The Aftermath

Friday 17th October

So, Niall captured the Mcqueen gang, he got caught, he blew them up. Voila.

You surely didn’t think that is all you were going to get?

Well, to start with, someone’s got to die. It wouldn’t be a Hollyoaks drama if someone didn’t. Plus your intrepid correspondent saw a spolier a few months ago and has been waiting for this moment with bated breath.

Let’s whittle through the options.

No point in killing off Michaela or Carmel – what sort of storyline would the death of a annoying teenager (the ‘Oaks wouldn’t be that kind to us) or a big-boobed beautician?

Mercedes isn’t going to go – she might have HIV and has slept with Jacqui’s man. The scope for mid-village rows is enormous.

Jacqui is a vital shouting, hair-grabbing requirement for these scenes.

John Paul – well, he’s obviously going to jet set back off to Dublin so that’s no drama.

Myra – she has to clean up the mess she has made. It would be a cop out if she disappeared.

So, who’s left? Tina.

Tina got pregnant in a one night stand with a man who was not her husband. Then pretended the baby belonged to her husbands brother, promising it to her husband’s brothers girlfriend, who also happens to be her sister. She was pushed down the stairs by her crazy brother. She had to have a hysterectomy and after this decided to take the baby back from her sister who is also her husbands brothers girlfriend. She made a failed attempt to make a go of it with her child’s biological father and then her mother chose her to live out of all her siblings.

I think Tina’s been through enough. Kill her off. She wouldn’t be able to take any more. She isn’t as strong as Tony.

Plus, the scope for a story after this would be unimaginable. The fight over baby Max would take the forefront of any other McQueen barney. Russ (the baby’s biological father), Jacqui (who the baby was promised to), Dom (Tina’s husband), Myra (the baby’s grandmother) Tony (Jacqui’s mug) will all be fighting over custody of poor defenceless Max.

If this is the case, I say draw straws.

So there is the usual search of bodies under rubble, names are being called, floors fall in, Jacqui leaves her mother stuck under a slab of mortar, as Tina is younger and needs more help. Survival of the fittest? Or getting your own back?

Chaos ensues. Niall and Myra indulge in a mother-son bonding moment. Myra won’t have John Paul and Niall fighting each other. She has robbed us of a full on fist fight in a collapsing derelict church. That would have got us quivering with excitement. Alas. It was not to be.

Eventually they are all out safely. Apart from Tina McQueen. Poor Tina. Adultress dying in her betrayed husband’s arms. Told you so.

As the ambulance doors close on Tina’s bagged body, we see Niall’s reflection in the dark glass of the ambulance doors.

Whoa!

We had assumed Niall had died. Are all ‘Oaks bad boys and girls blessed with all the luck of an Irish Leprachaun?

Niall is still alive. Jack’s secret is out. Dom is a widow. Baby Max is an orphan. The McQueens are bereaved. Mercedes still might have HIV. Tony is in the dog house with Jacqui. Poor vindicated Newt is in hospital. Darren’s convinced he is going to hell.

Hollyoaks is just bloody BRILLIANT.

Pigeons in a Derelict Church

Talk about SLOWLY bring water to the boil then letting it bubble over! Ten months of calculated disruption, over four episodes of chance abductions and then all of a sudden it climaxes in half an hour?

Like a lion stalking his prey, picking out the gazelles one by one, Niall has collected the McQueen gang and lined them up for his one-man pack to ravish.

Revealing to Myra and her girls that he IS the abandoned son (who would have guessed it?) of Myra McQueen, he goes on and on about his struggle through life, how he never had a role model, never knew where he came from, never had stable familial relationships etc etc.

Come on Niall. Think about where you are. You’ve entered into the world of ‘Oaks, where tragedy is unforgivingly indiscriminate: there is no point in having a character in Hollyoaks unless you are going to tear them apart bit by bit, increasing audience numbers in the process.

Yet, others don’t think it is acceptable to tie up five vulnerable women in a derelict church and threaten to blow them to pieces.

Creating the soap version of Sophie’s Choice, Myra has to chose which children to live and which children to die. In answering six questions correctly or incorrectly Myra literally holds her children’s lives in her hands. Wonderfully compelling viewing. We applaud you Hollyoaks writers. It took a long time coming, but we stuck with you and we have been rewarded. However, you could have dragged this out a bit more.

Myra answers two questions correctly and four incorrectly. Shocking. If only I was being interrogated instead of Myra, I could have answered at least four. So two of Jacqui, Mercedes, Carmel, Tina and Michaela will live and four of them will die.

Hold on a cotton picking minute. There are only five children there. For six life-changing places.

Yes, you’ve guessed it, our crying distraught ladies took a bit longer. Niall has managed to hop over the Irish Sea to Dublin, capture McQueen brother John Paul, smuggle him through passport control, get him on a plane or ferry and bring him struggling and protesting to a derelict church in Cheshire. The mind boggles, it really does.

And where was Craig Dean when the love of his life disappeared? Why did he not contact Myra asking her if she had heard from him?

So Myra makes her choice. Although not until Mercedes and John Paul have offered themselves up, martyrs that they are. Great. Two down, two more to choose.

Jacqui and Carmel you’re up. Unfortunately neither of you have a child and neither of you happened to be the baby of the family. Life’s tough.

Meanwhile, dead Jack is actually alive and almost well. Against the wishes of a pushy Darren he races to the McQueen villa and bumps into the Hutchinson duo. Questions come bubbling to the surface. What? When? How? Why?

Oh bloody hell Tony, never mind that, your missus is about to face her death and you want to engage in a confrontational conversation with a ‘dead’ ex-copper. Priorities man!

