Let's make something abundantly clear, and I would hope someone would tactfully point this out to the skeletal Hetti Bywater:-
Lucy Beale is not iconic.
Lucy is an important legacy character, yes; but she is far from iconic. "Iconic" seems to be a generic word used with whatever character seems to be the most popular of the moment. Hetti Bywater obviously thinks Lucy is iconic because she played the character, because the actress gives the impression of being very entitled, and because she also gives the impression of being very stupid.
On the other hand, the word "iconic" is used in a sinister fashion by someone who should know better.
EgoBoy the Wonder Producer uses "iconic" to describe Shirley the Scrote, his version of the Alpha Hermaphrodite and the hero of the piece. After seven years of being a peripheral character - the unwanted tangental of the Wicks family and on the edges of not-quite-being a Mitchell, WonderBoy concocts a family for her, gives her the Vic and deems her iconic, in a subliminal way of influencing the audience - his target audience who cut him enough slack to populate a forest.
The Son ofMan Mick.
Second first impressions: I like Lee Carter. Sure, he's no hunk - if anything, he looks like a cross between a more intelligent version of Kirk from Coronation Street and a Neanderthal, but DannyBoy Hatchard is a good young actor, which means he probably won't be staying long on the show. Still, at least TPTB are now hiring according to acting ability and portfolio instead of gauging who's the prettiest.
Lee slotted in easily with the family, but we all know from the blurbs that he has a secret. We also know from the furtive looks exchanged with Stan that Stan knows the secret; and further based on another look exchanged between him and Stan when Shirley the Scrote ask the most tactless, stupid and unfeeling question anyone could ask a returning soldier ...
Oi, Lee, have you ever killed anyone?
we sorta kinda have an idea what Lee's secret might be.
I still say Lee is the latest in a line of EastEnders' soldiers which began with Grant Mitchell. Grant was haunted by the Falklands. Sean Slater was haunted by Iraq. Lee's nemesis is Afghanistan. The other obvious similarity?
Well, Grant smacked Eric and ran away (off-screen). Sean smacked Brian and ran away (off-screen). And we actually got to see Lee smack Mick and run away. Apart from Stan knowing Lee's secret - and it's something that two of Stan's grandsons have sought solace from him, rather than going to their immediate families who revile Stan - you get the feeling that Mick has an instinctive feeling that something's not quite right with Lee. It niggles him that Lee lied to him and Linda about his leave, having spent the first week with Stan.
And here we have the difference between Mick and Linda. At the moment, Lee is number one son, the only one of her three children who hasn't let her down in any way. Yet. For the moment, he's the hero, a soldier in the service of Queen and country. But we all know, what happens when one of her own disappoints Linda's Little England world, and very soon, not only his army caper but something far more serious will envelope Lee.
One good thing about his full introductory episode was that TPTB kept him within the confines of the family, so we could see his easy camaraderie with his siblings and his relationship with his parents.
I know that Lee Carter's introduction comes as a contrivance to integrate him into the gaggle of suspects surrounding the impending death of Bag O'Bones Beale (and thus making him yet another man in Walford with the sudden urge to mate with a stick insect), but I hope this doesn't turn into a smokescreen for making Shirley the hero of the piece. I'm not up for ten months of Shirley snarling and sniping at anyone who whispers suspicions about the nephew she's never known possibly being a murderer.
Secret Love.
The latest Ronnie-on-Roxy caper is sick beyond belief.
I have to give DTC credit, however, for going where no other producer dared go before. I've always said that Ronnie was obsessed to the point of sexual arousal by her sister. Psychopaths obsess and psychopath also are control freaks. Thus we have Ronnie with Roxy. She's obsessive about her sister to the point that she's made Roxy virtually child-like - with the emotional maturity level of an adolescent.
Roxy is thirty-six going on thirteen. She dresses like a teenager and is beginning to look suspiciously like mutton dressed as lamb. She often forgets she has a young daughter, who's way down on Roxy's list of priorities - the first two being, getting a man and getting a job that requires no brains and even less effort. She clearly doesn't rate poor Amy at all.
