Hand on heart, this is the first episode I have watched, in almost 30 years of watching EastEnders, where I've been angry with almost all of the characters until the end of the episode ... only to have me end the episode, broadly smiling at the duff-duff.
In fact, this is the only episode I've ever watched, in 30 years of watching EastEnders, where I've been immensely happy ... happy ... to see Nick Cotton.
Nick, with his last appearance, was in serious danger of becoming, if he hadn't already become, a cartoon villain. Let's face it, Nick's done almost everything bad there is to do, and - poor Charlie - his dad is a two-time murderer, unpunished, and he's about to marry a murderer, who, as yet, is still unpunished and as unrepentant about her crime as Nick has been and is about any of his; but maybe Charlie's done murder too. Who knows?
Nick is back this time, and it feels right. This is an intriguing storyline in which he figures, and it's proving more interesting than the murder investigation, which has dawdled into a morass of Branning-centred love angst - Max with the insipid Summerhayes, selfish Peter with even more selfish Lauren, posing prettily for the camera and failing in raising the audience's interest, and sulky Abi, scowling on the sidelines and waiting for someone sensible enough to smack her spoiled face.
More than anything, the Nick-Charlie-Ronnie storyline intrigues and interests me, simply because of the quirkiness of the characters involved. It's like a convention of psychopaths colliding amongst unsuspecting people.
It will all end in tears and tragedy, but this has totally outstripped the Lucy storyline, but it still might be intertwined with that, after all. I still haven't ruled out either Ronnie and/or Charlie from my suspects.
The rest of the episode was a welter of bad manners, selfishness, entitlement and emotional blackmail.
Spot the two stinkers (if you cannot guess, I'll reveal them at the end).
Oh, and more than anything, the majority of this episode was a testiment to the writing room's inability to create and sustain a strong, positive male character.
The Absolute Worst Parent in the World. Sonia. What an selfish, self-serving bitch! What kind of mother lays such an abysmal responsibility on the shoulders of her child.
"You know I love you more than anything, so you have to stay with me and abandon your dreams because you're the only thing - sorry, fing - that's holding your dad and me together."
What a load of shite! So now she's put the responsibility of saving Sonia's marriage on Rebecca's shoulders. The kid is thirteen, FFS! Sonia isn't the least bit interested in her daughter's desires and ambitions. She couldn't even be bothered to read the letter from the music school offering Rebecca an audition in exchange for the possiblity of a scholarship.
I cannot believe the burden with which Sonia has lumbered Rebecca - the child is go forfeit her ambitions in order to save her parents' marriage, the implication being that if she doesn't, then the failure is down to her. But I shouldn't expect anything less than this sort of selfishness from Sonia, as both Bianca and Carol have exhibited this sort of behaviour at times, themselves. Remember Carol bullying Bianca into binning Ricky because David binned her?
And once again, Sonia's language is indirectly derogatory of the as yet unseen Martin. All Sonia's done since she cropped up has been to moan about the inadequacies of Martin, both as a man in his behaviour and as a person, in general. I'm not surprised that Martin's gone off that pill of a woman. He was unfaithful to her, but before that, Sonia left Martin - and left him with Rebecca - for Gnomi; and who the hell knows what Sonia's been up to since then. We do know she's snogged the imbecile Tina - Sonia's delicate sensibilities are offended because Martin burps at the table, but she can tolerate a thief, who swigs alcohol from the bottle and pukes in the gutter. We also know that she's going to try to snog Kush.
.
Maybe if she stopped being so hypocritical and so fucking self-righteous, looking down her nose at everyone, and stopped depending on her daughter to save her own marital bacon, things might right themselves. She's a pukewad of a bitch to lay a guilt trip like that on Rebecca. Poor kid.
She doesn't deserve her daughter, and she certainly doesn't deserve either Martin or the name of Fowler.
Alfie, Kat and Stacey. I wanted to bang all three of their heads together. Seriously. This is the most frustrating storyline in a long time. First of all, Alfie-haters, the Alfie and Kat split you want isn't going to happen. The pair are too ingrained in each other's psyche at the moment for them to exist as separate entities. They are, indeed, an endgame couple, and this reunion and marriage is one that isn't going to be blown asunder.
