originally published in the long-defunct fashion-tabloid horror zine PERFUMED TRIGGER
(recovered from a water-damaged barback ledger in Double Bay)
Look, I’m going to level with you — I was three vodka slammers deep at a Koala Blue party when someone shoved a Betamax copy of Return to Eden into my crocodile-leather briefcase, right between a crushed pack of Dunhills and a vial of something that glowed faintly when the air conditioning shut off.
I watched it alone. Naked. On the 34th floor of a Gold Coast high-rise. The TV was bolted to the ceiling. I didn’t blink for three hours.
And let me tell you this:
RETURN TO EDEN is not television. It's revenge pornography filmed through a Swarovski ashtray, dipped in sunscreen and blood.
PART ONE: “STEPH, THE MEAT”
Stephanie Harper is rich. Dumb. Soft. The kind of woman who thinks marrying a tennis pro named Greg Marsden is a good idea. She wears cardigans the color of supermarket ham and smiles like a woman trying not to drop her pearls into a blender.
Then he feeds her to crocodiles.
Yes. Literal crocodiles.
Crocodiles! In a soap opera! I dropped my rum spritzer and screamed.
PART TWO: “EDEN, THE PHOENIX”
But she doesn’t die. Oh no.
She gets a full reconstructive surgery montage in what I swear is a discarded Duran Duran music video set. There’s a mad doctor, sculpting her face like it’s a Versace campaign. She reemerges from the ashes — Tara Welles, a supermodel forged from trauma and Malibu Barbie limbs.
“I had to kill Stephanie to become someone stronger.”
That’s not just a line. That’s a mission statement.
She returns to Sydney’s social circuit, hotter than Satan’s mistress and twice as ruthless. She infiltrates high society wearing waist-high heels and eyeshadow sharp enough to cut glass.
By this point, I’m chain-smoking clove cigarettes and screaming at the TV like it’s a horse at the Melbourne Cup.
PART THREE: “GORGEOUS MURDERCORE”
There’s betrayal. More betrayal. A flaming oil rig. Tennis sex. A brutal horse fall that ends a modeling career. Greg gets slapped into next week and the villainess Jilly — JILLY WITH THE CHEEKBONES OF DEATH — becomes a kind of Chanel-clad Lucifer, whispering poison into everyone’s martini.
This show is Dynasty with a vendetta.
Dallas if the Ewing family was staffed by ghosts and carnivorous orchids.
The editing is cocaine-fast. The lighting? A pastel hallucination. Everyone’s hair is twelve feet tall and trembling with rage. You don’t watch Return to Eden. You are flung headfirst into it like a body into Sydney Harbour.
FINAL VERDICT:
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
“Like if Judith Krantz adapted Oldboy for Qantas in-flight entertainment.”
“The best use of crocodiles and contouring ever broadcast.”
“I would tattoo this show onto the inside of my eyelids if I could.”
I finished the bottle. I called my ex. I cried.
Then I rewound the tape and watched it again.
LONG LIVE TARA WELLES.
JILLY FOREVER.
EDEN ISN’T A PLACE. IT’S A STATE OF VENGEFUL GLAMOUR.
— Dax Silver
(writing this while being chased through a botanical garden by a woman in heels shouting “YOU’LL NEVER BE HER AGAIN”)
No comments:
Post a Comment