By 
The most efficient way of ridding oneself of a problem in Hollyoaks is murder. Everyone has done it and will do it; it’s just a way of the village. Some people get caught quickly while others fly free for years. Cameron Campbell belongs to the latter group who after murdering his pregnant girlfriend’s parents years back then his older brother this year has been living the life. In the most normal way he knew how to. But the arrival of his snooping cousin Courtney Campbell has turned his world upside down – until maybe he’ll have to off her too.
Cameron is lucky that he has his looks and Scottish accent, or else no one would be able to look past just how shifty he’s become since offing his brother. As a man with a whole host of secrets, it’s pretty safe to assume that he has grown used to dancing around the awful truths of things he’s done but what he isn’t used to is someone persistently digging. Cameron’s cousin Courtney arrived in the village a few weeks back, keen on finding just where Lockie Campbell could have disappeared to. He was the constant life of the party, eager to sap up all the attention in the room and yet he’d vanished into thin air. As a science teacher, Courtney knew it was best to not jump to conclusions before finding any evidence so that’s what she went about doing. Setting up websites, interviewing the police and following up with Lockie’s friends until she really began to suspect foul play was at hand.
Since no one seemed to want to take her plea seriously, Courtney decided to go the less serious route herself. Hijacking Tegan Lomax’s original plan for daughter Rose’s talent show act, she dressed the little girl in a shirt emblazoned with Lockie’s face and made her do a little jig on stage which she recorded. Her idea was to make the video go viral to hopefully bring in more leads for the case but everything backfired. The Loft soon had to be evacuated after someone flipped the fire alarm, Leela fainted outside and Cameron warned her not to upload the video with the excuse of not wanting to stress Leela out in her condition. Though Courtney did listen to her older cousin, it was apparent that her suspicions have continued to grow. Every time Lockie’s brought up, even If Courtney tried to play his favorite song then she was immediately shut down by Cameron.
Later during a family visit at the hospital, everyone learned that Leela was going to be fine as long as she kept her stress and blood pressure down. Cameron the true culprit took this as a time to warn his future sister-in-law and his cousin not to harm his girl and unborn child. With Tegan, Cameron thought she was too much of a wild child and Courtney’s snooping was apparently stressing everyone out. Apparently. From what we as viewers see, everyone in the Lomax and Campbell family are only stressed out trying to keep Courtney from mentioning Lockie which is stressing Cameron out. There’s no one else in the world that is bothered this much about Lockie’s disappearance.
These last few days that Cameron has snapped at Courtney feel a lot like his last warnings to her. He vowed to not let anyone get in the way of his happiness with Leela and shared blood aside, Courtney could be that roadblock that needs moving. Courtney has too much tenacity to give up at this point and I know for sure that she will uncover the truth about Cameron’s crimes. But will she live to tell the story to the police? Courtney has immensely grown on me as a character though I wish we could see more of her scientific side again, not just her inquisitive side. Her personality is unique let alone the fact that she’s the sole character in the village with a disability – and also played by an actress with a disability. I just don’t want Cameron to off her before we really get to know her. I’m rooting for you Courtney!
The Extra Mile
I’ll have to start this off by saying that I do not like the character of Eva Falco. Maybe it’s a bit early seeing as this last week was really her first full week on the show, but there’s nothing about her that’s at all redeemable. It can be a noble thing to want to avenge your father’s death but setting a man up for no longer wanting to hook up is really low. At least that’s what we think in the beginning. For what at first seems to be a tedious and silly plot begins to make sense by the end of the week. But even with all that cunning and prowess, Eva is still very much unlikable.
Liam Donovan is a well-known playboy in the village with a sort of code that he abides by when it comes to hook ups. Since he has no desire to be locked down to one girl, he keeps them all set to a strict three hook up rule before cutting them off. This last week was his third tryst with Eva and when she overheard him discussing the rule with sister Grace Black, she was clearly miffed. Eva doesn’t come across as a woman who would enjoy being tossed aside so easily, especially when she held so much power elsewhere in her life. So from there began a plot that at first felt like the world’s most elaborate yet tedious revenge plot.
The next time Eva the dirty cop met with Liam the hair stylist, she had a duffel bag full of drugs in the middle of a kid’s event. According to her, she had gotten herself into a tight situation with some dealers and needed to unload their product with nowhere to stash it in the meantime. Though definitely a player, Liam is a bit of a lovesick puppy when it comes to Eva so he readily offered to hide drugs for the dirty cop until she got her situation together. Very bad move. As if the hustle and bustle of the talent show isn’t enough, Eva purposely set off the fire alarm to cause even more chaos only to steal away the bag of drugs in the middle of it all to shoot Liam’s nerves. He panicked, thinking someone had stolen the drugs when it was his lover who planned the whole mess all along.
With the drugs missing and the drug dealers supposedly at her back asking for their goods back, Eva told Liam that she could be targeted for the screw up he caused. Feeling guilty, the lovesick hair stylist vowed to protect and help Eva through this mess – much to what seemed like her dismay. The ridiculousness of Eva’s crafted plot escalates to the point that she drove herself and Liam to an empty lot to await the arrival of a drug dealer that didn’t exist. It wasn’t until a random jogger showed up that she made her move, approaching him and pretending to try and work out a deal over the drugs. Of course that too went south and unless she could muster up 100,000 pounds then she was a dead woman. The amount of frustration I felt as this officer of the law scammed this simple boy into this mess, forcing him to try and take out loans in order to save her ass that wasn’t even in danger! It was absolute madness that was only saved when Grace caught wind of her baby brother’s desperation. Being the tough cookie she was, she forced him to reveal the dangerous game he was playing though the young man decided to leave Eva’s name out of it. As a reformed criminal herself, Grace checked in on the drug dealer that was supposed to be plaguing Eva but all of her connections came up with nothing. Obviously.
Once Eva got word that Grace was on the case, she knew she’d have to up the ante with her scheme. After giving Liam a warning about involving his sister, she went and he received a mysterious video on his phone of someone watching Grace and her son Curtis. With tensions keeping him on the edge, Liam knew he and Eva had to make some kind of deal with these “dealers” to keep his loved ones safe.
Eva returned later with the conditions of the deal that finally made all of this mess make sense. These mysterious dealers had told her the only way to get off the hook was to kill someone. And that someone was Jack Osborne, her long lost uncle. Eva had been working with her father to get back at her uncle up until he passed away but she promised him on his death bed to give up on the revenge. She tried but ultimately couldn’t stand to see him around town but she proved too weak to do it on her own. So why not dupe some loving fool into doing it for her? Liam may have been shocked to hear that they’d have to murder someone but with his sister, nephew and his new love’s life on the line then he’d go for it like the romantic he is. But what did Jack even do? All of this hullabaloo and the viewers don’t even have a hint as to what evil Jack could have done to deserve to be whacked by his own family. That lack of information just makes Eva so unlikable; you hold no sympathy for her even if her plan was surprisingly crafty. You don’t know her motives, her endgame and you really just don’t care.
Trust me on this, you do not want to be missing this show right now as it’s easily the most entertaining soap on the air. Please comment below with any questions about the show or tweet me, let’s get you addicted to Hollyoaks too!
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