Raving about Rikki

My wife likes Rikki the best, and she thinks that Rikki is the prettiest of the four of them. So in this article, I shall rave about Miss Rikki Chadwick a bit.

We are introduced to Rikki for having stolen the spark plug from Zane's Zodiac boat. Zane tried to deceive Cleo into helping to pass the tools, only to push her off shore in the idle boat. Presumably Zane didn't know that Cleo could not swim. So Rikki leaps onto the drifting boat from the dock and displays the spark plug to Cleo.

And the very first thing Rikki says in the entire series is Zane's name: "Zane Bennett's a pig. Anything I can do to get under his skin can't be all bad."

Rikki is sort of a new girl in school, and is looked down upon by, shall we say, the upper-class "plastics", namely Miriam the Queen Bee. Cleo knew Rikki's name, and made excuses on the boat for not having said hello earlier.

Rikki had a reputation for being somewhat rebellious and independent. She didn't have any friends per se, preferring to be a loner.

After fixing the boat, and picking up Emma, Rikki had a bright idea to go out to sea, which was foolhardy and dangerous. They ran out of gas a few miles off the mainland, and had to paddle to Mako Island, and the rest is history.

So in a way, Rikki started the whole thing. Rikki is a pretty blonde girl, and the initial scenes have set her up to be a ditzy troublemaker. But in reality, this assumption has proven to be false.

History appeared to be repeating itself, as Rikki was getting close to Zane. Cleo and Emma put Rikki into a position of choosing, and she replied, "Friends don't give friends ultimatums." The following episode would reveal that Julia made the exact same reponse to Gracie and Louise when she was in that very same situation with Carl. But the Carl and Julia episode would end with total betrayal. Rikki, on the other hand, admirably stayed in complete control.

And later, when Zane's father in cahoots with Dr. Denman, trapped the three mermaids in the moon pool, Rikki exercised her influence on Zane to do something, which he did.

Rikki the Faithful Daughter

Cleo, Emma, Zane, and Miriam were all from middle to upper class families. The home life of Rikki and Lewis was not revealed in the first season. On the hotel rooftop, Rikki tells Zane that her parents split up arguing over money. But she also told Zane that she lived with her father in a fancy townhouse, which was false. Rikki is ashamed to reveal, even to Cleo and Emma, that she lives in a trailer park with her single father. (Did anyone else notice that this is the typical profile of a Disney princess? -- an only child of a widowed father? Ariel, Belle, Jasmine, Cinderella, Mulan, Pocahontas, and Snow White all match this profile. Well okay, Ariel had sisters, but she still had a single father.)

While the exact marital status of Terry Chadwick is never revealed, his line to Rikki, "Where's that beautiful smile your mum gave ya?" implies that her mother had passed away. I take that line to imply that her mum died when Rikki was an infant.

The Treasure Hunt episode revealed some more details, that their personal finance had become so fragile that they could barely afford to even stay there. And here Rikki shows that she stands very strongly with her father with statements like, "We don't take charity," and "Dad and I will work this out." Notice the "We". So while Rikki's dad seems to be a bit disadvantaged economically, it is clear that he has given Rikki the best family life that he can. Later we see that Rikki has red satin bedsheets, indicating that her dad has spoiled her with some indulgences.

Rikki the Loyal Friend

Rikki has repeatedly demonstrated fantastic loyalty in their circle of friends. She reads people well and enjoys teasing Emma and Isabella over their respective crushes. And it should be noted that Rikki never once attempted to take anyone's affections for herself. While Rikki likes Byron, Ash, and Will, she always liked them most in the context of being well connected to their own girlfriends. She personally counselled Byron and Ash to get things right with Emma, and she personally helped Will get up the nerve to ask Isabella to the beach party.

Rikki would try to coax favours from Lewis, in Cleo's interest, by pushing him to admit that he liked Cleo. Even to raise the money to buy Julia's locket, Rikki grabbed $50 from Lewis and wondered how to raise the rest. Lewis teased her suggesting window cleaning and bikini car washes, to which Rikki pointed her finger at Lewis and said, "You are funny. You are hysterical." But then she told Lewis that the locket would mean a lot to Cleo, and sure enough, that drove Lewis to raise the entire balance himself.

