I've always had a soft spot for Neighbours, the pisspoor Aussie soap that airs here in the UK at 5.30pm. It's generally been harmless, entertaining fun. But I'm increasingly pissed off with it; it has taken a serious swerve towards the postmodern "everyone on tv has to be beautiful" tendency, and, rather more disturbingly for a reactionary like me, today's episode was the first I've seen for ages where people didn't nip off for a quick bit of casual sex in the middle of the episode. The relationships are increasingly secondary to a consequence-free ideal of casual sex between largely beautiful people (alright, except Lou and Miska) - how does that translate to the people watching this? It's just fine to say "sex is fun" as a message, but when you refuse to discuss contraception or any of the other problems around it, it becomes a fantasy, and a fantasy for good looking teenagers at that. There must be twenty-first century 15 year old versions of the Drummer around somewhere thinking something is deeply wrong with them, as they're not getting any. Or don't they exist anymore? That must be how they feel, given that the whole tenor of sex education is not for them, and quite openly exludes them. OK. I haven't mentioned Sky and the several month controversy over the fatherhood of her baby - could have been any of 3 men at one point - that certainly shows some of the consequences. But at just the point at which it might have been worthwhile, with two men fighting with themselves to take responsibility, it was swallowed up in fantastical plots around kidnap and arson. And what of Susan, the high school head, who let the 14 year old in her care go on a camping trip with her 18 year old alcoholic boyfriend?
Anyway. Carmella has just decided to keep her scar but everyone around her thinks it's a terrible idea and they just want to make sure she's "doing it for the right reasons" - whatever they might be, they're not being fully explained - they think she must be nuts and into self-punishment (she's an ex-nun).
Maybe it's just going through a crap patch at the moment. I was, however, gratified to learn that at least one subplot involving a totally-non-threatening bizarre triangle of implied hard porn, car theft and blackmail appears to have been resolved with a murder. Marvellous stuff for the kiddies.
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5 comments:
casual sex between largely beautiful people
That's the recipe for a successful show in a nutshell.
Nothing worse than having to watch non-beautiful people blathering on about their problems. I get enough of that in real life. ;-)
Er ... TD ... thanks a bunch for all that. Now I can rest easy knowing some lowlife doesn't know which of three men is the father and so on. Wonder who she'd be with on Valentines.
But what about Lynne and Paul? Isn't that the unlikeliest thing you have ever seen in neighbours? Even more unlikely than the mafia man, Katya's past, Carmella the nun.
Casual sex is certainly more visible than it's ever been. it was hinted at before but not at this sort of level.
But Neighbours has always been full of beautiful people.
Well I think the show is more totty-heavy now than before, I mean back in the 80s it didn't tend to feature 6ft plus blokes with nipple rings.
Agreed that the Lynne and Paul storyline is bizarre, but then Paul's characterisation seems to have been picked out of a hat - first he's devious but not evil, then evil, then mad, now he's alright!
I think maybe the show is tired, which is why they bought all those non-entities in at exactly the same time, the first time I've ever seen a show replace such a high proportion of its regular cast so quickly. Unfortunately it's even more dull now.
Neighbours is shown at 6.30 here. I have never seen an episode and there are always good reasons not to watch it at that time of the day. It comes on after the Simpsons, which we have given in on after persistent nagging from the kids. We have not given in on Neighbours and are not likely to. I get enough Aussie Culcha as it is.
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