Roxy, being stupid, is easy enough for Ronnie to control - or at least to convince that Roxy needs Ronnie in her life 24/7, and this is the control element, when Ronnie cries and tells Roxy that everything she does, she does for Roxy - like breaking up her relationships with Damien, Sean, Alfie and - in the biggest way - Carl.
I often said that Ronnie was just like Archie and that Ronnie was, in fact, Roxy's Archie, which meant that the most appropriate end for the Blisters would be for Ronnie to rape Roxy and for Roxy to then kill Ronnie. Because Ronnie wants Roxy, sexually, there's no doubt. But Roxy doesn't bat for the other side, so Ronnie has to play the part of Popeye (not the Sailor, Luddites), the impotent criminal in William Faulkner's Sanctuary, who secures a lover for Temple Drake and then watches them at it.
Roxy wants a boyfriend. Unbeknownst to her, Ronnie's paid Aleks to pay court to Roxy, but only the way Ronnie wants him to do so. Aleks, on the other hand, is attracted to Roxy, and says he would have asked her out anyway, but he can only do so if he does what Ronnie wants - which is, probably, not to encourage her too far away from Ronnie at all and, above all, not to encourage commitment.
In other words, Ronnie gets her rocks off hearing about what Roxy got up to with Aleks and imagining herself in Aleks's position.
Well, you know what's on the cards. Either Aleks will tell Roxy or Roxy will suss the score and end up with Jake, in a relationship unplanned and with nothing to do with Ronnie. In short, Ronnie will lose control, and in some way both Aleks and Jake will pay - and one will leave in a box.
Deliverance in Walford.
The inbred Butcher/Jackson/Branning/Beale family. Not only do we have to contend with that Village Idiot whose world revolves around her navel (AKA Bianca), we have Whitney self-obsessing about the fact that Johnny Carter doesn't like her because he's gay. In fact, she goes one further and reckons it's her fault that Johnny's gay.
She's a dirty girl, you know.
For all the progress WonderBoy has made with sending Ronnie in a new direction, he's regressed Whitney terribly. She's now back in the mould of the Walford mattress - looking like a greasy, dirty pikey slut, fat-faced and tango tanned and desperate for a man. A nice boy like Johnny Carter will do, until the next bad boy shows up. (Please, God, don't let it be Dean).
The fact that she's now got around to blaming herself and her dirty girl past for Johnny's sexuality and blanking him as a friend only proves her entitlement, her ignorance and her trailer trash mentality.
This is a spent character, and Shona McGarty should be axed.
As for Bianca, once again, I thought this trust issue with men was supposed to have been expunged in the great Simon Ashdown Epiphany episode from last summer, featuring Bianca, Whitney and Kat. Now it seems that all that was for nowt.
Bianca overhears a few words between Terry and Whitney, takes them out of context and accuses Terry of being a kiddie diddler ... forgetting that Whitney is actually an adult. In fact, she turned 21 in December, and I'm surprised there was no hoopla celebration.
Terry is a nice guy. Not the greatest of actors, but a genuinely nice person, who doesn't deserve an idiot like Bianca.
Oh, interesting to know that neither TJ nor Liam like the ladyboy known as Cindy the Greek.
The Luddite.
Yes, Jay, Abi's going to university. It's something she's always wanted to do, and you need a uni degree to be a vet. And, yes, you little toerag, it was mighty presumptuous of you, and of Luddite Phil, to presume that this was all talk and at the eleventh hour, she'd back out and stick around Walford with you. I knew he was always paying lip service to Abi's ambitions, hoping she'd throw caution to the wind along with her academic ambitions. He wanted her to run away to Gretna Green when she had barely finished her GCSEs instead of going on a study course in Costa Rica. His reaction to her telling him that, had she been pregnant last summer, she'd have had a termination, was to go kiss the local barmaid.
