Very uncomfortable scenes altogether.
There’s comes a point in every soap’s life when writers have to stop and think whether a storyline is actually justified or if they’re just throwing a load of questionable content at viewers in an attempt to shock them into submission.
Soaps usually overstep this line massively when it comes to serial killers and violence, leaving people a bit pissed off, but essentially grand.
When it comes to more sensitive matters though – like grooming – you generally have to be a bit more careful with how totally shocking you can be.
Which is exactly why people have been having none of Emmerdale‘s Maya/Jacob storyline this past while.
The schoolteacher began grooming her boyfriend’s son – and her student – a few weeks back, tentatively leading audiences into a storyline that was going to tackle abuse while exploring that ways that young people can be tricked into trusting their elders into believing that such a relationship is normal.
It isn’t, and while Emmerdale producers had approached Barnardos to ensure that they were tackling the storyline as sensitively as possible, people just aren’t that into watching a teacher “make out” with her student on Christmas Day – and then forcing him to watch her have sex with his dad from a wardrobe.
Because yeah, that is unfortunately what happened.
https://twitter.com/moore95_pamela/status/1077664683673481216
Not liking the Maya &Jacob storyline. It’s scunnering me 🤮didn’t like the role she played in holby city either. She gets cast as this female fatale role and I don’t get it 🤔It’s disturbing that she is messing with a boys head-now he is about to watch her & his dad🤮#emmerdale
— Tina (@doveuu) December 25, 2018
https://twitter.com/mikey65_mike/status/1077660116156104706
https://twitter.com/Andrewclink7/status/1077658631670251521
OK this Maya/Jacob storyline is foolishness now KMT #Emmerdale
— Louise Reid (@LouReid84) December 25, 2018
This Maya and Jacob storyline needs to come to an end😩🤢 #emmerdale pic.twitter.com/vCaDJyKTkN
— em ❄️ (@emlouixe) December 25, 2018
Still though, if this storyline can at least teach a few people that grooming is unequivocally wrong no matter who is doing the grooming, it may have done some good.
But it remains to be seen whether all of the discomfort is worth it just yet.
