This has to be The Shirley Episode, but before any of the shippers start the fusillades hurling my way, read what I have to say about her and about the episode.
I like the Carters. I appreciate they are DTC's creation, and that, as the Vic family, they will get their fair share of attention, but ... please! We would all do well to remember what happens when there is excessive over-use of one family to the detriment of others. We even had two remnants of the last dominating family skulking about in the episode tonight - plus, their most repulsive satellite. It's all too easy for familiarity to breed contempt, and whilst many are full of praise and can't get enough of the Carters this year, I wonder if we'll be so kind if we get a year of saturation for the majority of 2015?
The family is having everything but the kitchen sink thrown at them during Christmas and New Year; there's every possibility that Lee may even be Lucy's killer, and then there's the birth of Linda's baby and its paternity being discovered in the spring. What else is on tap? Or more succinctly, what else might there be on tap to the detriment of other characters?
Like the England-Scotland game, being broadcast this evening on two television channels, this was an episode of two halves - one was meant to re-introduce DTC's nominated muse and arguably the most marmite character ever to be foisted upon a viewing public, the other was a mishmash of subtle suspect introduction, mixed with what very well may be the beginning of a leaving line for one of the first, if not the first Carter to leave. As well as giving NuNuBen a shirtless scene.
EastEnders is a soap filled with imagery centering on the shirtless male.
The Carters' Toby Keith Moment.
The object of tonight's quest was to find Shirley and bring her home. Before we got more of the measure of Shirley, after nigh-on a year of DTC's trying to make her a sympathetic character, we got the measure of Babe - or at least, Stan did. But then, Stan has always known what Babe was like.
Tell me, is Walford known as Psychopath City? Because that's exactly what Babe is. The damned place is rife with them at the moment. Babe's obsession is family - Stan's family, and her aim is controlling various elements of it to the extent that they see her as the ultimate care-giver. Because of Babe, primarily because of her trash-talking Stan, most of his children have spent the better part of their lives believing him to be one shade short of the devil.
Stan, himself, admits he's not been a good father or even a good man. As he remarked to Cora tonight, he's smoked and drunk enough for two lives, and he's had his share of women. Mick now realises and rues the years he's spent hating Stan, and for what? As long as Stan was demonised and Shirley was with Kevin, Babe had the responsibility of raising Mick and the Court Jester, having them look to her as their source of love and comfort.
Sylvie abandoned her family, but what do we know about that? We have had it, less than subtly, implied that Sylvie's pent up at Babe's flat; she's the shadowy figure who gets "confused" in the evenings, and with whom Babe shares the odd drink. She's like a cross between Baby Jane and Miss Faversham and Mr Rochester's mad wife in the attic (and I don't mean the other Shirley's last cat). But maybe Babe manipulated Sylvie away from the family - didn't Stan remark once that Sylvie always came and went? And finally, there was Shirley's pathetic remark to Babe about not being able to take care of Jimbo because Babe - Babe wasn't there to pick up the pieces.
Stan gave us the measure of Babe tonight, describing her as purely rotten on the inside, a peripheral old auntie determined not to be sidelined in the general scheme of familial ephemera, but right at its heart and centre, calling the shots, dispensing comfort, wielding justice, the matriarch who shouldn't be - which is exactly why she sent Shirley off, fleeing on a lie.
And how clever Dominic Treadwell-Collins is trying to be - when faced with evil Aunt Babe and SuperShirl returning for Stan's last blessing, when Shirley's been deemed the lifeblood of the Carter family ... (Come back, Shirl. Dean needs ya. We all need ya.) ... then the EP has designated not only the Carters as the first family of Walford, by dint of owning the Vic, he's indicated that we should accept Shirley as the Walford matriarch - and not only that.
Time was, the central male figure at the heart of EastEnders, was the flawed Alpha Male - usually the landlord of the Vic. Den Watts, the dodgy wannabe hard man, who looked out for his community; Frank Butcher, who spread himself too thin financially across the community and then abandoned his family; Eddie Royle, the loner ex-cop, who didn't fit in; the Mitchell brothers, with their history of alcohol abuse and domestic violence; Alfie Moon, during his first stint, compassionate and yet edgy.