Phil was right - in this instance, a long-distance romance would not work, if only for the reason that Abi will be furthering her academic credentials, broadening her horizons and establishing a career. Jay is an untrained mechanic, with minimal education. Abi will outgrow him, but I do hope that, in her education, she does acquire some tact. It was wrong of her to tell Jay that, basically, he had nothing keeping him in Walford and should go with her to Liverpool. She'd most likely be in rooms for the first year at least, and where would he live? And if they got accommodation, Jay would certainly have to find employment to be able to sustain them both. Or is she expecting Max to do that? Either way, she deserves better than he, and he's been eyeing Lola up recently. I think the Liverpool option could be the end of Abi.
The Cheeky Girl.
I have to laugh at Lucy's and Lauren's business venture. Those identical outfits made them look like an upmarket, but just as cheesy a version of the Cheeky Girls. I find it hard to believe that two inexperienced, immature girls, barely out of their teens, with virtually no experience in the property market, have secured a contract to manage the lettings of council property on the reputation of a business which is less than two weeks old and operated out of the respective front rooms of their homes.
And as well as presenting Lucy as callous, they're trying to also present her as Little Miss Victim, whose father doesn't give a rat's arse about her success in the businessworld. In that respect, TPTB are presenting Ian as self-absorbed, disinterested and unimpressed with Lucy's venture. Maybe Ian's memory of how Lucy scammed him out of his businesses and how she treated him in the wake of his bout with mental illness to offer any sort of support. We know that Max's encouragement, support and compliments are all based on the fact that Lucy's spreading her skinny legs for him.
I found the Jake-Lauren association lairy and creepy, with Jake's creepy whispery voice and leering smile and Lauren looking increasingly like a little girl. I find Max and Lucy even creepier, because for all her exaggerated crimson lipstick and pseudo-sophisticated hairstyle, she still looks like an underaged, underdeveloped child playing a dangerous adult game. I hope Max thinks to fumigate his office after their tryst.
Time for Skeletor to die.
Lucy Beale is not iconic.
Lucy is an important legacy character, yes; but she is far from iconic. "Iconic" seems to be a generic word used with whatever character seems to be the most popular of the moment. Hetti Bywater obviously thinks Lucy is iconic because she played the character, because the actress gives the impression of being very entitled, and because she also gives the impression of being very stupid.
On the other hand, the word "iconic" is used in a sinister fashion by someone who should know better.
EgoBoy the Wonder Producer uses "iconic" to describe Shirley the Scrote, his version of the Alpha Hermaphrodite and the hero of the piece. After seven years of being a peripheral character - the unwanted tangental of the Wicks family and on the edges of not-quite-being a Mitchell, WonderBoy concocts a family for her, gives her the Vic and deems her iconic, in a subliminal way of influencing the audience - his target audience who cut him enough slack to populate a forest.
The Son of
Second first impressions: I like Lee Carter. Sure, he's no hunk - if anything, he looks like a cross between a more intelligent version of Kirk from Coronation Street and a Neanderthal, but DannyBoy Hatchard is a good young actor, which means he probably won't be staying long on the show. Still, at least TPTB are now hiring according to acting ability and portfolio instead of gauging who's the prettiest.
Lee slotted in easily with the family, but we all know from the blurbs that he has a secret. We also know from the furtive looks exchanged with Stan that Stan knows the secret; and further based on another look exchanged between him and Stan when Shirley the Scrote ask the most tactless, stupid and unfeeling question anyone could ask a returning soldier ...
Oi, Lee, have you ever killed anyone?
we sorta kinda have an idea what Lee's secret might be.
I still say Lee is the latest in a line of EastEnders' soldiers which began with Grant Mitchell. Grant was haunted by the Falklands. Sean Slater was haunted by Iraq. Lee's nemesis is Afghanistan. The other obvious similarity?