As I said previously, the age of the yo-yo couple has past. The beginning of the end was when Tanya left, and the end of the end was Roxy's abortive wedding where Alfie reunited with Kat. Once upon a time, many years ago, when a couple broke up, that was it. One of the pair left Walford, and the other moved on. Until recently, we've had characters break up, make up and break up again. I don't think DTC is the type to go to the trouble of reuniting Kat and Alfie just to tear them apart again. Too much damage has been done to the couple by Kirkwood's epic fail of a venture.
But I wanted Alfie to tell Kat. He genuinely loves her, truly and deeply. He's also scared and ashamed of having failed her and is afraid of losing her. Squatting in the house isn't going to solve anything, because she's going to find out.
The marriage was a bit unreal - can it really happen that quickly? But something that Kat said in the previous episode heavily foreshadowed the future of the couple - about how they need each other, how the process of their lives has always been a big knockback, followed by a rise from the ashes, yet again. I know this story is unrealistic, that in normal circumstances, there would be avenues of hope and help open to these people; but I thought the intention of this producer was to bring these characters back to the bare basics and build them up again.
Alfie's desperation and hopelessness is palpable, and Shane Richie does a good job. So many people talk about Alfie's stupidity, but remember this: Alfie unjustly lost his livelihood at the connivance of Aleks and Tamwar. For everyone talking about Alfie's sense of entitlement, look at some of his fellow market traders - how many times have we seen Peter Beale swanning around the Square, anyplace but on the stall, mooning after Lauren. His byword is ~ I'll close early ~. Didn't Aleks the hard man want to rescind his stall in the wake of Lucy's death because he hadn't opened for such a long time, and wasn't it Alfie who jumped to Peter's defence? And what about Aleks, himself? He's the Market Inspector, yet when he's scared shitless by the sight of his wife and child on the Square, he stops work in the middle of the day, with no word to his own superiors, and swans off on a holiday for weeks with his squeeze and her kid. No one's talking about having his job.
TPTB were on a hiding to nothing when they moved the Moons from the Vic. On the surface, it appears that, apart from the birth of the twins, they didn't have a plan for them, knowing that Alfie never worked well as a character on the market stall. Keep them together, by all means - a split would make Kat as redundant and as hopeless as Bianca had become, clinging to Stacey to the point that it would bring her down also - and either develop their characters, giving them something to do, or send them off with a happy ending.
It simply astonishes me that there are three clothing stalls on that market within spitting distance of each other's - Kat's, vile Donna's and now Kush's.
I feel immensely sorry for Kat, because of her insecurities in the wake of her injuries - which, actually, don't look that bad and look to be healable in the long run with not too much scarring. She'll be as annoyed at Alfie as Sharon was once with Grant for the same thing, but - like Sharon -she won't leave him. Alfie is at fault for the scam, but Mo has to bear some of the blame for having illegal flammable commercial goods on the premises.
As for Alfie's anger with Stacey, I can see this from both sides. Stacey cares about and loves Kat, but there Kat was again, tonight, whining about wanting Stacey to live in the house with them. Stop it. Just stop it. Even if this were all kosher, Stacey needs to remove herself from that dynamic and start fresh with her child, that's her first priority - Lily. If she stayed with the Slater-Moons, she'd only be sucked into their problems and dilemmas, and her presence would, inevitably, cause friction.
I'm not siding with Alfie, but his comment about Stacey destroying families has a ring of truth about it. In her last stint on the Square, one of the defining aspects of Stacey's character was, initially, her high moral code. She was extremely judgemental and called people out, even those in her own family, for failing to live up to her high moral standards. Remember, this is the girl who turned Danielle out onto the streets because Danielle got an abortion.
But Stacey's tragic flaw is, immediately after she assumes the moral high ground, she does something that defies her own moral code - i.e., sleeping with Max Branning and nagging him to leave his family. Stacey also broke up Janine's marriage to Ryan - goaded into doing that and being convinced that she was entitled to do so by none other than Kat, I believe.
There's a bit of foreshadowing here.
Stacey threatening to tell Kat the truth about the house if Alfie won't is really none of Stacey's business. As she reiterated to Mick, her prime concern in all this is a place to stay for her and Lily. She's not thinking at all about the repercussions of Kat knowing this thing and experiencing this stress at this stage in her recovery. It may even cause a health relapse for her in her fragile psychological state, but Stacey never thinks about the aftermath of these situations.
She's now about to get involved with Dean, a rapist, but there was a frisson between her and Mick, when he offered her a place in the Vic, had he room. In the middle of an emotional crisis with his wife, there Mick goes, putting someone else first. And the way he washed his hands of Alfie's predicament, after having tacitly and inevitably telling Alfie he "had to do what he had to do" was, at best, wishy-washy.
