Why do I have a memory of his bachelor party consisting of him and Alf drinking alone on a couch  ?

I disagree that Noah's death was the last big shock of Home and Away. Even with spoilers, if you're good at suspension of disbelief (and I am), you can pretend that MAYBE the spoilers are wrong when you're actually watching the episode, and MAYBE the character you care about so much will pull through, because they couldn't REALLY kill him off, could they?!?! Well, maybe "shock" isn't the word for it if you're forewarned, but I definitely felt a sense of trauma when Jack died. Not because of him,necessarily, but because of Tony's gut-wrenching reaction to seeing his son dead, and the way the guilt wrecked Angelo's life... If I remember correctly (and things get pretty hazy for me after Jack's death), being ostracized from the community is what lead Angelo to get into such a bad financial position with Brax that he lost the restaurant to him? I really don't remember, but it's interesting to think about how one thing[leads to another, and how we still have echoes of past storylines today, whether we realise it or not.

(Why did no one ever renamed the restaurant... especially after Brax "died"....?)

Casey's death was an incredible episode, and that was all down to the acting. You can know ahead of time what's going to happen on paper, but if you have the right combination of actors playing it out, it can still be magic. Why do people still go to see performances Hamlet when they know everyone dies?? I'm not saying H&A is Shakespeare, but maybe, just every once in a while, one particular scene or episode can be held up as extraordinary. I guess that's the reason I keep watching through all of the disappointing stuff. I know this show has produced televisual miracles before and I don't want to miss the next one.