The all-new Harold Bishop struck again this week, telling Susan to stop wallowing in self-pity over her marriage break-up with Karl. Though hurt by his words, Susan took them on board and realised that he was absolutely right. Later, he turned up at her house with a hairstyling magazine, showing Susan all the possibilities for a new look. She quickly arranged for Lyn to restyle her hair, while also throwing away most of her old clothes and blowing the credit card on a huge shopping spree on Chapel Street, with Lyn and Sindi. Everyone took the opportunity to tell her how great she looked, while she also made sure Karl noticed her when they ran into each other at the pub. Later on, a phone call from Candace Barkham led to Susan going out to a club and getting a lift home from a man named Brent. Unsure of his motives, Susan nervously explained to him that she was very recently separated and simply wanted a lift home and nothing more.

While a fashion makeover was long overdue for Susan, it also seems to have really moved the Kennedy storyline forward, with both characters really making a fresh start, and hopefully moving into some interesting new relationships and storylines.

When Stuart was assigned to be on standby at a footie match in his new role as a trainee police officer, he ended up having to mind a 16-year-old boy who’d been streaking during the game. The boy ended up giving him a heap of hassle and refused to wear his blanket. The situation ended in Stuart forcing him to put it back on and getting a ticking off once again from the senior officer. Insult was added to injury when Toadie arrived to pick up the boy – his cousin, Scott Timmins, and he ended up staying at number 30 until his court case, for indecent exposure, comes up. Toadie wasn’t thrilled, especially as the boy comes from the less savoury branch of the Rebecchi family tree and he also resented being used as a dumping ground for the unruly members of his clan. Meanwhile, Scott was making his presence felt in the house, playing loud music and basketball until all hours of the night, keeping Stu, Connor and Toadie awake. The following day, Toadie managed to palm his cousin off onto Sindi, so he could help with the filming of Making Mansions. Unfortunately, by the end of the day, Scott had vanished with the camera and Boyd’s skateboard, and looked to be heading for a major fall…

Having returned from Hong Kong a broken man, Lou continued to try to keep the truth from those around him this week. He eventually broke down and revealed all to Harold, who, in keeping with his recent personality transplant, told Lou that it was what everyone had expected to happen anyway. However, the following day, the truth came out when the local paper got wind of Trixie’s show being cancelled and ran a story on Lou’s marital problems. Nobody was terribly surprised, but Harold tried to keep his friend from seeing the article anyway. In an act of desperation, Lou contacted Trixie and tried to persuade her to come home, but when she hung up on him, he angrily ended up ruining a batch of Connor’s home-made beer. Although he apologised, and a bit of the old Lou returned by the end of the week, it seems that with financial ruin almost certainly around the corner, things are going to get a lot worse before they get better. And contacting Rocco to ask for a loan could spell the beginning of his problems…

It seems that Lou really could be ruined now, after coming close several times in recent years, and the fact that Harold isn’t his usual sympathetic self is only making the situation worse. However, it’s great for Tom Oliver to finally have a decent, long-running storyline to get his teeth into.

The divide between Liljana and David over the Kennedys marriage problems have provided them with some of their best scenes since arriving in the show. The viewers are really starting to see the dynamics of the couple now, and this, mixed with the new Harold, is making for some very entertaining scenes.

Also this week, Jack found himself increasingly drawn to Sindi and her flirtatious ways, especially as she encouraged him to show more flesh during the filming of the show. Gus continued his vendetta against Max as he deliberately erased a message from Summer asking her dad to pick her up. Gus then saved the day by rescuing Summer from a bully. Boyd and Sky also had problems, with the show taking a refreshingly realistic approach to the subject of teenage sex. It seemed that while Boyd was eager to have a repeat performance, Sky felt distinctly underwhelmed by the entire experience and was worried by Boyd’s desire for them to spend more time alone.