I personally think Janine is the best character in the programme at the moment. I'll go even further than that and say that, after Sharon and - quite possibly - Dot, she's right up there with the icons. Along with Phil Mitchell and Max Branning, she's the most complex and nuanced female character in the history of the programme.
Actually, it angers me that most people, especially those who purport to be long-term viewers (and yes, I'm looking at that vile contrarian troll vald who lives under a bridge near Digital Spy Soaps forum), are incapable of seeing this character as anything other than the one-dimensional "evil Janine." If these people had actually watched and mentally digested Janine's story since childhood - which we saw unfold on screen - instead of picking their noses or scratching their asses, you'd know what made Janine the way she is today.
Janine has massive trust issues, and these are all tied to her relationship with her father. Honestly, these Eastenders' characters with daddy issues are really beginning to feel trite now, but Janine was actually one of the original ones with a father problem. Also, one didn't really have to be a long-term viewer to understand Janine's backstory. One of the few good things Bryan Kirkwood did was to introduce Lydia Simmonds, Janine's maternal grandmother, who gave a pretty accurate account of the Butcher background, albeit from a different perspective.
In a nutshell, Frank Butcher was engaged to June Simmonds when he met 17 year-old Pat Harris and fell in love. However, when he discovered June was pregnant with their daughter Clare, he married her. Pat went onto marry Pete Beale and, subsequently, Brian Wicks. Frank and June had two more children, Ricky and Diane, and years later, when June was approaching menopause, she fell pregnant with Janine, a totally unplanned baby.
Janine was years younger than her siblings, and when she was little more than a toddler, June died from cancer, leaving Frank with two adolescents at home and a very young child. Frank found it hard to cope and farmed Janine out to Clare, who was an adult, to raise. From the beginning, Janine was made to feel an inconvenience - her mother was ill, her father easily perturbed, and once he couldn't cope, she was sent away.
When Frank married Pat, Clare "returned" Janine to Frank. Now that he had a wife, Pat could cope with Janine. Janine was five and acted out. She craved Frank's attention and was jealous of Pat's position in the family. Subsequently, she was sent back to Clare, made to feel unwanted and she felt let down. Fast forward another few years and Janine's back again, only this time, Frank walks out on his entire family. She bonds with Pat during Pat's struggles to hold the family together and bonds even more with Roy Evans as a father figure.
Then Frank returns, and she leaves with Frank for Manchester.
A few years after that, Frank returns to Walford and begins a relationship with Peggy Mitchell. They marry and Janine returns (now Charlie Brooks), a fifteen year-old schoolgirl. She beds Jamie Mitchell and gets up to all sorts. In 2000, when Frank is caught cheating on Peggy with Pat, he leaves Walford, leaving Janine, who's sixteen, with Peggy. Peggy promptly throws her out.
This begins Janine's grifting and scamming, and her associations with older men - Terry Raymond, Billy Mitchell, and then David the Jewish guy and Archie Mitchell. She's looking for a father figure and one who is relatively solvent, because one of Frank's mojos for a peaceful life was to throw money at Janine. At her lowest point, Janine is reduced to prostitution, sleeping with Ian Beale and then blackmailing him. Also at her lowest point, she was assaulted by Laura Beale and reduced to eating dog's food. She was accused of sending hate mail to Walford residents and pilloried for something she didn't do. Ian Beale's oldest son had orchestrated that.
Before anyone starts wailing that she killed Barry, she didn't. Yes, she married Barry for financial reasons and because she thought he only had a few months to live and would leave her a comfortable young widow. That much is true. But she didn't murder Barry. They argued on a mountain top, Barry began to hit on some uncomfortable truths that Janine refused to acknowledge. She moved away from him, he sought to touch her and she pushed him away. He lost his balance and fell.
Watch the clip. Note the horror on Janine's face when Barry's fallen, and the fact that at first, when she goes down to where he's lying, she tentatively attempts to touch him, before her control takes over. Barry is dying and is dead within a minute.
She was subsequently imprisoned for killing Laura Beale, which she didn't do at all, and then embarked again on a life of scamming and grifting.
At the present moment, Janine is suffering from post-partum depression, but also from a neurosis which has been building since she married Ryan Molloy back in 2010.
It has to be said that Ryan pursued Janine. Ryan pushed marriage. It was Janine who was delaying things - even then her trust issues came to the fore. On their wedding day, she gave him ample opportunity to get out of the commitment, but he promised fidelity. Within a couple of months, Ryan was shagging Stacey and lying to Janine.
