Just when you thought the show might be turning a corner ...
They start dishing the shit again.
This week is Britain's Got Talent week. Cheap tabloid television, I know, but the hoi-polloi love it, and last night EastEnders came third - third, which rhymes with turd - in the viewing stakes behind Corrie and Emmerdale. That's right, Emmerdale, the early evening soap which has suddenly become EastEnders' main competition.
According to the continuity announcer for the BBC, this is a big week for the show. Lives will be changed. Destinies altered.
Now on Corrie this week, it seriously is a big week. The Rovers re-opened, Dev began to suspect that Karl might be telling porkies, and Tina had the baby early in the middle of Izzy's and Gary's meltdown. Now she's having second thoughts about handing the baby over to them.
So, in CorrieLand, lives will be changed this week, and destinies will be altered.
Instead, EastEnders plays it sitcom safe, and when were not watching what really should be pilot shows for those hilariously unfunny sitcoms, Kim! and Poppy Pulls It Off, we're watching the same old same old droning on and on and on and on about characters who bore us to tears (Krusty and Max), or characters about whom we really couldn't give a rat's arse on a bad day (The Magic Negro, Sam the Sham and their Little Cock) or characters we hate (Lauren).
That's what makes a difference of more than 2 million viewers. That's what's putting EastEnders below Emmerdale in audience and qualities.
And that's why the BBC and Lorraine Newman need to sit up and take notice.
She Walks Alone (Well, She Doesn't Teach): Retconning The Magic Negro ...
There she is again. You know where you'll find her. Any school day, walking the streets of Walford. Walking her adult son to his place of work, arranging lunchtime with mummy (in the pub, of course), walking around the Square on Morning Magic Negro Patrol.
This is Ava the Rava, the biggest joke character ever in the history of the show. Ava is a teacher - nay, she's supposed to be a Deputy Head, yet she has no briefcase, no bookbag, and she never ever goes to work. Nope, in AvaLand, Deputy Heads get days off to grade papers (for teachers who actually teach, I suppose) or do lesson plans (again, for classroom teachers - Ava's supposed to be in administration). Yet instead of doing those things, she's walking from pillar to post - from the Minute Mart to the cafe to the pub - always to the pub.
You know, back in the late 1990s, there was a character on the programme who was a teacher - Julie, Nigel Bates's second wife. OK, we never saw her hanging around the Square much. We always saw her at home, in the evening with Nigel,making allusions to her day at work. We don't even see that with Ava, and the writers and storyliners have given up alluding to her working.
But this week is half-term. Again. And there she is, playing The Magic Negro of Walford.
Let me say this: Clare Perkins is nothing to write home about as an actress, nor is Cornell S John or whatever he calls himself. As characters, I care nothing for her, him or Cock. They are, like the vast majority of characters introduced over the past two years, extremely bland or extremely unlikeable.
Ava seriously looks variously like a man in drag, Mr Worf's lovechild ...
or Fred Sanford's Aunt Esther ...
Has anyone noticed the difference between "temporary character Ava" and "full-time Ava?"
Cast your mind back to the time when Tanya traced Ava to the leafy suburban school with the glossy brochure. Ava was presented as well-spoken, softly-spoken and an educated professional. When brought face to face with Cora, she couldn't emphasize enough how much her adopted parents loved her, how much they encouraged her and gave her the best education possible. She even admitted being tempted to trace Cora a decade before, but decided against it, because she had the best kind of parents and tracing Cora would prove nothing.
Fast forward to "full-time Ava" - chasing after Cock through the Square, screeching like a fishwife, using appalling grammar (especially the word "ain't" - tonight it was using objective pronouns as subjects and using personal pronouns first, which is wrong - "me and Dexter"). Listen, I don't give a rat's arse what los.kav the poseur professor on Digital Spy forum says about it's ok to use incorrect grammar in the classroom, because it shows your students that you're "approachable" and "not stuffy." That's the biggest load of bullshit going.
