If I've been a bit remiss in my reviews of late, it's because the show is angering me so much, it's difficult to write about it.
I'll cut to the chase. As you may have surmised, I'm no big fan of this Executive Producer or the acolytes who worship at his altar. I have to say it ...
That's what I long to scream at the assorted gaggle of mindless Millennials who bang on and on ad infinitum and ad nauseam about "DTC" or, more familiarly, "Dom."
Dom Dom-Dom-Dom Dommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Dom the Dumb. Dom the Dick, more like it, because he reminds me of that giggling, entitled, spoiled, little asshat who sat at the back of a schoolroom, snorking and making rude and condescending remarks about the teacher because he reckoned himself far cleverer.
What is Dom? Well, to put it succinctly, he's a con artist, a liar and a cheat. But credit where credit is due, he knows his legion of fans. Half the shit he gets away with on this shower is the result of the fact that he knows the audience to whom he panders is so damned unintelligent and incapable of critical thinking that he can present what he wants and they'll buy it as the gospel truth. People who are so turgid and obstreporous in their thought processes that they are incapable of understanding history and the way people behaved in other eras because - well, because if something happened beyond their memory or before their birth, it just wasn't that important.
Dom the Dim holds that philopsophy too. A brilliant example of such a person can be found in whoever it is who manages the BBC's EastEnders' Facebook and Twitter pages. As a spoiler picture (because most of the Millennials find reading such a bore), on Facebook, there was posted the moment Ian Beale breaks the news to Bobby and CindyBoy the Greek thatsomeone's stepped on their pet stick insect Lucy has died. The caption, which was posted on Facebook by the BBC EastEnders' site administrator, read (and I quote):-
Ian tells the younger Beales that they're sister has died.
There it is. Read it again.
Ian tells the younger Beales that they're sister has died.
First of all, CindyBoy the Greek isn't even remotely a Beale. I'm highly doubtful that she's even a girl. Secondly, the plural possessive pronoun is their. They're is a contraction of a pronoun and a verb. Get a grip and get a fucking education.
EastEnders - a show written for Millennials by Millennials about Millennials. Produced by Dom the Dim.
Rip Her to Shreds.
How appropriate ... Blondie.
I'm going to say it and invite all the Millennial fanbois to come stomping on my page, just spitting in indignation.
Lucy Beale is a stick insect, and the actress who plays her is anorexic. I don't care what the PR says, and I don't care that she makes all the appropriately right noises when Thinspiration cites her as an example for young girls to starve, she's a fucking anorexic, and she's painful and disgusting to watch. It's no coincidence that TPTB have her walking about Walford in late April swathed in a pink fluffy coat. Anorexics have no meat to insulate body warmth, and it hides the fact that she's grossly thin. Her arms and legs are like sticks. Put a tattoo on her forearm, and she could play a concentration camp survivor, as long as she doesn't speak, lays off the weird eyeliner and false eyelashes and shuts her fucking mouth, because that open-mouthed pout makes her look like a mouth-breather.
Shit, she probably is.
I get it that Tuesday's episode was a concerted effort to make us feel sorry for her and see how "messed up" she is, but the episode also illustrates exactly why Hetti Bywater is getting the chop. The show has taken on young actors with no experience before - Charlie Brooks, Jack Ryder and Lacey Turner come to mind; but those youngsters learned from the talent around them. In recent years, there have been two inexperienced actors in particular who have left as dire and bad as they were the day they showed up. One is Tony Discipline, the other is Hetti Bywater.
Maybe if they'd taken her character in a different direction from the get-go, things might have been different. But here's an important legacy character in whom I can't invest because she's eminently unlikeable. Janine, one of a triumvirate of legacy characters who have departed/are departing this year, wasn't particularly likeable at the best of times, but she was damned watchable and played by a competent actress. The same for Patsy Palmer - and I'm not talking about Brooks and Palmer now, I'm referencing them when they were closer to Bywater's age than now, with all their experience behind them.
I suppose the purpose of Tuesday's episode was to show us that Lucy actually had a conscience, that she cared about her friend Lauren, that she recognised that what she and Max had was wrong, and that, naively, she latched onto Lee's banter as sincerity.
