It goes without saying that this was a Simon Ashdown episode, which means it was a very good one. There were all the tell-tale signs - absolute minimum of characters, swathes of symbolism and the action centred around either Brannings or Branning satellites.
I was wondering how long it would be before there would eventually be a counselling session between the women of Walford who have been victims of sexual abuse. There could be a veritable support group of Kat, Whitney and Ronnie returning on the horizon, all three systematically abused as young girls by an uncle, a stepfather and a father.
But then, it could also be said that there should be a support group for people who sport addictions - Phil, Lauren and the soon-to-arrive Jake Stone (alcohol); Masood, Patrick and Alfie (gambling); Max and Jack (sex addiction); Kirsty and Carl (cocaine). And, of course, there has to be a support group for people with parental issues - Janine, Michael, Ian Beale, Phil, Joey Branning, Dex-TAAAAA and Carl.
The entire Square would be host to some kind of therapy, all of which has to be addressed.
Kat's and Whitney's problem has been screaming for resolution of a sort for ages, at least since Kat returned. Intertwined with their psychological issues regarding their sexual abuse, has been the single biggest problem with most of the characters featured on the programme these days - the enormous sense of entitlement, the propensity to shift blame for inappropriate - even criminal - behaviour to someone else or, in these people's cases, an event in the past.
In short, nothing is ever the fault of the person who made the mistake.
Kat's the obvious example of a victim of sexual abuse who, herself, becomes an abuser of sort. Returning in 2010, retconned to the hilt and totally unrecogniseable from the happy and sensible ending of 2005, it was painfully obvious that Kat had been emotionally, psychologically and even physically abusive toward Alfie.
Where Kate Harwood gave her her redemption in the form of Alfie's love at the end of 2005, Kirkwood made her an abuser. Serially unfaithful to her husband, she returned to Walford, pregnant with his cousin's child after a drunken, self-pitying one-night-stand. This, itself, was retconned, inexplicably, to fit various storylines running throughout 2011 and 2012. The ONS became a full-blown affair, which lasted a summer, when the original story told was that it was one night and one night only, with Kat scarpering before Dawn to another Spanish town to harbour with Martina, the mother of the legend known as Shenice.
Each time she cheated, her stock defence of her actions was that she was "a dirty girl." Because she dressed like a slut, men smelled the slut on her. After all, she explained at the time, Michael smelled it. At the end of these self-pitying soliloquys of abnegation, it was always reckoned that Alfie was the one to blame. The gist of all of this was that Kat was entitled to shag around, but Alfie wasn't.
Who can forget her indignant reaction to Roxy's presence in the Vic when Kat returned in June 2012? Roxy handed her her ass, but within weeks, Kat was shagging Derek Branning in the kitchen of the Vic in what is, arguably, the most atrocious and worst storyline ever concocted in EastEnders.
Even the protracted Shaggerman affair wasn't Kat's fault. Since its discovery last Christmas, she's variously blamed Derek (even insinuating repeated rape), Alfie and even Roxy.
But never Kat.
As for Whitney, since the Tony reveal in 2008, she's cut a swathe through the young men of Walford with a noticeable pattern.
A nice bloke will fall for Whitney - take her out, treat her nicely. She's happy for awhile. Then a bad boy will make an appearance, and she'll make a beeline for him, unceremoniously dumping the ubiquitous dependable bloke along the way.
Whitney was dating Todd, the first boy to treat her nicely after her sexual abuse. She meets Billie Jackson one morning, dumps Todd in the Butcher kitchen in the afternoon and before he's out the door, she's in bed with Billie, who promptly dumps her when he joins the army.
Her next victim was Peter Beale, who was ditched for Connor, who played her whilst sleeping with Carol. When Connor dumped her, after sleeping with her in the Arches, Whitney blamed him openly.
Finally, there was Fatboy, who was dumped on Valentine's Day 2012, after he'd bought her a car and booked tickets to Paris, for Tyler.