Rikki saved Will's life, and he was of course immensely grateful, and regarded Rikki as an angel. He loved Rikki in that sense and made her a jewel necklace to match Isabella's. But Rikki would not allow Will to get close to her, even after she had cut her ties with Zane, because Rikki's love for Will was only in the context of his being connected with Isabella. Rikki is happy when they are happy.

Rikki the Defender of the Secret

While it seemed that Rikki was closest to blowing the mermaid secret, she has repeatedly proven to be the strongest defender of the secret. Even in the very first episode, when Cleo was about to say something to Lewis, Rikki was shaking her head as a warning not to. And when Cleo asked Lewis, "Do you know anything about mermaids?" Rikki was quick to mock that very line after Lewis had left.

We shall recall that what prompted Rikki to start dating Zane in the first place was actually a bit self-sacrificing. Zane was determined to discover the sea creature that rescued him from Louise's sunken houseboat, and later, he literally saw Emma swimming out of the houseboat (with scarlet red hair, like Ariel), and was telling everyone that he had seen an actual mermaid. So Rikki banked on Zane's personal interest in her and offered to date him on the condition that he spoke no more about mermaids. Zane accepted the offer. And when he couldn't help speaking a bit more, Rikki changed the subject by admiring a fancy dress in a boutique window. It was in this very episode, later wearing this very dress that Zane bought for her, that Rikki stood up to Zane's father, and his plans to develop Mako Island into an exclusive resort, and sabotaged them.

Rikki was the first to officially distrust Charlotte, and Rikki boycotted Charlotte's birthday party for Lewis, which was a good thing since Cleo and Emma were both victimized by Charlotte at the party, and could have been exposed. It was Rikki who saved the day.

It was Rikki who was most suspicious of Ryan, when Cleo wanted to fish him for his geological knowledge. It was Rikki who personally defended Mako Island from Ryan's intrusions, by fusing one of his measuring instruments, and by causing lightning inside the cave.

There is a cute little scene in Season 3, before Will learns the truth about Isabella. It's a full moon night and they're having the usual night in. Will shows up to talk with Isabella, who steps outside with him just as the moon is rising. Lewis says, "Does she even realize what we're trying to do here?" And Rikki adds, "She loses it every time she's around him. I've never known anyone so reckless." Cleo was staring at Rikki after she said this, and Rikki turns back to Cleo and says, "What?"

Rikki the Self-Controlled

And finally, perhaps Rikki's most admirable quality, is that she has great discipline over her emotions. Rikki thinks with her head and not with her heart. In Season 3, Rikki loved Zane as the season opened, but as Zane displayed persistently immature behaviour, Rikki grew distrustful, and after seeing Sophie smooch Zane on the dive boat, she told Zane in no uncertain terms, "This is me you're talking to, remember. I know what I saw." And she said good-bye and walked out. And she stayed away.

As I said in the commentary of the last question of my quiz, I wish many female fans would heed that advice. Many would-be girlfriends would save themselves a great deal of grief, heartache, abuse, and defilement if they would just follow Rikki's example.

Speaking about Rescues

The storyline of H2O is fantastically well connected. In this article, we discuss marine rescues performed by the mermaids.

As we discussed in the previous post, the three present-day mermaids parallel the 1950's mermaids as well-defined counterparts.

So we'll start with Louise and Emma.

Of the 1950's mermaids, Louise is the only one known to have performed a rescue. This was an off-shore rescue of a man who would otherwise have drowned. When interviewed, Louise denied having performed the rescue so far off shore, but acknowledged only having pulled him up on the beach. She denied having seen anything else that could have been involved.

Our first modern rescue was performed by Rikki, in which she rescued Elliot Gilbert from heavy surf, and we'll come back to this incident in a bit.

The first deep water off-shore rescue was performed by Louise's counterpart Emma. Zane was trapped in, oddly enough, Louise's sinking houseboat. He sunk with the boat and drowned. Emma arrived as the boat hit the bottom and had to break the door open with her tail, of which Zane caught a glimpse before passing out. Emma brought an unconscious Zane to the surface and brought him to the beach with this own boat, which Emma presumably untied from the sunken Lorelei. On reviving, Zane remembered drowning in the boat, but Emma insisted that she found him on the surface, and denied knowing how Zane escaped from the boat.

