I was too ill to watch this on Monday evening. Too ill to watch it on Tuesday and still too ill to watch on Wednesday. To tell the truth, I was avoiding it.
Sometimes, it's nice to be surprised.
This was a watchable episode - if only for Shane Richie's and Jessie Wallace's performances, alone; but the rest of the crew slotted in nicely - with a few noticeable exceptions, which I'll name.
Suffice it to say that the most noticeable phenomenon which stands out in tonight's episode is the fact that Max Branning and Alfie Moon are two mediocre men saddled (literally) with wives who dress like streetcorner sluts. The difference between the women is one knows exactly from whence she came and owns it; the other is the eternal dirty girl, who only admits responsibility in a desperate attempt to get back what she so wantonly threw away.
Kat and Alfie: From Here to Eternity
Kat and Alfie ... Kat and Alfie ... has the same rythym to it as "Love and Marriage", doesn't it? Which is why, of course, one would always think that Kat and Alfie would be a Walford marriage etched in stone, one that would last ... well, from here to eternity. You'd be forgiven for thinking that after the send-off they got in 2005, wouldn't you?
Kat and Alfie were the couple you wanted to succeed, the one love match you wanted to last forever. When he returned for her in the snow on Christmas Day, you knew she'd buried all her demons, and that she'd found her man in the moon and that the loved each other unconditionally.
Then Bryan Kirkwood got hold of the tale and turned it into a horror story.
For the pas two-and-a-half years, we've watched Kat go from hero to zero. We've seen the abuse victim become the abuser - and before I go any further, I'm going to wag a cyber finger under the bullyboi noses of Walford Web Kindergarten Katapologists Bex and Will Slater-Mitchell and advise them that some victims of abuse learn to use their awful experiences as a means to justify inappropriate behaviour in the future; and some abuse victims become abusers, themselves.
Kat did and became both. We've watched her systematically abuse her husband both physically and emotionally. We've watcher her humiliate him publically and belittle his masculinity. We've watched her cheat on him without compunction and certainly with impugnity - always getting caught and always so terribly sorry (that she got caught, that is).
Alfie was right to throw her out when he found out about Derek at Christmas. I know the bullybois will say that he should have kicked her arse out in October, when he first discovered the affair. There are those who wonder why he only did it when he found out she'd been shagging Derek, after their affair had ended.
The reason Alfie did what he did when he did it can be summed up in two simple words:-
She lied.
That's right, Kat lied. Even when she was forced to confess she had been having an affair in October or September or whenever the hell it was, she still lied to Alfie.
She told him that he didn't know Shaggerman.
She told him Shaggerman lived in Catford.
She told him they didn't meet on the Square.
All lies.
When Alfie discovered the real identity of Shaggerman, even if the affair hadn't continued, he knew that Kat still couldn't be trusted.
I've said before that, when he's used correctly, Shane Richie is one of the strongest actors in EastEnders, and he showed as much in this episode. He's full of inner conflict, and it's written all over his face. He loves his wife, but he's with a woman who loves him and who is consumed with insecurity in this relationship because the first wife always seems to be in the face of the man she loves.
Yes, Alfie still loves Kat, but he can no longer trust her, and a marriage is nothing without trust. He has to move on with his life, and the only way he can do that is to end it with Kat.
I'll admit and I still do, that I don't like the way this storyline is going - the aftermath of the reveal has been told totally from Kat's point of view, presenting her as the sympathetic victim, instead of the heartless, dislikeable slut who just ripped apart her marriage. The viewers are smarter than Lorraine Newman reckons. After all, in forum poll after poll, Kat regularly tops the list of most hated characters, and now that Derek's dead, she's the mamma.
But Newman wants Kat saved, so we have to buy this version now which sees poor Kat, desperately loving Alfie from afar, wanting nothing but to be his wife and be together with him and having to suffer him being openly affectionate with Roxy. We have to stomach Roxy being a jealous, demanding bitch; and we have to watch the souring of her relationship with Alfie, which - last year- was one of the bright spots on programme's dim horizion. We know that this will last the better part of a year and end with their reunion at Christmas 2013 - their tenth anniversary. In fact, there was a subtle foreshadowing of that tonight, in the text of Alfie's prepared speech, the one he disregarded, when he alluded to their having been together for almost ten years.
