Dude, Where's My Carmella?

Holy smokes, it's 6pm on Monday, just half an hour before the next episode, so I'm blogging pretty close to the line here. Will rush through what happened on Friday's show, with the emphasis on 3 storylines:

*Pepper & Adam having fights, and Adam giving off more signs of being a bit of a jerkface.

*Ringo's patented Rehab Centre

*the best one, Paul's arrival back in Ramsay St.



The first two were fairly dull, so we'll knock them over and get to the bulk of the third one, which involved over half the street.



*Pepper and Adam - so with all the talk of Paul coming home, talk turned to how he treated Pepper while they were gettin it ooorrnnnn, and how Rosie was interested in him at the time. Adam, because he's a bit annoying, was a bit annoying about it, giving Pepp a lot of shit about how she could do that to herself, to her best friend, to the world. It's been a few days, and I don't remember much else from that sideplot, but it looks to be building this week, with the Next Week being about "Has Pepper Picked The Wrong Guys again... Is Adam a killer romantic, or a romantic killer?", which is a bit of a stretch from having too many metro-fashionable tatts and giving your new gf shit about rootin Paul Robinson, so we'll see how that flies.



*Ringo's attempt at getting Carmella off the gear was kinda filler too. He's abducted her to the bush, she's cranky with him, he tells her how much he cares for her, the potential for creepy romance is still left hanging, she pretends to be thankful, pretends to go to sleep, tries to steal the bit he stole out of the engine that makes the car not go, he catches her, she admits she has a problem, chucks the windscreen wiper or whatever into the bush, and thanks him sincerely for looking out for her. Next morning, she cured, and thinking a lot straighter. Thanks for this opportunity to clear my head Ringo, things are making a lot more sense. Now let's go home. Crikeys. If that's the end of Carmella's drug dependency, which has kinda been really subtle since the shonkdoc's arrest, it was a bit of a go-nowhere plot, so I'm guessing it will rear its skinny not-sexy head again. One thing that did come of the bush abduction sleepout was that when Carmella got back, she broke up with Oliver. They're over. To me, that was the start of Oliver's end, and I would expect him to leave in the next few weeks, except for 2 things: a) Alan Napier, the old Barnes family friend who had a heart attack right before he could tell Oliver a dark family secret that could affect his access to the family fortune, is starting to wake up from his Erinsborough Hospital coma but can't talk yet, and b) Oliver was on a Seriously Ten dot-pressing ad for the first time this week, suggesting he's been made a regular cast member. He wouldn't be missed.



*Finally, and I gotta rush because Neighbours is on very soon, was Paul, who pushed Gail and finally got the answers he was after - exactly what he's done to everyone while he was evil, which was only caused, Elle reasons, by his brain tumour. Elle sent out invitations to the whole street to a Welcome Home - Get To Know The Tumourless Humourless Paul, and in one of Neighbour's honestly brilliant interlocking scene exercises, showed each house's reaction to getting the invitation at the same time that Gail explained to him what he'd done to them. Gail: "You robbed their house, framed them, and didn't even stop when Dylan's baby got luekaemia". Paul: *horror and shock* Timmins house: "Fat chance, limpy! Is he joking? etc etc outrage". Buying a gun to shoot Max, then he went mad and left, leaving Lyn at the altar... everything was covered, and I'd suggest there was a shitload of stuff noone except he and Elle know about too. The best part was Paul's real concern "I didn't do anything to hurt Harold, did I? Not Harold." That was sweet. Oops, tonight's episode's starting, I'll continue this later...

*21 hrs pass*

..Sorry, back. So a big bunch of decision-making Neighbours, most of the seniors of the street, get together at teh Timmins house for a group meeting to decide what they should do. Elle's asked all of them to keep quiet about Paul's past, and the general consensus is that idea can get stuffed. It was a pretty big group to have all in one room actually, more than they're able to schedule for some weddings or funerals. Janelle, Steiger, Bree, Karl, Susan, Harold, Lou, Toadie, Steph, Sky, Kerry & Boyd, and half were all "Not on your life sonny" and the other half were all "Let's go check out if he's faking or not". Janelle, who obviously didn't want to go, took over and put it to a group vote, saying they'd either all go or preferably, all not. Her kooky plan backfired as Steiger said he wouldn't miss it for the world, breaking the deadlock, and you could almost hear the "waa-waa-waa-waaaaaaaa" cartoon trumpet noise in the background. So they all trundled awkwardly off to Elle's house - she's greeted them and told them that her mum has told Paul everything anyway, so they don't have to pretend anything, and they've all said "Sif we gonna NEwayz", and then Paul, all nervous in the back room, came out to meet them all. With Elle, Paul and Gail, it was 14 talking Neighbours + Kerry and Ugly Charlie in the room, a bit of a scheduling coup surely. Paulie did the whole "I don't know many of you (only Harold and vaguely Lou) but I'm so ashamed, and his regret at hurting Harold again really touched the right spot, tears in eyes and everything. They all kinda looked at each other, went "C'mon, she's right mate, and hesitantly admitted he's probably telling the truth about the whole brainmelt thing, and we should stick around for the BBQ. Everyone went into the backyard for the very un-Paul snags n sauce, and looked to be a happy end to the episode. But that's just stupid, so Paul and Gail came back in to have a litle tiff about how Paul's treating Elle, i.e. not very well. He says he doesn't remember her, she means nothing to him and she lied to him about his life. Gail, with really really bad hair, what's teh go there, pulls out the "She's your daughter" card and Paul ends the episode with "But I don't love her. I don't even like her!" And guess who's followed them into the house and heard everything? Not Toadie. It's Elle! Corr, she's not gonna like that!

Good episode, mainly to see Paul react to all his horror stories, and get reintroduced to the neighbours.