She came across as amateur, plebeian and awkward, when you could understand what she was saying. And she needs to stop that catwalk walk in future parts. Go back to catalogue modeling, if that's what she wants. She needs some serious speech lessons and training in how to project your voice, and someone needs to tell her to cut it with the opened-mouthed pout. Whatever money Bywater's made from this venture into serious acting, I hope she puts it to good use and takes some drama lessons - and buys a steak dinner, while she's at it.
I hate how TPTB are dragging Ian through the mud with regard to Lucy as well, even with Peter's remark about her being unbearable after her success. What a singular letting agency - get the punters drunk and get them to sign on the dotted line. Something a bit unethical about that, and I thought these were new, purpose-built flats. They looked like council properties.
All of a sudden, TPTB have made Ian disdainful and distant regarding his children's ventures into business, when in the past, he's always been proud of the initiative they've shown. Once again, personality transplants of familiar characters in order to promote particular plotline. The sudden two-week feature interest in Lucy, a character played by an inexperienced actress, who has failed epically every time they've thrust her into a major storyline, is rushed and ragged. We're being asked to take a sympathetic interest in Lucy now because she's about to die.
No.
She comes across as sleazy as Max, imposing herself onto his family dynamic, crawling all over him like a bad rash with his daughter, her best friend, in the next room. (Been there and done that before, the last time DTC was hanging around - now what was he saying recently about the show not replaying greatest hits?). Taking him away from spending an evening with his son in order to romp the beds some place in a hotel, and now, tonight, she gets an epiphany after spending an afternoon, plying students with drink in order to palm them off with over-priced flats they probably can't afford. She wants a younger model, who's sweet-talked her. She wants someone to love her. Aw, diddums! Someone says Lucy's a pretty thang and she's ready to dang his thang.
It's been established that Lucy is unlikeable and unloveable. In fact, it's been long established that just about the only person to love Lucy has been Ian. I suppose that Ian's ultimate reaction to Lucy having stolen his credit card, advising her that he'd be billing her for the amount she stole from his credit card account, with interest, isn't a parent being unkind, it's tough love. In point of fact, Denise was right - Ian was well within his rights to have called the police on the pouting little entitled beeyatch.
Her biggest entitlement issue came in believing that just because she'd put out for Lee last week and he was still showing an interest, that all she had to do was show up in the pub and he'd be hers for the asking.
She didn't bargain on Whitney or the fact that Lee is a soldier home on leave from combat duty.
In other words, horny.
I actually liked the Whitney-Lee dynamic. I prefer Whitney when she's scrubbed clean of slap and she isn't sexing it up in front of some boy. although I dispute the fact that Whitney has always put a wall up against any potential romantic interlude. Maybe Lee is just the right mix of bad boy and nice bloke to keep Whitney interested.
Lucy has got to be the most unsympathetic victim ever in the genre of soap, but then the home of unsympathetic victims, particularly female ones, is EastEnders.
You've Got Mail.
Wow, and this song even uses the signature word "Babe."
Oo-er, as Dot would say. Someone's seen Max canoodling with a blonde grasshopper.
I would imagine that part of Lucy's enhanced image of herself comes from the fact that when she has sex, she's usually the one on top. Don't kid yourself, love. The bloke likes his comfort, and that means not lying on a spiky bag of bones.
Max's mystery e-mail has me stumped. Before I saw the picture, I was thinking perhaps Lucy sent the e-mail in order to scare Max off pursuing her, but now that's a real mystery. The obvious choice is Lauren, but then if it were she, she's undergone another personality transplant for plotline purposes as well, because Lauren is, in no way, capable of doing something as subtle and sneaky as that. Her gob is too big.
And Max is back to his sleaziest. How rich of him to counsel Lucy that Lee was only using her, when that is exactly what Max is doing - he's getting on fine with the girls now, but what happens when one of them finds Lucy in his bed.