So Alfie decides it's time to call time on Kat, but of course, Jean and creepy Michael find out first, which is bad enough; but Kat's got her own village idiot egging her on in the form of Bianca, who convinces Kat that Alfie's real reason for asking her upstairs for a drink later on, was because he wanted her back. It amazes me how no one in this entire debacle has yet to slam it into Kat's face that her behaviour destroyed her marriage, and she really shouldn't expect the wronged husband to want her back only to have her misbehave again.
Bianca is like Kat in that she thinks it's OK for her to bonk around with Dan Sullivan, but Ricky had to be kept on a tight lead. She thought of Ricky as a convenient child-minder until he returned home with Sam Mitchell in tow, and suddenly he became the object of her desire. Ricky and Bianca were supposed to have been a forever couple too ... until Bryan Kirkwood got hold of them.
Michael Moon's presence continues to irk me, and if I could fast forward all the unpleasant shit that's about to rain down until Queen of the Night Janine returns to smack the cack out of he cadaverous arse and send the Prince of Darkness off to daddy-hunt forgiveness, I would gladly do that. His exchange with Roxy was creepy enough, disdaining her interest in Alfie, refusing to see how or why anyone would be attracted to him. But then he insists on giving marital advice to Alfie, especially about how Alfie and Kat were to be the eternal couple ... what the fuck point was that, when his one-night-stand-great-love-affair-of-the-century-long-standing-affair-depending-on-what-day-of-the-week-who's-writing-the-episode-and-who-the-executive-producer-is did a helluva lot to rip that marriage apart too - for which he's shown no compassion nor asked for any forgiveness from Alfie.
He won't and he can't. Because he's a psychopath. Thank goodness, those sorts have short shelf lives. When Michael leaves, I hope he leaves in a box, hissing with sulfur and with a stake driven through his heart.
But the last two scenes between Alfie and Kat were their best. Alfie was totally honest - and tender and gentle - in telling Kat how he felt - that he loved her and would always love her, but he couldn't trust her, and so it had to end. He was actually quite cavalier about this, not blaming her, just sadly realising that his vision of them being together forever was just a fantasy. Too much had happened in between. You couldn't imagine a Grant Mitchell or an Ian Beale pulling this off. Maybe Max on a good day.
Both of Kat's reactions are typical Kat-the-Victim. Initially, now, at last, she actually admits that everything that led to this was her fault, that if Alfie took her back she'd be the perfect, sweet and faithful Mrs Moon - no more clubbing, nothing of that sort. She'd be whatever he wanted her to be. This was the cry of the desperate - and it was the manoeuvre Kat always makes when caught out - one more chance, and she'd show him how good she'd be ... Now let's go on a sex-filled holiday.
Her second reaction was even more spite-filled and typical Kat the victim bitch: finding out thata Jean, Michael and Roxy all knew about this before she did, and blaming Alfie for that. Alfie told Jean because he was forced to do so by Jean earwigging and thinking Roxy wanted her gone. So Kat resorts to her old tricks of ritual public humiliation - calling Alfie pathetic and saying how glad she was to be shot of him.
And Alfie gives her her own back - how he'd hoped they could have ended this with dignity and how he was kind enough to afford her that, but he knew deep down, she'd react this way, and her behaviour only convinced him that he didn't love her anymore.
There you go, Alfie. Well done, my son. How I wish this bitch were leaving!
Max and Kirsty: One for His Baby.
Kirsty's got a day off and Max has to work. Kirsty's all kitted out in leather, but Max isn't interested in sex. He has to work. I imagine the money he makes trying to sell one of four cars on the forecourt pays the weekly rent on the room where he and Kirsty live at the B and B.
However, by chance, Kirsty runs into Lauren the Lip, who doesn't work and isn't speaking to her father, in the cafe. Now this is an incongruity. Lauren's grandmother, Cora the Bora (who, thankfully, hasn't been seen for awhile, has spent all housekeeping money on booze and cigarettes, so Lauren has been sent out to forage in the cafe for obliging friends and relatives to cadge her meal. So she finds Kirsty, and immediately ascertains that Max had to work when Kirsty wanted to play. Instead, Lauren the Lip invites her stepma back to the house where her clusterfucking cousin Joey ...
