Home and Away recap: Justin does a runner, is Tori and Christian’s wedding off?

Justin is like that shape-shifting drunk friend you take your eye off for a second and next thing they’ve done a runner and gone home with a kebab.

Justin doesn’t have a kebab (that I know of) but he does abscond from the hospital not once, but twice.

He’s just been rushed to the ED in a “semi-conscious” state, wakes up for long enough for Leah – who is surprisingly quite handy with a crowbar – to discover his stash that could be “cut with anything”, get a serving from his sister, Tori, before he proclaims, “you can’t make me stay here!”

He’s right, but wouldn’t a little nap after an overdose be nice?

“I need you to start dealing with fact that you’re an addict,” Tori says.

“Nah, nah,” Justin said as he shakes his head, vehemently denying it.

“You’re not my doctor, I want you replaced.”

So Leah, Tori and Christian aka Budget McDreamy (BM) are deep in conversation deciding what to do with Justin while he does a sneaky and bails from the hospital in his gown.

They catch him, it turns a bit violent and BM is put on Justin-watch duty because “addicts can be manipulative”.

But BM is distracted by Rachel, or as Maz puts it, “You mean the skydiver?” and wouldn’t you know, Justin has disappeared again.

Naturally Tori is infuriated because if BM wasn’t “so busy searching for your higher purpose in life”, Justin wouldn’t have ran away to the very far away and unknown location of *checks notes* the beach in front of the bait shop where Alf has been keeping an eye on him.

Leah sits down with Justin.

“Please don’t make me go back,” Justin pleads.

His aversion to receiving medical attention isn’t new, Justin pretended he didn’t have a tumour growing on his spine for a while, but Leah’s “heart can’t take it” and he agrees to get help for her and that’s the last we see of him for the night.

Then Tori and BM have a “talk” and it sounds like the wedding is off.

They should be on their honeymoon but Tori says BM “abandoned my brother to share life stories with some woman” aka the skydiver.

In the (almost) words of Christmas Queen Mariah Carey, “Why are you so obsessed with her?” Tori says.

“What’s happening with me has nothing to do with us,” BM says.

BM says he has this profound “connection” with Rachel the skydiving girl, which is because of their mutual near-death experience and Tori couldn’t possibly understand.

Please BM, this is Home and Away. Practically everyone has been at the brink of death, or even actually dead, including Tori, who was in a coma for the first six weeks of precocious baby Gracie’s life.

“All I know is that ever since Lewis, the only thing I’ve been doing is hurting you,” BM says.

“I think I need to move out.”

I might be more devastated about the wedding than Tori. I was so ready for my first Home and Away nuptials.

While this is going on Chloe is showing us a fine piece of overacting.

As we all know, she’s pretty immature and can’t understand why her mum and Ari “would put themselves through this again” referring to her brother Cody who “was born too early and then he died”.

Ari explains that he and Mai “want a chance to have our own baby” which is completely misconstrued by Chloe.

“Because I’m not yours?” Chloe says.

“Chloe I’ve been your father since you were a baby,” Ari replies.

…except for the last 18 years… but sure, I’ll let him have this one because the intention was there.

Then Chloe declares to Ryder, “Well I’m never having kids anyway” which isn’t addressed at this stage because the taco truck is an abysmal failure.

They’re broke and have no customers.

Nik (well Sienna) comes up with a mutually beneficial idea to host some kewel event with heaps of influencers that will be the “talk of the internet”.

The taco truck and will cater and Nik can resurrect his Insta because the “numbers are plateauing”.

But the gram is coming between Nik and Bella’s relationship as we always knew it would.

Nik “won’t even eat a taco” and his girlfriend says “you’re changing and I don’t like it very much”.