Well, Grant smacked Eric and ran away (off-screen). Sean smacked Brian and ran away (off-screen). And we actually got to see Lee smack Mick and run away. Apart from Stan knowing Lee's secret - and it's something that two of Stan's grandsons have sought solace from him, rather than going to their immediate families who revile Stan - you get the feeling that Mick has an instinctive feeling that something's not quite right with Lee. It niggles him that Lee lied to him and Linda about his leave, having spent the first week with Stan.
And here we have the difference between Mick and Linda. At the moment, Lee is number one son, the only one of her three children who hasn't let her down in any way. Yet. For the moment, he's the hero, a soldier in the service of Queen and country. But we all know, what happens when one of her own disappoints Linda's Little England world, and very soon, not only his army caper but something far more serious will envelope Lee.
One good thing about his full introductory episode was that TPTB kept him within the confines of the family, so we could see his easy camaraderie with his siblings and his relationship with his parents.
I know that Lee Carter's introduction comes as a contrivance to integrate him into the gaggle of suspects surrounding the impending death of Bag O'Bones Beale (and thus making him yet another man in Walford with the sudden urge to mate with a stick insect), but I hope this doesn't turn into a smokescreen for making Shirley the hero of the piece. I'm not up for ten months of Shirley snarling and sniping at anyone who whispers suspicions about the nephew she's never known possibly being a murderer.
Secret Love.
The latest Ronnie-on-Roxy caper is sick beyond belief.
I have to give DTC credit, however, for going where no other producer dared go before. I've always said that Ronnie was obsessed to the point of sexual arousal by her sister. Psychopaths obsess and psychopath also are control freaks. Thus we have Ronnie with Roxy. She's obsessive about her sister to the point that she's made Roxy virtually child-like - with the emotional maturity level of an adolescent.
Roxy is thirty-six going on thirteen. She dresses like a teenager and is beginning to look suspiciously like mutton dressed as lamb. She often forgets she has a young daughter, who's way down on Roxy's list of priorities - the first two being, getting a man and getting a job that requires no brains and even less effort. She clearly doesn't rate poor Amy at all.
Roxy, being stupid, is easy enough for Ronnie to control - or at least to convince that Roxy needs Ronnie in her life 24/7, and this is the control element, when Ronnie cries and tells Roxy that everything she does, she does for Roxy - like breaking up her relationships with Damien, Sean, Alfie and - in the biggest way - Carl.
I often said that Ronnie was just like Archie and that Ronnie was, in fact, Roxy's Archie, which meant that the most appropriate end for the Blisters would be for Ronnie to rape Roxy and for Roxy to then kill Ronnie. Because Ronnie wants Roxy, sexually, there's no doubt. But Roxy doesn't bat for the other side, so Ronnie has to play the part of Popeye (not the Sailor, Luddites), the impotent criminal in William Faulkner's Sanctuary, who secures a lover for Temple Drake and then watches them at it.
Roxy wants a boyfriend. Unbeknownst to her, Ronnie's paid Aleks to pay court to Roxy, but only the way Ronnie wants him to do so. Aleks, on the other hand, is attracted to Roxy, and says he would have asked her out anyway, but he can only do so if he does what Ronnie wants - which is, probably, not to encourage her too far away from Ronnie at all and, above all, not to encourage commitment.
In other words, Ronnie gets her rocks off hearing about what Roxy got up to with Aleks and imagining herself in Aleks's position.
Well, you know what's on the cards. Either Aleks will tell Roxy or Roxy will suss the score and end up with Jake, in a relationship unplanned and with nothing to do with Ronnie. In short, Ronnie will lose control, and in some way both Aleks and Jake will pay - and one will leave in a box.
Deliverance in Walford.
The inbred Butcher/Jackson/Branning/Beale family. Not only do we have to contend with that Village Idiot whose world revolves around her navel (AKA Bianca), we have Whitney self-obsessing about the fact that Johnny Carter doesn't like her because he's gay. In fact, she goes one further and reckons it's her fault that Johnny's gay.
