Because...Plot!

Come on Spain though!! Do it for the world coz no one wants to see Argentina lift the World Cup trophy yet again!

It was kind of a ridiculous game. So much so that I was kind of hoping France would tie it up so it could go to extra time to see what else crazy could happen. I guess when the pressure is off and there are no real stakes, they’ll just have fun and try to score as much as possible. I had a good time watching it.

It’s probably going to be more exciting than the final as far as goals go.

I will also be rooting for Spain but I do have one benefit to Argentina winning and that’s my Argentinian coworker who is constantly slammed with work as our only production artist, being very happy and a happy Moti is a better Moti. Haha.

So we shall see!

It REALLY was! So pleased I watched even though I should be in bed now!!

I mean Mack and Aaron literally haven’t had a proper scene together since those two episodes during the Kev story back in October or something. Otherwise, they were briefly in the karaoke scenes at the party together also during the Kev story, one minor interaction at Christmas, that tiny scene post corriedale when he found out John was dead ad they went for a drink off screen, that brief stuff when they were trying to save Moira but they didn’t really speak to each other, they were standing near each other in the pub but again didn’t speak when everyone found out Robert was getting the farm tenancy and Aaron chose him, the tiny interactions during the cow theft and that two seconds when Robert accused Mack of arson. That’s it.

He lost him to the baby story and also off screen land on both their parts.

To the point where when Aaron said Mack was his best friend…I was like “are you sure?!”

But yeah…this year so far, Aaron interacting with his own mother, his best friend, his supposed surrogate dad, his surrogate dad’s Aaron clone replacement have all felt super bizarre because it just so rarely happens these days.

It’s so bad.

This year Aaron has really only been allowed to interact with Robert, and then the Coira Dingles, so Cain, Moira, Sam, Belle and then Kammy and then Ross and Joe. And that’s about it till Serena. (Also Vic obviously until she left)

I don’t know, it all just makes me sad.

I miss the days when Aaron had his own little family, a relationship with Chas, a best friend and then the extended Dingles. It was nice. Now he’s pretty isolated along with Robert.

But everyone is isolated and siloed off in their little groups most of the time.

Sigh sigh

To answer the question, I feel like he got Chas because they have to use Lucy somewhere to get her episodes since she’s not really part of any story either this year.

I can’t believe Paddy’s story looks like a masterpiece by comparison solely because it *only* lasted for 5 months while Charity and Cain’s look like it will never end 😂. Same with the John story since they’re revisiting it so now, it feels like we’ve been dealing with for 2 years.

I mean technically Cain’s didn’t really get started until March. That’s when he finally told the family. I actually remember using the lack of his story to complain about why the Paddy story was bad, which is hilarious now. Haha.

So if it only really got started in March, then it’s also been around 5 months even though it technically started with him getting shot during Corriedale.

But Paddy’s story was tacked on to the end of the Ray and Celia story in general, which started last July.

And Charity’s story obviously started way longer ago because it technically started with Sarah’s false positive unplanned pregnancy. But the cheating part happened in August I think. So it just feels endless because there have been so many parts to it because this story mutates every month into some new absurd thing.

And Cain’s story seems like it’s about to go on forever more because he now has to wait months for more treatment and in the meantime we have to deal with him being utterly inept at fatherhood because he can’t figure out how to spend some time with his kid.

I can understand if this John stuff is Sophie Roper wanting to bring back her story if she feels like it got short changed last year and early this year but then I don’t know what the hell she’s doing with it with all of this convoluted nonsense. If you’re gonna bring it back, let it make sense. Use it to let Aaron have some feelings and Robert too. So yeah…I don’t get it thus far.

And it would be really nice to move on from the psycho husbands period, which is hard since we have one back in the village and Serena bringing up the other. Like I just want to get past this and get them something new. Do an actual farm wars story, let them get the farm off Joe for themselves. Get them their damn kid back. Anything.

I mean this show has had long running plots forever but, the way they’re going about these and especially the way Paddy and Bear and Dylan and April and Marlon and Rhona and Mandy even were just banished from existing mostly after theirs, I just think it’s weird. Like yes, they need a rest, sure, but Rhona has been entirely MIA. Marlon got a few scenes in the pub and Paddy got a few scenes doing vet things for Monty. And those were nice things because they were daily life things. But two episodes and then disappearing again…

Then again, it’s hard to see Cain just disappearing for months after this saga. But I guess he did for a while last year post John.

I don’t know, I just really crave getting more every day life stuff that would allow for characters to exist more casually and they just don’t have interest in doing that anymore. I think it hurts the show but here we are. I know that this is technically where the budget cuts come in but I think I’d rather have not gotten a really unnecessarily repetitive story for Paddy for fifty episodes and then get only a handful the rest of the year for these people. Like if they did the story in thirty episodes and then had another 30 to play with the rest of the year, that might have been nicer.

Wasn’t she left on her own because her co-producer was on maternity leave? I don’t know if what we’re currently seeing is the tail end of her solo work or if this is now the joint venture. I keep hoping once we finish up the Cain and Charity stuff, they’ll have a semi-clean slate and have another go at it.

Yeah she definitely was and I can see how that made it worse from like October onward. I don’t know if I trust Sophie Roper either because it wasn’t exactly stellar last year but it was slightly better I guess. But if she’s stuck working with this new format bullshit, who knows if anything will improve.

I just think overusing characters for a few months and then them disappearing entirely doesn’t make a lot of sense and is antithetical to the soap genre but what do I know?! Haha.

Haha. Well I do have gaps here and there where I just couldn’t be bothered for a bit but I definitely watched quite a bit of it.

It’s been going downhill for me since 2018/2019 though. But there were some bad times in the intervening years.

I’m waiting for John’s return and for them to tell us the coroner is an old archery club friend who did him a favor and faked his death.

They really are just rewriting narratives that are only a few months old. From why Moira was in prison, to Kev, to Graham’s resurrection, to this John and Serena meet up while he was on the run…

And like...I think some of it is because a lot of the humor already feels stale to me because they're just repeating his greatest hits from the first time around with the baking and the singing and the Claudette likes him better than Charles stuff.

And some of it is that it's just not my humor. I don't always love the slapstick kind of thing or like that "I could be your daddy" joke just made me shudder. Not for me.

But I also think it's his scene partners. Because I did genuinely enjoy some of the comedy the first time around, but I think a lot of that was down to who he was with in scenes. So many of his comedic moments before were with Liam and I adore Liam. Like that whole robbery scenes was funny to me because of Liam's obliviousness to it all and his reactions to what Kev was doing, not really because of Kev. And the first karaoke thing was funny because of the situation and it being about Robert, but also watching Ryan trying so hard not to break in the background.

Now he's having scenes with Lewis, who I don't really care about and Ross, whose humor is hit or miss with me and then the Jimmy/Nicola stuff just annoys me and makes me sad.

The troll level is astronomical. Axing an actor who’s been on the show 20 years and basically showing his replacement the ropes on how to fill his role. It would be incredibly messy but I would love a tell-all. Juicer drama than what’s on the show, that’s for sure.

The scenes with the two of them just make me kind of sad because it just makes it so blatant they're replacing him. And it just seems even more unfair.

Reminds me of my friend who got let go recently (along with half her company) after she essentially trained a person they kept to do her job.