The object of education is to improve one's person, and that includes the way you speak. You don't have to use received pronunciation, but speaking with good grammar creates a good impression. As for your students appreciating your appearing to be more like them, believe me, they think you're a prat. Ava sounds like just another inarticulate, uneducated, ill-mannered chav on the Square, and she behaved like one tonight - shouting the odds in the Vic at Sam the Sham in the middle of the day. Jesus.
And as per usual, they've retconned her backstory more than just a bit. First of all, Sam makes reference about Ava's paranoia about her mother having abandoned her reflecting in her distrust of him and her thinking he'd cheat on her, when they were together many years ago. That flies in the face of everything she told Cora, and what she told Cora wasn't a lie - because that was the mini-storyline as was supposed to be presented at the time. Also, during the gangabanga storyline, in her guise as The Magic Negro, she waxed lyrical about how much love,help and support she got from her white adoptive family when Cock was gangabanga-ing about. The grandparents even send Cock presents - remember the shirt? So now, all of a sudden, we're supposed to believe this woman's gone all her life, a nervous, neurotic wreck, thinking of nothing except how her birth mother abandoned her.
What a steaming, stinking crock of shit! Get your act to-fucking-gether, EastEnders, and stop trying to change the backstory to suit the storyline.
Another thing ... Ava and Sam the Sham were together when Dexter was born twenty years before, living in a squat. They referred to themselves as just "a couple of kids." I beg your pardon, but this summer The Magic Negro will be 49 years old. Cock will turn 21. When Cock was born, Ava was twenty-eight. That's hardly a child. Her lilywhite half-sister was suckling a baby at eighteeen. That's a kid. Lola's a gymslip mum at sixteen. That's a kid. At twenty-eight, you're a mature woman. Janine had a baby last year when she was twenty-eight. Is she "just a kid?"
I don't give a shit about plug-ugly Ava or Sam, the BOGOF economy character who comprises the requisite young-ish, sexually active black man (to fill a quota) as well as a plank of wood (replacing Jack Branning). I certainly don't give a shit about The Little Cock, who's just one-third of an unintelligible trio of talentless young men who've never acted before and who gets by on an English version of a bad impression of Will Smith.
They are pointless, irrelevant characters who do nothing for and add nothing to the show - another long-lost relative whose wife never stopped loving him and who'll probably indulge in a secret shag, as well as yet another character with a daddy thang ... Please. We've had enough of this trite shite.
She's Here, She's There, She's Every Fucking Where ... Hag City.
Yet another man-in-drag tonight. Cora the Bora.
They start dishing the shit again.
This week is Britain's Got Talent week. Cheap tabloid television, I know, but the hoi-polloi love it, and last night EastEnders came third - third, which rhymes with turd - in the viewing stakes behind Corrie and Emmerdale. That's right, Emmerdale, the early evening soap which has suddenly become EastEnders' main competition.
According to the continuity announcer for the BBC, this is a big week for the show. Lives will be changed. Destinies altered.
Now on Corrie this week, it seriously is a big week. The Rovers re-opened, Dev began to suspect that Karl might be telling porkies, and Tina had the baby early in the middle of Izzy's and Gary's meltdown. Now she's having second thoughts about handing the baby over to them.
So, in CorrieLand, lives will be changed this week, and destinies will be altered.
Instead, EastEnders plays it sitcom safe, and when were not watching what really should be pilot shows for those hilariously unfunny sitcoms, Kim! and Poppy Pulls It Off, we're watching the same old same old droning on and on and on and on about characters who bore us to tears (Krusty and Max), or characters about whom we really couldn't give a rat's arse on a bad day (The Magic Negro, Sam the Sham and their Little Cock) or characters we hate (Lauren).
That's what makes a difference of more than 2 million viewers. That's what's putting EastEnders below Emmerdale in audience and qualities.
And that's why the BBC and Lorraine Newman need to sit up and take notice.
She Walks Alone (Well, She Doesn't Teach): Retconning The Magic Negro ...
There she is again. You know where you'll find her. Any school day, walking the streets of Walford. Walking her adult son to his place of work, arranging lunchtime with mummy (in the pub, of course), walking around the Square on Morning Magic Negro Patrol.