She's a dirty girl, you know.
For all the progress WonderBoy has made with sending Ronnie in a new direction, he's regressed Whitney terribly. She's now back in the mould of the Walford mattress - looking like a greasy, dirty pikey slut, fat-faced and tango tanned and desperate for a man. A nice boy like Johnny Carter will do, until the next bad boy shows up. (Please, God, don't let it be Dean).
The fact that she's now got around to blaming herself and her dirty girl past for Johnny's sexuality and blanking him as a friend only proves her entitlement, her ignorance and her trailer trash mentality.
This is a spent character, and Shona McGarty should be axed.
As for Bianca, once again, I thought this trust issue with men was supposed to have been expunged in the great Simon Ashdown Epiphany episode from last summer, featuring Bianca, Whitney and Kat. Now it seems that all that was for nowt.
Bianca overhears a few words between Terry and Whitney, takes them out of context and accuses Terry of being a kiddie diddler ... forgetting that Whitney is actually an adult. In fact, she turned 21 in December, and I'm surprised there was no hoopla celebration.
Terry is a nice guy. Not the greatest of actors, but a genuinely nice person, who doesn't deserve an idiot like Bianca.
Oh, interesting to know that neither TJ nor Liam like the ladyboy known as Cindy the Greek.
The Luddite.
Yes, Jay, Abi's going to university. It's something she's always wanted to do, and you need a uni degree to be a vet. And, yes, you little toerag, it was mighty presumptuous of you, and of Luddite Phil, to presume that this was all talk and at the eleventh hour, she'd back out and stick around Walford with you. I knew he was always paying lip service to Abi's ambitions, hoping she'd throw caution to the wind along with her academic ambitions. He wanted her to run away to Gretna Green when she had barely finished her GCSEs instead of going on a study course in Costa Rica. His reaction to her telling him that, had she been pregnant last summer, she'd have had a termination, was to go kiss the local barmaid.
Phil was right - in this instance, a long-distance romance would not work, if only for the reason that Abi will be furthering her academic credentials, broadening her horizons and establishing a career. Jay is an untrained mechanic, with minimal education. Abi will outgrow him, but I do hope that, in her education, she does acquire some tact. It was wrong of her to tell Jay that, basically, he had nothing keeping him in Walford and should go with her to Liverpool. She'd most likely be in rooms for the first year at least, and where would he live? And if they got accommodation, Jay would certainly have to find employment to be able to sustain them both. Or is she expecting Max to do that? Either way, she deserves better than he, and he's been eyeing Lola up recently. I think the Liverpool option could be the end of Abi.
The Cheeky Girl.
I have to laugh at Lucy's and Lauren's business venture. Those identical outfits made them look like an upmarket, but just as cheesy a version of the Cheeky Girls. I find it hard to believe that two inexperienced, immature girls, barely out of their teens, with virtually no experience in the property market, have secured a contract to manage the lettings of council property on the reputation of a business which is less than two weeks old and operated out of the respective front rooms of their homes.
And as well as presenting Lucy as callous, they're trying to also present her as Little Miss Victim, whose father doesn't give a rat's arse about her success in the businessworld. In that respect, TPTB are presenting Ian as self-absorbed, disinterested and unimpressed with Lucy's venture. Maybe Ian's memory of how Lucy scammed him out of his businesses and how she treated him in the wake of his bout with mental illness to offer any sort of support. We know that Max's encouragement, support and compliments are all based on the fact that Lucy's spreading her skinny legs for him.
I found the Jake-Lauren association lairy and creepy, with Jake's creepy whispery voice and leering smile and Lauren looking increasingly like a little girl. I find Max and Lucy even creepier, because for all her exaggerated crimson lipstick and pseudo-sophisticated hairstyle, she still looks like an underaged, underdeveloped child playing a dangerous adult game. I hope Max thinks to fumigate his office after their tryst.
Time for Skeletor to die.
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