In these times of economic hardship for many, DTC has given us the ultimate BOGOF (buy-one-get-one-free) or even Two for the Price of One, because it was evident from this episode that Shirley is supposed to be the matriarch as well as the flawed Alpha she-male.
You knew Dean would go - as sure as eggs are eggs. Dean loves his mother, and to give her credit, Linda Henry played a blinder. She is a good actress, who can turn on the tear; but I can't invest any sympathy in Shirley, because all this pathos is based on a well of self-pity.
I understand that the caravan - hang on, that was a car caravan, not even a proper anchored caravan (commonly known as a motor home, where I come, or rather, a trailer - as in trailer park) - has traumatic, yet poignant memories for Shirley, and I'm certain Mick found it just a tad suspicious, Shirley's relation of how he was born in the caravan and how she happened to be there too, especially with that cry ~They wouldn't even let me hold you~ of just who gave birth to him. I felt immensely sorry for Dean, yet again. The most Shirley could say to him was that she couldn't take him with her when she left, and even when Mick told her Phil was fine, and that both he and Sharon had covered for her story, she still offered no comfort for Dean, not even any hope.
I'm surprised a caravan that age is even together in one piece. I thought it was Babe's caravan, but during the course of the episode Babe described it as her(meaning Shirley's) caravan. According to Dean, it was the Carter family's caravan. Who cares? It's still a miracle it's in one piece. Of course, Shirley's upset that Stan is ill, but I would imagine that the reason she's clinging to not coming home is that yet another secret has emerged from the woodwork, to compliment the secret about her being Mick's mother.
She's shacked up with Buster Briggs, AKA Andy, who - more than likely - fathered Dean as well as Mick, and probably Carly too. How to write Kevin neatly out of the equation, with even a parting shot of him as a reminiscence of Mick's when Shirley was still with Kevin and she, their three children, Kevin and assorted Carters had a day out at the beach when Dean was still a baby. Why else would she describe Dean and Mick to the - as yet - unidentified person as "just friends who won't be coming back?"
Do TPTB think we are really that thick that they not only have to spoonfeed us, but have to lay it on with a trowel?
Classy shot, with sound effects, of Mick pissing. That goes one better than Heather letting a fart on Christmas Day 2007.
Speaking of Heather ...
Rambo and Not-So-Gentle Ben. I'm pretty sure the latest edition of the Walford BratPack was meant (1) to establish Lee, possibly, as a suspect in Lucy's killing or (2) to begin the end of Johnny's life on the Square (that's not saying that he's going to die, it's saying that he's going to leave), or maybe both, but it stank, from beginning to end.
First of all, I've never seen Lee socialise with any of the people invited to his birthday do; secondly, the Carter siblings' grief over Stan's announcement wasn't believeable at all, and I'm not sure that's down to bad acting or the fact that, less than a year ago, two out of three of them had very little to do with the old man or anything of which to approve. If Danny-Boy Hatchard, who's totally disappointed me as an actor since his return, were a stronger actor, I could believe Lee's emotions. After all, he made contact with his grandfather, and during his first stint, at Easter, Stan understood more about him than his parents did; but absolutely everything about this vignette was weak and contrived. It may well have been a high school play.
Thirdly, doesn't Lee have any Army mates? Please, don't say his mates are far away, because Lee is still on active duty. As such, he should be assigned to a barracks. Plenty of them in and about the London area, and he could see his family on a regular basis. As active army, besides his trades' course, he'd have duties to perform in and around the barracks. After all, as an active soldier, the armyis his daytime job, not the Vic. Yet all we've seen him do is help out in the Vic and attend the odd plumbing course. I thought this was the British Army, not the Ava Army.
