How do you end a show that’s been on for 37 years, and run for almost 9,000 episodes? It’s a Herculean task of resolution: nearly four decades of plot threads splaying out like frayed rope. So how can you tie that all together? Well, William Shakespeare, the greatest dramatist in the history of the English language, used to deploy either a wedding or a bloodbath as a means of closing the scene. The writers of Neighbours, arguably not the greatest dramatists in the history of the English language, opt for the former – but casual viewers might find themselves lamenting the absence of the latter.
In a plot confection (admirable in its shamelessness) the residents of Ramsay Street decide, en masse, to sell up and move. At the same time, Mel and Toadie (Lucinda Cowden and Ryan Moloney) are tying the knot (in a convenient wedding-cum-street-party), and, in the final strand of this valedictory triumvirate, Harold Bishop (played by Ian Smith, a man who must be resigned to being called “Harold Bishop” by strangers every day for the rest of his life) is still scribbling away, updating his History of Ramsay Street book (“the last of the custodians” who started the work). As with shows like Friends and M*A*S*H, the Neighbours finale is offered a longer running time in order to wrap things up, a creative decision that only prolongs the agony.