... lives. Joey has told Lauren that she and Kirsty can stay there as long as they want. Joey maybe would like a threesome, but neither would understand what he would want because he's unintelligible. Of course, the first thing Lauren does is help herself to some drink she found in the house. (That must belong to Kat. Joey doesn't impress me as a wine-drinker, and Aa-asss doesn't drink, So that's stealing, right?)
If Michael giving relationship advice isn't bad enough, try Lauren out for size, especially when she's overtly trying to spook her father's new wife. Getting all dolled up for Max is what Yummy Mummy would do, until she'd find Max was bedding a girl half her age. When Kirsty replies that she's a different person from Lauren's mummy, Lauren smugly replies that Max is the same, and greedily hordes the booze when Kirsty leaves.
Because Kirsty is the mountain - or rather - two mountains brought to Mohammed (as in Max), when she sexes herself up and offers it to him on his desk in the portacabin. That desk has seen some action - Sean Slater and Carly Wicks, Max and creepy Becca, Max and Vanessa, Darren and Lauren ... and now this.
You know this will all end in tears. All I will say is: Watch Jack.
Phil and Sharon - oh, and Jack: He's Got Her Under His Skin.
Phil's back, and the first to feel his wrath is the Little Cock ...
Walford's very own racial stereotype - the faux cool, unintelligible black urban yoof. The next to know is Lola, the resident chav - and here's another spin the writers are trying to force-feed the viewing public.
Faced with a vociferous outcry from professional social workers for the pejorative way in which Trish Barnes was depicted, she's now been watered down beyond recognition, bigging up Lola's qualities. TPTB are doing a hardsell job on Lola for us too - because she's had a baby, we're now supposed to root for her and love her - ne'mind the fact that she's a common little trollope and a thief, that she has no manners and is adverse to authority. Ne'mind that since her baby's birth she's swathed her foot in chemical red paint and daubed her forehead with beauty cream. Ne'mind she only had the kid to get benefits. And ne'mind that, whenever she's caught doing something, it's never her fault because:-
Yes, yet another racial stereotype from the white, leafy surburban, middle-class minds of the EastEnders' writing room.
Ava the Rava and Whitney play a brief game of You Hand My My Arse and I'll Hand You Yours, with Ava (an educated professional who's spent an adult lifetime working with children between the ages of four and eleven) trying to explain the Whitney's role in whatever her new job is, and Whitney being her typically arrogant self in refusing to acknowledge authority and wisdom, and presuming to know more than Ava (whoever she is), because Whitney is that much more of an expert, having a fourteen year-old brother and an eight year-old brother, who are both stroppy, and a ten year-old sister who thinks she's twenty.
(No, Bitch, that's not the way to sell your qualities to a seasoned professional. Besides, you forgot to mention that you live with a stepma and a stepnan, one of whom has the emotional maturity of a five year-old and the other who throws hissy fits like a fourteen year-old girl suffering from PMT).
So Whitney's given the task of entertaining a group of what looks like twelve year-old delinquents and she decides they're going to write some rap - Whitney has a friend who loves rap, but she neglects to tell them that she slept with the friend until he became too nice and she dumped him, which is what she'll do to any bloke who becomes too nice and too dependable, like Tyler.
Until one little wotsit won't respond to Whitney's dynamic teaching skills and she seeks to include him by humiliation, which is actually Bianca's way and doesn't accomplish anything but a kick-off.
Enter Ava the Rava, to put the situation right quietly and effectively, and to make Whitney, whom she calls Britney, look small.
But in the end, it doesn't matter, because Ava the Rava tells Whitney, in the presence of Cock and Tyler and the entire pub, that Whitney was fab, I mean really fab, and that she loved her name.
Please. Stop. Stop now.
Observation: Cock and Tyler have now met. They can be unintelligible together. How long before we see subtitles?
Dorothy Pulls It Off. Again.
When I was well last week, I sang the praises of Dot the Matriarch. Now that I'm poorly and recuperating, I see things with a jaundiced eye. They're overcoating Dot with matriarch juice (as well as stylish clothes, which aren't Dot) too much. It's curdling.
Tonight's pastiche was a situation comedy interlude about a misunderstanding. Patrick thinks the Fox sisters don't want to look after him as he recovers, and they think he doesn't want them to look after him. They consider themselves his daughters, even though Anthony is really his son.
