YMMV / Shortland Street

• Alas, Poor Scrappy: Quinn Cox's death was tragic because of the circumstances, dying in a hospital under siege with a crazed gunman firing on everybody, as she had her hand held by the wife of the woman she loved. It was an effective tearjerker watching Quinn slip away bonding over the love she and Maeve had for Nicole.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: Fans can't tell whether Shorty's writers are accidentally writing Quinn to be a predatory creep, or if they're doing it on purpose and she's meant to an actual scumbag with major cognitive dissonance.
• And You Thought It Would Fail: Within weeks, critics all across New Zealand predicted the show would be canned within anywhere between 2-6 months. It's now lasted for over 30 years.
• Anvilicious: The show never used to be shy about topical subjects on occasion. The series has touched on various political and social issues in New Zealand from drug use to teenage driving, race relations, gender politics and so on. Some would argue that over the years it's gotten worse about hitting people over the head with what the writers want the audience to think.
• Arc Fatigue:
  • A trademark of the show's most recent Audience-Alienating Era. Arc Villains would take the longest time to get caught with fans tiring of the dragging and often boring storylines.
  • A storyline in 2020 around an organ harvester dubbed the Creep seemed to stop and start when an obvious candidate was introduced then written out as a red herring, like Shereez's new housemate, before finally being resolved.
  • Some would argue the Brightshine saga went on far too long and Rebekah should have been caught long before she was.
• Ass Pull:
  • You really would think someone would have mentioned an active volcano in Ferndale at least once prior to the show's 25th Anniversary, wouldn't you?
  • Hamish Flynn being a conman named Richard who stole the identity of a baby Yvonne Jeffries gave up when she was younger came out of nowhere. It wasn't hinted or foreshadowed until the small cast axing in 2006. Almost like they pulled something out to write him out...
  • Just because we didn't have enough reasons to hate Rebekah Anderson, apparently, Wilder's drowning was retconned from being done by Rebekah's psychotic youth pastor Scott to Rebekah herself. Scott made sense as the murderer. Rebekah didn't.
• Audience-Alienating Era:
  • The first half of The New '10s were not the show's finest years. Boring storylines coupled with awful characters and repeated attempts to recapture the magic of Joey and Ethan led to an unnecessary number of antagonistic or otherwise creepy and unlikable characters, old characters brought back retaining few of their old traits, no respect for the show's heritage, lazy, uninspired writing and factual errors led to the show's ratings slipping. Luckily, new writers and a new production crew seem to have turned the show around, as evidenced by a very well-received 25th anniversary episode.
  • An example of this in the early years of the show was the 1995-1996 period where most of the original cast had left and were replaced with characters who while not as outright awful as the ones from 2010-2015 were still incredibly dull and unmemorable with a few exceptions here and there. For example, Dr Mckenna was replaced with the unpopular Julia Thornton who was written out of the show within a year of getting there and was replaced with David Kearney as the clinic's CEO. While Michael Mckenna and David Kearney are well-remembered, popular characters, Julia... isn't.
  • Happened again in 2000, with most of the cast being written out in 2001 and replaced by new characters entirely. In fact, very few characters from the 90's lasted past 2001 with only a small handful sticking around.
  • The show is firmly entrenched in another one of these as of 2018. Constant use of swear words to sound edgy, increased time given to the show's unnecessary comedy characters, ridiculously unrealistic and inappropriately risque storylines such as Drew and Harper having a threesome with their nanny, characters like Drew being turned into parodies of themselves, badly written villains, characters being unrealistically stupid and unpleasant and what seems like an attempt to turn the show into a cringe comedy have gone down like a lead balloon leading to calls for the writing team and the producers to be given the boot before they do irreparable damage to the show. The show seems to be out of this as of 2022 with the show getting good again, coincidentally after Desi and Damo left.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Sarah Potts is either an interesting protagonist, a strong woman who had some interesting storylines and died in a tragic fashion or a boring, wishy-washy whiner whose entire tenure on the show consisted of jerking multiple men around and not being able to decide what she wants and was around for far, far too long.
  • Dawn Robinson is either a funny character who makes the show interesting or an annoying bimbo who gets far too much time dedicated toward her.
  • Desi Schmidt is either hilarious or someone who should have been written out of the show yesterday.
  • Leanne is either a meddling busybody who needs to butt out of [insert pretty much any character here]'s business, or a devoted mum, grandmum, and hospital volunteer who can occasionally be a bit high-and-mighty. The fandom seemed to have a bit more consensus on her during her initial fling with Rosalyn (especially sympathetic) and during her Brightshine era (especially unsympathetic) respectively. There's also the matter of whether she changed enough between when she first showed up and when she left. Obviously she'd changed as a person for the better (compare her homophobia being an actual issue between her and Nicole versus later on when it was treated more as a running gag, especially after she'd hooked up with Rosalyn), but whether it was enough to make Leanne tolerable or not varies from person to person.
• Nurse Sage Stewart is either funny and quirky or every negative stereotype of a gay man in one incredibly annoying, motor-mouthed package.
• Broken Base: Maeve and Nicole's relationship. There's the Maecole camp of fans, several of whom act like the show revolves solely around Nicole and Maeve's relationships and families while the rest of the characters and stories are just extra added whatevers. Then you have another group of fans who find the relationship to be unrealistic and find Maecole fans annoying, obsessed and wish Maeve and Nicole would split with either one or both leaving so the Maecole fans will follow. And THEN you have a third camp who really don't care, wish both camps would be quiet and just want to watch the show.