Side note here: Zane later tried to do a scuba dive on the wreck to try to investigate the mystery. While his buddy Nate had surfaced, Zane saw Emma swimming out of the wreck, and thus saw a mermaid in full torso. But this was the time Emma had coloured her hair scarlet red. So while Zane only saw her backside, what Zane actually saw was not much unlike Disney's Little Mermaid! So this only swirled the mystery further.

Now it is very interesting that Emma would rescue Zane, as this is also a repeat of history, for about thirty years earlier, Emma's mother Lisa, who was then twelve, performed a shore rescue of Zane's father Harrison, who was also twelve years old. So history repeated itself in that Lisa's daughter rescued Harrison's son.

But let us take a moment to recall that Harrison Bennett was a champion windsurfer in his teen years. He held an unbroken time record for windsurfing around Mako Island. So while the circumstances of his accident at age twelve are not given, a reasonable guess was that he had a surfing accident.

This then brings us to Lisa's son Elliot. At about age twelve, he was learning to surf. Byron was giving Elliot some basic lessons on dry sand. Byron was distracted for a few minutes with Emma, who begged Rikki to sit and watch Elliot. It is self-evident that Elliot fancied Rikki, who sat up against the rocks in her pretty pink bikini. Elliot was determined to show off, hoping to impress Rikki, and he ran into the heavy surf with this surfboard. But Elliot was not trained to penetrate the surf zone properly, hence why he was told to stay on the dry sand. A heavy wave flipped him and he was caught fighting for air in the heavy surf. Rikki had to risk mermaid exposure on a public beach to rescue Elliot. She was successful and discrete, and managed to motor Elliot back to shore on his own surfboard without her tail being seen. Elliot was smitten with Rikki and boasted that Rikki was the fastest swimmer ever, that she could even outswim a dolphin!

And we are reminded that Lisa rather fancied Harrison, but nothing ever came of it. Still, the Gilberts and Bennetts were long-term family friends, and Lisa always liked Zane, perhaps hoping that Emma would connect with Zane, even though they never did.

Another little incident before the houseboat sinking was when Zane tried to recreate his father's record setting windsurf around Mako Island, using the actual sailboard his father had used. But the reef on the far side of the island had since become shark infested. He had Lewis along for filming and surface support, but on the far side he capsized in the water with sharks around. Unknown to him, Rikki was in the immediate area shooting some underwater video of sharks. Seeing the situation on the surface, Rikki boiled water in a circle around Zane, keeping the sharks away while Lewis completed the surface rescue.

Season two would present an interesting turn as we follow Zane and Rikki. Here we have a situation where Rikki is doing some search and recovery for a ten thousand dollar reward for a sunken gold statue. Zane is doing surface support. On finding the crate, Zane provided Rikki with a scuba tank and the right lift bags to raise the crate. After inflating the bags and starting the lift, the harness assembly broke apart and the crate fell on Rikki. She took a nasty bang on the head and was knocked out cold underwater. As the lift bags surfaced with no load, Zane knew something was wrong and dove in after her. This interesting scene marks the only time any of the mermaids were ever injured in mermaid form, and the only time any of them was actually rescued. (In this context, we're not counting Lewis going after Cleo in "Sea Change". Cleo was in emotional distress, but not immediate physical distress.) So here, Zane rescued Rikki underwater, off-shore.

Now we come to Rikki's crowning rescue in Season 3. Will is a competitive deep free diver. Zane's ego has him jealous of Will's ability, and he tries to show off by getting Nate and another friend to help him fake a moderately deep free dive by scuba gear. Will is then determined to show off what he can do by trying to dive to seventy meters. His sister Sophie begs him not to try, as he is not adequately prepared for such a dive. But he tries anyway and blacks out in the deep water. Zane telephones Rikki on-shore, who is able to race to the scene in a couple of minutes. This implies that in an emergency, Rikki is able to swim at extreme speed, perhaps in excess of one hundred knots. She arrives at the scene and finds Will unconscious by the seventy meter marker. Here she successfully revives Will underwater with A/R and brings him up ten meters from the surface, from where he is able to surface on his own. Sitting on the boat, a bit dazed, Sophie asked him what happened and Will answered with a glowing smile, "An angel... an angel rescued me." Zane quickly covered for him before he said too much, but Will would later say to Rikki, "I remember you like an angel." Will would always have a certain fondness for Rikki from then on.