We now have our latest piece of retconning.
Hands UP, all ye who remember Anthony Truman having a wife and children?
Anthony was a missionary doctor in Cambodia, and Patrick has visited him there many times since Paul's death in 2005. There has been no mention of a wife named Sophie, and a man like Patrick wouldn't hesitate to mention grandchildren. In the front room of the B and B, there are pictures galore of Chelsea and Libby, Paul and Anthony, Paul's young daughter, and the Wicks' kids ... but no such pictures of any childen of Anthony Truman. In fact, the last time Patrick visited Anthony in Cambodia was in the wake of Heather's death in his grief.
Now we find he's not only acquired a wife and kids, but he lives in Glasgow.
You know, this show is classed as a continuing drama. That's continuing, meaning it has a past, a present to draw from the past and (hopefully) a future to draw from both. But when you have writers who make up facts as they go along in order to suit storyline of dialogue, then the show loses a huge chunk of credibility. It may be aiming itself at the younger edge and lower braincelled capacity of Millennials with Emer Kenny doing storylining, but people remember Anthony Truman was in Cambodia, and suddenly didn't sprout a wife and kids in Glasgow.
Pull the other one.
Anyway, that pastiche achieved its end - Patrick is going to stay with Denise and Kim, and Dot's smiling self-satisfyingly. It's rare when Rudolph Walker and Diane Parish are in a weak vignette, but only the fact that we had to endure the shit about Whitney tonight saved this segment from being the weakest of the lot.
Otherwise, the episode was watchable.
Sometimes, it's nice to be surprised.
This was a watchable episode - if only for Shane Richie's and Jessie Wallace's performances, alone; but the rest of the crew slotted in nicely - with a few noticeable exceptions, which I'll name.
Suffice it to say that the most noticeable phenomenon which stands out in tonight's episode is the fact that Max Branning and Alfie Moon are two mediocre men saddled (literally) with wives who dress like streetcorner sluts. The difference between the women is one knows exactly from whence she came and owns it; the other is the eternal dirty girl, who only admits responsibility in a desperate attempt to get back what she so wantonly threw away.
Kat and Alfie: From Here to Eternity
Kat and Alfie ... Kat and Alfie ... has the same rythym to it as "Love and Marriage", doesn't it? Which is why, of course, one would always think that Kat and Alfie would be a Walford marriage etched in stone, one that would last ... well, from here to eternity. You'd be forgiven for thinking that after the send-off they got in 2005, wouldn't you?
Kat and Alfie were the couple you wanted to succeed, the one love match you wanted to last forever. When he returned for her in the snow on Christmas Day, you knew she'd buried all her demons, and that she'd found her man in the moon and that the loved each other unconditionally.
Then Bryan Kirkwood got hold of the tale and turned it into a horror story.
For the pas two-and-a-half years, we've watched Kat go from hero to zero. We've seen the abuse victim become the abuser - and before I go any further, I'm going to wag a cyber finger under the bullyboi noses of Walford Web Kindergarten Katapologists Bex and Will Slater-Mitchell and advise them that some victims of abuse learn to use their awful experiences as a means to justify inappropriate behaviour in the future; and some abuse victims become abusers, themselves.
Kat did and became both. We've watched her systematically abuse her husband both physically and emotionally. We've watcher her humiliate him publically and belittle his masculinity. We've watched her cheat on him without compunction and certainly with impugnity - always getting caught and always so terribly sorry (that she got caught, that is).
Alfie was right to throw her out when he found out about Derek at Christmas. I know the bullybois will say that he should have kicked her arse out in October, when he first discovered the affair. There are those who wonder why he only did it when he found out she'd been shagging Derek, after their affair had ended.
The reason Alfie did what he did when he did it can be summed up in two simple words:-
She lied.
That's right, Kat lied. Even when she was forced to confess she had been having an affair in October or September or whenever the hell it was, she still lied to Alfie.
She told him that he didn't know Shaggerman.
She told him Shaggerman lived in Catford.
She told him they didn't meet on the Square.
All lies.
When Alfie discovered the real identity of Shaggerman, even if the affair hadn't continued, he knew that Kat still couldn't be trusted.