• Captain Obvious Reveal: The only person in 2012 who had any motive to sexually assault Roimata was Zac Smith. Nobody was shocked when he was revealed.
• Character Rerailment:
  • Drew Mccaskill is finally back to being able to make competent, capable decisions as of 2022. In fact, after Harper started suffering through post-natal depression, Drew has attempted to be a stablising influence and is showing to be the one behaving responsibly with Harper and their kids.
  • By the same token, TK Samuels is back to being reasonably laid-back nowadays. While he's pretty much exclusively a background character, TK is more of a calming influence on his wife Cece and a mentor to the new staff rather than the hostile douchebag he'd been for more than a decade.
• Creator's Pet:
  • Sarah Effing Potts. Introduced in 2004, Sarah was arguably the main character of the show for most of 2005 and 2006. Her main storylines being love triangles where she was treated as if she were the most beautiful goddess to ever grace the hospital, Sarah got married to buff pretty boy TK, which was then followed by another love triangle with TK and Maxwell Avia. Sarah was often selfish, wishy-washy and catty, but was rarely ever made out to be wrong, on top of aforementioned treatment of goddesshood by the writers.
  • The producers in 2020 loved Desi Schmidt. Viewers didn't feel the same way.
  • The Jeffries family. While popular with fans as well, the 20th anniversary was based around 5 minutes of Marj, the only original character they brought back, while the rest of the plot centred around the Jeffries, the last of who only left a year prior.
  • Shereez Baker. Boyd's annoying bogan niece who essentially stalked and pestered Frank Warner into bed. While her actress isn't unattractive, she certainly wasn't the manslayer the writers kept trying to make her out to be.
  • Before her actual exit in 2023, Dawn Robinson kept leaving, fans kept hoping she was gone for good, and the writers kept bringing her back. Dawn had been around for 6 years as of 2023 and had little character development or growth. In spite of this, she was one of the most focused-on characters during her six-year arc.
  • Quinn had shades of this, mainly because it was implied we were meant to treat her as a decent person with a strong love of a woman she couldn't have which drove her mad, rather than the creepy female incel with the odd good trait here or there she actually was. Compare and contrast her and fellow registrar Noah who himself had a crush on a taken woman (Cece, who is married to TK). During Milo Cross's shooting rampage, Quinn was shot dead, with Maeve comforting the woman who'd borderline stalked and harassed both her and her wife, kissed her wife twice, and insulted Maeve to Nicole's face, while Noah was (rightly) told by Cece to pull his head in because she was taken.
  • Selina. Despite being loudmouthed, brash, obnoxious and repugnant by every measure, Selina has so far managed to ensnare Max Lynch and Dr. Love himself, Chris Warner–both good-looking, rich men who could have any woman they wanted. Notably, she got the edge over Monique when it came to Max by revealing to Max that Monique had a urostomy bag. She constantly says obnoxious things to people above her at work, has thrown eggs at Drew with no consequence, disrespected her brother's fiance Madonna in their home and wasn't kicked out. In spite of being a terrible character, the writers are doing what they did with Desi except worse.
• Cry for the Devil:
  • While not evil evil, Zoe Carlson was a liar and a manipulator who faked cancer to keep her job, seduced her boss Chris after falling for him, fell in love with his son Finn and tried to leave Chris for Finn and damaged the relationship between Chris and Finn. Still, even she didn't deserved to be beaten and raped by the Ferndale Serial Rapist aka the Beechwood Beast.
  • Invoked in-universe after Dominic tried a murder-suicide with Chris which backfired. Chris told Toni she was allowed to cry for the boy she grew up with, even if he grew up to be an attempted serial killer.
• Designated Hero: Chris could be this from time-to-time. He was supposedly the good guy in his feud with Callum Mckay, even after setting Callum up with a false rape allegation, after cheating on his wife with Callum's before Callum got there.
• Diagnosed by the Audience: Leonard Dodds may have had autism, but it was never officially confirmed. However, Leonard's peculiar social behaviour and lack of social skills seemed to point towards Asperger's Syndrome.
  • Logan's sister Daisy was pretty clearly on the spectrum based on her way of talking and her odd behaviour, but she never officially stated she was.
• Downer Ending: Tama Hudson and Shannon te Ngaru's write-out was depressing, even in a show where characters don't always have happy endings. After spending five years overcoming teen pregnancy, their baby dying, Shannon's infidelity, the arrival and surrogate parenting of Tama's younger cousin Eti and other family dramas, Tama and Shannon's marriage ended in 2006 when Shannon cheated on Tama with his older cousin Whetu. After realising things weren't working, the two tried splitting amicably, but after a nasty fall-out over money and again Whetu, things turned nasty. After Tama's mother Te Hana got involved, the couple finally mended bridges enough to be civil with each other, settle financially and agree that Shannon should have full-time custody of their daughter, Rangimarie. Even after that, watching a beloved couple who'd survived highs and lows over five years disintegrate and not get their happy ending over 5 months hurt.
• Draco in Leather Pants: Dominic Thompson was a fraudster, a murderer, a thief and an ephebophile. Due to being played by Shane Cortese, a lot of his fans overlooked all of these faults, and in spite of these traits, Dom is still one of the most popular villains in the show's history.
