TV: Angry Boys - Episode 3

(Credit: ABC)

Nothing really happens this week, except for S.mouse getting what he deserves, the introduction of Blake and Dan beginning the legendary party planning.




Dan begins to organise his brothers farewell party calling on Gran's power to get all of the "legends" to swing by to wish his brother goodbye. It's thoughtful and in the end gives a bit of a laugh when Dan actually gets a response from a model's agent. Small doses of the Dunt family this week, and it was nice, it just needs to slowly expand.

We're introduced to a new character in the form of Blake Oakfield who resides in the town of Namucca Bay. A surfing legend who seems to be disliked by the general public because of a mentality developed as a boy. It's something that he refuses to let go, as mentioned by his pregnant wife. Blake is a man that has been through a lot, he has two kids with another on the way and yet he can't let go of what defined him as a kid. I see this change being a problem for him and I'm interested to see where he goes with it.

Blake isn't as much of a jarring character as S.mouse, so I found that some of the jokes worked. I did have to laugh at the constant cutaways to gang fights with the Mucca Mad Boys against the Fennel Hell Men. It does play somewhat into the territorial issues Australia has had in the last few years with the development of the gang psyche. There was a rather shocking cut to a picture of Blake's scrotum after it had been shot, which was funny but also pretty disgusting, I think the shock of that cut made it funny, but I'll have to close my eyes and be a bit weary next time we talk to Blake.

I'm taking a break from S.mouse, he's too much at the moment, all I can say is that he's got a long way to go and he gets what he deserves in this episode. It can only go up and for Liley's sake I hope it does. Positive points to his father who seems to be the only one that makes sense.

Not much happened this week though, the episode kind of framed up what's going to be happening in the next few weeks, but a weak episode again. It's a bit saddening to see, but I'll be back next week with my fingers crossed for a little more change from some relatively annoying characters.

I think Liley has over extended himself with all the characters here and I think that might have something to do with the fact that we're expecting 12 episodes out of this. Now I'm not sure if the HBO deal was in play during production, but I wouldn't be surprised if it had some part in Liley's thought process going into this and ultimately completing the series.

There's 9 more episodes of this and I'm now rather worried about the material Liley has cooked up for us. 12 episodes might seem short, but it really isn't, I hope that he doesn't burn out, because the possibility for it happening is large at this point. "Summer Heights High" and "We Can Be Heroes" had 8 and 6 episodes respectively and the general consensus among viewers (and ratings to an extent) is that those seemed to work well in the short period of time given. Perhaps if Liley was given a little less room to move the writing might have been much tighter. Until then this is beginning to look grim.