Another theory is Abi, and that is interesting, especially the theory about Abi being the potential killer. She's naive and unsophisticated, and when she reacts adversely, she usually overreacts. She was also in the Branning house on hand to wish her sister and the centipede good luck on their laughable business venture. She could have followed at a later hour and caught Max in the act. Once again, this reeks of Stax. Yet another Greatest Hits' lie.
The Son Also Gets a Rise.
Dean is back. Minus the ridiculous "o" and darker in substenance and countenance. It's good to see him. I've lobbied for his return for years, and I'm glad that he's back and that he appears to be mean.
Mean Dean.
I hope they aren't going to present Dean as another version of a ladies' man, considering the yarn he spun Stan about cheating on his girlfriend. Stan's "advice" was classic Old School EastEnd. It's extremely interesting that both of Stan's grandsons turned to him when they were in trouble, and even more interesting that Stan took the rap for Dean's crime in order for Dean to scarper, just like I think he protected his scrotey daughter when he told Mick about his near-drowning experience from the week before. And the proof that the toxic Scrote is filling Mick's head with poison, because the only family member who spoke out against helping Stan was the Scrote.
I particularly liked the ambiguity of Stan's line as he sat smoking outside the Vic and Shirley was collecting glasses:-
I know you're there. I saw you as I came in.
The Scrote took that remark to be directed at her, but when she left, Dean emerges from the shadows. Stan's function, I suppose, as Dean "owes" him, is to reunite the son with the mother. Brownie points for Stan? I hope Dean never forgives the alcoholic bitch.
In fact, I hope he kills her.
Vice Is Nice But Incest Is Best.
Pssst! The one on the left is George Clooney's aunt.
The Mitchell meal without either Phil or Sharon? Are they sidelining the two oldest and most established characters of that dynamic? And, yes, I include Sharon in the Mitchell fold. Ronnie's courting Roxy with elaborate presents now - the gift of the keys to the house in which Archie lived, then we have that atmospheric scene of Ronnie channeling Archie whilst planning a house-warming party - two ageing party girls throwing a part, and we know for what that will serve as a backdrop. I loved how Lola sat through that awful dinner party, with her jacket on and clutching Lexi, abject fear in her eyes re Ronnie. Run, Lexi, run.
I feel sorry for Denise.
I'll cut to the chase. As you may have surmised, I'm no big fan of this Executive Producer or the acolytes who worship at his altar. I have to say it ...
That's what I long to scream at the assorted gaggle of mindless Millennials who bang on and on ad infinitum and ad nauseam about "DTC" or, more familiarly, "Dom."
Dom Dom-Dom-Dom Dommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Dom the Dumb. Dom the Dick, more like it, because he reminds me of that giggling, entitled, spoiled, little asshat who sat at the back of a schoolroom, snorking and making rude and condescending remarks about the teacher because he reckoned himself far cleverer.
What is Dom? Well, to put it succinctly, he's a con artist, a liar and a cheat. But credit where credit is due, he knows his legion of fans. Half the shit he gets away with on this shower is the result of the fact that he knows the audience to whom he panders is so damned unintelligent and incapable of critical thinking that he can present what he wants and they'll buy it as the gospel truth. People who are so turgid and obstreporous in their thought processes that they are incapable of understanding history and the way people behaved in other eras because - well, because if something happened beyond their memory or before their birth, it just wasn't that important.
Dom the Dim holds that philopsophy too. A brilliant example of such a person can be found in whoever it is who manages the BBC's EastEnders' Facebook and Twitter pages. As a spoiler picture (because most of the Millennials find reading such a bore), on Facebook, there was posted the moment Ian Beale breaks the news to Bobby and CindyBoy the Greek that
Ian tells the younger Beales that they're sister has died.
There it is. Read it again.
Ian tells the younger Beales that they're sister has died.
First of all, CindyBoy the Greek isn't even remotely a Beale. I'm highly doubtful that she's even a girl. Secondly, the plural possessive pronoun is their. They're is a contraction of a pronoun and a verb. Get a grip and get a fucking education.
EastEnders - a show written for Millennials by Millennials about Millennials. Produced by Dom the Dim.
Rip Her to Shreds.