• Ending Fatigue: Winston Youn's arc in 2011 dragged on. By the time he finally left, his story seemed to have ended at least twice before the writers sent him packing.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Many characters over the years have become this, most notably Nick Harrison, whose original character was retooled from a drug-abusing badboy into a goofy good guy with a comedic side. A similar thing happened to Shortland Street's IT guy Damo Johnson- originally created to be a goofy nuisance and run-ins with popular characters such as Chris Warner and Mo Hannah, Damo became one of the more popular characters of the mid 10's because of his amusingly socially incompetent personality, rather than in spite of it. Damo became so popular, in fact, that his sporadic appearances were streamlined into a more regular role.
  • The same thing happened with Luke Durville. Originally introduced as a suspect for the Ferndale Strangler due to his somewhat quirky personality, Luke became a constant fan favourite even during the show's Audience-Alienating Era due to his Adorkable personality and eventual romantic pairing with fellow Ensemble Dark Horse Bella Cooper.
  • The Mid 10's brought us Frank Connelly and Curtis Hannah. Both are so popular they've been brought back two times each after their original run, and are both beloved by fans in spite of coming from a reasonably weak period for the show.
  • Logan Barns, AKA Logan the Bogan, has been a sign of the show getting better in 2022. Logan is well-liked for having some of the best lines and being one of the closest things to a hero the show has had in years. He's also genuinely kind to and about his love interests (even when things don't work out) and has several female friends–in other words, he's truly respectful to women, despite what his bogan roots might suggest.
  • Stanley, an older gay guy introduced as a patient who befriended Jack and Dawn. Although he hasn't had a focus in main storylines he provides well received commentary on plot beats he is witness to in his capacity as running the flower stall in reception.
  • Greg Feeney was the most popular recurring character of the 90s. Helped by Tim Balme's natural charisma playing the character, even though Greg was a womanising drug dealer and petty crim with a violent streak, fans loved Greg because he had a hidden heart of gold deep, deep down. It helped he often had conflict with worse villains and was a good looking guy on top of it all.
• Fair for Its Day:
  • Jamie and Jonathon's relationship was shocking back in the early 90's. While they were hit with a dose of But Not Too Gay, it was unheard of for gay characters on New Zealand television in the 90's to be shown as normal people who just happened to be gay versus a stereotype or to be treated as if a bit of homophobia from others was normal. Sam Aleni learnt to overcome his bigotry when he found out Jamie was gay and was treated as being wrong for holding homophobic beliefs.
  • The same was true with Meredith Fleming and Annie Flynn. Marj Neilson was again the audience surrogate and treated as being wrong for being offended by Meredith and Annie being lesbians and while the two were again Straight Gay characters, they were treated as regular people rather than sideshows as was still traditional in NZ media in 1994.
  • Again where the LGBT community is concerned, temporary nursing manager Duncan Winters was a somewhat stereotypical Camp Gay, but he blew up at Jonathon and taught him that flamboyant gay guys are still gay people and deserve the same respect other homosexuals do. At a time where other shows were still using camp gay characters as villains, Duncan was a breath of fresh air in that he was a nice guy.
  • Transgender nurse Samantha Thomas was played by a gay male in 2006 rather than a transgendered actress as would be traditional nowadays. But to have a transgender character at all, let alone one who happened to be treated as a normal person rather than someone strange or an Aesop for a storyline in 2006 was huge for New Zealand TV at the time.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: The original was Nick and Waverley, along with Kirsty and Lionel. Nick and Waverley obviously ended happily ever after. Lionel and Kirsty? Not so much.
  • Currently, Maeve and Nicole have a massive fanbase on social media. "Maecole" is popular to a certain section of the LGBT community, almost to an obsessive degree.
  • Marj and Laurie became much more iconic and much more popular than Marj's first marriage to Tom Neilson. It helped that Marj had softened from a judgmental gossip to everyone's favourite receptionist by the time she met Laurie in addition to Laurie and Marj being less of a stereotypical "stodgy, boring old married couple who'd been married for years" like her and Tom had been. When most people think of Marj, they think of Laurie rather than Tom.
• Franchise Original Sin:
  • The success of Guy Warner returning all drug-addled and different to who he was lead to a spate of returns of older characters Hone Ropata, Grace Kwan, Zac Smith and Jonathon Mckenna as poorly written, severely altered characters albeit played by the original actors. To say viewers weren't impressed outside of Guy is an understatement.
  • Joey Henderson and Ethan Pierce being so popular lead to repeated attempts over the next 8 or so years to replicate their success. What we got were a bunch of unpopular characters and a new Audience-Alienating Era.
• Attempts to modernise the soap by frequently including LGBT+ characters has lead to Shortland Street creating several characters who accidentally contain some very negative stereotypes. Quinn seemed to get a free pass for her predatory behaviour because she was bisexual, while Sage contains several negative gay traits, such as objectifying doctor Nazar Arshad in a way which would be extremely inappropriate if a straight man were to talk like that about a woman.
• Fridge Horror: Upon being revealed as the Ferndale Strangler, we were slowly shown what Joey Henderson was up to when choosing his victims via footage he filmed of himself in his lock-up. The fridge horror kicks in after being shown how he treated Alice Piper after kidnapping her while unsuccessfully trying to bump her off. Imagine being one of the girls he killed, being kidnapped for God-only-knows-what reason, waking up tied to a bed in a make-shift operation room, being conscious while being operated on by a psycho pretending to be a doctor and then being violently strangled to death. *shudder*
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Shorty has a pretty decent following in England, Ireland and Australia.