This is Ava the Rava, the biggest joke character ever in the history of the show. Ava is a teacher - nay, she's supposed to be a Deputy Head, yet she has no briefcase, no bookbag, and she never ever goes to work. Nope, in AvaLand, Deputy Heads get days off to grade papers (for teachers who actually teach, I suppose) or do lesson plans (again, for classroom teachers - Ava's supposed to be in administration). Yet instead of doing those things, she's walking from pillar to post - from the Minute Mart to the cafe to the pub - always to the pub.
You know, back in the late 1990s, there was a character on the programme who was a teacher - Julie, Nigel Bates's second wife. OK, we never saw her hanging around the Square much. We always saw her at home, in the evening with Nigel,making allusions to her day at work. We don't even see that with Ava, and the writers and storyliners have given up alluding to her working.
But this week is half-term. Again. And there she is, playing The Magic Negro of Walford.
Let me say this: Clare Perkins is nothing to write home about as an actress, nor is Cornell S John or whatever he calls himself. As characters, I care nothing for her, him or Cock. They are, like the vast majority of characters introduced over the past two years, extremely bland or extremely unlikeable.
Ava seriously looks variously like a man in drag, Mr Worf's lovechild ...
or Fred Sanford's Aunt Esther ...
Has anyone noticed the difference between "temporary character Ava" and "full-time Ava?"
Cast your mind back to the time when Tanya traced Ava to the leafy suburban school with the glossy brochure. Ava was presented as well-spoken, softly-spoken and an educated professional. When brought face to face with Cora, she couldn't emphasize enough how much her adopted parents loved her, how much they encouraged her and gave her the best education possible. She even admitted being tempted to trace Cora a decade before, but decided against it, because she had the best kind of parents and tracing Cora would prove nothing.
Fast forward to "full-time Ava" - chasing after Cock through the Square, screeching like a fishwife, using appalling grammar (especially the word "ain't" - tonight it was using objective pronouns as subjects and using personal pronouns first, which is wrong - "me and Dexter"). Listen, I don't give a rat's arse what los.kav the poseur professor on Digital Spy forum says about it's ok to use incorrect grammar in the classroom, because it shows your students that you're "approachable" and "not stuffy." That's the biggest load of bullshit going.
The object of education is to improve one's person, and that includes the way you speak. You don't have to use received pronunciation, but speaking with good grammar creates a good impression. As for your students appreciating your appearing to be more like them, believe me, they think you're a prat. Ava sounds like just another inarticulate, uneducated, ill-mannered chav on the Square, and she behaved like one tonight - shouting the odds in the Vic at Sam the Sham in the middle of the day. Jesus.
And as per usual, they've retconned her backstory more than just a bit. First of all, Sam makes reference about Ava's paranoia about her mother having abandoned her reflecting in her distrust of him and her thinking he'd cheat on her, when they were together many years ago. That flies in the face of everything she told Cora, and what she told Cora wasn't a lie - because that was the mini-storyline as was supposed to be presented at the time. Also, during the gangabanga storyline, in her guise as The Magic Negro, she waxed lyrical about how much love,help and support she got from her white adoptive family when Cock was gangabanga-ing about. The grandparents even send Cock presents - remember the shirt? So now, all of a sudden, we're supposed to believe this woman's gone all her life, a nervous, neurotic wreck, thinking of nothing except how her birth mother abandoned her.
What a steaming, stinking crock of shit! Get your act to-fucking-gether, EastEnders, and stop trying to change the backstory to suit the storyline.
Another thing ... Ava and Sam the Sham were together when Dexter was born twenty years before, living in a squat. They referred to themselves as just "a couple of kids." I beg your pardon, but this summer The Magic Negro will be 49 years old. Cock will turn 21. When Cock was born, Ava was twenty-eight. That's hardly a child. Her lilywhite half-sister was suckling a baby at eighteeen. That's a kid. Lola's a gymslip mum at sixteen. That's a kid. At twenty-eight, you're a mature woman. Janine had a baby last year when she was twenty-eight. Is she "just a kid?"