How appropriate ... Blondie.
I'm going to say it and invite all the Millennial fanbois to come stomping on my page, just spitting in indignation.
Lucy Beale is a stick insect, and the actress who plays her is anorexic. I don't care what the PR says, and I don't care that she makes all the appropriately right noises when Thinspiration cites her as an example for young girls to starve, she's a fucking anorexic, and she's painful and disgusting to watch. It's no coincidence that TPTB have her walking about Walford in late April swathed in a pink fluffy coat. Anorexics have no meat to insulate body warmth, and it hides the fact that she's grossly thin. Her arms and legs are like sticks. Put a tattoo on her forearm, and she could play a concentration camp survivor, as long as she doesn't speak, lays off the weird eyeliner and false eyelashes and shuts her fucking mouth, because that open-mouthed pout makes her look like a mouth-breather.
Shit, she probably is.
I get it that Tuesday's episode was a concerted effort to make us feel sorry for her and see how "messed up" she is, but the episode also illustrates exactly why Hetti Bywater is getting the chop. The show has taken on young actors with no experience before - Charlie Brooks, Jack Ryder and Lacey Turner come to mind; but those youngsters learned from the talent around them. In recent years, there have been two inexperienced actors in particular who have left as dire and bad as they were the day they showed up. One is Tony Discipline, the other is Hetti Bywater.
Maybe if they'd taken her character in a different direction from the get-go, things might have been different. But here's an important legacy character in whom I can't invest because she's eminently unlikeable. Janine, one of a triumvirate of legacy characters who have departed/are departing this year, wasn't particularly likeable at the best of times, but she was damned watchable and played by a competent actress. The same for Patsy Palmer - and I'm not talking about Brooks and Palmer now, I'm referencing them when they were closer to Bywater's age than now, with all their experience behind them.
I suppose the purpose of Tuesday's episode was to show us that Lucy actually had a conscience, that she cared about her friend Lauren, that she recognised that what she and Max had was wrong, and that, naively, she latched onto Lee's banter as sincerity.
She came across as amateur, plebeian and awkward, when you could understand what she was saying. And she needs to stop that catwalk walk in future parts. Go back to catalogue modeling, if that's what she wants. She needs some serious speech lessons and training in how to project your voice, and someone needs to tell her to cut it with the opened-mouthed pout. Whatever money Bywater's made from this venture into serious acting, I hope she puts it to good use and takes some drama lessons - and buys a steak dinner, while she's at it.
I hate how TPTB are dragging Ian through the mud with regard to Lucy as well, even with Peter's remark about her being unbearable after her success. What a singular letting agency - get the punters drunk and get them to sign on the dotted line. Something a bit unethical about that, and I thought these were new, purpose-built flats. They looked like council properties.
All of a sudden, TPTB have made Ian disdainful and distant regarding his children's ventures into business, when in the past, he's always been proud of the initiative they've shown. Once again, personality transplants of familiar characters in order to promote particular plotline. The sudden two-week feature interest in Lucy, a character played by an inexperienced actress, who has failed epically every time they've thrust her into a major storyline, is rushed and ragged. We're being asked to take a sympathetic interest in Lucy now because she's about to die.
No.
She comes across as sleazy as Max, imposing herself onto his family dynamic, crawling all over him like a bad rash with his daughter, her best friend, in the next room. (Been there and done that before, the last time DTC was hanging around - now what was he saying recently about the show not replaying greatest hits?). Taking him away from spending an evening with his son in order to romp the beds some place in a hotel, and now, tonight, she gets an epiphany after spending an afternoon, plying students with drink in order to palm them off with over-priced flats they probably can't afford. She wants a younger model, who's sweet-talked her. She wants someone to love her. Aw, diddums! Someone says Lucy's a pretty thang and she's ready to dang his thang.
It's been established that Lucy is unlikeable and unloveable. In fact, it's been long established that just about the only person to love Lucy has been Ian. I suppose that Ian's ultimate reaction to Lucy having stolen his credit card, advising her that he'd be billing her for the amount she stole from his credit card account, with interest, isn't a parent being unkind, it's tough love. In point of fact, Denise was right - Ian was well within his rights to have called the police on the pouting little entitled beeyatch.
