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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mel O&#039;Drama" data-source="post: 443526" data-attributes="member: 23">AlternativesAlmost immediately, the series has highlighted this. In the course of this episode, Vicky reprimanded Shirley over her dismissive treatment of Frank. Vicky, too, has been criticised for her own treatment of Simon. It’s gratifying that the characters acknowledge this frustration and diffuses my own as a viewer.Vicky found some competition for Simon in the form of an old friend of Molly’s from the city, model Bianca Forbes-Hamilton. Nebulous, vain, entitled and shallow, Bianca is kind of a proto Charlie Bartlett, with a dash of some of those comic characters who would later appear in Neighbours or Home and Away (think H&A’s Marilyn).ACP gets plenty of mileage from poking fun of her in these two episodes. She totters round the farm in high heels, driving Brendan to distraction with her name-dropping and “fabulous”es. She’s chased flat on to her face when trying to feed Doris the pig. When Vicky realises she’s after Simon, she gets her revenge by “kindly” offering to take Bianca on her rounds to see some cute fluffy animals. Then she takes her to a calf being birthed. Just when Bianca is on the verge of throwing up, Vicky emerges from the barn and asks if she wants to come and see the cow eating the placental bag before they go for afternoon tea… which finishes the job. Bianca heaves over the fence while Vicky watches in satisfied amusement. The final indignity for poor Bianca came when Molly took her advice and put kerosene in the outside loo to clean it… but neglected to warn Bianca in time when she went out there with her morning cigarette in hand. You wouldn’t think daft scenes of someone getting comically blown up would work in between some of the heavier scenes in this episode, but it feels wonderfully balanced and the Bianca material is a genuinely funny diversion. It’s even a little disappointing that this is the last we’ll see of Bianca, if not actress Tina Bursill.With the whole business helping Vicky take Simon a little less for granted, Shirley is similarly encouraged to do the same. She also overhears a conversation between two men asking why women can’t simply be direct about what they want and cut out the manipulation. Her response to this, and her concession of an olive branch to Frank, is to fake a puncture so that Frank will stop and help her. It’s something, I suppose, though I did like the ending we almost got when Frank drove by without stopping, before changing his mind and reversing.The theme of bickering couples who have taken one another for granted continues in the story of an older couple, former loves reunited after many decades when both end up staying in the hospital. It’s a sweet story, sold with the use of quotes from John Shaw Neilson (who receives a special credit over the end titles.Notably, as one of the poems was read, I recognised the music to be that flutey romantic piece used when John had his dreams about Angela in early Sons and Daughters. As if it’s not surreal enough that John had appeared in the previous story, the woman to whom the poetry is read here is Lily, played by none other than Pat McDonald - weeks before she (and the flutey tune) would launch that series.Continuing the degrees of separation, Pat’s former Number 96 co-star Bettina Welch (the former nasty Maggie Cameron). Bettina plays a controlling grandparent who believes his mother and her new partner aren’t suitable parents. We get a sense of her character, Mavis Carmody, when she marches imperiously into the surgery and makes demands of Terence. When he refuses to examine her grandson without the mother’s consent, she drags her grandson along to Simon who obliges. What none of them know at first is that the grandson has acute leukaemia and - after months of treatments in hospital - the mother has opted to go the alternative medicine route knowing that he is going to die anyway. Finding this out drives Mavis to push harder and push her hotshot lawyer son to go for custody of the son in whom he’s shown no interest.Where this gets really gripping is when Terence gets dragged into things. Somewhat reluctantly, he agrees to testify on behalf of the child’s mother if needed, so Mavis’s son digs up dirt on him and tries to use it as leverage. This pushes Terence into getting drunk and crying in despair. In a brilliant touch, we’re still not given details of Terence’s background. It’s evident that Marta knows, but Simon is bewildered and is told only that Terence had badly let down a child in the course of his duties.Sobering up, Terence goes to tell Mavis he has every intention of testifying, no matter what the consequences. Independently of this, Simon pays Mavis’s son a visit out of loyalty to Terence, and makes a threat of his own involving a powerful relative of his own who is an even more powerful lawyer. Mavis, though, tells Simon she has already made up her mind and what he has said has no bearing on her decision which turns out to be the right one. It’s somewhat predictable to a jaded viewer, but no less satisfying an ending for it.</blockquote>

Verification: Who played JR Ewing?