2023 Season - UK Episode Discussion

[pembie]

So Andrew is part of a cult while it’s a interesting story I will say being in a cult was quite predictable

I liked Cash in this episode but hated Eden hanging around waiting to talk to him the writing for these two is awful 

So why hasn’t anyone else noticed the extra label underneath for these beauty products?

[CaptainHulk]

Good stuff with Andrew but now we're back to the boring lives of Mac and Rose. Also more Lyrikal Lousiness. And more stuff with Tane/Cousin It to continue based on previews.

Marilyn v Beauty Baddies seems to be taking a few steps forward but as with her stories, they go a few more steps back.

[H&Alover]

I may be totally ignorant about how cults operate but don't they usually gather in communes rather than send their disciples off to houses to manage on their own with maybe their partner/child?  Do they get moved around so as not to raise suspicion? Vita Nova - new life - which seems an odd name seeing as it's a Doomsday Cult unless I'm missing something.  Justin definitely didn't learn from Cash and his overbearing attitude when he was 'asking' Andrew questions.  Time to see his Anger Management Counsellor methinks. I'm absolutely no expert but I would have found out what I wanted to know by going a different  route, talked about my childhood and where I was taken when I was little and see if it nudged Andrew into revealing something, he was only four when he was snatched but funny the things kids that age do remember.  Glad Leah chucked him out so she could speak to Andrew and she did it very well, gently asked how he found out his mum had died and when he said 'they' told him but backed off when he closed down.  He did reveal later these men kept coming round and talking to his dad but still not happy that he'd revealed so much.   

Cash has seen the light and decided they need to get 'proper' people in, those who have experience in talking to young people like Andrew who have escaped or been rescued from a cult who have been indoctrinated from an early age and know how to unindoctrinate them. 

Justin did speak wise words to Cash - see he can do it sometimes -  about how he would feel if the situation had been the other way round.  Still nothing to do with him just giving - sorry lending -  her a wad of cash, it's for the band.  

That's the term I was looking for NDA - Non Disclosure Agreement -  SO let those people go as long as they signed one.   Any product can have an averse reaction to someone who uses it even natural stuff like plants, herbs and spices and no company can test it out on everyone.   But any responsible firm should say on a bottle, jar etc to do a sample test in case you get  a reaction but obviously SO didn't put any sort of warning on their products.  Well spotted there   Eyed Alf.  Clearly this other firm had to close down or ducked out of sight but then changed names to avoid being charged for similar offences. 

 

 

[pembie]

2 hours ago, CaptainHulk said:

Good stuff with Andrew but now we're back to the boring lives of Mac and Rose. Also more Lyrikal Lousiness. And more stuff with Tane/Cousin It to continue based on previews.

Marilyn v Beauty Baddies seems to be taking a few steps forward but as with her stories, they go a few more steps back.

Yeah I don’t think Gabe was in the show that long to have sent all those messages to Mac 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Red Ranger 1]

Rose being as skittish as she's ever been was quite amusing and I loved Felicity wanting all the details about her getting drunk and bonding with Xander about having buttoned-up cops as siblings.Also loved John getting into way too much information territory by telling Mali the last person he broke up with ended up dead.Mali giving Rose his schedule was a way of bringing things to a head, I suppose, and at least it's got her to talk.

I must admit I'd virtually forgotten what Mackenzie was upset about at the moment, Gabe was so unmemorable.I was kind of worried that Felicity sending Xander on his break without telling her was going to backfire so relieved that Mackenzie was at least reasonably polite to him at the end.

So, we get to learn a bit more about Vita Nova. I was wondering how Andrew was punished when he said his father didn't hit him.I guess now we know and it's not too pretty.

[atrus]

Back up to speed, and looks like Home and Away is finally back to doing what it does best: troubled waifs being taken in by pillars of the community and sheltered from the clutches of wacko cults. Joshua Hewson is putting in a wonderful idiosyncratic performance - it's great to see the little moments of the character relishing the freedom of the real world, such as in the music sessions or at the beach. This storyline is so far and away above everything else right now in terms of quality and engagement value that for four days this week I managed almost to forget the show is totally different to the one I grew up with.

Justin and Cash frustrated at times with their questioning style; I get that impatience is an established character flaw for Justin, but it's hard to watch when Andrew is visibly terrified. I spent most of the time thinking that there must surely be ways to make these interviews easier for him: such as not needlessly dragging him to the police station when they could easily have conducted it at home. Maybe they could've put Rose on the case rather than the officious Cash, too, as I suspect she'd have been better at making it a less intimidating process and let's face it, didn't really have anything more worthwhile to do this week. Leah's softly-softly approach seems to be garnering a little more information, but evidently Andrew's still terrified of repercussions if he says too much, and understandably so given what Leah learned about their punishment methods yesterday.

Of secondary interest is Marilyn's story, which also has somewhat of an old-school feel about it even if I can't exactly put my finger on why. (Maybe it's just that so many characters who've been in the show for more than two years are involved.) This cosmetics company seems fairly bullish and hardcore in how they deal with detractors, but we're taking a lot of time to uncover anything about them and have still yet to meet any representatives, which gave me a thought: is anybody else wondering if there's going to be a link-up between them and Andrew's cult somewhere down the road? Maybe it's how they make their money to buy endless supplies of tinned goods and mineral water?