I've said before that, when he's used correctly, Shane Richie is one of the strongest actors in EastEnders, and he showed as much in this episode. He's full of inner conflict, and it's written all over his face. He loves his wife, but he's with a woman who loves him and who is consumed with insecurity in this relationship because the first wife always seems to be in the face of the man she loves.
Yes, Alfie still loves Kat, but he can no longer trust her, and a marriage is nothing without trust. He has to move on with his life, and the only way he can do that is to end it with Kat.
I'll admit and I still do, that I don't like the way this storyline is going - the aftermath of the reveal has been told totally from Kat's point of view, presenting her as the sympathetic victim, instead of the heartless, dislikeable slut who just ripped apart her marriage. The viewers are smarter than Lorraine Newman reckons. After all, in forum poll after poll, Kat regularly tops the list of most hated characters, and now that Derek's dead, she's the mamma.
But Newman wants Kat saved, so we have to buy this version now which sees poor Kat, desperately loving Alfie from afar, wanting nothing but to be his wife and be together with him and having to suffer him being openly affectionate with Roxy. We have to stomach Roxy being a jealous, demanding bitch; and we have to watch the souring of her relationship with Alfie, which - last year- was one of the bright spots on programme's dim horizion. We know that this will last the better part of a year and end with their reunion at Christmas 2013 - their tenth anniversary. In fact, there was a subtle foreshadowing of that tonight, in the text of Alfie's prepared speech, the one he disregarded, when he alluded to their having been together for almost ten years.
So Alfie decides it's time to call time on Kat, but of course, Jean and creepy Michael find out first, which is bad enough; but Kat's got her own village idiot egging her on in the form of Bianca, who convinces Kat that Alfie's real reason for asking her upstairs for a drink later on, was because he wanted her back. It amazes me how no one in this entire debacle has yet to slam it into Kat's face that her behaviour destroyed her marriage, and she really shouldn't expect the wronged husband to want her back only to have her misbehave again.
Bianca is like Kat in that she thinks it's OK for her to bonk around with Dan Sullivan, but Ricky had to be kept on a tight lead. She thought of Ricky as a convenient child-minder until he returned home with Sam Mitchell in tow, and suddenly he became the object of her desire. Ricky and Bianca were supposed to have been a forever couple too ... until Bryan Kirkwood got hold of them.
Michael Moon's presence continues to irk me, and if I could fast forward all the unpleasant shit that's about to rain down until Queen of the Night Janine returns to smack the cack out of he cadaverous arse and send the Prince of Darkness off to daddy-hunt forgiveness, I would gladly do that. His exchange with Roxy was creepy enough, disdaining her interest in Alfie, refusing to see how or why anyone would be attracted to him. But then he insists on giving marital advice to Alfie, especially about how Alfie and Kat were to be the eternal couple ... what the fuck point was that, when his one-night-stand-great-love-affair-of-the-century-long-standing-affair-depending-on-what-day-of-the-week-who's-writing-the-episode-and-who-the-executive-producer-is did a helluva lot to rip that marriage apart too - for which he's shown no compassion nor asked for any forgiveness from Alfie.
He won't and he can't. Because he's a psychopath. Thank goodness, those sorts have short shelf lives. When Michael leaves, I hope he leaves in a box, hissing with sulfur and with a stake driven through his heart.
But the last two scenes between Alfie and Kat were their best. Alfie was totally honest - and tender and gentle - in telling Kat how he felt - that he loved her and would always love her, but he couldn't trust her, and so it had to end. He was actually quite cavalier about this, not blaming her, just sadly realising that his vision of them being together forever was just a fantasy. Too much had happened in between. You couldn't imagine a Grant Mitchell or an Ian Beale pulling this off. Maybe Max on a good day.
Both of Kat's reactions are typical Kat-the-Victim. Initially, now, at last, she actually admits that everything that led to this was her fault, that if Alfie took her back she'd be the perfect, sweet and faithful Mrs Moon - no more clubbing, nothing of that sort. She'd be whatever he wanted her to be. This was the cry of the desperate - and it was the manoeuvre Kat always makes when caught out - one more chance, and she'd show him how good she'd be ... Now let's go on a sex-filled holiday.
