Mia Freedman: "We need to talk about last night's Offspring."

Here are the notes I made on my phone while watching Offspring last night:

• Too many kids and babies – I forget them all
• Nobody seems remotely sad that THEIR FATHER is dead
• The handsome shrink is having a baby?
• Wide legged pants
• Script seems so stilted
• I like that Nina looks older
• Everyone in Offspring is young and hot – estate lawyers, Shrinks, doctors….
• Plot a bit plonky – no finesse
• Death is a downer

• I'm tired of Nina's clumsy schtick
• I was hoping Jimmy would have cut his hair
• The music is odd - keeps starting and stopping
• Too early in the season for a funeral
• Funerals don't end like that
• Brother twist - lame
• Why wouldn't she tell Billie about the secret brother?
• Jimmy is an idiot

• I like it when Nina is good at her job
• Who would ever let their newborn be a stuntbaby in a tv show?
• Bouncy walk down the corridor
• Bar fight at wake - how ridiculous
• Jumping the shark
• Why are the women in the show all so unhinged and slapstick?
• Velvet jacket
• Deborah Mailman is the only believable character in this whole episode
• "Bye dad, you're the best" - how is that even a line?
• WTF

In summary: bummer.

Listen to Mia, Monz and Kate discuss Offspring on Mamamia Outloud.

I have a question for the producers - were there any women in the writers' room? Because the best thing about Offspring has always been the strong, complex, nuanced, layered, smart, fiesty women. And last night? There were no women on the show who behaved in ways I recognised in actual human female ways.

Maybe Deb Mailman's character. But Billie and Asher and their mother and sister in law....they were all slapstick, one-dimensional holograms. Clowns. I'm not sure if the fact I know the original creators and writers - Deb Oswald and Michael Lucas - chose not to come back this season and that knowledge coloured how I saw the episode.

Let's revisit our top five favourite Offspring moments. (Post continues...)

Deb and Michael felt the show was done, the characters had completed the journeys they wanted to take them on and it was time to say goodbye. But for totally understandable reasons, Channel Ten wanted it back. It has such a large fanbase of women of which I have passionately been one. I couldn't help but feel last night though, that whoever was writing the characters didn't really know them....didn't feel them. I felt like those women we love would not behave in such silly, superficial ways when faced with the shocking news that someone they loved had died.

I'm hoping things will improve...