A Moon for the Misbegotten - Review: 07.10.2013

Message to the Ronnie-Shippers: Fuck off. 

Seriously. 

You're encouraging a tax-funded bunch of morons who should know better, but you don't care, because the majority of you have your licence fee paid by the bank of mum and dad. The BBC owes a remit to its viewing audience not to misinform; yet in the past ten years, EastEnders has managed to misinform the misbegotten of the following ideas which are, simply, wrong:-

• That it's OK for adopted siblings to fall in love and marry - after all, you're not blood-related
• That it's OK for first cousins to fuck or marry - after all, you just share one set of grandparents
• That it's OK to take the law into your own hands and kill someone because he or she is evil, even though the European Union and Great Britain have banned the death penalty as punishment; and if the guy is evil (whom you killed), you can even get a life in the sun somewhere on the beach in Spain.
• If someone steals your child and leaves a dead on in its place, the perp should be forgiven and allowed to come back to the community and live as though nothing's happened. 
• Any parent who doesn't forgive the criminal for committing such an act is the real bad guy and should be punched.
• Insouciant children should be beaten, strapped, drop-kicked or simply smacked until they're black and blue - what's a bit of child abuse when the kid's obnoxious?
• Teachers and teachers' assistants shouldn't hesitate to tell parents, preferably within earshot of their kids, that the child in question is a malicious influence on the rest of the class to the point that he's poison.
• That it doesn't matter if a person's spent his or her life raising and loving someone else's kid, they don't matter because they're not the "birth parent." So fuck off Alfie Moon, Ian Beale, Kevin Wicks, Pat Butcher and Patrick Truman.
• That you can give a child up for adoption and then take the kid back without remit of the law.

Because of all of the above, we've got a generation of fanbois and retarded adolescents who will forever be walking around seeing and hearing nothing about any other tranche of society and understanding less because their heads are so far up their arses, they can't see daylight.

I know she's pretty (if you like botox and a facelift so tight her mouth looks too wide for her face), and I know she gained the reputation of tragedy queen in her previous stint, but Ronnie is a psychopath.

Psychopaths simply cannot be cured. They're born that way, and a lot of them inherit their tendencies from a parent - like Michael did from his mother and Ronnie did from Archie. They are ego-centric, manipulative, obsessive about people, control freaks, deceptive, cold and they can be dangerous. They don't give a rat's arse about anyone but themselves.

Do you think Ronnie gives a shit that, as long as they're together, Roxy will never ever be able to have a rational adult relationship with a man? Roxy is the eternal overgrown child, and Amy, as she gets older will become that too. Ronnie has broken up a marriage because the man in the marriage was essential to her needs, but once she found out he couldn't procreate, she ditched him there and then. She held onto another woman's child because of her obsession over Jack, the closest thing to a male slut the Square has ever seen.

Yet Ronnie, like her male counterpart Michael Moon, is to be a sympathetic hero.

Give me a break, EastEnders attempting to preach to the masses misinforms yet again, and considering the dwindling amount of fanboi bullies, intellectually stunted adolescents and various irrelevant troll hangers-on, we're going to be cursed with a singularly unpleasant and ignorant tranche of society.

Funded by the licence fee.

The Good.

Thank goodness for the all-too-brief scenes tonight between Michael French and the always watchable Charlie Brooks.

What a delight watching Pat's son and her step-daughter bounce off each other in a trip down memory lane. For the record, Janine was not played. She knew David was after a sub and let him play his hand long enough to give him what he wanted, with the stipulation that he pay her back with interest.

It's nice to see this dynamic remembered, now that Janine is an adult because her only interaction with David previously came when she was a gawky young pre-adolescent curiously reminiscent of Cindy the Greek ...

... and David was between fucking Sam MItchell and Cindy Beale.

Kudos to Emer Kenny, a millenial who's obviously learned that a little history isn't such a bad thing when you come to a continuing drama like EastEnders.

Frank gets a mention, and so does Pat. Nice to hear that someone misses Pat - well, we all do, and her elimination at the hands of an EP who didn't know his arse from his elbow when it came to this show, is criminal. Even if the assessment that Janine misses Pat unrealistically comes from one of the two most obnoxious child characters on the programme - the atrocious Tiffany.

I thought the dialogue between her and Janine in the cafe was contrived and stilted - from Tiffany, part of the perenially poor Butchers, buying Janine a sticky bun (which she ate, herself) to her assiduously giving sage advice regarding the care of a sick child. Tiffany, like her Mancunian counterpart Simon Barlow, is one of these stageschool kids whom writers think it profound, poignant and "cute" to make them sage old heads on young shoulders.