Her second reaction was even more spite-filled and typical Kat the victim bitch: finding out thata Jean, Michael and Roxy all knew about this before she did, and blaming Alfie for that. Alfie told Jean because he was forced to do so by Jean earwigging and thinking Roxy wanted her gone. So Kat resorts to her old tricks of ritual public humiliation - calling Alfie pathetic and saying how glad she was to be shot of him.
And Alfie gives her her own back - how he'd hoped they could have ended this with dignity and how he was kind enough to afford her that, but he knew deep down, she'd react this way, and her behaviour only convinced him that he didn't love her anymore.
There you go, Alfie. Well done, my son. How I wish this bitch were leaving!
Max and Kirsty: One for His Baby.
Kirsty's got a day off and Max has to work. Kirsty's all kitted out in leather, but Max isn't interested in sex. He has to work. I imagine the money he makes trying to sell one of four cars on the forecourt pays the weekly rent on the room where he and Kirsty live at the B and B.
However, by chance, Kirsty runs into Lauren the Lip, who doesn't work and isn't speaking to her father, in the cafe. Now this is an incongruity. Lauren's grandmother, Cora the Bora (who, thankfully, hasn't been seen for awhile, has spent all housekeeping money on booze and cigarettes, so Lauren has been sent out to forage in the cafe for obliging friends and relatives to cadge her meal. So she finds Kirsty, and immediately ascertains that Max had to work when Kirsty wanted to play. Instead, Lauren the Lip invites her stepma back to the house where her clusterfucking cousin Joey ...
... lives. Joey has told Lauren that she and Kirsty can stay there as long as they want. Joey maybe would like a threesome, but neither would understand what he would want because he's unintelligible. Of course, the first thing Lauren does is help herself to some drink she found in the house. (That must belong to Kat. Joey doesn't impress me as a wine-drinker, and Aa-asss doesn't drink, So that's stealing, right?)
If Michael giving relationship advice isn't bad enough, try Lauren out for size, especially when she's overtly trying to spook her father's new wife. Getting all dolled up for Max is what Yummy Mummy would do, until she'd find Max was bedding a girl half her age. When Kirsty replies that she's a different person from Lauren's mummy, Lauren smugly replies that Max is the same, and greedily hordes the booze when Kirsty leaves.
Because Kirsty is the mountain - or rather - two mountains brought to Mohammed (as in Max), when she sexes herself up and offers it to him on his desk in the portacabin. That desk has seen some action - Sean Slater and Carly Wicks, Max and creepy Becca, Max and Vanessa, Darren and Lauren ... and now this.
You know this will all end in tears. All I will say is: Watch Jack.
Phil and Sharon - oh, and Jack: He's Got Her Under His Skin.
Phil's back, and the first to feel his wrath is the Little Cock ...
Walford's very own racial stereotype - the faux cool, unintelligible black urban yoof. The next to know is Lola, the resident chav - and here's another spin the writers are trying to force-feed the viewing public.
Faced with a vociferous outcry from professional social workers for the pejorative way in which Trish Barnes was depicted, she's now been watered down beyond recognition, bigging up Lola's qualities. TPTB are doing a hardsell job on Lola for us too - because she's had a baby, we're now supposed to root for her and love her - ne'mind the fact that she's a common little trollope and a thief, that she has no manners and is adverse to authority. Ne'mind that since her baby's birth she's swathed her foot in chemical red paint and daubed her forehead with beauty cream. Ne'mind she only had the kid to get benefits. And ne'mind that, whenever she's caught doing something, it's never her fault because:-
- she's a kid (as in, she's entitled)
- she's been pregnant
- she's been in care
We're supposed to forget all of that and love Lola. Well, I don't, and I'm sorry - even though we now hear how she's been all sweetness and light to the Social and has gained an apprenticeship at the salon. (Not technically true. Poppy promised to speak to Tanya about it, but Tanya's nowhere to be seen).
But now Phil catches up with Joker Jack and Miss Piggy in the pub, and it's clear that his interest isn't only in keeping Lexi, it's keeping Sharon too.
I despair of this storyline, especially since it's being used as a backdrop to the reincarnation of the Phil-and-Sharon romance that was so vibrant in the early Nineties and back in 2001. The writing has been awful, especially for Sharon and Phil. Instead of even friends, they treat each other like business associates. And Sharon looks like a man in drag - even tonight, with her hair styled differently, she looked like a floozy. She's a 43 year-old woman. Fine, if she's going to have long hair. Long hair on women past forty should be upswept or tied back.
