lowculture.co.uk

Friday, January 26, 2007

Tonight's the night

FINALLY! Hollyoaks, Channel 4, 6.30pm

It's here at last, folks. After patiently waiting for what seems like about twenty thousand years, John Paul is finally going to tell Craig that he's deeply in gay love with him. And first of all, we're going to give Hollyoaks some props for the way they've handled this storyline thus far - laying the groundwork quietly, dropping the odd hint every now and then, letting the viewers piece it together for themselves before actually starting to let it unravel; it's been an exemplary piece of storylining. Unfortunately, this means we're going to be harsher on them than ever when they resort to stupid contrived storylines that involve mass raping sprees, because now we know they're actually capable of better.

It speaks volumes about the Dean family that Craig is meant to be by far their brainiest member, and yet has somewhat stupidly failed to spot that John Paul has the hots for him, assuming instead that JP's affections lay with either Weepy Hannah or Swimbint Sarah. That little bit of wrong-footing even had us fooled for a second, if only because it's the kind of dumbass thing we'd normally expect Hollyoaks to do when they've got the perfect groundwork laid for a sensible and touching storyline - they'd completely ignore it.

John Paul hasn't exactly made things easy for himself by allowing himself to get strong-armed into dating Hannah, the anime character who cannot function unless she has a man to psychotically fling her arms around. In fact, we suspect you could replace the man with a giant carrot and she wouldn't mind, as long as the carrot told her she was prettier than Swimbint.

Tonight's Anime Hannah's 18th birthday, and to cover up his totally non-heterosexual feelings for his best friend, John Paul's trying to be the perfect boyfriend by arranging a fantastic party for her. Except Swimbint and Skanky Rhys start getting a bit too close for comfort, so Craig storms out of the party in a huff and that's when John Paul finally blurts out what he's been hiding for so long. And presumably the bastards will stick it right at the end of the episode, thus forcing us to switch over to E4 to avoid having to wait all weekend to see the fallout. This may well be the Most Important Event of Soap Gaiety this year, so don't miss it.