The first episodes of "E Street" aired in January 1989. After the much publicised launch and following generally positive critical reviews, "E Street" surprisingly did not perform well in Australian ratings. The opening episodes were seen as left-wing and relentlessly uncompromising in their approach to difficult and taboo subjects; for example, the second episode of "E Street" included a story arc about a young woman with severe learning difficulties who becomes pregnant after implied sexual abuse by a gang of young men. The subject of rape, cohersion and the legalities of forced abortion are all explored, and then abruptly conclude with the woman attempting to commit suicide and losing her unborn baby. A couple of weeks later, a four episode story arc commenced which followed a ten-year-old boy who finds his mother dead from an overdose of valium in their crumbling bedsit. He goes to live with a foster family, but the boy accuses his foster-father of sexual abuse. Homelessness, child abuse, domestic abuse, suicide, incest, disability, alcoholism, drug addiction, an armed robbery and illegal immigration are all covered explicitly in early episodes, but these often grim and socially conscious storylines were interspersed with lighter scenes, such as Rhonda and Sarah's cocktail party, Elly and Bob's slowly developing romance, and Rhonda unknowingly purchasing bedroom furniture from a porn baron. This gave the series a rather uneasy balance of crime and heavy drama mixed with lightweight soap opera and slapstick comedy.