Where the hell was Toby?


I was so confused by episodes 2 and 3. In the first episode Toby was traveling around Europe so Nick was alone in the house with Cat. But then the family returns and many years pass over the span between episode 1-3. Why was Toby so nonexistent in most of the series? Nick's whole reason for having been in this family's house in the beginning was because he was best friends with Toby....but yet they barely have any scenes together in the entire series. He ends up becoming closer with Cat! It just confused me.

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I haven't read the book but maybe that explains it. Perhaps Toby was distancing himself from the train wreck of a family he had?

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I was equally as confused by his absence, mercyonme. (Almost as much as I was by Elena's getting in the "last word" on Nick, which made no sense to me whatsoever, but I'll look for an appropriate thread on which to post my thoughts on this!)

Nick's raison d'ĂȘtre for living where he does is Toby, yet we rarely see this "best mate" of his!

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After having given it some thought, it makes sense to me that Toby would rarely be around.

When they first enter the house together, and Nick asks something like, "You live *here*?" Toby makes a point of saying that his *parents* do; he's a university graduate and obviously eager to leave the nest and start his own life. (When Gerald says something mildly derogatory about Nick's hometown, now a part of his constituency, and subsequently apologizes, Nick tells him not to worry, he couldn't wait to leave it, himself; his break from home apparently occurred when he went off to college.) While it isn't all that uncommon these days for young people his age to keep on living/move back in with Mom and Dad, in the early '80s kids wanted out! (This is from my own - American - experience, and per my having taught and advised university students for decades; I could be way off the map, though, when it comes to kids in England.)

As far as their friendship goes, it's (again) been my experience that people one was close to in college tend to fall by the wayside once that common bond is removed from the picture. Perhaps Toby would have spent more time at his parents' home - or even continued to live there - to look over Cat had Nick not stepped in as the "surrogate son" (as I believe Gerald once calls him.)

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