A liar's tale about another liar.
I think we can all agree now that the Messiah, who isn't really the Messiah, but a naughty boy telling porky pies ...
Because he is. Several things he's promised have not come about - most notably the part about this not becoming The Stacey Show. Already, we've seen the leaving line of one of the most important legacy characters in the show's history, as well as one of its most nuanced characters, hijacked and used as a plot device to re-establish close-up shots of Lacey Turner's nostrils (not to mention her bad skin).
The central themes of this episode tonight, which could have been better and wasn't, was the lies of various individuals concerned and how they're going to unravel, and unravel they will - Max, Kat, Alfie, Ronnie, Ian and Lola.
Oh, well, at least DTC has remembered when various EastEnders' episodes revolved around a theme.
Clever boy.
Sniff: Stacey the Victim's Nostrils.
I know the Staceybois, those people who hide behind a Lacey Turner avatar, might find this hard to accept, but I'm getting mightily pissed off with having Lacey Turner's diamond-shaped nostrils flung in my face four times a week. They're worse when accompanied by what is her signature piece right now - the sad-eyed worried look of the perpetual victim.
Surprise surprise ... she's under Max's protection tonight, and we had yet another confession of love from him. He loved her then (2010) and he loves her now, more than any of the others.
Really, Max? (Although this was not his first lie of the night. His first was when he told Lauren that he was going to court (he wasn't); his second came when he told David that he was taking Lauren shopping, so he couldn't possibly see Carol. His third came when he reiterated to Carol that there was no reason for Kat to lie, and he promised to speak with Kat as well as promising to speak with Alice. He'd already promised Stacey he'd speak with Kat, but now he tells Stacey that Kat's been taken into "special custody" as Carol had been bothering her - "sequestration" is how he described it, but we all know that's a term to do with juries considering a verdict; and finally, he lies to Carol, whilst keeping company with Skanky Slutter, about being at the court and Alice not leaving her cell was yet another lie as well).
See what a facile liar Max is?
But back to the single most important lie which stuck out like the proverbial sore thumb ... that Max loves Stacey, by far and large more than all the rest.
Bull ... SHIT.
I wonder what would have transpired, had Tanya walked through the door of that hotel room at that moment? Boy, that would have been a sublime scene of confliction. Max would want Tanya, because she's the mother of his children, but he'd want Stacey as well, because ... well, because she's Stacey and he probably gets off on her nostrils.
The truth is that Max loves the woman with whom he's with at the moment. If she has a child by him or is going to have a child by him, he loves her that little bit more. But curiously, I think he does love the little bitch, and he loves her because she's the ideal - wonky nostrils and all - who, for whatever reason, he can't attain. Well, now he can, because they're both single. I'm actually calling this - they'll get together, and he'll be as big a bore for her as Bradley was, and she'll be bonking Dean Wicks as soon as he winks at her. But, of course, it won't be Stacey's fault because Dean was the one who winked.
And now we're treated to the great Stacey redemption soliloquy, emitted after Max remarked that his intention was to take her back to Walford, cleverly keeping her from Kat until she'd given her false evidence.
What amazes me even more about Max the watchable slimeball is how easy he can toss aside his family all for Stacey. It's one thing for Max to be willing to condemn Alice to more years in prison than she deserves (and she does deserve time inside, but for conspiracy to commit murder and kidnapping), but it's quite another to dismiss the death of his son so wantonly. Once again, we had this "Bradley died for your sins" crap, as if Bradley (and not DTC) is some latter-day EastEnders Messiah.
One grain of truth Max says, without realising it, is that Alice actually did stab Michael (she didn't kill him, but she did stab him), whilst pointing out to Skanky that she didn't stab Janine.
And then the line of the night ... (small girl's voice) ...
But Ah kiwed Archie...
Then off she goes on the old chestnut about thinking of Bradley every day, lying there dead and branded a murderer - while she fucked Ryan on the bonnet of Dot's car and later got involved with Luke. Bradley never left her mind. If she felt that guilty about the bloke, why didn't she go to the police and confess?
And, of course, we got the Max-and-Stacey kiss after the declaration of love. Been there, done that. Now who's saying there are new directions in which to take Stacey's character? She's right back where she was before she left - sneaking around hotel rooms with Max. She even ran off from Brighton and left her daughter - and how, pray tell, did Big Mo manage to get to Brighton, to Jean's house and back in the space of a morning, tugging back the six-year-old who's playing a three year-old?
Suicide Blonde.
Phil isn't afraid of Ronnie. He thinks she's mad. He's going to give her enough rope with which to hang herself.
Anyone who acts as Ronnie does around Phil, any Mitchell no less, meets their just rewards. Even if that Mitchell is a purdy woman.
I seem to recall Archie relishing taking control of the Mitchell dynamic, relegating Phil to the second division of importance, and she's doing the same thing - rubbing his nose in his refusal to protect his "family." Phil has come close feeling the collar of the law in the incident with Ben. He's not about to go there again, because he knows Ronnie's done a botch job; and sooner or later a body is going to surface - maybe not Carl's,but one will. The question is ... Whose?
Lucy Beale's? Jake Stone's?
Phil it totally right - Ronnie is out of control. She as good as admitted to Carl's family that she killed him, and then she arranged for the silly Aleks - who's gone from fey, dodgy market inspector to hard case and Ronnie's rottweiler. Why was he at the gym during the day when he should be at his job? Obviously, the plan is to get a scapegoat to do her dirty work. Aleks is an isolated character with no family or antecedents on the Square - easily disposable if he gets caught doing a job for her.
And make no mistake - this is a leaving line. It's significant that an actress like Sam Womack, playing a character of the calibre of Ronnie Mitchell, has only been offered a one-year contract. From March 2014. That says everything, including closure at the time of the 30th anniversary episode.
To have Ronnie stay on in psychopath mode - because she cannot be anything else now that this has been acknowledged - would be an insult to the viewers' intelligence (even those who are too stupid to realise it) and to the actress. To do so risks cartooning the character. It's also a total imbalance on the gender make-up of the programme. Soaps have enough problems these days, bar Emmerdale, depicting male characters. The last thing we need is a total shrieking, botoxed bevy of women characters emasculating what is left of the male population.
I think Jake is going to be a victim of Ronnie, as Jamie Lomas, who's doing a passable job as a drunk at the moment, is scheduled to finish his contract in the summer, getting involved with Roxy, Ronnie's real obsession, along the way.
And to add insult to injury, a smiling cobra of another blonde on a power trip, an Antipodean one, has come hunting Alfie for the scame he perpetrated whilst in Australian. I would have said "down under," but Alfie doesn't cheat.
The Not-So-Good Samaritan.
Is Jane for real? Her smugness knows no bounds, much less, her arrogance in acknowledging Masood's compliment that she was the wisest woman in Walford. That wasn't Jane being coy or even self-deprecating. It was Jane taking credit for influencing Ian into offering a home to a homeless drunk. Something Jane didn't do. She merely handed over money with which he could get drunker.
Ian's playing nice with Jake in order to impress Jane, and I'm glad the penny soon dropped for Denise - that he's not doing it for business purposes.
Jane's another character whose return has sucked royally. She only makes me realise what a smug and judgemental bitch Jane has always been.
The Beginning of the End.
Blink and you'd miss it, but Lola's and Peter's conflict, aided and abetted by the increasingly more Neanderthal-browed Jay is really the beginning of the end for Lucy. Watch again and think about it.
No comments:
Post a Comment