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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 389392" data-attributes="member: 22">Yes, it’s hard to imagine this story happening in any other house on the close, at least not so generically. Because they’re so underdeveloped as characters, the nurses are pliable enough for the writers to place them in this situation without too much trouble. If this were happening to the Grants, say, it would be all, or mostly, about them. As it is, it’s all about the plot. The anonymity of the nurses allows us to see what happens when a series as grittily “real” as Brookside takes on a classic (and/or cliched) Hollywood scenario: it’s the juxtaposition between the two - the so-called real colliding with the so-called unreal - that’s so interesting. Although she’s a hundred times better in every way, I feel like there’s a bit of a parallel between Ciji in Knots Season 4 and the nurses in this story. It's when both shows decided to go full soap (or melodrama) ahead, and having slightly less specifically-drawn characters at the centre of the plot allows the writers to move around them like chess pieces. (Ciji was lovely, but essentially a blank page onto which all the other characters could project their neuroses.)Ha! I appreciate your attempts to make sense of Sandra. It feels as if she should make sense, just as the actress should be better than she is. There's a real strength and energy about her, but it's as if she misses the point of almost every scene she's in. It's like listening to a singer with a really powerful voice continually hitting the wrong note.I do think this is Pat's finest hour, if only because he's tied up and isn't able to do very much.  Him  being penalised for non-attendance at the Job Centre and/or his job interview on account of being held hostage has always struck me as a nice little soap/reality collision . It also reminds me of the bureaucratic red tape Sue and Ali had to go through on Enders to both get their baby son declared dead and his child allowance cancelled a few months earlier. It all feels very '80s, very compassionless, very Thatcher, very "edgy soap".I love it!I don't recall these scenes specifically, but I'm reminded of an interview with a writer who worked on both Crossroads and Coronation Street who said that you could write more or less the same dialogue on both shows and it would feel believable on Corrie because the premise of the series itself (a community of people living recognisable lives)  fundamentally made solid, logical sense,  but not on Crossroads because the premise of that show (an ad hoc selection of character who spend 80% of their lives hovering around a motel reception desk) fundamentally didn't. Same with Pat and Sandra: scratch the surface and there's nothing underneath. I think it all stems from the nurses' introductory scene where they're not so much characters as sitcom stooges who facilitate Harry's George Roper-style assumption that he's renting his house to three girls, one of whom is called Pat.  They didn't convince as a living, breathing pre-existing threesome then, so why should they now?Well, she's clearly the only one of the three who knows what she's doing. Or is that because she's the only one playing a character who knows what she's doing? Either way, she was cast in that role for a reason. And she's the only one who you feel understands what the writers are asking of her, and they then respond in kind. By killing her.Seeing armed police descend on the close gives me the same shivery feeling as watching the motel going up in flames on Crossroads or the first fifteen times the Vic burnt on down on Enders. And I love all the stuff at the B&B. I only wish we could have had more of it.</blockquote>

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