The 1989 season

[adam436]

What are people’s thoughts on the 1989 season?

After a pretty much faultless 1988 season, 1989 seemed very hit and miss. In many ways, late 1989 felt like a very different show to what we had in 1988. It also started laying the foundations of the changes that would occur in 1990 and shape the early 90s era of the show.

 

Highlights:

• Ailsa’s post-natal depression
• The Dodge storyline
• The Morag/Danny stuff - brilliant young actor who played Danny - it's a shame his career was cut short. 
• The Morag and Marilyn pairing - I loved how they needed each other. Morag secretly needed company so she put up with Marilyn, and Marilyn was completely oblivious to Morag's acidic remarks and sarcasm. 
• Bobby's relationship with Donald
• Emma Jackson - I loved her relationship with Ailsa, Alf, Steven and Viv and she felt like a breath of fresh air. 

 

Low points:

• Tom and Pippa's marriage problems at the end of the yer - really poorly written how the entire town believed Pippa was having an affair 
• Pretty much everything Lance and Martin did - chasing women, Image, the fish funeral, the hotdog stand. Their slapstick stuff seemed fine in 1988, but my 1989 it either become too repetitive or the show was trying to cut back on comedy B plots. 
• Frank and Bobby's shortlived marraige. After a big 1988 season for them, their relationship just ended on a whimper. 
• Carly lusting every man in Summer Bay - Andrew, Matt, Adam, Grant and finally Ben. The latter two were in early 1990 though, but it did Carly no favours. 
• Andrew and Stacey - not only did they seem quite ill-suited, but it also felt too soon after Philip. 
• Adam and Emma - as I said above, I loved the Emma character, but we really could have done without this. I've heard the producers wanted them as the "Scott and Charlene" of H&A, but it didn't take off for whatever reason. 

 

Changes that helped shaped the early 90s era: 

• Tom and Pippa seemed to take a backseat in the second half of 1989, and Bobby, Steven and Carly seemed to "step up". Tom and Pippa were always the lynchpins of the Fletcher family, but we went months without Tom, and then Pippa in the show. It may have been a coincidence, but both actors departed permanently not long after, and replaced with Pippa 2.0 and Michael, who stayed until the mid/late 90s. 
• The new Diner and Surf Club are introduced, which became constant sets and meeting points of the 1990s. 
• The show shifted towards a younger demographic - it had always been youth-focussed, but older characters were either dropped or sidelined (see my above comment about Tom and Pippa), and I feel like the number of scenes with shirtless males or women in swimwear definitely picked up. 
• Many of the cast changes that propelled the show into a new era - such as the departures of Lance, Martin, Celia, Tom, Pippa 1, and the arrivals of Sophie and Pippa 2 occured in early 1990, but based on how those characters were used in 1989, I'd say their exits were already in train. 

 

 

[j.laur5]

I always wondered if the Sands Resort was meant to play a bigger part in the show.

I do think Morag soon grew sympathetic towards on Marilyn and could understand why she was and Morag tried helping her.

After rewatching 1989 episodes a couple of years ago I did feel Morag was on her way to mellowing and becoming more like later years Morag but once her exit storyline started and Danny started hid revenge it went all out the window. 

[Homeandawayfan.]

1989 did seem more hit and miss than 1988 I agree. In the first year, 1988, the show catered for all ages even if it did have several younger characters. We had the older ones such as Floss, Neville, Pippa, Tom, Don, Celia, Alf, Morag and Colleen. In 1988 many of the sets were quite old fashioned looking such as the Fletcher house and the general store, very stuck in the 1960s. Late 1988 saw the Diner come in, and 1989 saw the exit of the original shop and a newer more modern shop, and the introduction of the Surf Club in 1989. And the show became more youth focused, and the comedy element seemed to dwindle quite a bit, whereas 1988 had some good comedy. 

EastEnders was also going through a slump in 1989 after a fab 1988. But EE is 3 years older, so its slump came later into the show than the 2nd year. 

[adam436]

1 hour ago, Homeandawayfan. said:

In 1988 many of the sets were quite old fashioned looking such as the Fletcher house and the general store, very stuck in the 1960s. Late 1988 saw the Diner come in, and 1989 saw the exit of the original shop and a newer more modern shop, and the introduction of the Surf Club in 1989.

I didn't notice it so much with the Fletcher house, but certainly with the General Store. All the teenagers hung out there because it was "the only place in town", so it could never have worked long-term with someone like Celia running it. The local gathering point had to be welcoming and run by characters who could relate to the youth, like Bobby and Ailsa. I notice the producers made more use of the exterier towards the end, with characters drinking their coffee/milkshakes on the outside tables, so maybe the producers also realised the set had had its day. From what I understand the building was meant to be demolished, so the wrote it out with the fire, but I suspect it would have either gone or had a complete overhaul sooner or later anyway. It was also a huge set for what it was, so it would have given them more studio space too. 

