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Weekly Reviews > Episodes 4363-4367 by Steve

UK Broadcast: Monday 12th January – Friday 16th January, 2004
Written by: Ray Harding, Katrina Foster, John Hanlon, Graham Hartley, Linda Stainton
Directed by: Jovita O’Shaughnessy, Julie Bates

A week of comings and goings that began with a bankruptcy and ended with a proposal…

Stuart’s new life with Life Mechanics took up a large part of this week’s action as he made some drastic decisions and alienated himself from his old friends. As his behaviour became more and more strange, everyone was concerned. Susan decided to try and find out more about Life Mechanics by turning up at Stuart’s meeting and asking lots of difficult questions. This only served to destroy their friendship further. Toadie and Connor decided that a trip to the pub might help Stuart remember his old mates, but things fell apart when Jack started having a go at Stu, revealing how weird everyone thought he’d become. An angry Stuart announced that he’d get out of their way as soon as possible, by moving out of number 30. Meanwhile, Lou began receiving complaints about the garage being closed and work taking weeks to get done. After several warnings, Lou was appalled to find Stuart at home, packing up his things and ordered him back to the garage. Stuart announced that he’d had enough of being told what to do, and he resigned. Jonathan Verne quickly took him in and offered him the job of state leader for the division of Life Mechanics, even getting him to sign a contract for the job. He also announced that he’d be going away for a while, offering his apartment for Stuart to stay in…

While it’s obvious to almost everyone – the viewers, along with Stuart’s friends and neighbours – that this is all going to end in disaster, it’s still proving interesting to watch. Blair McDonough is finally proving how good an actor he is with these scenes and it’s great that the show is highlighting the friendships that he’s built during his time on the show – with flatmates Toadie and Connor, with Susan mentioning his support of Libby and Ben and even with the mention of him almost marrying into the Scully family.

Meanwhile, Steph was out of hospital after her scare last week and finding that those who loved her were doing a very good job of smothering her. Joe got upset as Steph asked him to back off a bit, and he broke down, admitting that he was scared of losing his daughter. Back at the Hoyland house, it was obvious that Izzy wasn’t thrilled to have Steph around once again and the two girls had it out with each other. They realised that maybe they could try and make an effort and find some common ground between them. Max was also coming to terms with how much he needed Steph in his life and he confided in his sister that he was going to propose to her. Unfortunately, Summer overheard the conversation and couldn’t keep the information to herself. Before long, Joe and Lyn knew and Steph overheard them discussing it. Later, in the pub, Steph confided in Izzy that she wasn’t going to say yes to Max when he eventually did propose, as she felt that she’d be too much of a burden on him and the kids. Izzy tried to subtly talk Max out of proposing, but only got her head bitten off. When Max was finally ready to pop the question, Steph started talking about how she didn’t think that people always needed to get married to prove their love and he soon realised that she knew what he’d been planning. The couple had a heart-to-heart and she explained that, although marriage might be on the cards for them in the long term, she just wanted them to enjoy their time together at the moment.

The storyline of Steph’s cancer has really been handled well, showing the reactions of everyone around her, as well as her own. This was particularly evident this week, as Steph returned from hospital to find her father breaking down in tears on her, Izzy reacting jealously to her return to number 32 and Max attempting to propose to her. Hopefully their likely engagement and marriage this year won’t be a long and drawn out affair, a la Drew and Libby, but her reactions this week to the prospect of marriage were very nicely observed.

After interfering in Stuart’s life, Susan found more strange behaviour going on – this time in her own home. With Taj having moved in, Karl’s behaviour became very odd as he tried to cover up and justify his drinking. He explained to his new lodger that his wife was going completely overboard, believing that he had a problem with alcohol and so he had to do things behind her back. Karl started making weird comments to Susan in an attempt to back his claims up in front of Taj and she was left confused. However, after Susan went out of her way to get Karl’s favourite Japanese take-away for him, Karl felt guilty about his treatment of her and booked a trip away to the town where they used to live, Greendale. Once there, they bumped into Patrick Mardell, who took over Karl’s old practice, and Dr. Kennedy began to look back over his life and the progress he’d made in his career since moving to Erinsborough. It quickly became evident that the alcohol was just one of a myriad of problems affecting Karl…

The addition of Taj to the Kennedy household has really added a new dimension to this whole storyline. Not only making things awkward for all three people, what with Taj and Libby’s history, but now that Taj knows about the drinking, it seems that Karl can’t sneak around for much longer. The added information that Taj’s father used to be a drinker meant that Karl’s attempts to cover his tracks only made things more obvious. With their return to their old home town at the end of the week, it seems that Karl is really beginning to get into the swing of his mid-life crisis now, questioning whether he’s happy with his life and how he might be able to change it…

Also this week, Lyn returned from New York with gifts for everyone, worrying a cash-strapped Joe. Also worrying Mr. Scully was Jack, who seemed to be having a crisis over his future, not wanting to go to uni and finding it difficult to care about his studies because of this. At number 32, Summer began boxing lessons in an attempt to defend herself, but was surprised to find Declan at the classes too. The pair began chatting and she was surprised when he invited her to the movies. She was happy when, after a great deal of persuasion, Max allowed her to go; though he and Steph would be going along to keep an eye on proceedings. David was in a state of shock after Toadie revealed the state of his finances and it seemed like he’d have to get another job, and quickly. Luckily, the situation between Sindi and Toadie also came to a head this week. She told him she couldn’t continue to work with him as she still loved him, but, realising he couldn’t move on from Dee that quickly, she handed in her resignation. The job was quickly offered to David, but, having already had to sell his BMW, how much longer can he keep his problems a secret from Liljana?

Notes: This week marked the first occasion on which Neighbours has mentioned the name of the Kennedy family’s previous home town in the country – Greendale.