Who Am I, Really?

Synopsis

A photographer arrives at the school and Nicole becomes suspicious when she notices the woman is always taking her picture. Eventually she realises that the woman is her birth Mother. This gives her adopted parents cause for concern.

Meanwhile Morloch's first love is in town and he needs Sherwood to pretend to be his partner.

My Review

Sadly this is not a favourite episode of mine and is one of my least favourites in this season. Although I love the character of Nicole and she had quickly become one of my favourites on the show, since she arrived at the start of the season, I don’t think the story works very well. The majority of the other episodes this season have 3 or sometimes 4 different story lines running simultaneously, involving different sets of characters and giving a feeling that there is quite a lot going on. Here there is a minor story of Morloch losing his voice but the bulk of the episode involves Nicole and her birth mother and it all feels a little empty to me. Usually if you don't like one particular plot line there are enough others to carry the episodes but not in this one.

I think one of the issues for me is that the story has come out of nowhere and we had no indication that Nicole was even adopted. Considering there have been a couple of episodes dealing with Nicole's relationship with her parents already, it would have been nice had the seeds for this story have been laid previously. Maybe Nicole could have mentioned something like she has a high expectation to live up to as she is adopted and the pressure this places on her. This would have been so easy to fit in especially in "Parents Week". It would have also been nice for Nicole to previously mention how she feels about being adopted and if she wanted to meet her birth mother or not. Without any of that to build the story and emotional content I find the story a little flat.

To me this story doesn't really go anywhere and as usual the guest star disappears at the end of the episode never to be mentioned again, so it's a little hard to become attached to her.

The rest of the cast apart from Jesse feel a little ignore and Valerie only gets a brief scene. It might have been nice had they built in scenes of Nicole turning to Doris and Holly for support and advice. Which would have been away of communicating Nicole's feelings. For me Nicole accepts Diane back into her life way too quickly and calling her Mom pretty much straight away feels out of place.

Continuity rears its head again in that when we see the photographs of Nicole being taken, many of the scenes are taken from previous episodes and show events that had already happened throughout the year when Diane wasn't even there. It would have been nice if they could have introduced the character briefly earlier in the season and that would have not only helped continuity but also given more weight to Nicole's feelings as she would have known her Mother for longer.

There is some nice footage of Nicole as a child, which is footage that Nia actually provided, so it really is Nia in the home movies.

The Morloch story is a little light relight but there's not much too it, apart from people being happy he can't speak so I don't feel that goes anywhere either.

"Some Girls" is a fun song and gives some of the other cast members something to do in the episode.

"Come What May" is a nice cover of a Patti Labelle song which really suits Nia's voice.

Episode Pictures