So, goodbye then Neighbors. After 37 years of banal storylines and problematic haircuts, the very last episode ever airs next week.
Despite still attracting about a million viewers per day, Channel 5 canceled the show so after July 29th we can all finally relax with our afternoon cuppa without fear of getting an Australian accent or worse – getting into a habit.
You may mock, but I know what I’m talking about because I was once a Neighbors addict. I’ve been clean for over two decades now, but the fear of relapse never goes away. During lockdownwith only a monosyllabic partner for company, there was always that temptation to go back to Ramsay Street.
I lied to myself. I said it was just to see if Susan Kennedy still had that fringe that looked like a garden rake or if Paul Robinson was aging well, but I knew the terrible truth: One episode would lead to two, then I’d be back in it. sucked .
Jason Donovan (left) and Kylie Minogue (right) appear in the very last episode of Australian soap Neighbors
Somehow I resisted. I did the 12 steps from the TV to the fridge and ate instead. I just couldn’t let myself get addicted again.
It started when I was a young mother with a baby stuck in London, knowing no one, with only a handful of TV channels to watch. I’d spent much of the previous year at home with hepatitis and sneering—yes, sneering, actually—on daytime soap operas, viewing them as losers, inmates, and sulks.
But that was before I discovered Neighbors in the late 1980s – crack for homebound. I was there in the beginning – the Mullers, the Mangels, Kylie Minogue in her overalls playing Charlene before she got lucky, lucky, lucky. And Jason Donovan, whom I saw in person one hot summer’s day in West London and wondered why he didn’t come running to greet me by name.
Then there was the nicotine-voiced Madge, pot-bellied Harold, and Mike, a pre-Hollywood Guy Pearce. They were my daily painkillers. One child, two children, three then four: my life became busier but no less lonely. During the days when my more glamorous peers had no careers, I was in the park, juggling school pickups and tables, desiring it to be 5:30 p.m. so I could sit down with those neighbors who have become really “good friends.” ‘ ‘ as the theme melody promised.
Saddo I was, I think it was the continuity that calmed me down. When you’re out of sync with life — a stay-at-home mom in a new city, know few people well and have little in common with those you’ve met, your partner busy, busy, busy — that gave me something familiar to cling to.
Chatting with Aunt Beeb gave me a familiarity I didn’t have in real life. I didn’t want rough, I didn’t want literature. I wanted what I got: gentle soap.
Scott and Charlene (Jason Donovan and Kylie Minogue) married 25 years ago on November 8, 1988, in the TV soap Neighbors
In the end I didn’t even notice that the characters had an accent. It just sounded, well, normal. If I missed the evening slot, I’d race home early the next day from playgroup to catch the lunch rehearsal. My only other mother friend, Jane, was also an addict and we enabled each other. In the afternoon we would discuss the plots, slumped in front of the television with dull eyes. We were zombies, completely gone. Even when the toddlers started calling each other “dags” and “drongos,” we just said “shhh,” which was better than having to “stretch,” but we needed that half an hour.
Neighbors soon didn’t have enough effect. I needed a bigger hit. Then it was Home And Away and even, I confess, a bit of The Flying Doctors.
Now I’m ashamed to admit how far I’ve fallen. People with Netflix won’t understand the slim choices we had in the 1990s. Back then I just had a VCR and streaming was what you did when you had a cold. Little did I know that my seemingly safe, recreational habit would be a gateway to the hard stuff — the murky world of primetime soaps.
Once the kids were safely in bed, I tried them all – Brookside, Coronation Street, EastEnders. I even surrendered to the low point of Emmerdale when that was all I could get.
So, goodbye then Neighbors. After 37 years of banal storylines and problematic haircuts, the very last episode will be broadcast next week
Eventually you end up at the bottom. The youngest was two. I was a mature art student, struggling to seem normal in the midst of a bunch of young kids for whom ecstasy was a pill instead of the moment the kids are asleep and you’ve just poured yourself a glass of wine.
I knew I had to do something when good old Helen Daniels died and I was robbed. I realized that my most lasting friendships were with people who didn’t really exist. What’s worse is that the actors had all done different, better things. They had a pop and film career. And where was I? Sitting at home with no life. It was time to switch off.
Stupid, I went cold turkey. I started knitting, a miserable accident involving many horrific sweaters. The youngest has started nursery. I got a job at a local newspaper.
I slipped once. I developed an archer habit. I kept it a secret for a while, but eventually even that got out of hand. I put on the omnibus edition every Sunday when we drove to my parents’ house for lunch. Then the children refused to get in the car and my husband intervened.
It’s been 15 years since my last episode, but I still take it day by day. Maybe I can give myself one last hurray when the final episode of Neighbors airs. All the old favorites are coming back. It would be a fitting farewell and I mean, what could possibly hurt? It has been canceled so no chance of recurrence.
On the other hand, I’m circling pretty close to retirement age when the danger of professional TV watching beckons again. Better not. I now have real good friends and my real neighbors bring me curries.