  

1 hour ago, Homeandawayfan. said:

the comedy element seemed to dwindle quite a bit, whereas 1988 had some good comedy. 

I found the comedy in 1989 to be quite cringy and juvinile. Lance and Martin were great comedy characters in 1988, but I think it became a case of either the show moving away from that element or the writers running out of ideas for them. I'm talking about the pop band stuff, the goldfish funeral, the hotdog stand, trying to get rid of Colleen. They had become very two-dimensional, whereas in 1988 I feel like they had more depth - Martin "breaking up" with Lance because he realised Lance was better without him showed some great growth with the character. In some ways, Lance and Martin became quite isolated from the rest of the cast: other than Celia (for some of the aforementioned comedy stories), Sally, Marilyn and Stacey for the pop band story, they barely interacted with any one with by the end and didn't even hang out with Carly, Bobby etc. like they used to. 

Though the comedy element was all but dropped in the early 90s apart from maybe the odd character like Marilyn and Adam, I think the writers learned their lesson and made sure any comedy characters in the 90s could also deliver on the dramatic stuff too rather than just two-dimensional comic relief. I'm talking the likes of Vinnie, Irene and Marilyn in the late 90s - all fondly remembered for the comedy and heart they brought, but all were powerhouses when it came to the dramatic stuff. Lance and Martin, and perhaps even Celia, Neville and Floss would have struggled with those storylines because they'd essentially become caricatures towards the end of their stints, despite some good storylines in 1988 such as Celia's tragic backstory and the McPhees' family heartache. 

[j.laur5]

I did enjoy having more older characters in 1988-1989 but I guess with the direction the show was talking it’s understandable why Neville and Floss were written out as well as Morag and why Celia wasn’t replaced when Fiona Space decided to leave. If Celia stayed I think she mostly would just continue as town busybody and village fool with getting into comical situations.

As Pippa and Micheal and Alf and Ailsa all had purpose by being parents of teenagers and Donald being principal.

Neighbours did same in 1993 when they move show into more teenage direction and writing out older characters like Dorothy/Jim/Cathy/Bentio. 

[Homeandawayfan.]

The original store ran by Ailsa was like the H&A version of Daphne's coffee shop in Neighbours. At least the Diner was bought in a few months before the original store was blown up by Dodge, so both locations were in the show onscreen at the same time. 

[cymbaline]

They changed the girls' school uniform in 1989, discarding the drab blue one. It didn't add to the drama one way or the other, but it became the best-known costume from the show. 

 

[Homeandawayfan.]

I did like in an early 1989 episode when Nicola Quilter made a pre Donna Bishop appearance in one episode as Louise. 

One downside of 1989 was the exit of the fabulous Alison Patterson in February, a great guest character/almost semi regular. I guess she became so unlikeable and was alienated by the Bay and her story had been told, now she and some of the regulars of her age had recently left school. 

[adam436]

1 hour ago, Homeandawayfan. said:

One downside of 1989 was the exit of the fabulous Alison Patterson in February, a great guest character/almost semi regular. I guess she became so unlikeable and was alienated by the Bay and her story had been told, now she and some of the regulars of her age had recently left school. 

  I guess she was replaced by Vicki Baxter, who became the antagonist for the next generation of high schoolers. She wasn't as likable as Alison in my opinion though, and that's coming from someone who wasn't a big Alison fan. I guess Alison felt more three-dimensional, whereas Vicki just felt like a two-dimensional villain. We also of course, knew the Pattersons were a fairly significant family in the district, so perhaps that's added to the character as well. I wonder if the producers invlted Kathryn Ridley back in the early 2000s when the connection to Vinnie was first established. The show was really celebrating the early years during that era and did introduce two of Alison's siblings. It might have been fun to bring her back as part of the Brett Macklin story in 2005, or the Josh West story in 2006, but they were well after Vinnie had left the show and no one except Alf, Sally and perhaps Leah (meeting her off-screen) would have known her. 

As much as I disliked Alison, it's surprising the opted to re-introduce boring Matt Wilson as a regular, but not a character as complex as Alison. 

The show dropped other recurring guest cast in 1989 too. It was the last we saw of Colleen for many years, and the Barnetts disappeared too. Those characters were great because they gave Summer Bay a "community feel" beyond just the regular cast, whereas we didn't really get those sort of characters in later 1989 and the early 1990s. We had Vicki, Craig and Murray Jenson, and Chris Hale whenever a police office was required, but I think most Summer Bay residents who were guest cast came in for one storyline and were never seen again. 

[cymbaline]

I'm glad you touched on the "community feel" of Home and Away. That was one of the things I really liked about the 1988 season. Summer Bay felt more like an actual town, with people who had been there forever. Even Donald Fisher, who I assume was a blow-in, was well and truly settled there. Keeping that aspect was always going to be a challenge once actors started to come and go, but it's a shame it was lost. I wonder was the introduction of the twentysomething locals such as Rob, Donna and Travis an attempt to recapture that original magic.