Monday, July 23, 2012

Lola Gives Birth Tonight ... Who Gives a Shit?

Tonight sees two episodes of Eastenders, built around Billy Mitchell being an Olympic torch bearer and his granddaughter - granddaughter! - giving birth in a special seven-minute live segment during the second episode.

Needless to say, the live segment features Cora, whom TPTB are turning into a less-than-brilliant amalgamation of Pat, Peggy, Pauline, Dot and Big Mo. She's everywhere and everything for everybody ... Well, that's what the production team would like her to be. Instead, she's just an interfering old lag with a penchant for booze and a sharp lip.

Anyway, Lola gives birth, after what seems to have been a lifetime. Cora assists and ends up telling Lola she'll be a great mum. Now, that's two older women in as many episodes who've assessed that Lola will be a great mum - but considering that those two older women were Shirley and Cora, and neither of them were candidates for Mother of the Year, Lola will probably be better than they were, at least until the kid's taken into care.

Of course, Eastenders has spent the better part of Lola's screen time - and especially in recent episodes - emphasizing what a selfish, entitled, hardassed, totally unlikeable and irresponsible little chav she is. The very fact that she fell pregnant in the first place is testimony to her irresponsibility. Even the circumstances of the less-than-immaculate conception were as well. She blithely decided to fuck Ben just so Ben could figure out if he were gay or not, and she's ignorant enough to ascertain that because she was left less than satisfied, sexually, that - yep - Ben was gay. And that miscalculation was even more evidence of the level of Lola's ignorance.

Let's not beat about the bush (to use an entirely unintentional crude pun). Ben got enough of a stiffie to ejaculate enough sperm to make Lola pregnant. So poor Little Girl Mitchell comes into this world with a skank for a mother and a psychopath murderer for a dad ... what chance does she have? Especially with Billy Mitchell as a great-granddad.

But the purpose behind all this build-up of Lola the Unlikeable, is to show the viewers that she probably will be a brilliant, responsible mum, and we'll all love her to bits.

Except we won't.

This pregnancy was just another dinky storyline interposed with loads of other storylines, most of which were bad, to the point that it was forgotten. For the better part of this year, we didn't even know Lola was pregnant. Janine had a bump that was noticeable. Lola didn't. And the way she drank, the kid should at least shoot out in the throes of the DTs.

Truth is, no one gives a rat's arse about Lola the Unlikeable, and the sooner we see her leaving the Square, dragging Miss Damien behind her, will be a better day all around, because that will be one less unlikeable character played by one less pisspoor actress.

Since January, we've had two pregnancies on the Square - Lola and Janine. In the general scheme of things, Janine is the more important of the two characters and the more experienced actress, so why wasn't she allotted the live slot to give birth? Is this an Olympic thing or Eastenders' nod to that eternal loser and background character, Billy Mitchell, in order to validate his even being there?

No one gives a shit about Lola or her baby.

And one final mini-rant ... there's someone on Digital Spy called vaslav37, whose every other post is about Cora being landlady of the Vic. His latest perambulation is that Cora and Sharon should have the Vic jointly, and he's another idiot pushing the meme of Sharon being Cora's daughter. Even though it's been pointed out to him countless numbers of times that we know Sharon's birth mother. She's Carol Hanley, and we've seen her. To him, it makes no difference. In fact, he blithely proclaims that if the producers wanted to forget Carol Hanley, they should go ahead and forget she'd ever been introduced, because for him, it works better to have Sharon as Cora's long-lost daughter and a sister to bouncy Tan.

Ne'mind the long-term viewers who know Sharon's backstory and remember her reunion with her birth mother. We don't count. Anything to promote the ever-increasing cancer known as the Branning family and their satellites, and if Sharon's presence amongst them can validate their existence, stuff everything that's gone before.


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