Therefore, being assigned to a barracks, Lee would most certainly have army mates; and even if these were a way aways, soldiers are a band of brothers, and at least one of them would attempt to visit for a birthday drink. Hell, even Gary Windass in Corrie has army buddies. But, no ... we've got Lee the Ava soldier with no mates at all, and his brother Johnny, the Ava uni student with no mates at all from uni. And there they all were, tonight, partying with none other than Ava's son, Dex-TAAAA (still there and still hated by the viewers), who works at the Ava Arches and isn't particularly liked by Lee and who proves that Nancy's taste is in her mouth (bad pun intended).
Lee hates Dexter. I've never seen him interact with Fatboy or Tamwar or even Lauren at her silliest; and then there was Abi and NuNuBen crashing the party - Abi, another person who's never said a word to Lee Carter, or even Nancy, bringing NuNuBen. Lee objects strongly to Ben's presence because, Lee says, Ben's a murderer who killed Auntie Shirl's best mate. (Once again, this time last year, he barely remembered Auntie Shirl, who's really his nan, and he never knew the best mate whom Auntie Shirl, on occasion, treated like shit).
Is it I or methinks Lee doth protest too much at Ben's inclusion? As well, there were too many (again) contrived remarks by someone about Ben being there because Johnny fancied him. And equally surreal was Lauren, at her utter silliest tonight, attempting to give Abi relationship advice. Really? Lauren, who's slept with her first cousin and who'd broken up a marriage before she was twenty? Lauren reckons it's best Abi not get involved with Ben. Well, that's sound advice, but I'd forgive Abi not following it, considering Lauren's track record.
Is Ben in denial or is he trying to play up Abi in order to make Johnny more interested? Or is he trying to brush off his former gay identity, a la Syed, in order to convince himself that he's heterosexual? Either way, Abi will get hurt in a far more awful way than she did with Jay dumping her - and Jay didn't even dump her for Lola, that was a figment of Abi's imagination. The context of those scenes, where Ben set Johnny up, confronted Lee and was leaving, was to establish Lee as a loose cannon - so loose that not only did he beat the living shit out of Ben, he would have killed him, had Nancy not intervened; and he was ready to knock her for six as well, until he realised who she was.
Could it be that Lee, inadvertantly, lost his temper about something and lashed out at Lucy? Now Nancy knows how volatile he is. Funny, but my abiding memory of the scene immediately after Ben's beating was Dexter standing there with a mouth doing a wordless impersonation of the Dartford Tunnel opening. Be thankful for small mercies - at least he was rendered speechless.
Team Cora. The briefest of scenes with Stan, but Ann Mitchell was the real star of the evening. I love the way Cora guards her grief about her husband. That's her territory, around which she's built a wall and no one, not even Stan, will pass the parameter. The strength of her line - Don't you DARE speak of my husband! He's ten times the man you'll ever be - laid bare how raw her grief still was and how Stan's illness brings this all back to her yet again. Those whom Cora has loved are either afflicted by pain (Patrick) or dying (Stan), and this only enhances her loneliness.
I know this was Shirley's episode, but far more sympathetic was Ann Mitchell's Cora in a simple three-minute exchange with Timothy West.
I like the Carters. I appreciate they are DTC's creation, and that, as the Vic family, they will get their fair share of attention, but ... please! We would all do well to remember what happens when there is excessive over-use of one family to the detriment of others. We even had two remnants of the last dominating family skulking about in the episode tonight - plus, their most repulsive satellite. It's all too easy for familiarity to breed contempt, and whilst many are full of praise and can't get enough of the Carters this year, I wonder if we'll be so kind if we get a year of saturation for the majority of 2015?
The family is having everything but the kitchen sink thrown at them during Christmas and New Year; there's every possibility that Lee may even be Lucy's killer, and then there's the birth of Linda's baby and its paternity being discovered in the spring. What else is on tap? Or more succinctly, what else might there be on tap to the detriment of other characters?
Like the England-Scotland game, being broadcast this evening on two television channels, this was an episode of two halves - one was meant to re-introduce DTC's nominated muse and arguably the most marmite character ever to be foisted upon a viewing public, the other was a mishmash of subtle suspect introduction, mixed with what very well may be the beginning of a leaving line for one of the first, if not the first Carter to leave. As well as giving NuNuBen a shirtless scene.