• Growing the Beard: Once the show began receiving more of a budget in 1993, along with its first big mystery storyline featuring the disappearance of Tom Neilson, the show started getting a more positive reception, along with slowly adding in new fan favourite characters such as Carmen Roberts and Rachel Mckenna as well as the return of Guy Warner, who'd been a guest character the year prior as a permanent character.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Any scene with Rene Naufahu playing a nice friendly guy when it comes to women is incredibly awkward given his sexual assault conviction.
  • Nick made a snarky remark about how if the party he was throwing for Kirsty didn't go well he could "always kill himself." Come 70 episodes later, a friend of he and Stuart's would over a party gone wrong.
  • Harry becoming a murderer makes the scene after Toni died where Chris tells him that if he's ever stuck for what to do, to ask himself what his mum would think and he won't go wrong hurt even more. Not only did Toni die, but that life lesson was lost somewhere along the way.
• He Really Can Act: Theo David's acting can be... divisive. However, in the scene where Vili To'a opens up to Monique Strutter about being groomed by his rugby coach as a child, he lets some very real and very powerful emotion out. Even his harshest critics were impressed.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Olivia Tennet's character Tuesday laments to Sophie McKay (played by Kimberley Crossman) that she doesn't want to be seen as "a violin-playing music nerd." Tennet went on to portray a violin-playing teen genius in Power Rangers RPM.
  • Chris and Dr Mckenna had a conversation in the second week of the show bringing up at the time beloved Kiwi yachter Russell Coutts and Chris stating Russell was an acquaintance of his father, the Hate Sink Sir Bruce Warner. Years later, Russell would be public enemy number one by jumping ship (figuratively, not literally) along with another member of Team New Zealand to join a Swiss yachting outfit for money. Nowadays, Russell Coutts is loathed across the nation for not only this, but being on board with the Freedom Convoy anti-Covid protests in 2022.
• Ho Yay: A signature of many brohoods in Ferndale over the years. Young cult escapee Ezra thought Drew Mccaskill and Boyd Rolleston were a couple in 2017. A lot of people aren't entirely sure he's wrong.
• Hollywood Homely:
  • Chris Warner once described Emily Devine as "one of the most physically unattractive women I've ever met." Michaela Rooney is FAR from ugly.
  • Five words: Marton Csokas as Leonard Dodds. Leonard was presented as your stereotypical 90's nerd: Oversized glasses on a string, tacky shirt and unfashionably gelled hair. Anyone who's seen Marton Csokas knows he's not a bad-looking guy at all.
  • Nick's friend Simon spotted Nick's girlfriend Serena at the coffee shop and said he wouldn't like to see her coming towards him in a dark alley. Willa O'Neill even done up in punk get-up was cute and certainly not the bombsite Simon described her as.
• Informed Attractiveness: After the registrars have shown up in 2023, Harry has been called both hot and attractive by Stella and Britt Adams. Nicole has been talked up as if she's the most beautiful woman on the planet by both Maeve and Quinn. Suffice to say, neither is any more or less attractive than anyone else in the hospital.
• Informed Wrongness:
  • Due to some writers making a point of pushing their points of view rather than a nuanced one, they'll fall into this trap. Drew is usually the one they're the most guilty with as of 2023. For example, Esther ended the nurse's strike by capping the surgeons' pay and using shares to make funds available for a payrise for the nurses. Drew was portrayed as being wrong for losing his shit, whereas you could make an argument for both sides.
  • As discussed below, both Esther and Madonna are supposed to be sticks in the mud and need to loosen up when it comes to Nicole and Maeve's inability to tone their hormones down at work.
  • This was one of Peter Elliott's complaints about David Kearney when he started playing him. Peter found that David was often portrayed as being in the wrong whenever he'd argue with female characters.
• Jerks Are Worse Than Villains: Parker Dawson in contrast to Milo Cross. You know you're a dick when the audience has less sympathy for you than a violent kid who shot up a hospital and killed several people. Admittedly, Milo lost both parents, was baited by Marty into getting arrested, began to self-harm after being released into a halfway home and had somewhat of a sympathetic backstory. Meanwhile Parker is just an arrogant, backstabbing, underhanded douchebag trying to earn a placement in a scummy fashion with no excuse.
• LGBT Fanbase: Shortland Street has always appealed to a gay demographic due to being the first Kiwi show to have gay characters in it as well as the first to have a proper lesbian couple, but as of 2020 it's had a fanbase of "Maecole" fans who like Nicole and Maeve due to their saccharine, almost romance novel-like nature, rather than previous, more realistic gay relationships. The relationship has led to a large increase in fans who exclusively watch the show for the lesbian romance.
• Like You Would Really Do It: Yeah, they're gonna *totally* kill the last original character left and the guy they build entire casts of family members around with cancer out of nowhere. same with TK's cancer diagnosis. Nobody buys a character who has been around since 2006 to buy the farm after all this time.
  • They got closer to convincing the audience that TK might actually die after the shooting in 2023, when the hospital staff reluctantly removed him from life support after finding an advanced directive (likely a relic from his cancer battle). However, once he entered the dream sequence with Roimata and Sarah turning him away, it was clear that he'd make some sort of miraculous recovery.
  • An end-of-episode cliffhanger early in the show's run shows ambulance driver Tom Neilson fall asleep at the wheel approaching a pedestrian crossing full of school kids. Naturally the next episode shows him waking up at the last second and swerving to avoid all of them.
