OH. MY. CURLERS.
Now THAT is what I call a slam-bang quarter-season finale! I thought they’d nailed it in season sixty-seven when Marlene returned from her quest to save the quokka population from an evil oil baron who wanted to build a supermarket over their only remaining sacred burial ground, but THIS was even better!
Got to admit, I didn’t see Velma coming out with that business plan of hers. We’ve known for years that Velma is totally obsessed with her looks, ever since she had that psychotic breakdown where she tried to destroy ever mirror in the entire town because she thought that her reflections were talking trash behind her back. Now she’s visited a hair salon in the middle of Melbourne and seen how much more professional they are than in Realsville, she’s on a one-woman-crusade to establish a fine hair salon of a Melbourne standard, right there in town.
Of course, Judith runs the only salon in town, and she only knows how to do about six types of hair, four of which went out of style in the sixties. Still, Judith is approaching her 96th birthday, so everyone has just been humouring her and traveling elsewhere for their real hair salon needs. This new plan of Velma’s is a direct challenge to Judith’s monopoly, so the two are now at loggerheads, and old grudges are coming out of the woodwork. Judith is now trapped in an immersive flashback to 1962, when she was watching the South Melbourne hairdressing guild setting up and putting her family’s artisan home hair salon out of business, even though it was actually down to her father’s alcoholism and her mother’s obsession with experimental mousse.
So THAT’S all happening. Now there are two mobs converging in the streets, with torches and everything. All over one little hair salon. Weird, that…