EastEnders is a soap filled with imagery centering on the shirtless male.
The Carters' Toby Keith Moment.
The object of tonight's quest was to find Shirley and bring her home. Before we got more of the measure of Shirley, after nigh-on a year of DTC's trying to make her a sympathetic character, we got the measure of Babe - or at least, Stan did. But then, Stan has always known what Babe was like.
Tell me, is Walford known as Psychopath City? Because that's exactly what Babe is. The damned place is rife with them at the moment. Babe's obsession is family - Stan's family, and her aim is controlling various elements of it to the extent that they see her as the ultimate care-giver. Because of Babe, primarily because of her trash-talking Stan, most of his children have spent the better part of their lives believing him to be one shade short of the devil.
Stan, himself, admits he's not been a good father or even a good man. As he remarked to Cora tonight, he's smoked and drunk enough for two lives, and he's had his share of women. Mick now realises and rues the years he's spent hating Stan, and for what? As long as Stan was demonised and Shirley was with Kevin, Babe had the responsibility of raising Mick and the Court Jester, having them look to her as their source of love and comfort.
Sylvie abandoned her family, but what do we know about that? We have had it, less than subtly, implied that Sylvie's pent up at Babe's flat; she's the shadowy figure who gets "confused" in the evenings, and with whom Babe shares the odd drink. She's like a cross between Baby Jane and Miss Faversham and Mr Rochester's mad wife in the attic (and I don't mean the other Shirley's last cat). But maybe Babe manipulated Sylvie away from the family - didn't Stan remark once that Sylvie always came and went? And finally, there was Shirley's pathetic remark to Babe about not being able to take care of Jimbo because Babe - Babe wasn't there to pick up the pieces.
Stan gave us the measure of Babe tonight, describing her as purely rotten on the inside, a peripheral old auntie determined not to be sidelined in the general scheme of familial ephemera, but right at its heart and centre, calling the shots, dispensing comfort, wielding justice, the matriarch who shouldn't be - which is exactly why she sent Shirley off, fleeing on a lie.
And how clever Dominic Treadwell-Collins is trying to be - when faced with evil Aunt Babe and SuperShirl returning for Stan's last blessing, when Shirley's been deemed the lifeblood of the Carter family ... (Come back, Shirl. Dean needs ya. We all need ya.) ... then the EP has designated not only the Carters as the first family of Walford, by dint of owning the Vic, he's indicated that we should accept Shirley as the Walford matriarch - and not only that.
Time was, the central male figure at the heart of EastEnders, was the flawed Alpha Male - usually the landlord of the Vic. Den Watts, the dodgy wannabe hard man, who looked out for his community; Frank Butcher, who spread himself too thin financially across the community and then abandoned his family; Eddie Royle, the loner ex-cop, who didn't fit in; the Mitchell brothers, with their history of alcohol abuse and domestic violence; Alfie Moon, during his first stint, compassionate and yet edgy.
In these times of economic hardship for many, DTC has given us the ultimate BOGOF (buy-one-get-one-free) or even Two for the Price of One, because it was evident from this episode that Shirley is supposed to be the matriarch as well as the flawed Alpha she-male.
You knew Dean would go - as sure as eggs are eggs. Dean loves his mother, and to give her credit, Linda Henry played a blinder. She is a good actress, who can turn on the tear; but I can't invest any sympathy in Shirley, because all this pathos is based on a well of self-pity.
I understand that the caravan - hang on, that was a car caravan, not even a proper anchored caravan (commonly known as a motor home, where I come, or rather, a trailer - as in trailer park) - has traumatic, yet poignant memories for Shirley, and I'm certain Mick found it just a tad suspicious, Shirley's relation of how he was born in the caravan and how she happened to be there too, especially with that cry ~They wouldn't even let me hold you~ of just who gave birth to him. I felt immensely sorry for Dean, yet again. The most Shirley could say to him was that she couldn't take him with her when she left, and even when Mick told her Phil was fine, and that both he and Sharon had covered for her story, she still offered no comfort for Dean, not even any hope.