• Mandela Effect: Due to only a limited run of reruns originally, several things from the show's early years were forgotten about or incorrectly remembered by fans and so were accepted as the truth until the show reran again in 2009.
  • One of Carrie Burton's triplets being referred to as "Flynn" in articles and write-ups prior to 2010, when upon rewatch his name is in fact Finbar, not Flynn. Thankfully, this led to him having his correct name when the character reappeared in 2017.
  • Damien Neilson was also referred to as Darryl Neilson's twin brother due to being played by the same actor, but Damien was actually Darryl's younger brother.
  • Michael Galvin himself was hit with this when he sat down with Ngahuia Piripi to watch the show's first episode. Michael misremembered Marj's first line on reception as "Kia Ora, welcome to Shortland Street," which would become the standard for the clinic/hospital over the years. In reality, the phrase wasn't used until 1993. What Marj said was "Shortland Street Accident and Emergency Centre."
• Memetic Mutation:
  • From the very first episode: "You're not in Guatemala now, Dr. Ropata."
  • "Please tell me that is NOT your penis!" ^ExplanationAn episode from February 2017 ends with Chris confronting his son with photos he found on a tablet that had automatically synced to Harry's phone.
• Narm:
  • A lot of Nick's "trendy" 90's slang was clearly written by someone who had no idea of how teenagers in 1992 spoke.
  • Any of Tash Keddy's attempts at showing emotion turn into this given this his idea of "acting" seems to be "whine your dialogue when distressed."
  • Tom and Marj Neilson's arguments early on when the show first went to air were this, albeit intentional as they were supposed to be a run-of-the-mill uncool over-the-hill couple.
  • Ambulance driver Dennis Cracknell from the first few weeks of the show's run. He was supposed to be a Hate Sink with his blatant racism and repugnant personality, but the fact that every word of dialogue out of his mouth was a PG racial slur (TVNZ Standards and Practices wouldn't allow the N Word) or an obvious "I'm a bad guy!" bit of dialogue meant his entire personality fell flat.
  • Curtis Hannah showing up at the Warner Mansion after his sister Pixie died was supposed to be dramatic, with Curtis punching Chris showing how poorly he was handling his grief. Instead we got a badly slurred "I'm mad atchu Doctah Wahnah!" with overexaggerated pointing. Bonus points because Jayden Daniels is normally a good actor.
  • Maeve Mullens seems to have a habit of turning into a teenage girl whenever she's in a new relationship. Literally the same day she told Nicole she was interested (and Nicole turned her down), she showed up at Nicole's house and said "I get that you're scared, but that's love... I'm all in." Her dialogue with Rebekah Anderson was downright cringeworthy at times. The two pledged to keep their relationship a secret, and Maeve went from "I'm not gonna be in a secret relationship with a straight woman" to making out with Rebekah again in the course of about two minutes. She also agreed to their relationship when Rebekah stated "it'll be our secret little world," which itself sounds like an edgy teenage turn of phrase. Of course, this may have been a novel way of showing Rebekah's persuasive power, but the dialogue is cringe nonetheless.
  • Speaking of Maeve, fans hated the episode that featured nobody other than her and Drew talking to a therapist. The episode itself was disliked enough, but the corny "everything is OK now" dance montage at the end with Maeve dancing with Wilder's ex-girlfriend in a sickly sweet fashion while some cheesy music played in the background was the icing on the cake.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
  • When he first appeared, Lionel Skeggins was a pretty obnoxious guy. Cue a romance with Kirsty Knight and a personality change to make him less annoying, and Lionel became a fan favourite for the rest of his time on the show.
  • TK went from being a fan-favourite, to a scrappy, to being a case of this trope in the course of 10 years. At the end of 2016, TK reverted back to his original personality, becoming more laid-back than the aggressive, unpopular alpha male he had become. While he shifted up and down for awhile, TK has become somewhat of a medium of his original personality and his 10s personality.
  • Harry Warner became less of a caustic brat in his teen years. While this can be chalked up to Harry growing up, it can also be Depending on the Writer too, since his new personality coincided with new writers coming aboard the show. He'd be rescued again during 2023 when the writers started toning down his newfound "I hate my father" personality traits which the character never had before and began focusing more on his relationship with Stella and mending his previously non-existent issues with his father.
  • A whole cast version of this trope happened between 2014 and 2015. After several years of trying to craft the next big villain and instead giving us a cast full of backstabbers and unlikable jerks, new writers took over and crafted several new fan-favourite characters and even gave new life to previously disliked characters.
  • Selina To'a as described below was disliked by a significant number of fans when she first got to Ferndale. However towards the end of 2023 and into 2024, Selina's mouthier aspects were trimmed down and Selina began being kinder and more tolerable. While she could be sassy and rather in-your-face, usually it was justified and usually it was when someone deserved it, as opposed to Selina being tactless.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Internationally, KJ Apa is best known for Riverdale, but prior to that, he played Kane Jenkins from 2013-2015.
  • Domestically, Shane Bartle is better known as the guy in the Mitsubishi Electric ads than Otis Jackson, who he played in 1995.
  • Thomasin Mckenzie (Pixie Hannah) is getting increasingly famous for film roles, notably Leave No Trace.
