Loveday Writing

When Meryl, Michael and the rest of the Knight family (sans Ajax and later Hayley) arrive at court, Meryl tries to get in one last shot at Sharna, but Sharna returns serve by saying that she may not be able to run from her past, but Meryl can’t either. When Meryl sees Hugh comfort Sharna before the trial starts, she asks Hugh if he loves her as she refuses to go to jail for one of his meaningless flings. He says (unconvincingly) that he does. When Hugh goes into the courtroom, Meryl tells Michael to drop the perjury plan and think of another way to save her from jail.

When we see Michael cross-examine Sharna, he manages to make the bribes Meryl accepted appear to be donations which she used for community events and resources, however Sharna manages to point out that there is still money missing and unaccounted for. The trial judge ends up finding Meryl guilty, however she sentences her to 100 hours of community service and orders her to compensate the Council for damages. Michael tells Meryl that the prosecution will take a lesser amount of money if she pays today. Meryl ends up (reluctantly) selling valuable possessions, although she doesn’t lose the homestead.

Later, we see Meryl start her community service by trying to clean up graffiti around town, but it isn’t long before she manages to get Matt, Charlie, Hayley and Tom to do her community service work for her, showing that she hasn’t and never will change.

Overall, considering how many times it’s been made clear to the viewers over the years that Meryl is corrupt, and the build-up this season, I found the outcome of the Meryl-corruption story arc to be predictable and anti-climactic. It didn’t surprise me that Meryl didn’t go to jail, but I felt that the court case was rushed and over in the blink of an eye, a little too quick considering how much time was spent building up the consequences and ramifications of the saga.

Hugh, Meryl and Michael – Underneath the Meryl-corruption story arc, a minor subplot of the possibility of Michael being Hugh’s father instead of Jim was played out in this episode. This subplot started out as a joke between Charlie and Hugh, when Charlie asks Hugh if he thinks Michael is hitting on Meryl and points out the similarities between them.

The joke quickly escalates into a plausible theory for Hugh when he finds out that Michael is also left-handed and is O Negative, like him. The theory becomes even more plausible when Michael tells Hugh about his and Meryl’s dating history, and her visits to him when he was admitted to the Bar, the same year Hugh was born. After having dinner with Michael, Hugh comes home drunk and tries to confront Meryl about it, but as he’s drunk, she refuses to have a conversation with him about it.

Things come to a head when Meryl realises that Hugh has run a paternity test by taking Michael’s blood. She goes to the Clinic and confronts him, telling him that she could never betray Jim by having an affair. Hugh then scrunches up the piece of paper with the results on it and throws it in the bin, however he does tell Penny later that he looked at the results and they were negative anyway.

Overall, while I enjoyed getting a bit of history on Meryl and Michael’s past romance, I felt that the theory of Michael being Hugh’s father instead of Jim to be absolutely ridiculous. It came completely out of nowhere (and disappeared just as quickly as it appeared), and added nothing to the episode, nor did it provide any real character development. In all honesty, this minor subplot was bordering on soap opera territory.

Hayley, Ajax and Tom – At the end of the previous episode, we had Hayley come clean to Ajax about her near-tryst with Tom, this episode sees the ramification of this confession play out. Hayley spends most of the episode trying to get Ajax to talk to her, so they can work through the problem, but he spends most of the episode avoiding her and refusing to listen.

When Hayley first tells Ajax they need to deal with the issue, he storms off and confronts Tom at the caravan with a rifle. Ajax forces Tom to shoot at bottles, and he misses, Ajax then takes the rifle off him and fires a perfect shot. Ajax then admits to Tom, he wants to know why not when the near-tryst happened. Tom tells Ajax that he tried not to be in love with Hayley. Ajax then tells Tom he needs to leave, and Tom tells Ajax that he thinks Hayley may be in love with him too.

Later, Hayley goes to see Tom at the caravan. Tom tells her that Ajax told him to leave, Hayley doesn’t want him to, and Tom asks her to go with him. Later, while Hayley, Tom, Matt and Charlie are doing Meryl’s community service work, Tom mentions that Ajax is probably gambling again (although how Hayley didn’t hear him say that but Matt did, I’ll never understand). Matt goes to see Ajax at the local TAB and asks him how much he has lost. Ajax tells him he has lost everything, and asks Matt not to tell Hugh. Matt tells him that he doesn’t know what he is going through, but gambling is not the solution.

