Closing the gates
Miss Hunter is considering retirement but the kids are not going to let her go without a fight.
As this episode spells the end of the road for this series, I really hoped that it would pull a fantastic finale out of the bag but I’m disappointed to report that while it may have improved over the weeks, this episode did nothing to inspire me to watch a second series. It’s strange as it has all the right ingredients – a great cast, humorous story lines and some good performances but nothing appears to have saved this sporadically amusing sitcom. I’ve tried so hard to like it but like so many mediocre shows that have gone before, ‘Gates‘ is going straight in the ‘could have been better’ file in my mind.
This week was parent’s evening and Sarah and Aiden were using the opportunity to have a go at each other as their son was perhaps not achieving as highly as they would like. Miss Hunter seemed jaded and fed up as she delivered the reports to the anxious parents. Mark and Helen were slightly disappointed to find out that Chloe was considered compliant and placid. Through a series of complications, Mark ended up misleading Sarah into thinking that he could be there for her any time as well as allowing Miss Hunter to come and see Chloe in her home environment. Determined to ‘live on the edge’, Helen began to slacken her ties on Chloe’s behaviour hoping she would play up and not be such a good girl but Chloe seemed to content to be herself.
After Miss Hunter had a somewhat sombre conversation with Chloe she decided to acquiesce to Mr Gould’s request and retire but her decision was met with more resistance than she expected. Meanwhile, Helen was a shoulder to cry on for Sarah and her intervention led Aiden to tell the truth about his job.
The end of the episode was quite sweet but other than Tom Ellis getting his top off (apologies for the supremely shallow comment but it really was one of the highlights), there was very little in this episode to entice me to watch a series two should one be made available. Essentially the theme that the kids were more mature than the adults in some ways wore thin in the first two episodes and it was pretty much of a muchness from then on. It wasn’t a terrible show but I’m definitely looking forward to seeing all of the actors in something substantially better in the future. I tried, but this show just isn’t for me, perhaps for other people it was amazing but for me ‘Gates‘ struggled to raise much of a smile. School’s out and as the gates close, I can’t say I’ll miss it.