• The Scrappy:
  • There have been many characters over the years who met this description. A significant number were present in the early 2010's, but a special mention as far as recent years has to go out to Blue Nathan for being a Wangst-filled Emo Teen whose personality isn't helped by Tash Keddy's subpar acting which consists of whining all of his dialogue.
  • Ana Fa'asolo was a scrappy in the 90's due to being a whiny, arrogant and self-centered character who stuck around too long.
  • Angel Schmidt was one even the writers knew they fucked up on. Originally written with the intent of being a sassy millennial obsessed with technology, Angel was poorly received for being utterly obnoxious and unfunny. She was gone within five months.
  • Unfortunately TK fell into this territory for a large part of The New '10s due to the aforementioned character shift from friendly, laidback guy into pompous, arrogant, angry alpha male.
  • Quinn Cox is hated by most sections of the fanbase, both for her overall predatory ways and for threatening the fan favorite couple of Nicole and Maeve. Her initial attempts to score a threesome with Nicole and Maeve involved borderline workplace sexual harassment of both nurses. Now that she's pursuing Nicole alone–going so far as to insult Maeve to Nicole's face–it's not clear whether her attempts to get involved in Nicole and Maeve's marriage were an early interest in both or just a creepy but "ethical" way for Quinn to get to Nicole before settling for outright homewrecking once Maeve said no. Part of the fanbase also dislikes the fact she used Parker Dawson–himself an unpopular character–for sex as a way of blowing off steam from being rejected the second time and making Parker temporarily sympathetic by extension. Some fans have even nickamed her "Quinncel" for her incel behavior and correctly noted that if a man had done what she's done, he'd be widely considered a creep.
  • Quinn's fellow registrar Noah also had an infatuation with a married woman as his main character trait. Always following Cece around and even coming on to her when her husband TK was seemingly on his death bed, viewers weren't unhappy when he departed due to mental health issues. Also not helping Noah's cause was his actor constantly mumbling his dialogue.
  • Selina already hit this territory in 2023 within weeks of getting there. Two of her first storylines were co-opting Harper's bravery during the shooting as her own story to impress influencer Max Lynch and telling Max about Monique's urostomy bag–a horrible violation of privacy–to gain the edge on Monique for Max's attention. Selina somehow combines the worst traits of both Schmidts (Angel's obsession with social media and attention seeking, Desi's lack of tact) and lacks the hidden depths Desi had. Selina does have the occasional moment of being tolerable and behaving like a normal human being, but they're few and far between. The writers DID recognise how tired people were of Selina's bullshit and toned down her worst aspects and increased the more tolerable ones which lead to the entry under Rescued from the Scrappy Heap.
  • Stevie-Lee Barns, mother of fan favourite Logan. Stevie-Lee is another in a long line of the writers' obsession with tactless characters who say too much, have no filter, are loud and are rude to everyone in the name of "comedy." The problem is that as usual, she's not funny and unlike Selina and Desi, Stevie-Lee doesn't have the more humanising aspects to her character to balance them out.
• Seasonal Rot:
  • 1996 is considered one of the show's most boring years, with Julia Thornton being one of the least entertaining clinic bosses in the show's history and several dull characters and storylines.
  • 2000 had to follow 1999's hemorrhaging of popular characters, then managed to introduce a bunch of boring replacements. The ratings suffered and most of the show's cast were keelhauled within the next 12 months.
  • 2010-2012 featured very little interesting and felt like the writers were just half-arsing everything, including returning characters they clearly didn't do any continuity research on, the laziest anniversary season ever written, long, boring storylines which ran way too long. A majority of the characters in 2010 were characters who'd been around since at least 2006-2008 still hanging around making the show feel rather stale as a matter of fact. The only new characters from the 2008-9 season were Brooke, Nicole and Maxwell, with the latter two being introduced only a year prior. On the flipside, however, they'd slowly begin leaving and be replaced with characters who didn't have the same strong personalities or likeable traits.
  • 2018 had a bunch of grim storylines which fell more into Too Bleak, Stopped Caring territory over darkly intriguing. When it wasn't being unnecessarily and unpleasantly dark, it was trying to hard to appeal to a more adult audience with unfitting swearing which seemed out of place for a 7 o'clock timeslot and un-PG storylines such as Drew and Harper being seduced by their nanny, leading to a threesome, or the Mccaskills getting high with Boyd in a hot tub.
  • 2020, Covid not withstanding is quite possibly the worst year in the show's history given the writers were more focused on bad storylines, bad comedy characters and attempts at writing funny dialogue which came across as more obnoxious than funny. It felt like the writers thought they were writing a cringe comedy rather than a soap opera. Desi Schmidt being arguably the main character, while being the most obnoxious and insufferable character on the show put a lot of people off.
• So Bad, It's Good: The show itself during its first 6 months or so. Wooden acting, cheesy scripts, low production values and dated societal values even for New Zealand in 1992 (Oh no! Alison is living with two men! Oh lord, Meredith had a child out of wedlock when she was a teenager! Whatever shall we do? Sam is a Christian, but he gambled!) along with unsubtle and over the top caricatures (The racist ambulance officer who replaced Tom Neilson) made the show charming but with an extreme fromage factor.
• Special Effect Failure:
  • It's pretty obvious in an October 2004 episode where Dominic Thompson is supposed to be standing in an airport that Shane Cortese is not standing in an airport. The weird camera angle doesn't help any, either.
  • Joey's death was done pretty poorly. They cut from Joey stepping off of his lock-up to an obvious dummy dressed in the actor's clothes falling before cutting to Johnny Barker on the ground, bleeding.