DTC has followed continuity to the core of late in a lot of things, so I wonder if he's going to keep a pattern going here, by having Stacey eventually fall from her moral high horse, in the wake of Dean's doings being revealed, only to get emotionally and romantically involved with Mick?
As DTC has openly hinted that 2015 will be Stacey's year, is there a Stick I see on the horizon?
DexterShite. What a dickhead! He annoyed me, and then Nancy annoyed me even more. Is she playing Tambore?
At first, she was right to call out that entitled, narcissistic, little moron for his behaviour in the Masood household, especially sneaking beer into a home where drink isn't tolerated. Even more disrespectful to her, trying to get her to drink when he knows she cannot due to her medical condition. He acted like a smacked baby's bum. And then I approved the practical joke she and Kush played on him, aiming it at his conceit and self-importance by giving him the strongest curry possible. (What an oaf to drink from the pitcher of water as well!)
But then, when Tamwar offered his apt assessment of Dexter (line of the night):-
He has the emotional maturity of a toddler and the vocabulary of a plant.
... when he told Nancy that she could do better than Dexter, she asked him if he fancied her. When he demurred, she admitted that Dexter wasn't that bad and was last seen cuddling up to him.
Ava must have been as crap a mother as she was a teacher, because she taught this arsehole no manners and social skills whatsoever. She certainly didn't teach him compassion and understanding. He's a victim of the Little King Syndrome, raised to believe the sun shines out of his arse. I can't wait for him to go.
Rude Masoods. If Shabnam is telling the truth about this money, then this is another smack in the face of male characters, in general. Masood's mother made a secret will, which excluded all of her sons from inheriting money, instead bestowing it all on Shabnam and Uncle Imzaman's daughter. So now she gives it back to Tamwar. At least, he's showing a moral backbone in hesitating to accept it. I wonder if she's lying.
When I think of the original Shabnam - how interactive and how perspicacious she was about other people and her surroundings, this girl is nothing of the sort; and whilst I realise that religion can change a person's outlook on life, it certainly doesn't cloud a person's perceptions to the point that they become so socially gauche as to be ignorant. A clued-up person would immediately have sussed, when Kush referred to his wife in the past tense, that he wasn't speaking of a broken marriage, but of a death. Speaking of a divorce, he'd have said "my ex-wife said". Instead, Shabnam, another one carving a rut on a moral high ground and gunning for a fall, not only assumes a divorce, but starts in on how she isn't surprised that his wife left him.
The tone of her apology at her faux pas was really weird as well. And the judgemental remark she made to Johnny at the table was rude and out of order. Johnny doesn't drink that much at all, and he was just making a passing comment. Maybe Dean needs to step up and remind people how Shabnam used to stay out all night clubbing with Carly and Dawn and was up for the odd pole dance.
I like Kush.
Once again, Tamwar's attitude leaves a lot to be desired. His father makes a birthday curry; when he doesn't go to the Vic, his friends bring him a homemade birthday cake, and he sits there all the time, looking like he's caught in a small place with someone who's just farted. Tamwar seems, for some reason, to be filled with self-loathing, based on the remark he made to Shabnam tonight, about the ten grand giving him a uni degree, but he would still be himself. WTF?
I know the show isn't much on counselling, but this side of Tamwar didn't appear until after that fire, which is when he started to let everything slide - his marriage, his business, everything. In relation to life about him, it's still all about Tamwar the self-hater. I'm beginning to wonder if he deserves any friends or any attention that he gets. He's a very frustrating character to watch, and I feel sorry for Masood, huddled on the couch, worrying to Fatboy about whether or not his ungrateful son is enjoying himself. That's the thing about Tamwar. He can never tell anyone when he's grateful or appreciative of anything done for him, but he's quick to criticise when he's slighted in some way or when Masood's ideals don't live up to his high moral standard.
Ronnie and Charlie. Well, the encounter with the Moons was weird. Roxy's got over Alfie, and they've reconciled as friends. What's Ronnie's beef? She can't help it if her sister gets involved with the wrong men. I see she's taken off Archie's ring, in exchange for Charlie's. That's significant. Many will interpret that as leaving off her villanous side, but psychopaths assimilate well - sometimes too well, as may be in Charlie's case. Still, I'm enjoying their human side for the moment.
Best bit was the duff-duff. But when Charlie looked around, you knew that Nick was about. Maybe it was that whiff of fire and brimstone.