I don't give a shit about plug-ugly Ava or Sam, the BOGOF economy character who comprises the requisite young-ish, sexually active black man (to fill a quota) as well as a plank of wood (replacing Jack Branning). I certainly don't give a shit about The Little Cock, who's just one-third of an unintelligible trio of talentless young men who've never acted before and who gets by on an English version of a bad impression of Will Smith.
They are pointless, irrelevant characters who do nothing for and add nothing to the show - another long-lost relative whose wife never stopped loving him and who'll probably indulge in a secret shag, as well as yet another character with a daddy thang ... Please. We've had enough of this trite shite.
She's Here, She's There, She's Every Fucking Where ... Hag City.
Yet another man-in-drag tonight. Cora the Bora.
Make no mistake, this was yet another pisspoor episode, but the abject hypocrisy of Cora lecturing Sam the Sham outside the Vic about the audacity of him thinking he could just walk back into Cock's life was supremely laughable.
Because Cora the Bora thinks she's entitled to walking right back into The Magic Negro's life and that of her son and playing Mummy Dearest and Nana. One year ago, she didn't even realise this rainbow grandson existed, and for the record once again ...
Cora is not not not Ava's mother.
She is simply the woman who gave birth to her. Ava's mother is the woman who raised her from an infant, who sat up nights with her whilst she was teething, who ministered to her when she was ill, who ferried her back and forth to school events in all sorts of weather,and who was always there when she needed her. She owes Cora nothing, and for Cora to presume to lecture Sam is the height of stupidity, cupidity and hypocrisy.
The total arrogance of this woman is amazing.
Her war with Dot continues, even to the point of condescension in the face of Dot's exercise in graciousness, even though Dot was only going through the learning curve of a charm offensive, remarking patronisingly about Dot being forgiving towards Lauren for her scamming a tenner from her.
Cora blames Dot for willingly giving Lauren the money without Lauren asking for it, but Lauren did worse than steal money from Dot. It was, indeed, fraudulent, it was taking money under false pretences, implying that she had no money to go out partying with her friends, which prompted Dot, her grandmother, to do what grandmothers usually do - offer financial help. Lauren knew very well what she was doing - showing up and essentially buttering Dot up for one purpose. For Cora to defend that was yet another example of what a lowlife she is - Cora took more than a tenner from Dot; Cora failed to pay Dot's council rent when she was sub-letting her house, brought lodgers in and then took their money to fund her habit in booze and cigarettes. She almost caused Dot to lose her home, and thought to make it up to her by throwing her a pithy party in the pub.
And in the end, I'm glad she was royally handed her putrid, stinking, wrinkled arse ... because Lauren scammed her too, and in the worst sort of way. She actually stole from Cora the Bora, taking money from her purse. The words "eat" and "crow" come easily to mind.
Another ironic scene occurred when Cora the Bora attempted to play the matriarch and epically failed. This was when she tried to have a conversation with Lauren about why she drinked. A provocative piece of dialogue would have been for Lauren to riposte:
Why do YOU drink, Nan? Huh? Why does me mum drink too? Because that's where I learned this.
But, sadly, no one in the writing room has enough nous to approach Lauren's drinking problem from this angle, which is, actually, the truest and most realistic one.
Still, the look on the old seahag's face was priceless, especially after that bragest she and Tanya performed, patting themselves on the back for the success they had in bringing Lauren up to be the woman she is. And how does Cora reward herself? By going to the pub and having a bevvy.
And, please, please, please stop saying Lauren is like Tanya was "at her age." When Tanya was Lauren's age, she was married with a kid.
Jesus, it's not rocket science.
Hattrick: Kim's Journey Around Herself
Here's why Ray wasn't that keen on Kim ... he found out she was a man-in-drag.
Kim is supposed to be funny, but she's not. And the morality play presented tonight as a form of vain comedy, was terrifically unfunny. Tameka Empson is one of the weakest actresses on the show. She's either pretending to be the late Flip Wilson as Geraldine Jones or she's acting like a white man's version of a stereotypically sassy, urban black woman.
Either way, it isn't working.
What TPTB wanted to show tonight was that Kim was really, deep-down, hurting at losing Ray, comforting herself and her pride with the fact that she dumped him - Ray was the dumpee. We saw the bleeding obvious - that Denise the Wise saw through her charade, that Kim was doing what someone reckons a lot of women do in the face of a break-up - sweep clean with a new broom, out with the old and in with the new look.