Later that year, Whitney had the unmitigated gall to beg money off Fatboy for a night out in London with the girls, only to end up snogging Tyler on the sofa.
Whitney's reprehensible behaviour was condoned and even defended by Bianca, who excused Whitney as being special, to the point that she assaulted Fatboy, when he suspected her cheating with Tyler and called her a sket, to reading the riot act to Tyler when Whitney overreacted to the fact that he had a couple of female contacts left on his iPhone.
Yet Whitney slept with Joey. Bumbling, mumbling Tyler had morphed into the dependable bloke, picking up the pieces Whitney scattered, grafting on a tat stall, wearing a flat cap and getting fat. Joey was the equally mumbling and mouth-breathing Neanderthal of a bad boy.
The one thing this episode and the previous one managed to examine - at last - was the low self-esteem suffered by both women and how this self-hatred was manifested by self-perpetuating bad sexual behaviour. Whitney even admitted that she was a horrible person who didn't deserve to be around anyone.
Kat, on the other hand, has projected her self-hatred onto the person closest to her and the one who loves her the most, Alfie. Yet even Alfie had his breaking point, as he explained on Christmas Day when he finally told Kat that he'd reached the point where he couldn't cope with her behaviour anymore, with her constant carpings about being a "dirty girl" and the shadow of Harry Slater. And Whitney told Tyler last night that, if he couldn't understand why she was confused about Tony, then she'd only end up hurting him too.
Their particular abuses had made them narcissistic. Kat cheats when Alfie doesn't worship at her altar 24/7. Whitney cheats when Tyler doesn't give the correct answer to her concerns.
The only non-present member of this trio of abuse victims, Ronnie, morphed into her abuser, herself, taking on the cold controlling characteristics of Archie Mitchell in an effort to achieve what she wanted - breaking up a marriage with the man who'd fathered Danielle and then dumping him on the street when she found out he'd had a vasectomy. Shrugging her shoulders at the absence of Owen (who was dead under a tree in the Square) after she returned, pregnant, with his child. Telling the police psychiatrist that she didn't care about the Moons when she took their child, they were nothing to her.
Tonight's events were sparked by rejection. Tyler walked away from Whitney, convincing her she was too horrible for anyone, and so she tried to run away. As she always does.
Kat's situation was prompted by Alfie's rejection of her in the kitchen at the Vic, when she drunkenly tried to come onto him, wanting him to admit that he loved her more than Roxy.
Whitney's situation devolved into an argument with Bianca, resulting in her shifting the blame about Tony King onto Bianca's shoulders. After all, Bianca brought him into their lives.
Understandably, Whitney is all over the place about Tony - one minute she loves him, then she's screaming at Bianca that he ruined her life, whilst Bianca effectively put her head in the sand. Next, she's extolling the fact that he understood her perfectly - paedophiles do understand their victims; it's called "grooming", love - like no one else did.
In her confrontation with Kat, she actually admitted that she was sad he'd died, that she felt if she'd only seen him once, he'd still be alive. Tony's suicide was the ultimate act of control. Preceeding this with a smuggled letter to her, telling her he loved her, he took his life, knowing precisely the guilt trip on which he'd be sending her. It was his act of revenge.
Central to tonight's episode, symbolically, were the hoop earrings favoured by many of the women on the show.
Earrings have always been an important part of EastEnders' folk history, starting with Pat's enormous collection of tacky clip-ons. Even she sacrificed these as a part of her persona, when Roy, after her infidelity with Frank, reconciled with her. The earrings were "Frank and Pat." "Roy and Pat" was something different.
At the moment, the show seems cluttered with women who favour enormous hooped earrings, favoured by the chavvier classes of society. Kat, Whitney, Bianca and Kirsty all wear them.
Bianca 2.0, the Retarded Bianca, wears them out of a misguided sense of fashion. The other three all have emotional problems centred around being dependent on a male for survival. Last night, Alfie deemed Kat's earrings "pulling earrings," part of the armour she wears when she's lusting after a quick fuck.
