Neighbours Review for the Week of 10-02-23: New Rivals After a Misunderstanding

Unsurprisingly, the Varga-Murphys decided to stay in Erinsborough after their holiday ended.

Sadly, they made enemies with the Rodwells as they moved two doors down.

A misunderstanding over a misplaced watch and a teenage boy’s impulsivity led to an explosive situation on Neighbours during the week of 10-02-23.

It’s a classic soap opera trope across cultures for a minor misunderstanding to blow up into something huge, and that’s precisely what happened here.

As soon as Sadie confidently proclaimed that JJ had taken her watch, I knew Wendy would find it elsewhere. The Rodwells didn’t handle this well, either, surrounding the family on the sidewalk and demanding that JJ return the “stolen” item.

Sadie is not much older than JJ and tends to be overly pushy, but what are the adults’ excuses?

As a cop, Andrew should understand the importance of not accusing people without facts to back it up, but he also bought into the entire “JJ fooled us” narrative. This puts a wedge between him and JJ when JJ’s secret mission was to find out whether Andrew is his biological father.

He even stopped JJ on the street to pressure him to confess to the theft. Great police work, Andrew.

Now that Wendy’s found the watch, it’s too late to mend fences; Cara and Remi wouldn’t even talk to her. That’ll ensure this conflict gets even bigger, but can you blame them after Wendy’s attitude?

Wendy and Cara will have to interact at work. Predictably, Cara got the job Wendy hoped to snag for herself. Will tensions boil over, or will either decide to be mature about this and hear the other out?

JJ’s contribution to this mess was a 95 percent stupid teenage mistake. When he learned about the spare key, he thought he could sneak in, get the answers he sought, and sneak back out.

If he’d been honest about the fact that he was searching for his biological father, it would have prevented much of this from happening. But JJ felt he couldn’t do that because he didn’t want to risk turning Andrew’s life upside down when he had another family.

Ironically, JJ’s desire to protect the Rodwells caused this huge rift with them. The truth should come out soon — thankfully, Neighbours doesn’t drag things out like Days of Our Lives and other American soaps tend to do, so it may be weeks rather than months.

In the meantime, JJ’s friendship with Nell might lead him into bigger trouble.

Nell’s behavior continues to be baffling, especially with her father at Sonya’s memorial wall. Nell asked Toadie if he missed Melanie in front of a giant mural of her mother’s face.

This story would make far more sense if there had never been any Melanie/Toadie storyline and Nell resented someone attempting to take her mother’s place.

As it is, Nell seems to resent Terese more than she does Melanie, who was the first person Toadie got serious about after Sonya’s death.

Did Nell drive Melanie away and then change her mind because Toadie moved on instead of staying single and honoring Sonya’s memory? That’s the only thing I can think of.

Nell and JJ can’t possibly be good for each other.

He’s already being ostracized somewhat because people believe he’s a thief, and he doesn’t need to get involved with Nell’s ridiculous schemes! (As an aside, the line of the week went to Hugo when he told Nell to stop causing trouble.)

Terese: We need to have a talk.Nell: About?Terese: It just hit me. The letter. You deliberately wanted me to find it. Did you read it?Nell: Didn’t have time.Terese: Look, I thought we were going to give each other a chance.Nell: Believe what you want to believe. It doesn’t change the fact that Dad kept the letter and didn’t tell you.Terese: Yes, but not for the reason you want it to be.

Thank goodness Terese at least realized that Nell was manipulating her again! She’d have to be stupid to think that letter was placed in her sight by accident, but soap characters sometimes lose their brains when it’s convenient for the plot.

Still, I wish she’d tell Toadie what his daughter is up to. If it comes out some other way — and this is a soap, so it’s bound to — that’ll drive a bigger wedge between Toadie and Terese than any of Nell’s teenage manipulations.

Terese has more significant problems to deal with, though, now that Jane’s learned that Terese is the developer who is trying to get the school closed down.

I’m not sure that Terese realized the site Paul was encouraging her to go for was the school site, but regardless, she knows now, and if she doesn’t back out of the deal, it’ll cause problems in her friendship with Jane.

What will Erinsborough do with its teenage population if there’s no high school? The kids could bus to Melbourne, but this story seems odd anyway.

Jane and Mike’s scenes surprised me. With Guy Pearce unlikely to make many more appearances, I assumed that Jane and Mike would break up.

But now Jane’s in Australia, and Mike is in the UK, and he has no job waiting for him in Erinsborough. So, while he’s supposed to return at some point, he might extend his stay overseas, killing the relationship.

It’s too bad. Mike’s diving into the lake to get the ring he so rashly threw away and then proposing to Jane with wet trousers made it clear that these two are made for each other.

Elsewhere, the Paul/Reece story continues to be the most underwhelming of the week.

Paul and Reece are using Byron as a spy to discover what the other is up to. Byron’s ‘romance’ with Reece was bad enough when he thought she was into him. It’ll be too soon if we never have another scene of these two kissing in the elevator.

There’s some intrigue about Reece and her dad. She is on a mission other than what she claims she’s here for. I’m curious about what it is, but can we please find out without any more Byron/Reece nonsense?

Harold’s story was over almost as quickly as it began.

Harold: This whole thing has made me think of Sky and Lana. I don’t want to be a burden to them.Karl: I’m sure they wouldn’t see it that way.Harold: Perhaps not. But nevertheless, considering my age, I think I need to make arrangements while I still can.

I’m relieved that  Harold doesn’t have Alzheimer’s or other dementia. I was bracing myself for a heartbreaking story.

Remi, realizing Harold’s blood pressure meds were to blame for his memory lapses, certainly beats that time that Days of Our Lives explained Doug’s forgetfulness as an effect of devil possession!

It was a bit too convenient for Harold to drop the pill in front of Remi and her to make the diagnosis, though it fits with Neighbours’ faster pace.

This may lead to a story about Harold making arrangements for his end-of-life care due to this brush with serious illness, though, and that should be a compelling story.

Finally, Mackenzie and Haz are all sorts of cute, so could they please get together already?

They’ve had several fun non-dates in which Mackenzie has barely hidden her true feelings. There’s no legitimate reason for her not to put herself out there and admit she’s jealous of Haz’s new girlfriend.

Her attempts to pretend she’s not into Haz are perpetuating the problem.

He’s only dating others because he thinks Mackenzie doesn’t want him, and this misunderstanding is tedious.

Your turn, Neighbours fanatics. Hit the big, blue SHOW COMMENTS button and let us know what you thought of this week’s shows.

For more Neighbours chat, check out the latest Neighbours spoilers.

Neighbours streams on Amazon Freevee in the US and UK and Amazon Prime in Canada on Mondays through Thursdays after broadcast on Australia’s Peach 10.

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Jack Ori is a senior staff writer for TV Fanatic. His debut young adult novel, Reinventing Hannah, is available on Amazon. Follow him on X.