I am pretty sure I’m psychic…that or I have the mind of a soap writer.
Day in day out while watching Home and Away (yes I watch Home and Away), I ramble off my theories on how the storylines will pan out. Nine times out of ten, I am right. Pretty sure that means I am qualified; I clearly have a thorough understanding of how the fictional world of Summer Bay works and the people within it act. That is half the battle.
I spent a lot of my childhood watching Days of Our Lives with my mother, well an hour a day of it, and from that time I learnt a thing or two about what works and what doesn’t in the world of soaps, and what I believe Home and Away is currently missing.
Home and Away has been known to take influence from the team at Days, so why not go there again? Take for example the storyline a few years back where on Days Marlena was brainwashed into ‘killing’ people, it turned out to be a giant fake out but the Salem Stalker storyline reinvigorated the show and inspired Home and Away to find a Summer Bay Stalker…original.
One of my favourite Days storylines they could use involved someone who I forget, sorry this was about 18 years ago, becoming a masked vigilante so that their unborn child could live in a safe city. This is soap gold; the drama, the deceit, the costumes…has Most Popular Logie written all over it. Picture Morag becoming an avenger called Copper Lips (her lipstick is copper…I’m not joking), who wants to get the surfer boys (they are bad…just look at the tatts) out of town so it is safe for Alf to return from his fifth turn of long service leave.
Another storyline I think Home and Away needs to look into is a possession. A few years on from the Pacifier (as the Days vigilante was called), Marlena was tragically possessed by the devil. This added a whole new level of crazy to the show. Days didn’t do the storyline with the dignity of say, The Exorcist, having Marlena turn into a panther from time to time (how that related I will never know); this is where they can one up them in The Bay. They could strip back the crazy elements and do a good old-fashioned possession tale. Could you imagine little old Colleen doing a yoo-hoo-only-me-possessed-by-the-devil?
That or they can stick with some run of the mill who’s pregnant, who’s the father, who’s having an affair, who’s gay storylines. Lord knows I can right a verbal tirade for someone. Maybe Leah can develop a rage against customers of the diner?
Writers of Home and Away, give me a call. We’ll make it work.
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