Shortland Street

[DRW50]

I'd be surprised if all these people are leaving. I know they will have to make cuts and Shorty is brutal (see poor TK) but I would imagine some are returning.

Honestly I hope Nicole, Harper and Drew are gone for good. They were exhausting this year and often a drain on the show - if not for the guest spots from Boyd and the times characters like Selina and Nazar got focus, it would have been unwatchable.

[AMCOLTLLover]

I hate losing vets on shows like shorty and home and away.. BUT Nicole was there for 15 years and that’s it? They could’ve easily sent her off with Maeve. They keep Cassie but letting go of Nicole ? That’s odd. 
I can live without Harper but not Drew. Drew without Harper is much more fun. 

This year was unbalanced and really odd. But Chris carried that damn show with the depression story and his friendship to Viliami. 
selina is annoying. She is lashing out on Chris. Badmouthing him and wonders why he doesn’t want to be with her lol 

Monique, Thaddeus, Chris, Drew here and there, Nazar, Marty were the real stars this year! Madonna had her moments but she can be so annoying too. 
 

They have no money for a 4 episodic week but for a blooper episode ? Ok? Lol

I really hope Chris won’t die during the showdown with his sons and his brother.

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[AMCOLTLLover]

The Cliffhanger Finale was great (Spoilers)

Drew and Harper Save a Family After a car accident and have a bike accident themself. 
drew survived and Harper died and we got a Beautiful Flashback Montage at the end

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 as much as annoying she could get she will be missed!

But yay. Drew stays!

Harry Warner‘s Showdown was not a letdown but could’ve been better. It played well with the the Depression Storyline! Now he’s in jail.

Chris wants the Warner Money gone but ofc Guy, Finn and Frank decide against it and we get a sass mention. Poor Chris. But he should’ve let Guy take Harry to the Facility in another Country to get Special treatment with his mental Health instead of jail. He even took chris hostage for a few minutes. It was an OK ending.

Esther is suspended coz of her actions but still tried saving Harper which will probably cost her career!

AND Logan pops up RANDOMLY and seems back on the new Picture for Shorty 2025 - New Blood! Chris seems back too.. But he tells Monique that he still loves her. Ugh

Madonna is pregnant.. So they work her real life pregnancy into the show i see

Edited December 23, 2024 by AMCOLTLLover

[AMCOLTLLover]

Wow they are uploading the entire 1994 season right now. Wow one of the best years in the shows history 

[Maxim]

I noticed this show on youtube and wondered... is it good... What are the good years? Are the first seasons solid? I would appreciate any info. 

[AMCOLTLLover]

Early years are a bit too 90’s. Not bad but u have to like the 90’s flair and some wooden acting here and there. But worth watching.. especially 1994.. 

good years would be like 94 til 98.. 2004 til mid 2010’s. After that it was hit or miss. 2020’s were so-so so far lol

[Dion]

Mostly agreed, although I didn't like 96. And I generally liked the show up until around 2021, although problems with it were definitely growing after 2018.

[Maxim]

Thank you so much for this! I didn't see the notification probably and forgot to check the topic. Sorry for the late response... I will try it out when I have time. 

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 I do love the intro music... lol. 

[Bright Eyes]

I just saw that Nicole has gone? Is this accurate? Can someone tell me what her exit was?

Sally Martin was a great actress and one of the best reactors on a soap. I still remember the face she made when Kylie was told she had chlamydia. Chris, Drew, and Esther are all that are left from when I was a viewer.

[DRW50]

Nicole had been going through a year of hell, starting with not liking or trusting the girl, Cassie, who had Maeve's grandchild and was living with them. Cassie had used drugs during her pregnancy and woke up in the park believing her baby was dead. As it turns out, a nurse at the hospital (the actor actually had been an extra on the show for several years as a nurse) had taken the baby and given it to his wife, Louisa, who had not been able to cope with their baby dying. Louisa tried any trick she could to stay close to the baby, including secretly breast feeding the baby. She was finally sent away to get help.

