Opinion: Packed to the Rafters... With Men

What on earth was the deal with Packed to the Rafters last night?

In the Seven drama's first post-Rachel episode (Jessica Marais departed the show to pursue other avenues overseas, hence her character left the sunny borough for greener pastures in the big Apple), the show was remarkably heavy on male characters.

Whether this was a concerted effort or not, it would still be mildly disconcerting for any Rafters fan.

Let's give the show the benefit of the doubt for a second; maybe the show wanted to have an episode that was more heavily male-influence in order to establish the core cast of characters- let's face it, it didn't have a great deal f female characters to start with.

And given the show centered around Dave's relationship with his estranged father, it kind of makes sense to place an emphasis on the men.

However, even a show about male relationships needs to feature women in some worthwhile capacity...

And last night's show didn't exactly do that.

Last night, the men in the show were Dave and his father; Coby and Jake; Carbo, Ben and Nathan; and Michael Caton's Ted. Oh, and in case that wasn't enough, we also had Jake's brother who has cerebral palsy literally drop in.

Amongst that, we had - count them - two female characters: Julie Rafter and "Retta". Neither of them had any real bearing on the plot; Julie was being a "worry wart" at the beginning and Retta said something to someone at one stage.

And symbolic of the dearth of female presence in the show, there was actually a pink balloon with a picture of Rachel's face taped on to it floating around. The question had to be asked: why wouldn't the show just replace the existing characters with balloons, and maybe introduce a few more to address the balance.

All attempted humour aside, hopefully the show can not only introduce some substantial female characters soon (a couple of actresses have been hired, apparently), but also give its existing characters some decent storylines (next week Julie looks to have a decent enough storyline, so we'll see how that goes). It also needs to give Retta some personality so that she doesn't just have to act as the foil to Carbo (come on, her name literally complements his- Carbo-Retta, etc.).

In a nutshell, the show has not coped, or even attempted to deal with the absence of female characters; first it was Sammy who left, then it was Mel, now Rachel. Other strong-ish characters like Chrissy and "Chel" are nowhere to be seen.

It simply has never recovered.

If it can do address this imbalance, the show's prospects look good- and will show that the show can survive the loss of key cast members, but if it can't, I'd be very worried for its future (at least creatively).