sorry i just cant believe emmerdale has danny miller on their show and they have not given him a serious plot since his crazy evil husband pulled him off a gorge
How would you have liked to have seen the Kevbert storyline play out?
great question that i have spent my night thinking way too much about. im going to put more under the cut but the summary (which i think is pretty much in line with the rest of the fandom) is:
instead of having some big, climactic ending, the storyline just kinda... fizzled out? I guess the hostage situation was the dramatic ending but the stakes were so low that it didnt really do much (this is a general ed problem to me though - the stakes are no longer high for anything ever. the easiest current example of is is we all know cain is going to survive cancer.. right...). but other than that it offered no satisfying conclusions to any of the intertwined plots - not the lewis/kev stuff, not roberts general prison journey/him changing as a person/his mental health, not kevberts relationship, not kevs relationship with claudette or charles or liam or even nicola, not even the robron reconciliation tbh. nov 6th 2025, great episode but it did feel a bit random and unearned at the time. so basically i would have done something to address All That i guess. and also i would have made the prison ep have any stakes at all. of all the specials we got, the april/dawn one and the april/marlon one had lasting implications (especially the april/marlon one, as april being honest did result in dylan getting run over). and the bear/anya one remained hugely important to bear's trauma and that arc in general (although you might not remember that, as some ids became the major focus of that plot rather than the two dead bodies found at butlers). so i would have made the lewis reveal or the self stabbing have any implication on the plot, as both remain a secret to everyone except liam and nicola iirc
to start with the kev stuff, generally i think what they did with his character was fine, given chris had some input that they listened to. but wow it would have been so much better if lewis found out kev was his dad and told him to leave either at the end of november or at the end of december. end of december works better probably, because then kev has an actual motive for coming back. and then roberts Big Moment in december would have felt a lot nicer if kev wasnt so sad during it. lol. and would have made john kidnapping him even more pointless and hilarious (which is so in line with his character to me lmao). and i also think kev returning to "win lewis over" in his upcoming return plot would be a lot better if they had already completely removed him from the robron storyline in december. anyway, i do feel like eventually they had a strong understanding of who kev was as a character it just took them like 75% of the plot to get there which is why it feels all over the place. idk maybe i'll like the kev aspect more once they (hopefully) give him a better conclusion just as of now i feel very whatever about it. although the majority of 2026 emmerdale has me yearning to go back to this lol
in terms of robert its a bit more complex... i think they either had to lean way more into the "robert loves kev" (even if its a symptom of his prison ptsd). by doing this it would have resulted in a lot more stakes to the robron reconciliation, and actually i think they could have done a lot of interesting things with aaron here, i.e. him actually having to deal with robert being in romantic love with another man. would have been nice to touch on his past jealously as well!! plus then they could have done more with robert mourning the relationship and also moving on and healing from prison without kev's safety. (and also generally if this was the direction they took they needed to way more explicitly say roberts nightmares etc. were calmed by kev's presence but his reliance on kev and now lack of him/his protection resulted in his massive ptsd outbursts in summer 2025)
or alternatively, they could have gone way more in the kev was actually scary/roberts tormentor direction, which to me makes a lot of things make more sense. why he kept the appeal a secret from kev, why he lied about vics brain tumor, why kev was so unnerving in his first ~10 episodes only for it to amount to literally nothing. and i also do think hawley was getting mixed messages on what robert actually feels for kev, which made his performance and therefore the storyline fall flat to me. idk i guess they were doing some of this stuff its just they took too much of the middle road for me. i.e. kev is scary but also hes not scary but also robert loves him but also hes not IN love with him and the prison marriage was out of pity/gratitude rather than fear (which for robert makes no sense to me. unless the marriage happened before he found out he could appeal. also I would have made the appeal + marriage decisions much more about aaron deciding not to visit/encourage him to appeal in 2021)
also another change is I would have made the self stabbing reveal that never happened be a driving force in the final robron reconciliation. I always felt like aaron fell back into robert way too easy, especially after the lying and stuff (they should have made aaron have more john/rob/lying trauma but i digress). and we were teased with aaron who is forcing himself to hate robert way too many times only for it to last 2-3 days before aaron got over it again. idk. i just think after the lying robert should have stayed mad, and the prison episode should have been a fight/present day robron two hander instead of the weird pointless present day stuff we got (and also kev and liam should have never been involved except for maybe the last 2 minutes to reveal the self stabbing/lewis, but otherwise i think that should have been revealed in one of the subsequent episodes. maybe when kev robs the pawn shop with liam. idk the timeline is a bit blurry in my head). anyways somehow robert finds out about the self stabbing, breaks it off with kev, and makes a big romantic gesture to aaron and they get back together. idk i know people want aaron fighting for robert but like. rob was the one wrong in that situation regardless of that trauma and likewise i think aaron would have been more forgiving after finding out just how manipulating kev was and how paired with roberts poor mental state. and again i would have more textually stated robs new susceptibility to manipulation as a defence mechanism developed via kev for him to survive in prison, and then aaron could help him through it. and also it would have made roberts oversights regarding the farm contract and his general ease at being pushed around by joe more understandable as well. AND also the self stabbing -> marriage bit had massive implications, given the ~ one year between finding out he could appeal and actually starting the appeal could have made all the difference re: johnrons relationship AND angela getting custody of seb (or in general either of them being able to be there for seb through mourning rebecca). and this will never be addressed but it bothers me to this day lol. also from a vic perspective as well!!