The story then began to focus on Nicole's financial worries, as well as her depression over Leanne dying of cancer. The best part of the story, mostly due to the work from Sally and Jennifer Ludlum. The aftermath of the story included one of the worst scenes of any soap I watched last year, where we suddenly learned that Leanne had a priceless vase handed down generations so that Nicole could smash it...moments before learning the vase was hugely valuable. I HATE this type of writing.

Nicole began to confide in a grief group chat, telling them everything...including that in a weak moment she kissed Drew. They also convinced Nicole to put spy cams in the house because Nicole was convinced Cassie had stolen jewelry from her. One of the people in the chat then spilled all the beans to Maeve, including about the kiss, wanting to show Maeve how much she had hurt Nicole. That person was kicked out of the group, and Nicole continued on with her good friends.

Now we come to the part that should have been brilliant - the reveal that the group chat members were all Louisa, to gaslight Nicole and cause more instability that would lead her back into the baby's life. Unfortunately, they chose to have Louisa return to town about a week before the reveal, and as soon as she returned, I knew it was her.

Using the group, Louisa lured Nicole to an abandoned factory. She held her hostage unless Maeve agreed to get her the baby. Maeve conned her with a fake baby and while she and Nicole were left at the factory together, Nicole managed to escape (not bothering to help Maeve). Louisa had realized the con and gone to the house, where she was harassing Cassie to give her the baby. 

When Maeve finally got there, she found Nicole trying to keep an injured Louisa alive. Louisa was taken to the hospital and soon died. Nicole and Cassie both told the police that Nicole had tried to keep her away from the baby and pushed her, leading her to hit her head on the counter. The autopsy said the injuries were more severe than that, and after a lot of angst, Nicole was arrested. There was then a lot of doubt about whether or not Cassie had killed her, and Nicole was covering for her. Maeve was torn between them.

Nicole went on trial (a trial we actually saw - I guess that's where the budget went) and was acquitted. Cassie by this point had run away after Maeve had caught her with an urn with Leanne's ashes, which she'd insisted Nicole had killed Louisa with. Nicole insisted this wasn't true. But after she saw Cassie was back, she was so angry, she almost picked up the ashes and hit her too. This is when her mental block faded, and she remembered hitting Louise with the urn.

Nicole spent one last Christmas with her son, Pele, and with Maeve, and said goodbye to Harper (not telling anyone of her plans), before telling Maeve that she had called the police as she was too unstable and needed to be locked up. Maeve was, of course, devastated, and the two had a teary goodbye. Now Maeve will be raising Pele, I guess, unless he's shipped to Nicole's mentally ill brother who hasn't been seen in a decade, or cute Eddie, who did make a cameo via Skype but otherwise is barely seen or mentioned and probably wouldn't be able to raise a child (Esther is happy enough to ignore that he is her son's father).

The story, along with the story about Harper cheating on Drew and him having a breakdown, attempting suicide, blaming himself for the death of one of Boyd's children (a story badly truncated because the show would only keep Boyd on for a few weeks at a time, presumably due to financial reasons), took up so much time in the year, and was a huge slog. They wrote Nicole into a complete corner to where she and Maeve had no personality between them beyond tears and misery. 

If the show stays on I could see her returning, but it would have to be a hell of a lot better than what she's had on the show in recent times. 

If you want to see any of the clips, there is someone on Youtube who exclusively clipped Nicole and Nicole/Maeve stuff.

If you ever want to know what else you missed this year, I'll just say try to look for the stories involving Emmett and Nazar and avoid most of the rest. 

[Bright Eyes]

I don't feel very positive about Nicole's exit being that she lost her mind and is now imprisoned. That doesn't seem right for her at all. At least they didn't kill her off, or let her vanish into thin air like TK. I saw a brief clip of her saying goodbye to Harper and had assumed they had reunited. I do know they killed off Harper though, which is devastating to hear. She was a firecracker and such a breath of fresh air when she first arrived and when I was watching.