Paralleling the Lockets

In this little article, we look at a number of connections between our original present three mermaids with their respective counterparts of fifty years ago.

1. Gracie found it most difficult to accept being a mermaid, and so did Cleo.
    
2. Gracie's boyfriend Max, was one of only two who learned their secret, and he faithfully kept the secret. Cleo's boyfriend Lewis was the first to learn the secret, and he has kept the secret faithfully, and been true to Cleo.
    
3. Max made the lockets for the three girls back then.
    
4. Gracie threw her locket into the moon pool, and found a way to be free of the mermaid effect. Emma found Gracie's locket and gave it to Cleo.
    
5. In 2.25 Sea Change, Gracie's granddaughter, Charlotte, stole the locket from Cleo, but was later forced to return it.
    
6. Louise is the one survivor. She is 65 years old when we first meet her, and Cleo is 15 (the other girls' ages aren't given, but presumably the same age as Cleo). There is exactly 50 years between them.
    
7. In 1.13 Shipwrecked, Emma retrieved Louise's locket from her sunken houseboat. In the picture, Louise identifies herself as being on the left, then names Julia and Gracie, presumably middle and right respectively. The episode ends with a picture of Emma, Rikki, and Cleo in the same left to right order.
    
8. Louise rescued a man in 1956; Emma rescued Zane in 2006.
    
9. In 1.23 In Too Deep, Rikki finds Julia's locket being sold as an estate piece, and tries to raise the money to buy it. Miriam buys it to spite Rikki, but the locket seems to hate Miriam. Zane manages to get it from Miriam, but not before she throws it in the cove. Emma goes after it, but Zane actually retrieves it, and gives it to Rikki. Rikki now owns Julia's locket.
    
10. Louise finally gives her locket (her "treasure") to Emma.
     
11. Julia tried telling all to her boyfriend Carl. He rejected her and then later betrayed her by trying to photograph her as a mermaid. Louise and Gracie destroyed the pictures, and nobody believed Carl. Of the four modern boyfriends who know the secret (Lewis, Ash, Zane, and Will), Zane (Rikki's boyfriend) is the least stable, and in 1.26 A Twist in the Tale, Zane was involved in a total betrayal of all three, but turned against his father and rescued them. And in 3.21 The Jewel Thief, Zane again threatened to break the secret, but later recanted.
     
12. The lockets, pictures, and identities all match. Cleo wears Gracie's locket, Rikki found and wears Julia's locket, and Emma received and wears Louise's locket.
     
13. Even hair colour lines up: Louise and Julia were both blondes, as are Emma and Rikki, and Gracie was the only brunette, like Cleo.
     
14. Gracie and Julia both had strife in their respective personal lives, whereas Louise did not. And Louise simply gave her locket to Emma. But let's retrace the history of the other two lockets, as they match their original owners.
    
    Gracie's locket sat at the bottom of the moon pool undisturbed for fifty years. Emma found it, Miriam stole it, Rikki demanded it back from Miriam, returning it to Emma, who then gave it to Cleo. Later it developed a broken hinge. Lewis brought it to Max, who fixed it, and returned it to Lewis, who returned it to Cleo. Then Charlotte stole it from Cleo, and finally Lewis recovered it from Charlotte and returned it again to Cleo. So Gracie's locket left her possession, and sat underwater for fifty years, as Gracie was free of being a mermaid. It was broken, as she broke away from Max, and Max fixed it, as Max spoke with Lewis and persuaded him to not let Cleo push him away. And it was stolen twice.
    
    Julia presumably kept her locket in her possession until she died, but it was sold as an estate piece. Rikki found it, but Miriam bought it. The chain kept tangling in Miriam's hair, as if the locket hated Miriam (it never tangled in Rikki's hair). When trying to untangle it, Miriam's friend Tiffany accidentally broke it, but was able to fix it with her bare hands. Julia had a betrayal from Carl, which she never quite got over, but after time did rebuild her relationship with Louise and Gracie. Miriam threw the locket in the cove, angry over a broken relationship with Zane, who then retrieved it for Rikki. But Zane and Rikki have had a bit of a rocky relationship.
    
    A little side note: both of these lockets were briefly handled by Miriam.
     
