Yes, the Past Is Important

There's a berk at the moment on a Digital Spy thread who's pissing all over himself because people are complaining about the totally understated reaction of Dot to Sharon being back in Walford.

His answer to every valid criticism is that whatever incongruity is noticed was probably something that happened off-screen, as in Ian told Dot that Sharon was back "off-screen," Sharon's spoken about Vicky and Michelle "off-screen," and Sharon mentioned Dennis on New Year's Day "off-screen."

I've heard of moving the goalposts, but this is ridiculous. But this is a common explanation given by the shippers and the tweenie-weenies who seek to justify everything about this version of EastEnders as good.

However, another thing which causes the berk in question to start throwing his toys from his pram is whenever someone mentions, in relation to Sharon, the absolutely abysmal continuity from her past that is sorely lacking this time around, and - because of the lack of it - impedes upon her character to the point that she's become a total stranger for most of the long-term viewers, who now consider her return a total failure and who are steadily growing to hate her as she is absorbed more and more into a sidelined Branning satellite.

Here are some of the obvious errors the writers have made this time around:-

• Sharon actually introduced herself to Janine Butcher: I don't know if you remember me ... Give me a break! Sharon has known Janine since Janine was five years old. She used to babysit her. Sharon was a close friend of Pat, Janine's step-mother, and of her father, Frank Butcher. Sharon was romantically involved with Simon Wicks, Janine's step-brother. Plus, Janine was living on the Square when Sharon returned in 2001, and was even involved in scenes with her.
• Since she's returned, she's said absolutely nothing about either Vicky, her sister, or Michelle, her best friend and Vicky's mother - both of whom were close relatives of Ian Beale.
• She was totally non-plussed at news of Pat's death. Sharon and Pat were close. Sharon entrusted the running of the Vic to Pat when she left Grant.
• On New Year's Day, there was no mention whatsoever of it being the anniversary of her husband's death.
• She's not even mentioned either of her parents since returning.
• Sharon knew Jane Beale (or Clarke, as she was then). She was living with Ian at the time of Sharon's marriage to Dennis. Ian and Jane even tried to "buy" the Vic from a fleeing Chrissie.
• Sharon and Peggy resolved their differences when the Mitchells helped expose Chrissie as a murderer. But according to whoever wrote the episode leading up to Lexi's christening, Peggy chose not to attend because Sharon would be there. WTF?

This is not Sharon - or rather, it's a totally new version of Sharon created by a gaggle of writers who have no knowledge or regard of the show in particular and the continuing drama genre, as a whole. Yes, I am talking about writers like Perrie Balthazar, Lauren Klee and the now fully-fledged storyliner wunderkind Emer Kenney.

They are either ignorant of what's occurred before in the programme, or they are so arrogant that they think they have the remit to write the show in their own vision for their own generation of viewers with no regard to the past.

If that be the case, their vision is limited, their arrogance unparalleled, and Lorraine Newman should be smacked with a wet fish for allowing the 28 year-old established brand of EastEnders to be sullied as such.

Like the berk on Digital Spy, these people adhere to the millennial mantra that anything happening before a person is born is not important. That is stupid. A wise man once said:-

Those who are ignorant of the past are condemned to repeat it.

Oddly enough, that's one of the premises which make a continuing drama - or a soap - watchable. Continuing drama has an emphasis on the word "continuing" - linking the past with the present. As much as berks like the DS berk or the triumvirate of berks above on the production team might hate to admit it, your past stays with you. It shapes you and forms what you become in the present.

The reason Phil Mitchell is such a miserable, unhappy bully and brute lies in several events which occurred in his past - his love for a woman who has been unattainable and, even before that, a childhood grounded in being physically abused by his father. In fact, one of the most reverberating and continuing stories in EastEnders has been the way the Mitchell men, from various generations, have been systematically abused  by their fathers or carers and how this abuse has impinged upon them as adults - from Archie to the Bruvs to Billy Mitchell.

They've another such storyline staring them in the face now, but they're trivialising it - the historuy of alcohol dependence in the Cross family: Cora's certainly an alcoholic, Rainie's a recovering alcoholic, who acknowledges that her problem stems from her mother and sister, Tanya is certainly a borderline alcoholic and Lauren's on the fast route to becoming one. Instead of focusing on all of this in dealing with Lauren's problem, they will feature Lauren, alone, and deal with the problem quickly ... basically because the actress is just so cute.

Ian's driven nature comes from a desire to please his father, his propensity towards trophy wives is part of proving himself to a community who always thought him the runt of the Beale litter, his Oedipal nature showed himself in his marriage to Jane, who was, in many ways, very similar to his mother. His pettiness and vindictiveness stem from his Auntie Pauline - all of which are important to his character and are recognised as part and parcel of his past.

No one's saying everyone has to reference some past character in every episode or some past event, but long-standing characters are recognised by their behaviour under certain circumstances. Perrie Balthazar wrote that infamous scene where Jack and Phil stood either side of Sharon at the bar of the Vic, discussing possession of her as if she were a blow-up plastic doll. 

First of all, Phil Mitchell would never ever discuss a woman in those terms, not in front of her and not someone whom he's known for twenty years; secondly, Sharon would never countenance either of them speaking about her like that and in her presence. She would have told them both where to go and how to get there and left them to it.

This is what makes her unrecogniseable, just as Kat the abuser and the eternal victim, blaming everyone for her inappropriate behaviour but herself is unfamiliar to viewers or the feckless Bianca suddenly turning rude and obnoxious, even to the people who are kind to her, reckoning she's entitled to steal what she wants because she's poor.

These are three iconic women who identified the decades in which they dominated the soap. Now they are reunited in one era, and none of the three are either recogniseable or likeable.

All because the writers who give them life have re-created them in their own vision.

This is why EastEnders is failing at the moment, and it's the fault of the Executive Producer and the children she employs to create the programme.