The Bayside Diner: Home and Away fans gather here!

[TheOnlyLivingBoyInNewCross]

A shiny new thread, yah flaming galahs - can't believe we filled up another one!

ok nasty but is it me......willow has too many teeth?
I want Roo to get with justine and ...........

Oh Roo deserves better than Justin

Is Jett staying?

Poor Jasmine is having some sort of mental health issue. The background music made it clear.

I don't care. I only care about Dean!

Me too! 😂 He is so much my favourite character and has been for a while.

(Willow does have a lot of teeth, btw)

One issue I'm having at the moment - I find Leah really odd to look at. Has she had fillers? Her mouth is different and it's really distracting me every time she's in a scene!

I thought the same with Leah, her lips look horrible

Those boof-heads were about as menacing as jelly and custard 😂 poor Dean though... does he ever have a quiet week?!

Erm, the fog of Brody being a total shitbag is lifting and I’m remembering that I can’t bear Ziggy 😬 I really don’t want Dean to end up with her! Especially as I’m clearly going to have to make my peace with another couple I don’t like - Lustin... booooo

But they hurt him!!!!! He'd have taken floppy hair no problem, but there was lots of them!!

If Dean doesn't get with Zig he'll end up back with Willow.

I am totally shipping Dean and Ziggy. She makes him want to be a better man - love the fact that Willow and Colby suspected he had real feelings for her because he didn't sleep with her 😂

And there were six or seven of those boof-heads! Even Dean can't cope with all six at once, pocket-sized embodiment of manliness though he is! He needed a swift River Boy reunion.

Speaking of, where ARE the River Boys? When Ash brought them back into the Bay, Dean was their leader (the new Brax) and had a whole pack of them doing his bidding. Where have they gone? Who has taken over? Has Dean just abandoned them? Was there a whole chunk of storyline explaining this which I've just forgotten?

Everyone must sever all ties with their previous life once they move to The Bay. Rare exceptions do occur, like Maggie's mum being around occasionally. Mostly though, they have to give up their entire lives to devote themselves fully to diner gossip & surfing. Thems the rules if you want to join The cult Bay. You may occasionally go to Yabbie Creek or "up the coast" but this must be announced in advance to at least 2 people & you must be contactable at all times or people will assume your long-lost son has kidnapped you. Unless he actually has, then they'll be remarkably blasé about you not calling them back for weeks. Only secured members of the cult are granted that kind of freedom. "They" know Irene is sucked in enough that she'd never get The Bay out of her head. No escape when you've been there that long! My theory is alien mind controlling parasites in the water.

My theory is alien mind controlling parasites in the water.

You're definitely on to something with the cult. Not sure about the alien mind controlling parasites though - my alternative theory isn't quite formulated yet but has something to do with Leah's new and scary lips.

Have you noticed how those that escape the cult are never able to return? Even on occasions when you would really, really expect them back - like the funeral of a loved one, for example - no-one ever comes back.

And if they do come back - Jett - they are punished for their temerity in leaving in the first place.

People can develop immunity, or allergies, to the mind controlling aliens. Leah's allergic, hence the lips. One day soon she's going to collapse from a mystery illness which Tori will diagnose as imminently terminal brain cancer but that'll be just what the parasites want everyone to think. The mass will be the swelling from where her body is rejecting the parasite.

Other people get immune to it & leave. Some only develop partial immunity & eventually the parasite's homing instinct kicks in so strong that they'll do anything to return, including allowing their host to get blown up. Sometimes they decide their host is no longer suitable & they release them. I wouldn't be surprised if Jett goes off to do some sort of rehab or desk job in the army or something. Those who manage to develop full immunity have such a strong aversion to the experience that they'll never return.

Sometimes the parasites attempt to start new colonies so whole families move away. Also, I'm pretty sure Morag was the leader... She travelled around & occasionally there'd be some random court case she absolutely had to come back for... It was all an excuse for her to check up on the colony!

It all makes perfect sense!

The parasites make you lose your memory.
Raffy has forgotten about her sister
Dean has forgotten about the riverboys (except for when Colby needed a wedding venue.

