I think the nadir was reached last Thursday evening when I ironed clothes for work the next day while only paying scant attention to Home and Away which I had on in the background.
It seems so terribly long ago that we marvelled at such storylines as the death of Dr Flynn Saunders, the murder of Mayor Josh West, Sally being stabbed along with of course the Summer Bay Stalker terrorising the locals in what was arguably the greatest spell of concerted TV drama in the history of the medium.
I’ll never forget watching the Stalker’s final moments (or so we believed at the time) being played out dramatically while sitting engrossed in the Board Room in the office of one of my previous employers at 1.50pm on 6 October 2005.
From those great and sublime heights we have somehow found oursleves in this current malaise.
I don’t ever recall Home and Away suffering from such an awful affliction. The storylines are poorly crafted and teased out while also being unwieldy and drawn out far, far, far too long. The show’s also losing out as all the main characters are currently playing backup to the problems of others. We have Alf, Sally and Jack constantly fretting over Martha, 'Ric trying to help Cassie launch her counselling service and Peter Baker disenchanted with Amanda’s erratic behaviour.
These mainstays are required to drive the show forward and need to be central to the majority of plots. Instead they’re all invariably restricted to the odd throw-away comment about Martha or Amanda while chatting casually in The Diner rather than being in the heat of the action themselves - where we demand and expect them to be.
That leads to my next point. The last 3-4 months have concentrated almost exclusively on Martha and Amanda’s respective journies to destruction. However, both storylines should have reached their natural conclusion long before now.
The viewer lost all sympathy for Martha when she ended her marriage to Jack because he went for one night-out with colleagues and then proceeded to bang his best friend later that week. Yet still we’re supposed to care as she goes through the agonies of an abortion, alcohol abuse, dalliances with drug dealers and so on. Her initial reaction to Jack and her typically whiny and whingeing female behaviour has ensured I don’t care what happens her in the future. Not now and not ever. Dragging out her demise needs to stop now - not because we care too much, rather because we don’t give a fook at all.
Then we have Amanda’s sister coming to the Bay to ruin Amanda’s life in revenge for injuries she sustained in a car crash many years ago when Amanda was driving. This has been ongoing for months now and is so incredibly shoddy at this stage that I weep every time she’s in a scene.
So far:
She’s kidnapped Amanda’s daughter.
Arranged for her accomplice to drug Amanda, get her back to his motel, take naked pictures of her and then pretend that she cheated on Peter with this accomplice man.
Blackmailed Amanda for money through possession of the photos which also entailed forcing Amanda to steal drugs from Northern Districts Hospital.
Convinced Amanda she killed a man when they merely drove him off the road.
Paid off her daughter’s kidnapper who was threatening to come clean.
Subsequently arranged for him to be murdered so he wouldn’t upset her plan of ruining Amanda’s wedding to Peter.
Ruining Amanda’s wedding involved placing these pictures under everyone’s seat so she wasted AUS$80k and killed a man for this - not great value surely.
And it’s still going on even though I assumed the marriage disaster would bring things to a head.
It’s just so repetitive and amazingly boring. Every single episode is the same:
Amanda says her life is ruined. Kelly says she’ll always be there for her. Amanda says she doesn’t know what she’d do without Kelly and starts crying in her arms. Kelly smiles over her shoulder while plotting the next evil move. Every single fooking day for 4 months. I’m at my wit’s end.
The only little bit of hope I’m clinging to is that surely Cameron Welsh must realise that this is simply not good enough. Otherwise I literally don’t know where go from here other than one thing - it won’t be to The Surf Club, The Diner, Yabbie Creek or The Caravan Park anymore. It’d be all to easy to sid idly by and watch the programme degenerate further, or worse still turn my back on it, but I can’t and I won’t. I am going to fight tooth and nail for a return to the standards we’re accustomed to.
Home and Away used to be the Daniel Hantuchova of soap operas / dramas and now slowly and surely it’s morphing into something akin to Roger Federer’s missus. It has to stop and it has to stop now.