And after Bootie's unseen Gaynor did her a make-under in the make-up department, Kim thought better of the situation: in fact, she thought she was perfect the way she was. And that was the moral of the story - be true to yourself, even if you do insult your sister's taste in clothing.
Really, Kim's out-stayed her welcome, and I can't help thinking that she's going to be ethnic quota victim number two, in favour of Ava. After all, how can you compete with The Magic Negro ...
It's Almost Over Now, Baby Blue.
Max and Krusty are not Sonny and Cher ... for starters, Sonny was hirsute.
Yep, the beat goes on ... Kirsty's little miracle is actually that Max hasn't found out about her little secret yet.
Seriously, love, Max is only with you at all now because he believes you're pregnant. Max is always devoted to whatever woman is carrying his baby, even if it means leaving his wife to be with the mother-to-be. Just ask Rachel, his first wife.
Time's ticking on and sooner or later, Krusty's going to have to explain the absence of a bump. Today, she neatly avoids a scan Max arranged (which will show nothing but the truth), by having a panic attack in the clinic's reception area, then running away. Now that was unintentionally funny.
Later, she talks cryptically about lying to Max, and he thinks she's talking about their baby she aborted on Derek's command.
The most interesting bit about this ever decreasingly circular storyline was when one of Krusty's false eyelashes became partially detached.
Move on.
Poopy the Sugar Plum Fairy.
Now at last ... EastEnders has the real making and build-up of a storyline. Dot's campaign to be church warden, which led to Poopy-Le-Dim, Life Coach Extraordinaire, honing Dot's PR skills, will come to fruition next week and will involve a reptile.
Stay tuned, if you're awake.
The moral of tonight's story was: To thine own self be true. (And that's from Shakespeare, not the Bible).
Only Poor White Trash Drink from the Bottle.
Well, there's a lot of white trash honky tonk in Lauren, but she sure is no angel.
She is, without a doubt, the most unlikeable ingenue in the history of the programme, played by, coincidentally ...
THE. WORST. ACTRESS. EVER. IN. EASTENDERS.
The scene at the end, where she's popping the top on a bottle of wine bought with money stolen from her putrid grandmother (who actually used to sit necking booze with her), summed up the entirety of what the Brannnings really are: a bunch of self-entitled losers, scrubbed up poor white trash thinking to pass for middle class respectability, but failing to do so, because the core of their existence began, thrives and will die in trailer trashville.
Lauren doesn't drink because her mother prefers Abi. (For the record, Tanya never did). But she'll tell herself that's one of the reasons, because it will make Tanya feel bad and reinforce Lauren's idea of self-pity.
She doesn't drink because of her family's dysfunctionalism. She didn't neck booze when Tanya married gormless Greg or when Max hooked up with Vanessa. The only reason she's pissed off at the prospect of Max starting a family with Krusty is that there won't be enough money from Max to which Lauren feels entitled. That's selfishness. But she'll tell herself and Max that, because, again, this will make Max feel guilty and feed her burgeoning self-pity even more.
She doesn't drink because Joey dumped her and her friends shun her (because of her drinking). TPTB may want us to believe in the epic story of forbidden love that was Joey and Lauren, but most of us saw it as a one-week fuckfest between a gurner and an unintelligible dolt. But she'll tell herself that too, because it makes her appear tragic and gains her attention.
She drinks because of the same reason her mother, her aunt and her grandmother drank and still drink: because she likes it. She likes the buzz it gives her. She likes the freedom it bestows to say what she thinks and reveal who she really is and afterward blame everything on the booze. She drinks because she likes the anaesthetic comfort of passing out cold. A hangover is a small price to pay for a drink dependency.
I hate to say this, but Lauren is one of the most unlikeable characters on the show, but her addiction storyline is actually more realistic than that one they're pursuing with Sharon at the moment. It's just a shame that neither will be, ultimately, given justice.
Very poor episode, in a week when the show should be fighting to be on top again.
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