They make you have a change of personality:
John Palmer was such an abusive dick that his stepson planted a bomb on the school bus for example.

Yes to the change of personality. Like every good cult, the parasites require you to be good and wholesome and righteous in order to stay. If you are bad, you are punished. Look at Billie - falsely accuses Dr Nate of sexual assault, then is raped, then dies of cancer. Even attempts to redeem yourself - rescuing people from burning buildings - might not be enough.

Loving the cult of the bay! Where you can forget anyone or anything that ever existed before you arrived, broken hearts are mended with a surf session, personalities are switched overnight and although you run the risk of being rushed in to the only ward at Northern Districts every other week, to be treated by the cult medicine (wo)man Tori, who will tell you that you’ll probably never walk again, you’ll be a full-time personal trainer within months, sprinting up and down the beach and doing physio for another paraplegic person WITHOUT EVER MENTIONING THAT YOU FACED THE SAME ISSUE LAST YEAR YES MASON I’M LOOKING AT YOU! That’s how much the parasites fuck with your memory.

Also, maybe Morag passed the Cult Leadership over to Martha when she slipped in to the other realm (The Great Cell Block H in the Sky!), and that’s why Martha has returned. She’s currently reprogramming Alf on their secret space vessel, the Blaxland, after he escaped the bay for a spot of Panto last year...

I was just coming on to post the same idea about Martha. Alf is obviously the local area leader, with Irene as his deputy. Tis why Alf has complete control over the young men & can just shout "oi" to stop fights. Irene is in charge of making sure all young females are suitably indoctrinated.

I have a new theory about new additions to The Bay. At some point they will all have come into contact with someone already infected with one of the parasites & will become infected themselves. The Bay & other areas like it are actually the spawning grounds. There's a few long term residents who are like the nannies, raising the next generation, but most of them will mature & move on once the parasite reaches reproductive age. This can take years or months depending on how old the parasite was when it infected the host. Once the parasite has matured it will instruct its host to leave The Bay so it can deposit its offspring in a new host. Said new host will then make their way to The Bay to allow the parasite to mature & gain full control of the host in a safe, nurturing environment.

I'm waiting for H&A to do a Halloween special based on this idea. It'll end up like the Buffy episode where she was infected by a monster & couldn't be sure whether her life was real or she was actually in an asylum & imagining the whole thing. At the end of the episode they showed her sitting on the floor of the asylum staring into space. Everything carried on as normal after that leaving the viewer to question which was the actual reality. All H&A fans will be left wondering whether the whole thing is actually an alien conspiracy to take over the world...

Maybe ‘Flaming Galah’ is Baylinese (alien cult language) for ‘Do not disrespect your Area Leader again or you will be exterminated in either a shark attack, deadly storm, or you’ll fall down that scrubby little hill thing in the bush and the camera will pan to your unconscious and slightly bloodied face’

Likewise, a ‘Blind Freddie’ might be a threat of violence against those who refuse to conform.

‘Girlie’ is the cult rank achieved once Irene has dished out a minimum of 17 pieces of unwanted advice to you. You are then ordered by Alf to leave your cult caravan to move to Irene's for further brainwashing.

Also AGnu: the parasites will reach maturity at three years, which is the length of a H&A contract. The parasite will then have to decide whether its host needs to stay in the bay to infect newcomers/mature in to a leader (John, Maz, Maggie is climbing the ranks), or move to ‘The City’ to infect future cult members.

Please tell me one of you is a secret billionaire and we can get this made in to a film!!

Sadly not, but I'll happily sell my intellectual property rights to the story if anyone wants to make me a billionaire!

Is that why Martha got the swankiest caravan I've even seen in Summer Bay but everyone else lives in a tiny rusty tin can? Even the Police who must earn a decent wage?

I was actually thinking that Lovely Young Dean (TM) has a swish caravan these days, sure he didn’t have that one originally.

And has he forgotten his vigil at Willow‘s bedside? All this rejecting her and getting closer to Ziggy is most perturbing.

It was a relief to see Maggie is back to her old acting ways today, ie waggle one hand with every other line of dialogue. She’s been forgetting recently.

yeah i notived it looked nicer the other day, it's normally the bog standard one everyone has had sex in