Significant Others

Dysfunctional family relationships. Siblings are divided and alienated from each other... nephew and nieces alienation and isolated children and no real connections or unconditional love. Sibling abuse behaviour and bullying towards one sibling and family relationships are tedious and torturous.the sisters are manipulative and emotionally vulnerable. People in denial or dysfunctional or alcoholics or hierarchical family systems or narcissistic parent or narcissistic care givers or no way to write teenagers script good attempt to articulate their behaviour and experience of their families dysfunction.

The first episode of the series says a good introduction to the premise and characters. However, from the second episode onwards, the characters are shown through their various weaknesses - but I'm struggling to find strengths.

The kids can be forgiven, being just teens, for struggling to deal with the loss of their mum. However, the self-centredness of the various aunts and uncle shows how they're unable to focus on the most important thing - supporting the kids. Relationships with friends and officials are strained, as happens at such a stressful time, but the sort-of-maybe wannabe romance between Hanna and the ?non-binary George feels far more clunky than even the most awkward teen romance in TV history.

Episode 4 is a total disaster. With the exception of the last two minutes, it does nothing to advance the story. It's as though the writer of this book adaptation originally thought there should be five episodes - but the network had decided, at the last minute, that there should be six eps. Enter the episode of mindless partying, drugs and booze at the Mardi grass. (I did enjoy the parody of one prominent religious anti-mardi grass Sydneysider, however.)

The sole reason I have for watching past ep 3 was that I don't like abandoning short series. I do want to know what happened. However, in this case, the series was just under six hours that I'll never get back 🙄

After the first episode my interest faltered but I thought I'd give it another try. However, after episide two, this straggle of annoying, dysfunctional characters, none of whom is even remotely likeable or relatable, makes this too painful to continue watching. I find the acting clumsy and the flashbacks are too short to provide insights into the history of family relationships. It may well be that there are lots of families like this, burdened by feuds, animosity and lack of genuine affection. But in this show, watching them deal with the issue of a missing family member is, I just can't make myself care about any of them. They all seem too self centred and fake to elicit sympathy or even interest.

This series started out promising/intriguing, but the more you get to know the characters, the more offputting and unlikable most of them are. The teenagers annoyed me, and the adults are all ridiculously self-centered and more or less worthless. It seemed to be well acted, but there wasn't much redemptive in any of the characters.

I tried to enjoy it, but it just kept letting me down over and over again. And that single sister was just despicable. The gay couple was also rather offensive. Why would anyone want them to be the parents of the two teenagers? They kept taking drugs and having sex with everyone. Not a great example, nor good role models.

The first two episodes had me intrigued. It was a good solid story of a missing woman, presumably drowned. A dysfunctional family come together to try to find their missing mother/sister.

Episode 3 was watched with great anticipation. Did she drown? Will the family resolve their differences under this cloud? But the episode was a total disappointment. The acting was clunky. The storyline seemed disjointed and confused. And why chuck in a random sex act? Did it add value? I think not.

Much discussion was had in our household. Should we persevere with this series? We decided to give it one more go. Perhaps episode 3 was a slump and it would pick back up in ep 4. Wrong! We bailed about halfway through it and have decided to ditch this series. Episode was as slow as a wet week, and seemed to be filmed in real time. The ep added nothing to the story and seemed to have forgotten that the series is about the missing family member.

Did she drown or was there foul play? I'll never know...