Speaking of smells, the big stinks were Sonia and Dexter.
In fact, this is the only episode I've ever watched, in 30 years of watching EastEnders, where I've been immensely happy ... happy ... to see Nick Cotton.
Nick, with his last appearance, was in serious danger of becoming, if he hadn't already become, a cartoon villain. Let's face it, Nick's done almost everything bad there is to do, and - poor Charlie - his dad is a two-time murderer, unpunished, and he's about to marry a murderer, who, as yet, is still unpunished and as unrepentant about her crime as Nick has been and is about any of his; but maybe Charlie's done murder too. Who knows?
Nick is back this time, and it feels right. This is an intriguing storyline in which he figures, and it's proving more interesting than the murder investigation, which has dawdled into a morass of Branning-centred love angst - Max with the insipid Summerhayes, selfish Peter with even more selfish Lauren, posing prettily for the camera and failing in raising the audience's interest, and sulky Abi, scowling on the sidelines and waiting for someone sensible enough to smack her spoiled face.
More than anything, the Nick-Charlie-Ronnie storyline intrigues and interests me, simply because of the quirkiness of the characters involved. It's like a convention of psychopaths colliding amongst unsuspecting people.
It will all end in tears and tragedy, but this has totally outstripped the Lucy storyline, but it still might be intertwined with that, after all. I still haven't ruled out either Ronnie and/or Charlie from my suspects.
The rest of the episode was a welter of bad manners, selfishness, entitlement and emotional blackmail.
Spot the two stinkers (if you cannot guess, I'll reveal them at the end).
Oh, and more than anything, the majority of this episode was a testiment to the writing room's inability to create and sustain a strong, positive male character.
The Absolute Worst Parent in the World. Sonia. What an selfish, self-serving bitch! What kind of mother lays such an abysmal responsibility on the shoulders of her child.
"You know I love you more than anything, so you have to stay with me and abandon your dreams because you're the only thing - sorry, fing - that's holding your dad and me together."
What a load of shite! So now she's put the responsibility of saving Sonia's marriage on Rebecca's shoulders. The kid is thirteen, FFS! Sonia isn't the least bit interested in her daughter's desires and ambitions. She couldn't even be bothered to read the letter from the music school offering Rebecca an audition in exchange for the possiblity of a scholarship.
I cannot believe the burden with which Sonia has lumbered Rebecca - the child is go forfeit her ambitions in order to save her parents' marriage, the implication being that if she doesn't, then the failure is down to her. But I shouldn't expect anything less than this sort of selfishness from Sonia, as both Bianca and Carol have exhibited this sort of behaviour at times, themselves. Remember Carol bullying Bianca into binning Ricky because David binned her?
And once again, Sonia's language is indirectly derogatory of the as yet unseen Martin. All Sonia's done since she cropped up has been to moan about the inadequacies of Martin, both as a man in his behaviour and as a person, in general. I'm not surprised that Martin's gone off that pill of a woman. He was unfaithful to her, but before that, Sonia left Martin - and left him with Rebecca - for Gnomi; and who the hell knows what Sonia's been up to since then. We do know she's snogged the imbecile Tina - Sonia's delicate sensibilities are offended because Martin burps at the table, but she can tolerate a thief, who swigs alcohol from the bottle and pukes in the gutter. We also know that she's going to try to snog Kush.
Maybe if she stopped being so hypocritical and so fucking self-righteous, looking down her nose at everyone, and stopped depending on her daughter to save her own marital bacon, things might right themselves. She's a pukewad of a bitch to lay a guilt trip like that on Rebecca. Poor kid.
She doesn't deserve her daughter, and she certainly doesn't deserve either Martin or the name of Fowler.
Alfie, Kat and Stacey. I wanted to bang all three of their heads together. Seriously. This is the most frustrating storyline in a long time. First of all, Alfie-haters, the Alfie and Kat split you want isn't going to happen. The pair are too ingrained in each other's psyche at the moment for them to exist as separate entities. They are, indeed, an endgame couple, and this reunion and marriage is one that isn't going to be blown asunder.
As I said previously, the age of the yo-yo couple has past. The beginning of the end was when Tanya left, and the end of the end was Roxy's abortive wedding where Alfie reunited with Kat. Once upon a time, many years ago, when a couple broke up, that was it. One of the pair left Walford, and the other moved on. Until recently, we've had characters break up, make up and break up again. I don't think DTC is the type to go to the trouble of reuniting Kat and Alfie just to tear them apart again. Too much damage has been done to the couple by Kirkwood's epic fail of a venture.