Of course the outcome of the Janine-Ryan-Stacey situation left Stacey smelling like a rose and Janine the pariah once again. When she cared for and looked after her dying grandmother and received her inheritance, Kirkwood had Pat connive with Ryan Molloy to frame Janine for Lydia's death, then conspired with Norman to contest the will, and finally urged Ricky to tear up the cheque for £100k Janine had given him.
By the time Pat died and Janine had reconciled with her, Janine was in the hormonal first stages of pregnancy. She even told Pat she didn't trust the baby's father. Everything she's suffering now is a culmination of events which have unfolded since her marriage to and separation from Ryan - Pat's death and the departure of Ricky, which left her mourning and in a state of isolation; Michael's machinations to scam Jean out of money Jean stole, which resulted in Jean assuming Janine was part of this situation; the planning of the wedding when Janine was heavily pregnant; Cora's bullying of Janine, especially when she was in the early stages of labour on her wedding day; Jean touching Janine's stomach and telling her that the baby would be unloved. Then there was the premature birth, itself, and Scarlett's condition. And all through this, Michael is subtly undermining her.
Janine has no support with this child. Carol and Bianca are away, Pat is dead, Dot has departed. No one's offered any sort of reassurance to her, and Kat's about to tell her Michael doesn't love her.
Couple this with post-partum depression and you have a cauldron beginning to boil.
It's beyond me how a community could change 360 degrees in attitude toward a chav like Lola, someone who's stolen and generally treated people like shit, but still react adversely towards Janine.
Don't get me wrong. Janine's no saint. She's done some despicable things and has behaved abominably on occasion; but she's loved and looked after her family - providing a roof over Bianca's head at a nominal rent, for which she's received scant thanks. She bought Pat's house, discharged her debts and paid for her funeral. She's been supportive of Whitney. She's looked after Billy, and he repaid her by stealing off her. She's constantly being told how much Saint Stacey, a real homewrecker twice over and a murderer, was loved. Dippy Jean couldn't even apologise to her properly.
And after all of this, in the throes of paranoia heightened by post partum depression, she'll leave her child, saying she's not good enough to be a wife and a mother; and when she returns, she's sure to be vilified by those paragons of virtue, led by Kat the slut and her minons.
It's about time Janine had a real friend.
Actually, it angers me that most people, especially those who purport to be long-term viewers (and yes, I'm looking at that vile contrarian troll vald who lives under a bridge near Digital Spy Soaps forum), are incapable of seeing this character as anything other than the one-dimensional "evil Janine." If these people had actually watched and mentally digested Janine's story since childhood - which we saw unfold on screen - instead of picking their noses or scratching their asses, you'd know what made Janine the way she is today.
Janine has massive trust issues, and these are all tied to her relationship with her father. Honestly, these Eastenders' characters with daddy issues are really beginning to feel trite now, but Janine was actually one of the original ones with a father problem. Also, one didn't really have to be a long-term viewer to understand Janine's backstory. One of the few good things Bryan Kirkwood did was to introduce Lydia Simmonds, Janine's maternal grandmother, who gave a pretty accurate account of the Butcher background, albeit from a different perspective.
In a nutshell, Frank Butcher was engaged to June Simmonds when he met 17 year-old Pat Harris and fell in love. However, when he discovered June was pregnant with their daughter Clare, he married her. Pat went onto marry Pete Beale and, subsequently, Brian Wicks. Frank and June had two more children, Ricky and Diane, and years later, when June was approaching menopause, she fell pregnant with Janine, a totally unplanned baby.
Janine was years younger than her siblings, and when she was little more than a toddler, June died from cancer, leaving Frank with two adolescents at home and a very young child. Frank found it hard to cope and farmed Janine out to Clare, who was an adult, to raise. From the beginning, Janine was made to feel an inconvenience - her mother was ill, her father easily perturbed, and once he couldn't cope, she was sent away.
When Frank married Pat, Clare "returned" Janine to Frank. Now that he had a wife, Pat could cope with Janine. Janine was five and acted out. She craved Frank's attention and was jealous of Pat's position in the family. Subsequently, she was sent back to Clare, made to feel unwanted and she felt let down. Fast forward another few years and Janine's back again, only this time, Frank walks out on his entire family. She bonds with Pat during Pat's struggles to hold the family together and bonds even more with Roy Evans as a father figure.