generally speaking i dont think hawley or the writers have a good grasp on what exactly is different about robert compared to 2014-2019 rob, so instead to me he just sometimes feels like a guy who looks and sounds like robert but in some ways is completely unrecognizable to the guy we know and love/hate. and this bothers me so much because HELLOOOOOOO that is MR EMMERDALE !!!!!!!!!!!! im sorry but jack sugden would never be paid this disrespect. regardless of if you like rob or not he is THE character of your show !!!!!!!!!! not cain dingle or charity dingle or joe tate or graham idk his last name or moira dinglebarton or ross barton or jacob sugden (obligatory lol) or sarah sugen jr or paddy kirkdingle or ds walsh. anyway imo upon his return he was sooo much more interesting pre-kev and even pre-corriedale because generally they had to write something interesting for him outside of his relationship with aaron and we got all that good farming stuff and annies field and his john triggered pstd and him scheming. fundamentally aaron was his motivation to keep trying to get better but they had no scenes together!! and it was awesome!!! aaron was calling him a snake to his face in the pub with the whole village there and then rob almost killed john lee style and then aaron said he was going to kill him!! and then nothing happened !!!!!!!! anyway they should be doing more with the ptsd and specifically how john triggering it was linked to both prison and the perfect jack son/andy stuff and also how it clearly drove him towards farming and then we can explore his actual motivations with farming and he can use it to heal and move past his relationship with jack but instead we are doing this arson plot and then they are going to be gone for an indefinite period of time (or at least aaron is. again hoping they do something interesting with rob is hes still on in the meantime)
ANYWAY basically what this all boils down to is: they do not to anything interesting in terms of character exploration anymore and nothing has stakes ever and it all just results in a big jumble of meaningless television and idk i still enjoy it for the most part but currently the show lacks any sort of depth and the writers/direction of soap is catering to the diminishing attention span and unwillingness to engage your brain when consuming media which is sooo wrong an soooo deeply saddening like. the only character they are doing something interesting that is tied to the roots and trauma of the character right now ... kyle????? cain i guess but they arent really addressing the fact that hes an asshole they are just letting him get away with acting like an ass because cancer. i guess jacob would be the other one. although that plot has a weird ending rn too lol?? anyway. i want to engage my brain just once while watching this show. none of these characters are complex anymore none of the plots are complex and media literacy is in hell and media catering to that instead of trying to correct it is so disheartening to me and i just hope emmerdale will do better at some point :/
oh if only there were someone in the village that lost their mom and home at 14/15 (with the root cause being a fire) and also had a shitty dad. if only that person existed for kyle to talk to. oh well at least they had the grahams dead wife and unborn child (characters im pretty sure we’ve never met) story in their back pocket to scare kyle off
okay i will say i tried watching through the hockey show again and as someone who did not get it the first time i get it more now. mostly in a romance adaptation/(white) boy of the month way. like the appeal is there. although the pacing is still kinda weird and terrible to me. and it still baffles me that people think this is gods gift to television. like. its fine/good, but multiple 9.8 rated eps on imdb… 😭
okay its actually starting to make me angry now like robert actually does have a good reason to not be the arsonist (certainly a better one than “well the arsonist might be you because youve done stupid stuff before” thank you for that genius insight graham) but instead of anyone verbalizing it, its just a ginormous elephant in the room
idk its probably annoying me too because for a while ive wanted them to do a barn fire plot that specifically touches on the sarah lore (in my head seb starts it because hes salty with rob/aaron for abandoning him and he starts it not knowing aaron and/or robert are inside and then they cover both sarahs death/robs trauma and also sebs sugden-ness re: 2000andy/2007vic and maybe even his (potential) vindictive craziness - both a rob and white family trait (2015chrissie scrapyard fire incident)). but also i never expected them to do this bc they just did a massive barn fire 1.5 years ago AND it was a big john/johnron thing. but instead theyre wasting arson at the robron farm by not even mentioning sarah or andy or vic even !!! ahhh i feel crazyyyyy
