omg, a hollyoaks post
So I've decided to check out their great big Hollyoaks bisexual love triangle (which has been a little underwhelming so far, I have to admit) and one look at the opening credits had me all, "Jesus H McQueen, who are all these people?" There have been A LOT of cast additions and subtractions since we left the 'oaks along with John Paul, it seems.
I figured I better catch up, so selected a few random eps to download and the first one was simply because it had Ste in the ep summary and I kinda wanted to check in with him...
OMG LOVE.
THIS is what I would like from soaps every day. See, I'm a not-so-secret sucker for the genre because of the characters - or, the fact that a show has a HUGE cast of characters to tell stories with. And sometimes they're really crappy stories, and sometimes they have nothing but really crappy characters, but sometimes, just sometimes, they can draw from their large character base and weave several simultaneous storylines together with one big thematic element and this is something I think Hollyoaks actually manages to do more often than a lot of others - usually set up at the beginning with those nifty little opening sequences.
So this is the episode of the 29th of December, just after Christmas, and it's an episode about male love. Not the man-on-man action we all love HO for (although Ste and Justin are just crying out for some shipping, yo), but love between two men all the same. It's about being a brother, or a father, or a son and how each role influences the other. It's about dealing with your emotions and facing your demons, or not, as the case may be. But mostly, it's about relationships between men. So much so, that no female character even makes an appearance in the ep - they're very much present in everything the men do, but we don't physically see them.
In fact, here's the ep via megaupload, because I feel compelled to share.
Most of them are characters and relationships we're already familiar with like Ste/Justin & Newt/Darren (I think I was so blinded by the JP/Kieron that I never truly figured out just how much I loved seeing Newt and Darren's brotherly relationship develop, but it's fantastically realised in this episode), and there's the addition of Warren's brother which made really made me sit up and take notice of Warren at last. The scene after the credits made me fall in love with him a little. Seriously. Apparently, kissing your mentally handicapped brother totally trumps being a cold-hearted murderer. Who knew!
I figured I better catch up, so selected a few random eps to download and the first one was simply because it had Ste in the ep summary and I kinda wanted to check in with him...
OMG LOVE.
THIS is what I would like from soaps every day. See, I'm a not-so-secret sucker for the genre because of the characters - or, the fact that a show has a HUGE cast of characters to tell stories with. And sometimes they're really crappy stories, and sometimes they have nothing but really crappy characters, but sometimes, just sometimes, they can draw from their large character base and weave several simultaneous storylines together with one big thematic element and this is something I think Hollyoaks actually manages to do more often than a lot of others - usually set up at the beginning with those nifty little opening sequences.
So this is the episode of the 29th of December, just after Christmas, and it's an episode about male love. Not the man-on-man action we all love HO for (although Ste and Justin are just crying out for some shipping, yo), but love between two men all the same. It's about being a brother, or a father, or a son and how each role influences the other. It's about dealing with your emotions and facing your demons, or not, as the case may be. But mostly, it's about relationships between men. So much so, that no female character even makes an appearance in the ep - they're very much present in everything the men do, but we don't physically see them.
In fact, here's the ep via megaupload, because I feel compelled to share.
Most of them are characters and relationships we're already familiar with like Ste/Justin & Newt/Darren (I think I was so blinded by the JP/Kieron that I never truly figured out just how much I loved seeing Newt and Darren's brotherly relationship develop, but it's fantastically realised in this episode), and there's the addition of Warren's brother which made really made me sit up and take notice of Warren at last. The scene after the credits made me fall in love with him a little. Seriously. Apparently, kissing your mentally handicapped brother totally trumps being a cold-hearted murderer. Who knew!