Then Frank returns, and she leaves with Frank for Manchester.
A few years after that, Frank returns to Walford and begins a relationship with Peggy Mitchell. They marry and Janine returns (now Charlie Brooks), a fifteen year-old schoolgirl. She beds Jamie Mitchell and gets up to all sorts. In 2000, when Frank is caught cheating on Peggy with Pat, he leaves Walford, leaving Janine, who's sixteen, with Peggy. Peggy promptly throws her out.
This begins Janine's grifting and scamming, and her associations with older men - Terry Raymond, Billy Mitchell, and then David the Jewish guy and Archie Mitchell. She's looking for a father figure and one who is relatively solvent, because one of Frank's mojos for a peaceful life was to throw money at Janine. At her lowest point, Janine is reduced to prostitution, sleeping with Ian Beale and then blackmailing him. Also at her lowest point, she was assaulted by Laura Beale and reduced to eating dog's food. She was accused of sending hate mail to Walford residents and pilloried for something she didn't do. Ian Beale's oldest son had orchestrated that.
Before anyone starts wailing that she killed Barry, she didn't. Yes, she married Barry for financial reasons and because she thought he only had a few months to live and would leave her a comfortable young widow. That much is true. But she didn't murder Barry. They argued on a mountain top, Barry began to hit on some uncomfortable truths that Janine refused to acknowledge. She moved away from him, he sought to touch her and she pushed him away. He lost his balance and fell.
Watch the clip. Note the horror on Janine's face when Barry's fallen, and the fact that at first, when she goes down to where he's lying, she tentatively attempts to touch him, before her control takes over. Barry is dying and is dead within a minute.
She was subsequently imprisoned for killing Laura Beale, which she didn't do at all, and then embarked again on a life of scamming and grifting.
At the present moment, Janine is suffering from post-partum depression, but also from a neurosis which has been building since she married Ryan Molloy back in 2010.
It has to be said that Ryan pursued Janine. Ryan pushed marriage. It was Janine who was delaying things - even then her trust issues came to the fore. On their wedding day, she gave him ample opportunity to get out of the commitment, but he promised fidelity. Within a couple of months, Ryan was shagging Stacey and lying to Janine.
Of course the outcome of the Janine-Ryan-Stacey situation left Stacey smelling like a rose and Janine the pariah once again. When she cared for and looked after her dying grandmother and received her inheritance, Kirkwood had Pat connive with Ryan Molloy to frame Janine for Lydia's death, then conspired with Norman to contest the will, and finally urged Ricky to tear up the cheque for £100k Janine had given him.
By the time Pat died and Janine had reconciled with her, Janine was in the hormonal first stages of pregnancy. She even told Pat she didn't trust the baby's father. Everything she's suffering now is a culmination of events which have unfolded since her marriage to and separation from Ryan - Pat's death and the departure of Ricky, which left her mourning and in a state of isolation; Michael's machinations to scam Jean out of money Jean stole, which resulted in Jean assuming Janine was part of this situation; the planning of the wedding when Janine was heavily pregnant; Cora's bullying of Janine, especially when she was in the early stages of labour on her wedding day; Jean touching Janine's stomach and telling her that the baby would be unloved. Then there was the premature birth, itself, and Scarlett's condition. And all through this, Michael is subtly undermining her.
Janine has no support with this child. Carol and Bianca are away, Pat is dead, Dot has departed. No one's offered any sort of reassurance to her, and Kat's about to tell her Michael doesn't love her.
Couple this with post-partum depression and you have a cauldron beginning to boil.
It's beyond me how a community could change 360 degrees in attitude toward a chav like Lola, someone who's stolen and generally treated people like shit, but still react adversely towards Janine.
Don't get me wrong. Janine's no saint. She's done some despicable things and has behaved abominably on occasion; but she's loved and looked after her family - providing a roof over Bianca's head at a nominal rent, for which she's received scant thanks. She bought Pat's house, discharged her debts and paid for her funeral. She's been supportive of Whitney. She's looked after Billy, and he repaid her by stealing off her. She's constantly being told how much Saint Stacey, a real homewrecker twice over and a murderer, was loved. Dippy Jean couldn't even apologise to her properly.
And after all of this, in the throes of paranoia heightened by post partum depression, she'll leave her child, saying she's not good enough to be a wife and a mother; and when she returns, she's sure to be vilified by those paragons of virtue, led by Kat the slut and her minons.
It's about time Janine had a real friend.
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