Mum's Monday: Neighbours - hotel explosion: who did it?

WARNING: Spoilers.

Paul Robinson had it all: hotel, girlfriend Naomi Canning, and he was even mayor of Erinsborough.

After a bad breakup from Naomi, she gave a memory stick with all of Paul’s private and dodgy dealings to Daniel, Paul’s nephew, which was then leaked to the newspapers.

The result of the leak was that Paul lost everything, his home which was the penthouse at the Lassiters hotel, the hotel itself, and all his money. Terese Willis who had recently split from her husband, Brad, and felt sorry for him, took him in.

The Quill family, Julie, Tom, and Shay, presently took over the hotel. Julie had known Paul from the past resulting in a not so friendly encounter.

Enter Lynn Scully, one of Paul’s ex-wives. He had given her some shares, which are now worth 70,000 Australian Dollars. After unsuccessfully wooing Lynn to get hold of the money, he finds out that she has given the shares to her daughter Steph.

Paul wants to use the money to invest in another motel, and after finding out Steph has the money, he persuades Steph to invest. She wants to build a future for her and son, Charlie

As part of promoting the Robinson’s motel, Paul wants to bring back the Citizen of the Year awards and host it. After Steph orders some alcohol from a friend Jacka, which turns out to be stolen, they lose the awards to the Quill family at the hotel.

Paul, wanting revenge for losing the awards, hires Cecilia Saint to sabotage the ceremony. She doesn’t go through with it as she has a family emergency so the awards were to happen without a hitch. Despite this, the hotel boiler is playing up. Tyler Brennon takes a look at it but being a car mechanic, he can’t fix it.

Someone is in the boiler room and sabotages the boiler…. Who is the mysterious shadow? The boiler subsequently explodes, destroying the hotel and trapping a lot of people inside. This starts off one of the biggest week in Neighbours.

Daniel, Pauls nephew, is saved because, Josh Willis, Terese and Brads son sacrifices his life as he was stabbed in the side by a piece of debris. Doug Willis, Josh’s Grandfather passes away due to a heart attack. Tom Quill is missing. CCTV footage shows Paul Robinson going down to the boiler room, as part of his plan to show revenge for losing the hotel; he sabotages the air-conditioning. Upon learning that the boiler is not working properly, he goes down to check that he wasn’t the one whilst tampering with the air-conditioning. As he is lodging with Terese and as she works at the hotel, he has access to the CCTV footage, which shows him entering the boiler room. He deletes the footage.

Tyler thinks he was responsible because he wasn’t qualified to look at the boiler. Piper thinks her ex, Chas, is responsible as they parted on bad terms, but he has an alibi for the time period the boiler was sabotaged.

A rumour spreads linking Tom Quill as the responsible person. He was fired because he conned Arron Brennon trying to get the plans for an extension to the hotel accepted. He has since returned having come out of hiding, but it has recently been found out that he was responsible for taking the money that his mum had to pay Jacka for the boiler sabotage.

Just before the explosion, a mysterious man was walking through the hotel complex. Paige was standing out front. When the explosion happened the man saved Paige’s life but he ended up in hospital with amnesia. When the man was released, due to his amnesia, he had taken on a new identity as John. Paige and John set out to 1) find out who he is, 2) what he was doing at the hotel, and 3) whether he is responsible for the explosion or not. This quest leads to another man named Dustin, who when he sees Mark Brennon, the local policeman, he strangely does a runner. John also finds out he actually has an alibi for the time when the boiler was tampered with. Wendy Iris, an employer at the hotel, sees John in a different part of the hotel. Soon after, John recognises a logo from a company that looks after boiler maintenance.

All the evidence points to Paul being guilty. The fact he was angry at losing everything, that he deleted the incriminating CCTV footage, and that he did hire someone to stop the awards going smoothly.

Terese throws Paul out. He moves into the motel which he co-owns with Steph. Steph is the only one who believed he is innocent as Paul is in love with Terese and would never hurt her family, but Paul is tried and is found guilty. He gets 18 years with parole after 14 years. Still maintaining his innocence, he starts to serve his sentence.

Mark, having his doubts, gets hold of Wendy’s bank statements only to find out she has been paid a lot of money. Julie had bribed Wendy to lie during any questioning. John, still believing that he was responsible goes to confess again, so they call in Wendy once more to confirm his alibi but she struggled not to lie. She was the one who started to reveal the truth.

We later find out that Paul is, in fact innocent because Julie Quill paid Jacka Hills – although he didn’t receive any money because Tom took it – to sabotage the boiler and frame Paul. We also find out more or less at the same time, John is in fact, a priest, Father Jack Callahan. He was travelling around Australia, and in doing so was filling in for the usual priest, who has recently travelled to Rome. The reason he knows Dustin is he was helping him at a refuge. So him running from the police would’ve been a common reaction as chances are he would be in some sort of trouble. Julie Quill confessed her plan to Jack that she was going to pay Jacka to sabotage the boiler. Jack arrived to try to stop it, but to no avail.

After this new piece of information, Jacka and Julie were arrested with Paul being released, Jack has gone back home to decide whether he still wants to be a priest or to be with Paige.

This was a huge storyline. A lot happened during each episode that tightened the mystery as well as gradually getting closer and closer to the truth. It explored all aspects of event, each person’s potential alibi and motive. The inclusion of John’s amnesia storyline was a nice touch as it kept things fresh instead of growing stale over the few episodes. The subtle character development of this newly introduced person didn’t go too far – you learnt just enough about them, before the final piece of the puzzle was added, and you found out their true identity. Throughout the storyline, it wasn’t rushed in any way. All the questions were given enough time to develop. When it was about time for all the answers to be revealed, it was done so in one episode, but it all fell into place. Each answer was given time to mature as well; we weren’t bombarded with them one after the other, we were allowed to process the shock, then hear out the explanation before moving onto the next revelation.

I felt sorry for Paul. Throughout, I felt he was innocent as he has always declared a connection with Terese and he was focusing on putting his and Steph’s life back on track. The fact that John was a priest was a huge shock, but he always said to Paige that something at the back of his mind held him back from a relationship. I was surprised at the fact Julie Quill was responsible. She explained that she blew up her own business for insurance purposes – because she had ploughed all her money into buying the hotel, that she had none left. It was a clever and unexpected twist.

After all the big questions have been answered, the storyline can then start relaxing before moving onto the next one.