Tonight, we learned that these earrings had been a gift to Kat's mother, from - yep - Uncle'Arry; and that Viv had bequeathed them to Kat.
Kudos to Simon Ashdown for the brilliant continuity in Kat's story. We need to remember that Viv adamantly and vociferously refused to believe Harry was diddling Kat when the child first told her. We needed to hear Whitney admit her confusion over her feelings for Tony, and that was understandable also.
Tony and Harry were two vastly different men. Tony was young, presentable, pleasant and attractive. Harry was older, greasier, creepier and uglier. Doesn't mean that Tony was any less the paedophile. It behooves the viewer to remember, as well, that the Tony reveal in 2008, was more about Bianca and her reaction than about Whitney, who was sixteen and newly legal and planning to run away with Tony. She was so caught up in her feelings for him that, for the longest time, she was refusing to testify.
She needed Kat to tell her tonight that Whitney didn't owe Tony any doubt, that he was just as bad as Harry, and to look no further than Kat to see what happens when you allow the perv that sullied you to remain inside your head. And kudos to Ashdown also, for remembering the brilliant, if pathetic Harry reveal in 2001, leading up to "You're not mah muvvah" where Harry despicably tried to blame his involvement with Kat on Kat the child - the sexually precocious minx in a school uniform, just as Tony, upon discovery by Bianca, tried to blame everything on Whitney.
At the beginning of the episode, Whitney accused Bianca of harbouring Tony, telling Bianca that she, Whitney, should have been able to come into that house, close the door and feel safe. Later when she dashes out of the house, Bianca follows, leaving the door ajar. Whitney succinctly reminds her that she's out on a London street in the middle of the night, with the door to her house opened, and anyone could enter, with Tiffany, a child, inside, alone.
The episode ended with Kat tossing her mother's Harry earrings into a drain on the street, consigning Harry to the gutter where he belongs and, hopefully, moving ahead. This, after being forced to look at herself in the mirror of a dodgy pub, decked out for sex and looking cheap, because that's how she felt about herself.
And where Whitney had slept with Joey after Tyler didn't meet her expectations, Alfie's rejection spurred Kat to nab Carl, literally demand that he compliment her to offset Alfie's brutal home truths, chew his face off and bundle him - where else? - down the pub alleyway for a knee-trembler.
Line of the night from Carl about the venue:-
It's not my style. Go home. Get some sleep. I'll buy you a coffee in the caff in the morning.
Carl White has arrived in Walford, a complicated, multi-faceted villain with standards and a sense of morality.
The door to the Butcher house got the duff-duffs, as symbolic of the fact that Whitney now felt confident to leave Tony in the past and move forward, entering the house, shutting the door on the past and feeling safe.
A bit kitsch, I know. Both women would do well to seek counselling, but we know that EastEnders isn't big on that, so we have to accept the dramatic merits of the 30 minutes on offer, even if the emotional encounter at the nameless High Street pub between Kat and Whitney was resolved into a happy homecoming and easy laughter suddenly after Carol had arrived home.
Were there fragile bits? Yes. It wasn't perfect, by any means - how many times are they going to use the cliche' of Whitney/Lauren/Lucy/Kat delving into a car with a load of male strangers to party down? Also, there have been entirely too many tits and arse shots of Whitney during the past few episodes, with the camera honing in on her boobs, dressing her in clothing that looks one size too small, as if she were melted and poured inside her togs.
But all in all, it was probably the single best episode thus far this year from a show which has been content to linger in mediocrity at best, and ineptitude at worst. Still, in the long run, I wouldn't weep if Simon Ashdown stepped aside for someone else (Daran Little?) to take charge in the writing department. I'm not too keen on the hatchet job he's done on Sharon, and that's an iconic character who needs fixing fast - far more than the obvious redemption we've been force fed for Kat.
Good episode. Nicely paced, well written and well acted.
It was an ok episode. That is all it was
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