Meanwhile Hayley spends the episode contemplating Tom’s offer, going as far as packing a suitcase and informing Ajax of his offer. However, Hayley ultimately decides not to go with him. Moments after she says goodbye to Tom and he leaves, Ajax asks her if everything’s okay now and if it will go back to normal. Hayley tells him everything is not okay.

Overall, I’m glad the cheating story arc came to a close and I appreciate that the writers didn’t go down the cliché path of having Tom’s departure immediately solve Hayley and Ajax’s marriage problems. I personally found Ajax’s hypocrisy in this situation, re: continuing to lie to Hayley about his gambling, to be a little infuriating. However, it will be interesting to see where Hayley and Ajax go from here, especially as Matt now knows about Ajax’s gambling but Hayley is yet to find out about it.

Hugh, Penny, Ken, Melody, Sharna and the Clinic – This episode wasn’t only D-Day for Meryl, but also for the Clinic. The gang are short 110 patients of the KPI and have a day to meet it. Ken tries a few ways to lure new patients in, which included a free hat for every visit (which fails as he ends up having to pay people to show up).

While they are trying to meet their KPI, Sharna comes to see Hugh at the Clinic. Sharna tells him that she overheard him tell Meryl he loves her. Sharna reminds him that she was only ever going to be in Whyhope temporarily and that she is going back to Sydney next week, but she invites him to go with her. He is surprised by her offer and agrees, just as Ken comes outside to see him.

The next morning, Hugh and Penny arrive at the Clinic to find heaps of new patients waiting for them. Ken tells them he called in a favour from his buddy, Gordon, to get the Farmer’s Association members in for a check-up, in return for the bottle of vintage malt Hugh brought into the Clinic with him earlier in the episode.

As they are signing up the new patients, Ken informs Penny about Hugh going back to Sydney. Penny later hides her patient files to force a miscount of the new patients, and sure enough, as Hugh and the gang are celebrating what should be 110 new patients, is only 101.

Later Ken drown his sorrows during book club and Penny admits to what she’s done when Ken tries to give her his resignation for what he views are his failures. Ken rightfully admonishes Penny for throwing away the Clinic’s funding and calls her out for still being in love with Hugh. Penny denies this; however, she does admit that she doesn’t want him to leave.

The next morning when Hugh arrives at work, Ken lets Penny’s sabotage slip, instead of being angry Hugh is relieved, which Ken notices and deduces that Hugh doesn’t actually want to leave Whyhope. Just as he is about to admit to this, Penny and Sharna arrive, and Sharna tells him that Penny told her she misplaced the files, and the Clinic will get the funding, which means Hugh can go to Sydney.

Sharna and Charlie – In this episode, Sharna offered Charlie the position of Interim Mayor until the next election, as Sharna has been called back to Sydney and with her conviction, Meryl can never be Mayor or sit on Council again. When she tells Matt, he jokingly accuses her of becoming Meryl and Charlie tells him she’s not going to take it. However, when Meryl informs her that the most likely replacement would be an old, chauvinistic white man, Charlie ends up taking the offer.

This subplot wasn’t in the spotlight in this episode and I honestly didn’t see it coming, however it will be interesting to see how this plays out, especially with Meryl, in the remaining episodes of the season.

Overall, I felt that this was a weaker episode in comparison to last week’s episode. While it was good to see the Meryl corruption story arc and the Hayley-Tom subplot come to a close, the tone of the episode was a little all over the place, especially when it came to the Hugh-Sharna-Penny love triangle, the Clinic story arc, and the Ajax gambling subplot.

Stray Observations:

-According to Penny, the only gift a patient has given her is a knitted hat and head lice.

-Apparently Charlie once tried to teach French mime to a kindergarten class.

Best one liners and interactions:

• “Can I take you up on that offer?” “Is that my shirt?” “No.” (Matt-Hugh-Matt on Hugh’s offer to pay for the Council damages on Meryl’s behalf)
• “How many patients have we had?” “Four and I just tried to make an appointment with a dead guy.” “Oh, that doesn’t count?” “I don’t think so.” (Hugh-Penny going back-and-forth on trying to meet Sharna’s new patient KPI)
• “Is shit stirring not a hobby anymore?” (Charlie to Hugh)
• “You were baking the other day, where did that come from?” “That was one quiche!” (Matt-Charlie when Matt tells Charlie she’s turning into Meryl)
• “Tea?” “No, I need wine, it’s book club we always have wine.” (Ken-Melody-Ken)