• Stoic Woobie: After Richard Thornton fell from a roof and broke his neck, Julia Thornton didn't cry when it happened, didn't cry at his funeral, kept going running the clinic like nothing happened and then finally broke down one night after an argument with her son James.
• Take That, Scrappy!:
  • Ula Levi finally telling Leanne Black off after months of pronouncing her name "EW-La."
  • In the 2017 finale, Ali Karim and Spotlight-Stealing Squad Dawn Robinson were about to kiss under the mistletoe after months of tension. Instead, the drunk Ali projectile vomited all over Dawn. Rather cathartic given the amount of time the young Motor Mouth Dawn had been getting in the 4 months since she'd been introduced.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: What the fuck was the point in bringing back original character Sam Aleni after 18 years, doing a storyline with his mother using the same actress from the show's early years and have actor Rene Naufahu do interviews saying he'd be happy to stick around only to get rid of Sam by having him hook up with Vasa Levi at the last minute and leave simply because Teuila Blakely's real life problems became too much for her to handle? That said, there are those who think it may have something to do with the trouble Rene Naufahu got in in real life...
  • The registrar team started with 6 characters and ended with 3 left. The problem comes from the fact that as soon as their first week came to an end we were down to 5 after Britt Adams quit. Fans asked what the point of having her there to start with was, given most of her story was transferred to Stella. Britt was introduced seducing Harry Warner, followed by being the cream of the new crop. But after convincing Drew to let her run a surgery, Britt quit and laid a complaint against the hospital, never to be seen and barely referenced again.
  • Unless Gia returns, her two month run, followed by being an off-camera love interest Rahu can't get over is a massive waste of a transgender character who was more than an aesop who was universally well-received. While Gia's inconsistent personality of being either OK with TK or wanting to keep him at arm's length and not wanting him to be all-in being her dad was a bit confusing, fans liked her because she was a well-rounded character played by a good actress. Then after two months she leaves with no warning.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • At the end of 2022, Nicole finally had enough of Maeve's caustic personality and outbursts aimed at everybody. Nicole told Maeve it was over and she wanted a divorce. After kicking Maeve out, Maeve began to act in an unbalanced and possessive manner, even making a drunken fool of herself and making everybody uncomfortable at the IV by going full meltdown at Nicole. What looked like a potentially interesting storyline where the show had potential to show that even supposedly perfect spouses can become disturbingly possessive and unhinged after being dumped, the show pivoted to Maeve vs Brightshine beginning with Brightshine killing Wilder and by mid-January 2023, the wheels were in motion for Nicole and Maeve getting back together with Nicole suddenly missing her wife and regretting dumping Maeve with no mention of why.
  • In mid-2023, 5 new characters and a recast Harry Warner were brought in as registars vying for one position at the hospital. (Eventually that became two, with Noah being written out to deal with his PTSD, meaning all of the final 3 made it in.) What was hyped as a Ferndale's Next Top Surgeon-type competition in 2023 didn't play out as such. After Britt quit, it wasn't until Milo Cross's rampage more registrars would leave the programme, and by his hand rather than by surgical performance.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: The show entered an Audience-Alienating Era from 2010-2015 because the writers decided to make nearly every new character an unlikable anti-social scumbag and made the entire cast a bunch of back-stabbing jerks who couldn't get along with each other. It's hard to care about a show when the characters are all genuinely bad people save one or two.
  • The show really hit a patch of this in 2018 where every character and storyline was going down the route of being unpleasant or over the top bleak. Serial rape storylines, assault on pregnant women, spousal abuse, the topic of aborting babies which would have been born with disabilities, it felt like the writers were trying to go down the route of being dark like the show was in 2007-08 without anything lighthearted or the cast of strong characters to counterbalance it.
• Tough Act to Follow: Joey Henderson is still the bar for Shortland Street villains for a reason. The best part of what many consider the soap's best year, every villain can and will be compared to Joey.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic:
  • Upon becoming CEO in mid-2023 Esther had to deal with staff shenanigans like workplace pranks gone wrong (Harper tricking Drew into losing his clothes) and Nicole and Maeve using the new tele-health initiative to get physically intimate not realising the video call to a patient wasn't closed off. This, combined with a nurse's strike along with her husband Marty becoming heavily addicted to drugs made Esther seem like someone being attacked on all sides simply for being the boss rather than anything she'd actually done.
  • Similarly, Madonna is made out to be a prude for not approving of nurses, specifically Maeve, openly flirting in the workplace. Given the aforementioned video call incident more professionalism is not unreasonable to expect.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • Interestingly, two in one storyline. Finn Warner hooked up with his father's pregnant girlfriend Zoe Carlson during a period of time the writers were trying to make Zoe sympathetic in her relationship with Chris and do a redemption arc for wifebeater Finn. Unfortunately, Zoe has been a manipulative liar and one of many recent scrappies on the show being incredibly unpopular with the fans, and Finn even during his periods of being a good guy is an incredibly arrogant little rich boy who clearly revels in being a rich surgeon who thinks he is above people like rival Curtis Hannah. To top it off, Zoe and Finn are being targeted as part of equally unpopular character Te Rongopai Rameka's hatred for the Warner family. No matter how much we're meant to feel for Zoe and Finn, one is a liar and the other a borderline narcissist. It's not happening.
