This was by far the trickiest episode to write!
It presented a number of problems.
First up – it’s the series finale. There probably won’t be any more LOL after this – so it needs to tie up everything we’ve seen so far. But it’s not just Keely’s story. There’s a lot of characters in the show that aren’t necessarily in every webisode – like Garner, Mase, Beth.
So to wrap up their storylines, there’s another little flashforward going into the end sequence, which shows what happened to everyone. Dawber’s getting stoned… Skellhorn’s lonely… and Mase has finally found himself a nice girlfriend in Beth.
Pretty straightforward.
The fate of one character was on everyone’s minds since the show started: Cam. In a flash forward we’d already seen that he ends up in hospital. But how?
Well, the original storyline was a little bit different than what ended up on screen. Nico was unavailable during the last shoot (eps 14 – 20) so we had to improvise.
Originally, the LOL storyline would have gone something like this:
In webisode 9, Jaz would have slept with Cam at Marshy’s party. (We actually shot these scenes in April and they’ll be available to view as deleted scenes shortly).
He’d have been the father of the baby, but Jaz would never have told him (knowing that he actually loved Keely).
Keely would have started dating Cam in webisode 14 (instead of Mase). Cam, as we’d already seen, hates his teacher, so they’d have had a bit of a scrap and Keely would have sided with Garner. Feeling hugely betrayed, Cam dumps Keely.
In episode 18, Cam would be lurking outside Garner’s house slashing his car tyres, when he looks through the window – and sees that Keely is staying at Garner’s house. Discovering their affair, he barges into the house, gets into a scuffle with Garner. Panicking, Keely grabs the nearest object and whacks Cam over the head with it. Boom. That’s how he ends up in hospital.
Without Nico – the storyline got rewritten so that Keely ended up injuring Garner. She had to injure someone, because in ep 4’s flashforward, we saw her with blood on her hands.
So we re-shot webisode 9’s party scenes to hook up Jaz with Skellhorn. Garner gets injured. Cam is still in hospital. But why? It was explained by his mother, running into Jaz and Keely at the hospital (somewhat conveniently :P). He had a BMX accident.
We actually shot that scene with Bryony (Jaz) and Roni (Di) staring at an empty bed. Cam was put in digitally, from earlier footage.
This kind of thing happens all the time in soapland where actors are suddenly unavailable. Think Nina on Neighbours - she was written out of the show last minute due to Delta Goodrem’s poor health, and so the character left a note to her family saying she’d got a surprise part in a Bollywood musical.
It’s pretty unsatisfying to the viewer.
So, to give a little bit more, in February we shot a couple of extra scenes.
Introducing Brennan Reece.
You might notice he bears an uncanny resemblance to Nico Mirallegro (Cam). We noticed too, and asked him to take over the role.
This allowed us to shoot scenes explaining visually what happened to Cam. It wasn’t a BMX accident as his mother believed. Angry and jealous over Keely, Cam got into a fight with a thug. Hence the smashed up head.
It’s Nico’s voice that you hear, lifted from earlier footage, with Brennan acting in.
It was pretty tricky to shoot. We could only film Brennan either on very wide shots or extreme close ups, so hopefully you wouldn’t notice the switch.
For the end sequence, we used the deleted scene of Cam hooking up with Jaz at Marshy’s party, to show them getting together in the future. Awww…
What did you guys think of Keely’s decision to lie about Garner? For a long time the plan was that Keely would learn the error of her ways and come good in the end. But that seemed pretty safe. So I figured it might be fun to take the character somewhere a bit darker. Will Keely ever regret landing Garner in prison? Or will she continue to lie and scheme her way through life?
Maybe we’ll find out if a second series ever happens. It would be great to hear how you think the future would pan out for our characters! Let us know what you think on the message board.
And with that, LOL comes to an end. It’s been a really enjoyable show to work on. Very challenging at times, but hugely rewarding. A HUGE thanks to all the cast and crew that worked on the show, to everyone that donated props, equipment and filming locations, and also to you – the viewer.
Please leave us a message on our message board, or send us a tweet and let us know what you thought of the show. Who knows, maybe there will be more in the future…
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