While Kirsty Marillier is valiantly putting baskets of energy into making Rose interesting, it still can't really save the fact that this thing with Mali is another by-the-numbers, heterosexual, twentysomething will-they-won't-they, and I'm just beyond caring. Beyond caring too on how Tane's random cousin will fund his fishing trawler, though I'm guessing we're leading up to Mackenzie getting suckered in (and she's not going to listen to any of her friends' warnings because she doesn't need to be wrapped in cotton wool - so just BACK OFF!) And even further beyond caring on the vexed question of how Lyrik is going to fund their new album - particularly the silly Cash/Eden interactions with him getting his nose out of joint because she even uttered the possibility that they might not be together in x years' time.

Glad to see Xander a bit cheerier now he's out of the paramedic gig - but is he the only Salt employee who's exempt from wearing black and white stripes? Or does it count as one big stripe if his shirt's all black?

[H&Alover]

Yeh Justin is still doing his CS as he mentioned to Leah that is where he was heading off to.  

It has taken some pressure off them having the proper people to speak to Andrew as they will have had years of experience in getting the info they need from him.  Leah & Justin are far too close, even if they have only known him a short time.  Justin could kind of relate, as he, Tori, Mason and Brody were in hiding, and he was in charge effectively, but they were all together.  Some of those horror stories Leah was reading about - was she reading about Vita Nova specifically or other cults - would be hard to take in.  It may help them to understand Andrew more, it's all he's known after all. Wonder how Archie got sucked in as cults do tend to zone in on people who seem 'lost' for want of a better word and they 'offer' to help them, he was a dad, husband was he having money worries, lost his job, worrying about about the end of  the world?   We've had experience of cults in the bay before though all purport  to be different, basically they are all the same,  keeping away from 'ordinary' folk if they don't go with their 'flow'. 

We needed a bit of light relief  after that and Rose gave it to us.  I get she was embarrassed about her going to snog Mali and him backing off,  but it is only her feeling that 'shame'.  Guess her being a cop makes it doubly so, well would be for her.  We discovered her secret  go to - Xander got tatts, she scoffs cereal straight from the container.  Xander soon fed up with checking if Mali was in the Surf Club and John seemed to have cottoned on quick too.    Was that a bit of reverse psychology by Mali with his print out of his schedule?  OK maybe too early for them to be friends but at least they can talk.  That was a nice bit of  having a cop as a brother/sister sharing moment between Flick & Xander. 

Mali did seem surprised to see Mac at SALT, even though she kept protesting she was fine - yeh well we know what that means.  She did snap at Xander when he was speaking to Mali about Rose so I wondered how she would react when Flick told Xander to take a break to see Rose, but she is his boss too.   Xander was concerned about her when he caught her crying in the store cupboard but wisely backed off  Gabe may not have been around long, but he was an old love of Mac's and he and she had been communicating a lot it seems by text so not surprising so was upset. 

[CaptainHulk]

I'm struggling with Mac as sans Dean or even Ryder to play off of, she's just... there.

[Red Ranger 1]

There is potential in Mackenzie and Felicity's friendship, but unfortunately, since the promising early days, their interaction seems to consist largely of one of them having a crisis and the other one putting out fires for them.Here, Mackenzie was unnecessarily short with Xander, although she did soften up a bit in the end.Ironically, her love/hate exchanges with Kahu were among the most relaxed she was all episode, possibly because he's one of the few who doesn't spend all his time asking how she is.

Rose was amusingly skittish at times although she annoyed me a bit with the way she rang Xander in a panic at work, getting him in trouble with Mackenzie, and then hung up straightaway.The "pretend fight" didn't really amuse either but, oh well, at least she and Mali have sorted things out now.John did his usual good job of commenting on everyone's storylines, with his winding up Mali and playing referee for Tane and Kahu. Felicity again worked well as support and voice of reason to Tane, who learns yet another secret Kahu's been keeping.

Remi was incredibly heavy-handed in cancelling the band's tour without consulting anyone, and it was obviously more about keeping Bree happy than freeing up rehearsal time, in which case...failure all round.

[H&Alover]

Mac was snappy with Xander but after she heard his story she did soften as he understood how she was feeling.  I can see why she was unhappy about him having his phone on at work, it was hardly a life or death situation with Rose so didn't need it on.  I'm guessing the other staff aren't allowed to.  Rose does get intense when she falls for someone and it doesn't work out, look what happened with her and Cash, she wanted to go back home, change shifts so she didn't have to work with him. That all got sorted out in the end. They wound up  Xander  so easily by pretending to be still arguing. 

You always find people get uptight and snap back "I'm fine"  when people keep asking it they are OK. 

Tane definitely doesn't trust Kahu and it looks like he has good reason, hasn't done what he said he was going to do with the money and now it seems he's used the gym business credit card for his own purposes, as like all good banks should do they phoned Tane about the suspicious transactions that had been  made, and he's found out Kau has been lying to his mum.  Felicity was the voice of reason by calming Tane down and getting him to sleep on it before tackling Kahu and she has had doubts about him from the beginning.  John did well with intervening between Kahu and Tane, take  it outside - no don't even take it outside. 

Remi did take it upon himself to get involved with This Battle of the Bands thing and like I thought once Bree realised why he had cancelled the tours told him it wouldn't help her in the long term.