[DRW50]

She still had her moments, but they really bogged her down with too many stories about leaving the kids, struggling with the kids, and cheating. She began an affair with another woman this past year, named Phil, who was an awful mess of a character (she started on the show a few months earlier in a "no labels" relationship with a male doctor - in no time she was aggressively pursuing Harper and we were meant to feel sorry for her, to the point where she was given a miscarriage, a past suicide attempt, a past abusive boyfriend, etc.). They got a lot of fans, as those pairings always do, but the show ultimately had Harper return to Drew before she died. They died in a bike crash, which I don't think was all that well done, frankly, especially the choice to have wacky music play right before the crash. They also kept having Harper run into injured or dead mothers before she died, which I found somewhat trite.

TK's exit leaves a bad taste in the mouth, because he has not been seen since he and his wife (who should have stayed on the show) move back to his old homestead, but we hear every month or so that he is depressed, still can't walk, and Esther avoids seeing him because it makes her feel sad. A great way to treat a character who was a lynchpin of the show for decades.

When I was writing up my comments above, I forgot to say that the story with Chris' mental breakdown over his son Harry being a murderer was also a strong plot, even if I disagree with the decision to make him a serial killer. His on/off girlfriend Selina's breast cancer story was also very good - I don't remember if you were watching when the wretched Desi was there, but Selina is Desi done right. 

Thaddeus, the show's Damo knockoff, is also very likeable, or would be if he was not constantly given terrible plotlines with exhausted characters.

Edited February 7 by DRW50

[Bright Eyes]

Anyone that debuted after Esther, I have no clue about, except a brief glimpse at hot as hell Alex Tarrant when he was on the show. These updates are amazing. It seems like a tremendous overflow of breakdowns, and the most dark and depressing plot twists imaginable. Harry being a serial killer is actually insane! Building for a future really isn't something they care to build towards I guess. 

[DRW50]

They've done a number on Chris' kids - Phoenix became a drug addict and committed suicide. Finn was physically abusive toward his wife Esther (although they made peace in his later guest appearances). 

In the finale, Harry was brought back to Ferndale (after the family had paid his way in spending most of the year on the run), and Chris, along with Finn, insisted he must face justice. Chris' brother Guy, and other son Frank, wanted him to get help but not go to the cops. After Harry held Chris at knifepoint, they finally agreed that Harry needed to be arrested.

Sass, maybe the only one who could have added some personality, wasn't able to make it - I guess the actress wasn't available. Due to her absence, you had various Warner men with the designer stubble of angst, and Chris saying they were all cursed because of his father and the usual soap routine of rich families being damned and evil (sadly, no scene of him beating a tomb with a crowbar). He told them that he wanted to dissolve the family trust and give all the money to charity. They said, basically, lolfuckno, and removed him as head of the trust.

And yes, the show has often had almost nothing but bleak material, even though a number of fans have told me the show often had comedy for many years. 

The nadir was 2023 when the "meet the new residents" program (Harry's reintro) led to none of them staying on the show, one being gunned down, and another having his hand smashed to pieces and becoming a drug addict. But the good news is he returned for about two days to have sex with Phil and then disappear.

Edited February 7 by DRW50

[Bright Eyes]

At least Sass and Frank are seemingly unscathed. The triplets were fantastic additions. And Frank was incredibly sexy to me. I remember reading about Phoenix here and being utterly disappointed. Honestly, I think fate intervened I stopped watching at the right time because my memories of the show are so solid and wonderful. Joshua's Survivor syndrome and the virus that killed Sarah are two of the best soap opera stories I've had the pleasure of watching live. To this day, I've never been as shocked as when Sarah actually died, being that she was a long termer who seemed like a lifer and who was written very Mary Sue-ish, which of course could be hard to take at times, but man did she get a hell of an exit. Of course, now it seems like they quadrupled down on making sure that's the unfortunate norm.

Edited February 7 by Bright Eyes