But I wanted Alfie to tell Kat. He genuinely loves her, truly and deeply. He's also scared and ashamed of having failed her and is afraid of losing her. Squatting in the house isn't going to solve anything, because she's going to find out.
The marriage was a bit unreal - can it really happen that quickly? But something that Kat said in the previous episode heavily foreshadowed the future of the couple - about how they need each other, how the process of their lives has always been a big knockback, followed by a rise from the ashes, yet again. I know this story is unrealistic, that in normal circumstances, there would be avenues of hope and help open to these people; but I thought the intention of this producer was to bring these characters back to the bare basics and build them up again.
Alfie's desperation and hopelessness is palpable, and Shane Richie does a good job. So many people talk about Alfie's stupidity, but remember this: Alfie unjustly lost his livelihood at the connivance of Aleks and Tamwar. For everyone talking about Alfie's sense of entitlement, look at some of his fellow market traders - how many times have we seen Peter Beale swanning around the Square, anyplace but on the stall, mooning after Lauren. His byword is ~ I'll close early ~. Didn't Aleks the hard man want to rescind his stall in the wake of Lucy's death because he hadn't opened for such a long time, and wasn't it Alfie who jumped to Peter's defence? And what about Aleks, himself? He's the Market Inspector, yet when he's scared shitless by the sight of his wife and child on the Square, he stops work in the middle of the day, with no word to his own superiors, and swans off on a holiday for weeks with his squeeze and her kid. No one's talking about having his job.
TPTB were on a hiding to nothing when they moved the Moons from the Vic. On the surface, it appears that, apart from the birth of the twins, they didn't have a plan for them, knowing that Alfie never worked well as a character on the market stall. Keep them together, by all means - a split would make Kat as redundant and as hopeless as Bianca had become, clinging to Stacey to the point that it would bring her down also - and either develop their characters, giving them something to do, or send them off with a happy ending.
It simply astonishes me that there are three clothing stalls on that market within spitting distance of each other's - Kat's, vile Donna's and now Kush's.
I feel immensely sorry for Kat, because of her insecurities in the wake of her injuries - which, actually, don't look that bad and look to be healable in the long run with not too much scarring. She'll be as annoyed at Alfie as Sharon was once with Grant for the same thing, but - like Sharon -she won't leave him. Alfie is at fault for the scam, but Mo has to bear some of the blame for having illegal flammable commercial goods on the premises.
As for Alfie's anger with Stacey, I can see this from both sides. Stacey cares about and loves Kat, but there Kat was again, tonight, whining about wanting Stacey to live in the house with them. Stop it. Just stop it. Even if this were all kosher, Stacey needs to remove herself from that dynamic and start fresh with her child, that's her first priority - Lily. If she stayed with the Slater-Moons, she'd only be sucked into their problems and dilemmas, and her presence would, inevitably, cause friction.
I'm not siding with Alfie, but his comment about Stacey destroying families has a ring of truth about it. In her last stint on the Square, one of the defining aspects of Stacey's character was, initially, her high moral code. She was extremely judgemental and called people out, even those in her own family, for failing to live up to her high moral standards. Remember, this is the girl who turned Danielle out onto the streets because Danielle got an abortion.
But Stacey's tragic flaw is, immediately after she assumes the moral high ground, she does something that defies her own moral code - i.e., sleeping with Max Branning and nagging him to leave his family. Stacey also broke up Janine's marriage to Ryan - goaded into doing that and being convinced that she was entitled to do so by none other than Kat, I believe.
There's a bit of foreshadowing here.
Stacey threatening to tell Kat the truth about the house if Alfie won't is really none of Stacey's business. As she reiterated to Mick, her prime concern in all this is a place to stay for her and Lily. She's not thinking at all about the repercussions of Kat knowing this thing and experiencing this stress at this stage in her recovery. It may even cause a health relapse for her in her fragile psychological state, but Stacey never thinks about the aftermath of these situations.
She's now about to get involved with Dean, a rapist, but there was a frisson between her and Mick, when he offered her a place in the Vic, had he room. In the middle of an emotional crisis with his wife, there Mick goes, putting someone else first. And the way he washed his hands of Alfie's predicament, after having tacitly and inevitably telling Alfie he "had to do what he had to do" was, at best, wishy-washy.