15. Interestingly, Emma retrieved all three lockets from underwater; (technically she went after Julia's locket in the cove, but Zane actually retrieved it).
     
16. The matches are unmistakable: Emma = Louise, Cleo = Gracie, Rikki = Julia; Lewis = Max, and Zane = Carl. (Honourable mention: Isabella = Eva, from 300 years ago.)

Every Fifty Years, and the Story of Gracie, Julia, and Louise

As evidenced by the storyline, it appears that every fifty years, one or more young girls are "called" in a way to one of the sea caves.

While the show features a threesome from the early twenty-first century, the same moon pool produced called three others back in the 1950's. Interestingly, the previous three parallel the modern three.

Certain gifts are imbued to each of them for manipulating water, and with phenomenally high power. Cleo can move, shape, and manipulate water. Emma can flash-freeze water. And Rikki can flash-boil water.

Their moon pool on Mako Island transformed the three of them together, as it had done so fifty years earlier with Gracie, Louise, and Julia, and so depended on having a threesome. When Emma was away from home for an extended time, Isabella was brought in to complete the threesome. She had become a mermaid individually at the age of nine at a different sea cave on the Irish coast. Even that area had a three hundred year old mermaid legend. Isabella's gift is to gel and harden water.

Gracie had a boyfriend Max who was deeply fond of her. He explored the island and discovered the three of them in the moon pool. The others were a bit frightened that the secret was broken, but Gracie was relieved that she didn't have to hide from Max anymore. And Max proved to a loyal friend of the three of them.

Julia had in mind to break her secret to her boyfriend Carl, with whom Gracie and Louise eyed with some suspicion. Despite his good looks, they didn't trust Carl. They warned Julia, but she rebelled, saying "Friends don't give friends ultimatums." When Julia confessed all, Carl rejected her. Then a few months later, invited Julia to prove her claim. When she did, he had a camera ready and sought to expose her publicly. Fortunately, Gracie and Louise were nearby and managed to destroy the pictures. But Julia never quite got over the betrayal.

It took time, and they rebuilt their friendship.

But Gracie found the mermaid gift too difficult to live with. Max tried the best he could to show his devotion to Gracie, but perhaps it was the Julia betrayal that pushed her to the edge. Max did some silversmithing, and had a bright idea. He made three matching lockets for them, hoping that it would help Gracie to embrace what she had become.

Louise thought the lockets were a wonderful idea, and used them as a token to covenant their friendship and keep the secret. Gracie accepted her locket for a time, but became increasingly tormented with the thought that she was no longer human.

Gracie enjoyed a bit of a modelling career and was desperate to free herself from the mermaid curse. Before Max, she threw her locket in the moon pool and drove Max away.

The three of them had evidently discovered that taking a dip in the moon pool under a lunar eclipse would suspend the mermaid effect temporarily, until the following day. When a rare planetary alignment came up behind the full moon, Gracie took a chance and jumped in the moon pool. And there she found herself free of the mermaid effect permanently.

Gracie never saw Max again, but she married and had a family, and found recluse telling her own daughter Annette, and later granddaughter Charlotte bedtime stories about mermaids.

Louise and Julia went on with their lives. Louise married and bought a houseboat with her husband. Gracie passed away as a young grandmother of 55 in the mid-nineties. Louise, now a widow, wondered if she would see mermaids again. She stayed on her lonely houseboat, the Lorelei watching Gold Coast. Perhaps she had some knowledge that it would be fifty years from when she became a mermaid. And she wondered how Julia was doing, having not heard from her in some time.

Then one day, when she was 65 years old, Louise noticed an interesting 15-year-old girl selling ice cream at the local Marine Park. Then she noticed that this girl was wearing Gracie's locket! (Emma had found it in the bottom of the moon pool, kept it for a time, and given it to Cleo.) Louise initiated conversation with Cleo, keeping herself a bit mysterious at first.

Louise remembered that when the mermaid effect was fresh, the full moon would play havoc with their powers and cause one or more of them develop a 12 hour "moon fever" and go all "gaga". While Louise had not formally met all three, Cleo was mystified as to how this strange "old woman" knew them so well, and even the names of Emma and Rikki.

Louise tried to warn Cleo about the full moon. If the three new mermaids matched one to one to Louise's group, then Rikki would match Julia's ability to boil water and become a firestarter if she developed moon fever. Louise warned Cleo that Rikki had the most dangerous power of all.