Tony and Dom race to the church with a Die Hard-James Bond-Batman and Robin style gait. Battered Jack and Darren (failing to call the police, self-confessed going to hell) are also on the case.

Lying father and gambling son burst into the church ‘it’s over Niall’.

Jack is also a contender for quote of the week. Did he think that spouting that line would convince Niall to change his mind? That he would reply ‘Jack, you are right. Now that you, an OAP landlord with a dodgy heart has burst through the door with your Chav son, it really is over. I have met my match. Take me away’.

Oh come on! Nasty Niall panics and presses his detonator. The church explodes. Bodies fly. Dum dum dum.

Pigeons flee from a broken church window.

There must be more to come.

It’s a waiting game…

In true Hollyoaks fashion, the slowly unravelling story of the McQueen family and their estranged brother Niall, is…still…slowly…un…ravelling.

With all the pace of an arthritic hippo, Niall, who is still sporting his black leather jacket and black hoodie combo, is continuing his quest to kidnap the McQueen sisters, all the while leaving a trail of pink post-it notes behind him. Depositing baby Max outside casa de las McQueens, Granny Myra finds him with a note replicating that of the note she left with nasty Niall when she abandoned him as a depressed fourteen year old school girl. Chilling? Or merely lazy? The menacing music points towards the former with all of the inherent subtlety of a Scouting For Girls lyric.

Gothic Lauren and erratic Newt plan to run away together when Newt betrays The Osbornes trust and announces that Jack is in fact alive they are all emigrating to Spain. In this typical example of the ‘Oaks tradition of keeping a secret, nasty Niall must be applauded for his unbelievable ability to protect his secret for so long.

Meanwhile, Tony, in Il Gnosh, reveals to bro Dom his plans to propose to Jacqui. Oh Tony. Oh poor, naive, caring Tony.

You’d think that after thirteen years of failed relationships with most of the female cast, unsuccessful businesses, four engagements, being jilted at the alter, catching an STD, physically abused by his ex-wife, losing a child, impregnating four women, and one truly tragic haircut, our loveable Tony would have learnt by now that things just don’t happen to go his way.

But true to ‘Tony-form,’ like a bruised and battered Ultimate Fighting Champion, after every knock he gets back up and readies himself for his next round in the ‘Oaks Fighting Cage.

In what must be the only abduction in history in which nobody swore, Niall abducts the final sister of the McQueen posse. But not without a fight. Tumbling into Tony and Jacqui’s flat, Niall throws Jacqui down on the sofa. Jacqui protests fiercely with the polite and clean mouth of a typical McQueen jailbird. Taking out his trusty camera-recorder (doesn’t everyone have one in their leather jackets nowadays?) he shows Jacqui pictures of her screaming sisters.

Like a dog eyeing up a succulent lamb chop this new piece of information leaves us salivating for more. At last we have heard a glimpse of the missing McQueen sisters. Without even seeing them, we are hungry for another bite. Where are they? Are they hurt? What will happen to them?

Lowering us down into the depths of Hollyoaks Hell, the writers have finally dipped us into the hot lava below. And boy, do we want to be submerged.

As a final tickle for our ‘Oaks tastebuds, we see Niall bundling Jacqui into his white van (why is it that nobody in the village, observant bunch that they are, has noticed a suspicious looking white van ‘hanging around’ and that Niall has changed his vehicle of choice from car to van? ). As Jacqui screams in protest, they are observed by, you’ve guessed it, Newt, the one guy in the ‘Oaks who happens to see things others don’t. Well, that’s convenient.

Get a bloody move on Niall

After months of frustrated pantomine-esque shoutings of ‘he’s behind you’ and ‘no he’s evil’ at my verbally abused TV screen, Niall Rafferty has finally taken the plunge and is abducting the McQueen ladies like they’re going out of fashion (seemingly fitting, judging by their couture).

On the birthday of Jacqui Malota, the now usurped second eldest child of Myra McQueen, Niall puts his long drawn out plan into action. With the failed kidnapping attempts of the birthday girl, Niall (played by Barry Sloane, check his dedicated fanbase) eventually captures indecisive mum Tina, using the somewhat lazy line of ‘it’s not as bad as it looks… it’ worse’.

Come on Niall, after months of evil eyes and smokey expressions, you could have given us a bit more juice. Pushing Tina McQueen down a flight of stairs, rendering her infertile, then finally abducting her by throwing us that lethargic line seems less than our committed viewing deserves.

However, Niall must be forgiven, in the hope that what is to come will rival those bad boys of Hollyoaks yore, leaving Toby and Sam as a speck in the rear view mirror of Niall’s white van.

Fingers crossed Niall, (or should we now call him Matthew?) will rise to the challenge of pushing evil Rob off the ultimate Hollyoaks throne as the King of Non-Sweary Crime. Although, can anything compete with throwing four adults into a disused watertank?

Let’s not forget the rest of the gang. The Osbornes are about to jetset into the sun, with fraudulent Jack leaving behind Hollyoaks’ only ‘decent’ watering hole and his gambling son, Darren. Nancy, still desperate to cling on to part of her deceased sister, Becca, insists she will accompany them and her nephew Charlie, to the Costa del Crime. Newt, who appears to be the Schizophrenic glue that is sticking this family of mishaps together, talks her out of it.

Niall is on the rampage, the McQueens are going awol, the Osbornes are jetting off to sunny Spain, and constant Tony is, well, a constant. To paraphrase Niall, ‘it’s not as good as it looks… it’s better’.