DTC has followed continuity to the core of late in a lot of things, so I wonder if he's going to keep a pattern going here, by having Stacey eventually fall from her moral high horse, in the wake of Dean's doings being revealed, only to get emotionally and romantically involved with Mick?
As DTC has openly hinted that 2015 will be Stacey's year, is there a Stick I see on the horizon?
DexterShite. What a dickhead! He annoyed me, and then Nancy annoyed me even more. Is she playing Tambore?
At first, she was right to call out that entitled, narcissistic, little moron for his behaviour in the Masood household, especially sneaking beer into a home where drink isn't tolerated. Even more disrespectful to her, trying to get her to drink when he knows she cannot due to her medical condition. He acted like a smacked baby's bum. And then I approved the practical joke she and Kush played on him, aiming it at his conceit and self-importance by giving him the strongest curry possible. (What an oaf to drink from the pitcher of water as well!)
But then, when Tamwar offered his apt assessment of Dexter (line of the night):-
He has the emotional maturity of a toddler and the vocabulary of a plant.
... when he told Nancy that she could do better than Dexter, she asked him if he fancied her. When he demurred, she admitted that Dexter wasn't that bad and was last seen cuddling up to him.
Ava must have been as crap a mother as she was a teacher, because she taught this arsehole no manners and social skills whatsoever. She certainly didn't teach him compassion and understanding. He's a victim of the Little King Syndrome, raised to believe the sun shines out of his arse. I can't wait for him to go.
Rude Masoods. If Shabnam is telling the truth about this money, then this is another smack in the face of male characters, in general. Masood's mother made a secret will, which excluded all of her sons from inheriting money, instead bestowing it all on Shabnam and Uncle Imzaman's daughter. So now she gives it back to Tamwar. At least, he's showing a moral backbone in hesitating to accept it. I wonder if she's lying.
When I think of the original Shabnam - how interactive and how perspicacious she was about other people and her surroundings, this girl is nothing of the sort; and whilst I realise that religion can change a person's outlook on life, it certainly doesn't cloud a person's perceptions to the point that they become so socially gauche as to be ignorant. A clued-up person would immediately have sussed, when Kush referred to his wife in the past tense, that he wasn't speaking of a broken marriage, but of a death. Speaking of a divorce, he'd have said "my ex-wife said". Instead, Shabnam, another one carving a rut on a moral high ground and gunning for a fall, not only assumes a divorce, but starts in on how she isn't surprised that his wife left him.
The tone of her apology at her faux pas was really weird as well. And the judgemental remark she made to Johnny at the table was rude and out of order. Johnny doesn't drink that much at all, and he was just making a passing comment. Maybe Dean needs to step up and remind people how Shabnam used to stay out all night clubbing with Carly and Dawn and was up for the odd pole dance.
I like Kush.
Once again, Tamwar's attitude leaves a lot to be desired. His father makes a birthday curry; when he doesn't go to the Vic, his friends bring him a homemade birthday cake, and he sits there all the time, looking like he's caught in a small place with someone who's just farted. Tamwar seems, for some reason, to be filled with self-loathing, based on the remark he made to Shabnam tonight, about the ten grand giving him a uni degree, but he would still be himself. WTF?
I know the show isn't much on counselling, but this side of Tamwar didn't appear until after that fire, which is when he started to let everything slide - his marriage, his business, everything. In relation to life about him, it's still all about Tamwar the self-hater. I'm beginning to wonder if he deserves any friends or any attention that he gets. He's a very frustrating character to watch, and I feel sorry for Masood, huddled on the couch, worrying to Fatboy about whether or not his ungrateful son is enjoying himself. That's the thing about Tamwar. He can never tell anyone when he's grateful or appreciative of anything done for him, but he's quick to criticise when he's slighted in some way or when Masood's ideals don't live up to his high moral standard.
Ronnie and Charlie. Well, the encounter with the Moons was weird. Roxy's got over Alfie, and they've reconciled as friends. What's Ronnie's beef? She can't help it if her sister gets involved with the wrong men. I see she's taken off Archie's ring, in exchange for Charlie's. That's significant. Many will interpret that as leaving off her villanous side, but psychopaths assimilate well - sometimes too well, as may be in Charlie's case. Still, I'm enjoying their human side for the moment.
Best bit was the duff-duff. But when Charlie looked around, you knew that Nick was about. Maybe it was that whiff of fire and brimstone.
Speaking of smells, the big stinks were Sonia and Dexter.
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