hollyoaks later 2010: the autopsy

Posted on November 2, 2010 by admin 4 Comments

Now, as you may be aware we rather love Hollyoaks. We generally have warm fuzzy feelings for everything about it, even it’s less than rewarding storylines (remember Holly’s ‘disappearance’?) and characters who are more aggravating than a pair of nettle underpants (we mean YOU, Neets). But we must confess that we were a bit disappointed by this year’s Hollyoaks Later. Big sadface.

So we thought we’d take it’s twitching, still warm cadaver, grab a scalpel and have a rummage around to find out what went wrong:

lack of gratuitous anything

We all know that certain things ALWAYS happen in late night Hollyoaks: swearing, shagging, drug taking, arse showing, occasionally there is a ghost and more often than not someone gets raped. Very little of which happened last week. Infact we could go so far as to sat that Hollyoaks 2010 was actually quite chaste. Could the fact that is was broadcast so soon after the 9pm watershed be a reason for this? If so, next time please push it back to 10pm (the rightful home of Hollyoaks Later) and bring back the carnage!

no Big Moment

Think of previous Laters and Luke Morgan’s rape and the humpty dumptying of both Sarah and Viall Niall immediately spring to mind. Will the Riley v Seth punchathon be as memorable? Unlikely.

Costello overload

Now we are all for giving a new Hollyoaks family a fair crack at the whip when it comes to family trauma, however basing an entire week’s worth of action around them seems a little bit excessive. And, honestly, the Costellos? Jasmine notwithstanding, they are at best Footballer’s Wives castoffs. And not in a good way. Maybe one day they will live in our hearts like the Osbornes, Deans and McQueens, but  if something bad had happened to Riley, Seth or Carl last week would we have really cared?

no Stendan : (

Let’s face it, we all thought Later 2010 was going to star the new Hollyoaks power couple didn’t we? And how we wept when we realised this sadly wasn’t true. What made things worse was that while Riley and Sami were ‘at it’ we had to watch in the knowledge that Brendan and his ratboy prince were up to all sorts in Hollyoaks proper. Oh Hollyoaks, why taunt us so!?

lack of boo hiss villainy

Previous Laters have had villain luminaries of Rob Hawthorne, Viall Niall, Toby the blonde hating serial killer and Lydia, with rohypnol rapists, evil Southerners and festival-based drug dealers thrown in for good measure. This year we had Liam and Nathan, the Chuckle Brothers of the cage fighting world. Plus, robbing them of their mwah ha ha ness somewhat was the fact  that their quest for revenge was perhaps a valid one. Carl is a bit of a dickhead, isn’t he?

too many flashbacks and voiceovers

If you can have too much of a good thing, then you can very definitely have too much of an intensely annoying thing, as demonstrated by Nancy‘s shrill narration of Each and Every episode, there to remind us of what important life lessons we should have learned. Think Carrie Bradshaw but even more fingers down the blackboard.

Same goes for the dozens of flashbacks. There is an episode of Garth Marenghi’s Dark Place when they hadn’t filmed enough footage to fill the episode, so to make up time they simply showed the action in slo mo. Could this be a clue as to why at least a quarter of each episode was made up of flashbacks? Just saying.

been there, done that ness

There was so much going on that we had kinda seen before:

rapey footballers

Thanks to Hollyoaks Laters of yore we know that all footballers are rapists.  Usually of one of the Morgans. So jog on, Dean Stanley.

evil lesbians

Fern could only dream to have the cojones of parachute slashing, Myra Hindley-alike Lydia.

duplicitous blonde lackeys

Sami wasn’t the first hot chick to use her womanly wiles to help a Hollyoaks fella come a cropper – crack whore Imogen did the exact same thing to Rhys last year – and got a similar beating for her troubles too.

there were, however, a lot of things we did like:

Mercedes. Back at her twisted, slaggy  best.

Nancy‘s spectacular projectile vomming over Mitzeee:

Fern’s crew. Assymmetic hairdos + Am I bovvered? scowl x New Look = MENACING:

Incestfest friendly sexual tension as Riley checks out Mitzeee’s tits during the Black Eyed Peas singalong:

In the opening sequence Hollyoaks felt the need to, yet again, remind us that Riley IS A FOOTBALLER:

TERRY VINCENT! He may have a head shaped like a egg, but he is 100% sexual dynamism:

The surprisingly gruesome death by impaling/soy sauce for Nathan (though this was not even the first late night Hollyoaks impalement death as Andy the rohypnol rapist was kebabbed at the seaside. Thanks to @QueenGoriana for reminding us of that one):

autopsy conclusion

We had such high hopes, but as it turned out Hollyoaks Later 2010 was all mouth and no trousers.

*sniff*  it coulda been a contender.

our verdict: accidental death.

Relive Hollyoaks Later 2010