So everyone's (or at least my) favourite terrible school drama, Waterloo Road, is back! The first episode of Series Eight wasn't one of its best, but I have to give it credit for compressing an entire series of Waterloo Road into a single hour.

Seriously, it had

- death (well, a death that happened some time ago, but we learnt about it in this episode)
- false drug-related accusations
- secretly homeless pupils
- incredibly unhealthy relationships
- fire
- pregnancy
- theft
- Tom manhandling a fighty pupil
- attempted murder
- someone getting arrested
- someone being hospitalised
- a threat to the future of the school
- the implied beginnings of a love triangle
- alcoholism

and probably other things I'm forgetting. Throw in 'teacher accused of inappropriate conduct with a pupil' and 'schizophrenia' and you've got every Waterloo Road plot ever in one episode.

On the incredibly excellent side, it looks like there's a good chance Josh and Tariq may form a friendship! This is all I want. On the less positive side, Josh has cut his lovely hair too short again. I TOLD YOU TO STOP DOING THAT, JOSH.

Halfway through the episode, I found I couldn't stop envisioning a Dangan Ronpa scenario set in Waterloo Road. It could actually work really well. Would it just be the pupils, or would teachers and pupils alike be at the mercy of Monobear and each other?

Er, perhaps I need to stop crossing Waterloo Road over with things in which teenagers murder each other.


(Speaking of my tendency to cross things over all over the place: a while ago, my brother brought up my My Little Pony/Merlin crossover and implied that there was rampant sex in it.

'There was no sex in that crossover!' I objected. 'It was entirely innocent!'

He stared at me. 'What are you talking about? I was just making that up to make fun of you - you've actually written a crossover between My Little Pony and Merlin?'

And of course I had. Whoops.)