Gurn, Gurn, Gurn - Review 27th September 2001

To every day
Gurn, gurn, gurn
There is a reason 
To gurn, gurn

If you're Lauren, Lucy, Alice or
Joey Branning

A fist in the eye
A prick up the arse
Over-acting a scene
Without any class

A chance to widen the eyes
A chance to inhale your stiff upper lip ...

Or better yet, here's a song to describe this episode ...

Helpless, helpless, helpless, helpless ... bloody fucking helpless.

Another in the series of dire episodes featuring characters we don't even love to hate, we just hate.

Another boring day in Branningville with all the action centering around the most unlikeable of all the Branning tribe  (or should I say tripe) - Derek, Alice, Joey and Lauren. Throw in that bag of bones, Lucy Beale, for good measure ...

Lucy Beale

A toad, an unbelieveably simple-minded girl, a gurner and two mouth-breathers. About all we learned tonight was something we'd long expected - mouth-breathers sometimes drool, which Joey did twice near the end of the episode. Literally. Not a pretty site, but then David Witts is not even a pretty boy or even an actor, for that matter.

Jaci Stephen in the Daily Mail expostulates about Kat's botoxed and collagened upper lip. She's not even noticed Jacqueline Jossa's. If Jossa's lip swells anymore and if she doesn't stop overacting and over-emphasizing her facial expressions - gurning, to the layman - she's in serious danger of sucking her upper lip up her nose and asphyxiating herself.

She really is a dreadful actress portraying a singularly unlikeable, entitled and spoiled little bitch of a character. who expects the world in return for doing sweet fanny adams. The tweenies at that poor excuse of a disco held more appeal than Jossa or her recreation of Lauren Branning. She needs to spend more time visiting Daddy at the Scrubs.

The whole Derek-Joey-peppy Alice thing is a joke.

"We can play ;I spy.' "

"I'll just go for a little wee-wee."

FFS, who says these things. "I-fucking-spy?" This is a girl who's eighteen and gets a thrill from riding with Daddy and big bro and playing childhood games whilst on the way to visit a mother with whom she no longer speaks?

Honestly, is she for real?

Take her away from the equation and all you have left is boring Derek and witless Joey

gagging his mouth open, lolling his tongue and now drooling in his hatred for Derek, whom he resembles in personality except for the fact that Jamie Foreman is that much a better actor than the steroidically-enhanced underwear model, Mr Witts, is.

Same old same old - except this time we begin to get the impression that Joey the tadpole is finding porking a bag of bones a tad boring and uncomfortable lately. 

Lucy the First (Melissa Suffield) was a one-trick actress who was incapable of showing any empathy or emotion. Hetti Bywater is a "nice gel" who tries to play downmarket, fails, and needs a good square meal. Her shoulders look as though she hasn't taken her clothes off their hangers. She wears pointy bras because she has no tits, so when wardrobe tarted her up in black (which slimmed her even more), gave her a hairstyle that was a cross between Sharon's and Roxy's and stuffed tissues and chicken filets down her front, it wasn't an improvement. However, it did get her fucked in Sharon's office of the club - a sackable offence for Joey the tadpole as (a) that was when he was working and (b) it could be considered gross misconduct. I'm seriously surprised that her pelvic bone hasn't lacerated his penis.

Ho-hum ... now we see the leaving off of Lucy, to be complemented by the snogging of Whitney the Walford Mattress and the impending forbidden lurrrve with Lauren the Gurner. Please, can David Witts leave after that?

This same old same old with Derek is boring.

Derek and Joey

In point of fact, they can all go - Derek, Joey, Alice and gurning Lauren. And take Lucy with them. This group of young actors are the most talentless crew ever to grace an EastEnders' screen - besides their characters being unlikeable and totally irredeemable.

Once again, Sharon is being sidelined to as a secondary character to the Brannings. She even uses Ian, again and again, as an assumed babysitter.

Roxy on the runaround again. People are talking and she's worried, suddenly, about her reputation. Don't worry, love. It's just that the writers are appealing to the low-information tranche of viewer and want to depict you as a slut. That's all. Roxy can sleep with one man a year and in a bed and she's a slut, whilst Lucy Beale can fuck in an office at a nightclub and she's Walford royalty. Give me a fucking break.

Phil is moving into the Vic. Can he not sack Fatboy and creepy Jean?

Finally, the Masoods, and scenes which heralded the first appearance of Gary Lucy. It's a shame Lucy's only going to be on screen for a few times. He's the sort of actor and character that the show needs. The irony of his character was in the first scene when he and his cronies arrived at the restaurant, only to be derided by Masood and AJ and eventually by Tamwar, on their pre-supposed immorality as investment bankers, only to be shown at the end, that Lucy's character had more morality and pathos about him than Syed. 

Of course, we know that Lucy's character is gay, and it was implied that his parents were less than pleased with his coming out, after listening to Syed's paean of self-pity. He really is an amoral creep, Syed, who thinks only of himself. If you recall, several weeks ago, he had Tamwar believing he'd solved the mortgage arrears. He's forged a cheque on his brother's name and now he's not above blaming his brother for the restaurant's problems when, as the man said, he's the one who's bankrupting his family. And his hand was out when Mummy Dearest offered him a lifeline in Kamil's savings.

Syed really is despicable, and this episode was bloody unwatchable.