Still, Cleo had trouble comprehending, and one by one, Emma, Cleo, and Rikki discovered what the moon fever could do.

But Louise found herself growing old. She had a weak heart. And her houseboat had become equally worn out. The hull was almost rusted through in places. And she had fallen into debt with mooring fees. The boat was deemed unseaworthy and was being impounded. Emma properly met Louise around this time and tried to help by temporarily boarding Louise at her own home.

Louise had pictures of herself, Gracie and Julia as mermaids, along with her own precious locket that she so deeply treasured. Fearing her boat would be taken and the contents discovered, she desperately tried to take it out to sea. But she had twice damaged Zane Bennett's jet ski, who had heard her say the word "treasure" and was determined to get some compensation.

When Emma discovered in the morning that Louise had left, and her boat was gone, she persuaded Cleo's boyfriend Lewis, the only other outsider who knew their secret, to try looking for Louise's boat at sea. Zane was also trying to catch up.

The Lorelei ran poorly, and was in grave danger of sinking. Zane arrived first, and demanded payment. Louise, was frightened that her critical evidence might be discovered, and she suffered a mild heart attack and collapsed just before Emma arrived with Lewis. As they left to take Louise to a hospital on shore, Zane determined to stay behind with his own boat, hoping to search for the "treasure". But the Lorelei was unstable and began to sink. Zane found himself trapped inside. When Emma saw an explosion on the boat, she left Lewis to take care of Louise and dove in, knowing that Zane could actually drown. Emma saw the boat go down with Zane trapped inside, and she chanced a mermaid rescue, of which Zane caught a glimpse before passing out.

Louise recovered and was able to find a home at a senior's complex.

Later, Emma did a dive on the sunken houseboat and recovered all of the secret pictures, and Louise's locket. Then Louise reviewed all of the pictures for Emma, Cleo, and Rikki.

One day, Rikki happened to notice a matching locket in a jewelery story window. It was being sold as an estate piece. She couldn't afford to buy the locket at the time but did take some pictures of it. Zane was thinking to buy it for Rikki, but his former girlfriend Miriam bought it deliberately to spite Rikki. When Louise saw the pictures, she recognized it as Julia's locket, and since it was being sold as an estate piece, she concluded that Julia had passed away. When Miriam discovered that she could never have Zane, she angrily threw the locket in the cove. Zane recovered it from the water and gave it to Rikki.

Upon holding the locket, Louise gave it back to Rikki. And on realizing that the three lockets could now be together again, she took off her own locket and gave it to Emma, hoping that once again, the three lockets would symbolize the covenant to keep the secret.

Introduction

Three Ordinary Girls - in an extraordinary situation. That's the show's premise. The title song is "No Ordinary Girl".

The premise seems a bit juvenile, that these three should have a chance encounter with a sea cave under moonlight to be transformed into mermaids. And yet, with a seemingly fairy-tale like premise, such a beautifully made show has been crafted.

Many of the teen shows that I've seen recently, (and not to name names), I find to be just plain silly. If I want silly, I'll watch Splat-a-Lot - at least its somewhat fun to watch.Or I'll watch the Flying Circus, which an English friend introduced me to when I was ten years old.

I'm a recreational scuba diver, and my youngest daughter, who is now eleven, has always fancied herself a mermaid. She's almost old enough to take Open Water, and then I'll have one of my own kids as a dive buddy.

We found H2O quite by chance a couple years ago, with a presentation of a movie form that had been compiled from amongst the first ten or so episodes of the first season. We remarked at the delight-fulness and sheer beauty of the show and went after collecting all the episodes.

I didn't think I would enjoy H2O as much as I did.

The characters are all intelligent and true-to-life. The storyline is well thought out and well connected. The comedy elements do not rely on any of the girls being patently ditzy or clumsy, but simply being caught in awkward situations. And because of the extreme delicacy of their "secret", they must all be very careful to protect it.

But water is very hard to avoid in day-to-day life. While it is perfectly harmless to drink water, a little splash of water anywhere on their skin starts a ten second countdown. If you can't dry it off in time, you've got that long to run and hide.

So in this blog, I shall post my own reviews and opinions on the show. Comments are welcome, but will be moderated. Foolish comments will only be deleted, so don't bother.