  • Te Rongopai. Her husband cheated on her with his secretary, yes, and Te Rongopai is meant to be a strong, self-made woman. But she's also an arrogant, self-centered hypocrite, denouncing Chris Warner for being a sexist and using nepotism to help his family while getting her nephew a job at the hospital AND being a racist herself.
  • There's a framing of the Desi storyline where she's a woman struggling with alcoholism who's trying to be a good partner and wife to Damo while being bullied by his ex (Leanne). That interpretation is pretty thoroughly undermined by Desi's overall obnoxiousness as a person and the fact that her relapse resulted in her abandoning Damo after the bus accident. The biggest kicker, though, is Desi telling Tilly at TK and Cece's engagement celebration that TK cheated on Cece with Te Rongopai – not only did Tilly not need that information, but Cece had already assured Desi that she and TK were past it and Desi told Tilly anyway.
  • Arguably Esther in the early days of her tenure as CEO. She seemed as though she had a complex about her role in the job and whether she'd earned it (debatable given that her inheriting TK's shares in the hospital made it possible), and she compensated for that by being unnecessarily stringent about a variety of things. She went from likeable colleague to power-grabbing executive with a complex in a flash. She's toned down and become more sympathetic again as of Marty's Zeclastion addiction and facilitating the co-op plan.
• Values Dissonance:
  • The show definitely wouldn't be able to get away with using the words "retard" or "faggot" nowadays quite as casually as they did in the 2000s, even in a negative context as they did back then.
  • Mike Galloway's weed smoking in 1998 was treated as something he needed to go to rehab to ween off and was treated as a big deal. Nowadays, nobody bats an eye if a character smokes.
  • Stuart Neilson losing his virginity to Kirsty Knight was treated as something which needed an intervention from multiple male role models and got Jenny Harrison a telling off by his mother Marj for "letting it happen" back in 1992. While Marj was treated as being somewhat out of touch, she was still treated as having a valid point to a degree as well. Nowadays the only characters who ever freak out over their teenagers having sex for religious reasons are villains or are straight up mocked.
  • Likewise, Stuart wanting to drop out of school and marry the woman his brother impregnated was treated like something which could wreck his life. Potentially true given the limited options for study past a certain age back in 1992, a ridiculous assertion to make as educational options became available for adult students and on-the-job training became more common in the workforce as time has moved on.
  • Steve pulling his eyes back and speaking in a You No Take Candle voice to cheer Alison up definitely wouldn't wash.
    • The absolutely abhorrent reason TVNZ changed Kirsty's rape to Date Rape Averted: They thought it would "sully" the character of Kirsty. While the storyline was shocking and certainly sensitive ground, the reason for nixing it was stupid and certainly wouldn't even be considered in this day and age.
  • A big part of Jamie and Jonathon's early story in 1993 is Jamie trying to get permission to talk about safe sex at Ferndale High and Jonathon potentially jeopardising that due to pissing off the principal of Ferndale High while protesting with Nick. Nowadays, it's unheard of for schools not to teach about safe sex.
  • In 1994, Chris had a storyline where he and Rebecca Frost got into a relationship while she was helping him get clean from his painkiller addiction. The big hitch was that Chris's parents wouldn't approve of an interracial relationship. This certainly wouldn't be treated as a "normal rich white family" thing nowadays.
  • There is not a snowball's chance in hell we will ever see another storyline like the one Harry Martin and Minnie Crozier had in 1996 which presented the 20 year old Harry as a sympathetic figure grappling with his conscience as to whether he would bed the 15 year old Minnie or not.
• Why Would Anyone Take Him Back?:
  • Viewers in the 90s wondered what Alison Raynor was thinking taking Chris back not once but twice. The first time they split was when Chris cheated on her with his ex wife Melanie before Chris decided to end things with Melanie again. Chris would then get back together with Alison much to the chagrin of her best friends Sam and Steve but would dump Chris after Chris no-showed their wedding due to being drugged by a jealous Darryl Neilson. After Chris and Alison left the show, the two would get back together off-camera when Chris's then wife Tiffany caught the two in bed in 1997. Alison would finally learn her lesson after catching Chris yet again cheating on her which led to Chris returning in 2000. (which the show would retcon the timeline of to an extremely confusing degree with Chris and Alison's son Phoenix being born in 1996.)
  • Nicole and Maeve for each other. Nicole and Maeve have both cheated on one another, have done multiple things wrong to one another and whichever side of the fence you're on, you could make arguments for why Nicole is worse than Maeve or vice versa. Individual citations include people pointing out that Nicole was willing to cheat on Maeve with Quinn, who'd harassed Nicole into kissing her twice and had insulted Maeve, while Maeve has a tendency to be extremely selfish, i.e. doing things regardless of who it affects like taking in Cassie after she'd gotten addicted to drugs after giving birth to Wilder's baby without asking Nicole or extremely confrontational and rude to everyone which is why Nicole wanted to separate in 2022.
• Win Back the Crowd: Shorty has had to go through some overhauls in order to stabilise falling ratings. The two most notable examples over the past 31 years are:
  • The massive reset in 2001. Shortland Street's ratings had fallen slowly throughout 1999 due to a couple of years of fan favourites leaving and not being replaced before completely tanking in 2000.
  • The Ferndale Strangler storyline was created in response to falling ratings again throughout 2005-2006. It worked, and a lot of fans consider 2007 and by extension 2008 the best years in the history of the show with strong writing and classic characters across the board.

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