At the same time, we need to remember that both Tiffany and Simon can be rude, obnoxious and downright shitty. The fact that she honed in on Janine missing Pat is totally unbelieveable. I'm not giving Kenny any credit other than to reckon she's been reading various fora, herself, because the more perspicacious posters have known all along that Janine has been grieving for and missing Pat and that she's been increasingly isolated and misunderstood.

I hope we see more of David with Janine, and I'm glad they've remembered their family connection. David, like his mother, is a lychpin figure, with familial connections to the Beales, the Butchers, the Wickses and the Brannings, and tangentially to the Mitchells. Son of Pat and Pete, stepson of Frank, brother of Simon Wicks and cousin of Kevin Wicks, whose widow is living with David's brother Ian. He's connected, unfortunately, to the Brannings via his daughter, and he's been romantically involved with Phil Mitchell's sister.

As long as David doesn't settle down in a Val Doonican cardigan and play grandad, he'll be fine.

The Bad

Two-thirds of the Newman Negroes are leaving, the single most stereotypical representative of Afro-Caribbean culture in the history of the show. Ava the Rava and Sam are reminiscent from racial stereotypes not seen on television in the United States since the days of Amos'n Andy.

Tonight Cornell S John was not Paul Robeson.

Ava was just atrocious, and it's harder and harder to believe this woman is a teacher, much less that she has any common sense. Of course, she'd be worried about her son donating a kidney; but any mother would be proud of a son stepping up to the plate and wanting to save his father's life or try to do so.

Instead, Ava - who's not teaching, but hanging around the pub again, starts spewing fright claims garnered from the internet to try to put her son off. I'm glad she's leaving. I'm glad Sam's leaving. I just wish that talentless, little prick Dexter was going with her.

Khali Best was not only annoying tonight, he was embarrassing. Moreso than usual. The party in the Hartman house for Jay's birthday - boy, it's been birthday mania lately - Jack's, Carol's, Jay's - although this year Sharon's was forgotten. Party round at Dexter's - but won't his parents mind?

It's mah'owse, innit?

Yeah, sure it is. You're making pocket money until it's discovered that Cindy the Greek stole Phil Mitchell's money - yet another dipshit storyline.

I'm not even feeling sorry for someone who would donate a kidney and then proceed to mix drinks and get drunk. 

For everyone asking why Peter Beale is choosing to align himself with the younger group of teens, it's obvious - he's interested in Lola, and this association gives EastEnders and Ms Kenny a bit of a whiffy moment tonight.

After months of hanging around Lola, his Dutch courage eggs him onto making extremely suggestive and sexually offensive remarks to Lola, only to be stopped in his tracks by the girl, to the point that when he susses a flirtation between her and the boy in whom she's really interested (Peter), he tries to assault her and when he's thrown off, he makes one of the most openly racist remarks ever heard in this show:-

Go off and make some blonde-haired blue-eyed children.

Racist much? Racism cuts both ways, and as much as Dexter is a racial stereotype and a token (as is Kim), he's exhibited one a very racist tendency now.

Dexter and Cindy are two of the yoof contingent who should be axed sooner rather than later; another candidate for the guillotine should be Abi the Dough-Faced Girl, who's graduated from wanting to be a vet to snorting, giggling and working at McKlunkey's, with all the lardy fat-fried food she can eat. Axe her before she becomes the next shallow Heather.

The Ugly

With all respect to the Ronnie-Shippers, I find her character offensive. I find it offensive that she should have committed a crime so abhorrent, yet be allowed to move freely back onto the Square as if this were her right. In reality, this would not be allowed to happen. Ne'mind that, yes, this is a soap opera. Such shows, especially in the UK, are supposed to be grounded in reality.

For the record, Ronnie is not mentally ill. She is a psychopath and those people cannot be helped. She knew exactly what she was doing when she took Tommy and left James, just as she knew what she was doing when she broke up Joel's marriage and then dumped him when she found he couldn't father anymore children.

I can totally relate to where Alfie's coming from. He invested a lot of love and trust in Kat and she threw it right back in his face, never taking responsibiity for her actions but casting blame about. She lied to him repeatedly. Alfie is not the bad guy in this. He originally told Roxy she was free to see her sister whenever she wanted as long as she did not bring Ronnie to the pub. That's fair enough. Alfie's feelings toward Ronnie are entirely understandable. It's Kat's who are unbelieveable, and her reactions and behaviour to Ronnie are not only totally adverse to her character, they're totally adverse to any woman's reaction.