Her biggest entitlement issue came in believing that just because she'd put out for Lee last week and he was still showing an interest, that all she had to do was show up in the pub and he'd be hers for the asking.
She didn't bargain on Whitney or the fact that Lee is a soldier home on leave from combat duty.
In other words, horny.
I actually liked the Whitney-Lee dynamic. I prefer Whitney when she's scrubbed clean of slap and she isn't sexing it up in front of some boy. although I dispute the fact that Whitney has always put a wall up against any potential romantic interlude. Maybe Lee is just the right mix of bad boy and nice bloke to keep Whitney interested.
Lucy has got to be the most unsympathetic victim ever in the genre of soap, but then the home of unsympathetic victims, particularly female ones, is EastEnders.
You've Got Mail.
Wow, and this song even uses the signature word "Babe."
Oo-er, as Dot would say. Someone's seen Max canoodling with a blonde grasshopper.
I would imagine that part of Lucy's enhanced image of herself comes from the fact that when she has sex, she's usually the one on top. Don't kid yourself, love. The bloke likes his comfort, and that means not lying on a spiky bag of bones.
Max's mystery e-mail has me stumped. Before I saw the picture, I was thinking perhaps Lucy sent the e-mail in order to scare Max off pursuing her, but now that's a real mystery. The obvious choice is Lauren, but then if it were she, she's undergone another personality transplant for plotline purposes as well, because Lauren is, in no way, capable of doing something as subtle and sneaky as that. Her gob is too big.
And Max is back to his sleaziest. How rich of him to counsel Lucy that Lee was only using her, when that is exactly what Max is doing - he's getting on fine with the girls now, but what happens when one of them finds Lucy in his bed.
Another theory is Abi, and that is interesting, especially the theory about Abi being the potential killer. She's naive and unsophisticated, and when she reacts adversely, she usually overreacts. She was also in the Branning house on hand to wish her sister and the centipede good luck on their laughable business venture. She could have followed at a later hour and caught Max in the act. Once again, this reeks of Stax. Yet another Greatest Hits' lie.
The Son Also Gets a Rise.
Dean is back. Minus the ridiculous "o" and darker in substenance and countenance. It's good to see him. I've lobbied for his return for years, and I'm glad that he's back and that he appears to be mean.
Mean Dean.
I hope they aren't going to present Dean as another version of a ladies' man, considering the yarn he spun Stan about cheating on his girlfriend. Stan's "advice" was classic Old School EastEnd. It's extremely interesting that both of Stan's grandsons turned to him when they were in trouble, and even more interesting that Stan took the rap for Dean's crime in order for Dean to scarper, just like I think he protected his scrotey daughter when he told Mick about his near-drowning experience from the week before. And the proof that the toxic Scrote is filling Mick's head with poison, because the only family member who spoke out against helping Stan was the Scrote.
I particularly liked the ambiguity of Stan's line as he sat smoking outside the Vic and Shirley was collecting glasses:-
I know you're there. I saw you as I came in.
The Scrote took that remark to be directed at her, but when she left, Dean emerges from the shadows. Stan's function, I suppose, as Dean "owes" him, is to reunite the son with the mother. Brownie points for Stan? I hope Dean never forgives the alcoholic bitch.
In fact, I hope he kills her.
Vice Is Nice But Incest Is Best.
Pssst! The one on the left is George Clooney's aunt.
The Mitchell meal without either Phil or Sharon? Are they sidelining the two oldest and most established characters of that dynamic? And, yes, I include Sharon in the Mitchell fold. Ronnie's courting Roxy with elaborate presents now - the gift of the keys to the house in which Archie lived, then we have that atmospheric scene of Ronnie channeling Archie whilst planning a house-warming party - two ageing party girls throwing a part, and we know for what that will serve as a backdrop. I loved how Lola sat through that awful dinner party, with her jacket on and clutching Lexi, abject fear in her eyes re Ronnie. Run, Lexi, run.
I feel sorry for Denise.
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