Britney-Shitney: Same Old Same Old One More Time.
Whitney has a new job, but I can't figure out where it is. It looks like the community centre and it appears her job is to babysit a bunch of shirty twelve year-old boys. And her boss is Ava the Rava, Walford's own Aunt Esther ...
Yes, yet another racial stereotype from the white, leafy surburban, middle-class minds of the EastEnders' writing room.
Ava the Rava and Whitney play a brief game of You Hand My My Arse and I'll Hand You Yours, with Ava (an educated professional who's spent an adult lifetime working with children between the ages of four and eleven) trying to explain the Whitney's role in whatever her new job is, and Whitney being her typically arrogant self in refusing to acknowledge authority and wisdom, and presuming to know more than Ava (whoever she is), because Whitney is that much more of an expert, having a fourteen year-old brother and an eight year-old brother, who are both stroppy, and a ten year-old sister who thinks she's twenty.
(No, Bitch, that's not the way to sell your qualities to a seasoned professional. Besides, you forgot to mention that you live with a stepma and a stepnan, one of whom has the emotional maturity of a five year-old and the other who throws hissy fits like a fourteen year-old girl suffering from PMT).
So Whitney's given the task of entertaining a group of what looks like twelve year-old delinquents and she decides they're going to write some rap - Whitney has a friend who loves rap, but she neglects to tell them that she slept with the friend until he became too nice and she dumped him, which is what she'll do to any bloke who becomes too nice and too dependable, like Tyler.
Until one little wotsit won't respond to Whitney's dynamic teaching skills and she seeks to include him by humiliation, which is actually Bianca's way and doesn't accomplish anything but a kick-off.
Enter Ava the Rava, to put the situation right quietly and effectively, and to make Whitney, whom she calls Britney, look small.
But in the end, it doesn't matter, because Ava the Rava tells Whitney, in the presence of Cock and Tyler and the entire pub, that Whitney was fab, I mean really fab, and that she loved her name.
Please. Stop. Stop now.
Observation: Cock and Tyler have now met. They can be unintelligible together. How long before we see subtitles?
Dorothy Pulls It Off. Again.
When I was well last week, I sang the praises of Dot the Matriarch. Now that I'm poorly and recuperating, I see things with a jaundiced eye. They're overcoating Dot with matriarch juice (as well as stylish clothes, which aren't Dot) too much. It's curdling.
Tonight's pastiche was a situation comedy interlude about a misunderstanding. Patrick thinks the Fox sisters don't want to look after him as he recovers, and they think he doesn't want them to look after him. They consider themselves his daughters, even though Anthony is really his son.
We now have our latest piece of retconning.
Hands UP, all ye who remember Anthony Truman having a wife and children?
Anthony was a missionary doctor in Cambodia, and Patrick has visited him there many times since Paul's death in 2005. There has been no mention of a wife named Sophie, and a man like Patrick wouldn't hesitate to mention grandchildren. In the front room of the B and B, there are pictures galore of Chelsea and Libby, Paul and Anthony, Paul's young daughter, and the Wicks' kids ... but no such pictures of any childen of Anthony Truman. In fact, the last time Patrick visited Anthony in Cambodia was in the wake of Heather's death in his grief.
Now we find he's not only acquired a wife and kids, but he lives in Glasgow.
You know, this show is classed as a continuing drama. That's continuing, meaning it has a past, a present to draw from the past and (hopefully) a future to draw from both. But when you have writers who make up facts as they go along in order to suit storyline of dialogue, then the show loses a huge chunk of credibility. It may be aiming itself at the younger edge and lower braincelled capacity of Millennials with Emer Kenny doing storylining, but people remember Anthony Truman was in Cambodia, and suddenly didn't sprout a wife and kids in Glasgow.
Pull the other one.
Anyway, that pastiche achieved its end - Patrick is going to stay with Denise and Kim, and Dot's smiling self-satisfyingly. It's rare when Rudolph Walker and Diane Parish are in a weak vignette, but only the fact that we had to endure the shit about Whitney tonight saved this segment from being the weakest of the lot.
Otherwise, the episode was watchable.
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