For all the Ronnie-Shippers on the Bullyboi Emporium and Digital Spy, including the creepy Ronnie-worshipping troll who calls herself after Samantha Womack's young daughter, I defy any of you, any of you to behave in such Christian attitude should anything of the sort ever happen to you or any of your family.

You may rhetorically forgive someone such a sin, but that doesn't mean you want to invite them into your house and bond with them. Besides, Kat specifically said that she didn't want Ronnie in Walford and requested that as part of Ronnie's probation conditions - however, the writers have conveniently forgotten that. Why?

Well, it makes it easier for Womack's deeply divisive and pejorative character to return. It also is a cack-handed attempt to undo the damage done by the babyswap debacle. The attitude is: If we make it seem trivial and use it as a plot device to reunite Alfie and Kat, then that makes it all right, innit?

Well, no, it doesn't. It's insulting to viewers' intelligence.

The confrontation between Alfie and Ronnie tonight was long overdue, and I'm Team Alfie on this one. He was totally in the right. He only forbade Roxy access to Ronnie in the end, after he found her, back from prison after only one day, sitting in his lounge with his son. It's then that Alfie realises that he can't live on the same Square as the woman who stole his child and made him believe he was dead for four months. That's rational too.

Also rational was Ronnie living off the Square but nearby enough so Roxy could visit her. For Ronnie to turn the tables and accuse Alfie of misbehaviour and suggesting that this wasn't all about Tommy showed her arrogance and entitlement. She should be on her knees to him begging forgiveness and sincerely. Alfie was right. She can't say "sorry" enough, because she doesn't mean it. It's just a get-out-of-jail-free card, pun intended.

As someone else pointed out, if this had been Kat who'd stolen a Mitchell baby, King Phil would have been running the Moons out of Walford with baseball bats. Yes, Ronnie lost a baby, poor her. But that doesn't excuse the fact that she robbed a couple of their son and put them through hell for four months whilst parading the baby around right under their noses. That was cruel beyond belief. What's crueller is that she's shown no remorse. As for her saying that Kat trusts her, she doesn't.

She snookered Kat into believing that she'd stay in Walford only long enough to see Roxy, but she lied. Besides, she steers clear of Kat.

As for Roxy, the eternal childwoman, Alfie is her first adult relationship. Deep down, she knows that, if she chooses Ronnie's way, she'll never have another real relationship in her life, and this means she'll surrender Amy to Ronnie's way as well. Life in Ibiza? Two ageing dollybirds sitting on the beach enticing men young enough to be their sons and laughing about it? Pretty soon, this lifestyle becomes pathetic.

Yes, Roxy wants to see her sister, but as Alfie pointed out, she's lying to him, again and again. As for Kat the Relationship Advisor counselling Alfie not to let what Kat did affect his feelings for Roxy, well, it does. Alfie wants trust and honesty. He thought he could get that from Roxy. Yes, he knew that Ronnie was her sister, but maybe he thought Ronnie might be decent enough not to return to Walford and disrupt lives. I guess he didn't know how selfish she was.

Were I he, I would have tossed her into the street. Instead, he succumbs to her tears. I believe Roxy genuinely loves Alfie. I believe, if he truly knew he could trust her, he would love her too. But now he's not sure.

The cliched "escape from Albert Square" was done by Kat last year, in a desperate attempt to cover ground exposed by her affair. This time, Alfie wants Roxy away from the source whom he feels is trying to manipulate her even more. As for Ronnie's remark about being a part  of Alfie's family, true - you don't choose your relatives, but you can choose not to associate with them.

Alfie doesn't need slapping. Ronnie and Roxy both do. Their co-dependent relationship is creepy, and Jack is stupid to get ensnared with the woman who played the ultimate deception on him.

I do wish PlasticFace was leaving with the Plank.

Final Observation: The fact that Amy is actually in school got a mention tonight, and well she should be as she's five next month. But the way Roxy carries the kid around and the size of her, you'd be forgiven for thinking she was two or three years old. Sort it out.

Really Final Observation: Haters need to check themselves and listen to dialogue more. Alfie is not abandoning Tommy. He didn't leave him with Tracey. Instead, in the bar when he was talking to Kat, he made arrangements for Kat to take Tommy for the time being, as he was fearful of Ronnie having access to the pub and Roxy's deception. He left his son with the child's mother. Stop trying to make the man bad because you dislike the character. Also, remember Ronnie wasn't averse to trying to break up Ricky and Bianca either, forcing Sam to lie about Richard's paternity. Yeah, she's a real hero.