I'm surprised a caravan that age is even together in one piece. I thought it was Babe's caravan, but during the course of the episode Babe described it as her(meaning Shirley's) caravan. According to Dean, it was the Carter family's caravan. Who cares? It's still a miracle it's in one piece. Of course, Shirley's upset that Stan is ill, but I would imagine that the reason she's clinging to not coming home is that yet another secret has emerged from the woodwork, to compliment the secret about her being Mick's mother.
She's shacked up with Buster Briggs, AKA Andy, who - more than likely - fathered Dean as well as Mick, and probably Carly too. How to write Kevin neatly out of the equation, with even a parting shot of him as a reminiscence of Mick's when Shirley was still with Kevin and she, their three children, Kevin and assorted Carters had a day out at the beach when Dean was still a baby. Why else would she describe Dean and Mick to the - as yet - unidentified person as "just friends who won't be coming back?"
Do TPTB think we are really that thick that they not only have to spoonfeed us, but have to lay it on with a trowel?
Classy shot, with sound effects, of Mick pissing. That goes one better than Heather letting a fart on Christmas Day 2007.
Speaking of Heather ...
Rambo and Not-So-Gentle Ben. I'm pretty sure the latest edition of the Walford BratPack was meant (1) to establish Lee, possibly, as a suspect in Lucy's killing or (2) to begin the end of Johnny's life on the Square (that's not saying that he's going to die, it's saying that he's going to leave), or maybe both, but it stank, from beginning to end.
First of all, I've never seen Lee socialise with any of the people invited to his birthday do; secondly, the Carter siblings' grief over Stan's announcement wasn't believeable at all, and I'm not sure that's down to bad acting or the fact that, less than a year ago, two out of three of them had very little to do with the old man or anything of which to approve. If Danny-Boy Hatchard, who's totally disappointed me as an actor since his return, were a stronger actor, I could believe Lee's emotions. After all, he made contact with his grandfather, and during his first stint, at Easter, Stan understood more about him than his parents did; but absolutely everything about this vignette was weak and contrived. It may well have been a high school play.
Thirdly, doesn't Lee have any Army mates? Please, don't say his mates are far away, because Lee is still on active duty. As such, he should be assigned to a barracks. Plenty of them in and about the London area, and he could see his family on a regular basis. As active army, besides his trades' course, he'd have duties to perform in and around the barracks. After all, as an active soldier, the armyis his daytime job, not the Vic. Yet all we've seen him do is help out in the Vic and attend the odd plumbing course. I thought this was the British Army, not the Ava Army.
Therefore, being assigned to a barracks, Lee would most certainly have army mates; and even if these were a way aways, soldiers are a band of brothers, and at least one of them would attempt to visit for a birthday drink. Hell, even Gary Windass in Corrie has army buddies. But, no ... we've got Lee the Ava soldier with no mates at all, and his brother Johnny, the Ava uni student with no mates at all from uni. And there they all were, tonight, partying with none other than Ava's son, Dex-TAAAA (still there and still hated by the viewers), who works at the Ava Arches and isn't particularly liked by Lee and who proves that Nancy's taste is in her mouth (bad pun intended).
Lee hates Dexter. I've never seen him interact with Fatboy or Tamwar or even Lauren at her silliest; and then there was Abi and NuNuBen crashing the party - Abi, another person who's never said a word to Lee Carter, or even Nancy, bringing NuNuBen. Lee objects strongly to Ben's presence because, Lee says, Ben's a murderer who killed Auntie Shirl's best mate. (Once again, this time last year, he barely remembered Auntie Shirl, who's really his nan, and he never knew the best mate whom Auntie Shirl, on occasion, treated like shit).
Is it I or methinks Lee doth protest too much at Ben's inclusion? As well, there were too many (again) contrived remarks by someone about Ben being there because Johnny fancied him. And equally surreal was Lauren, at her utter silliest tonight, attempting to give Abi relationship advice. Really? Lauren, who's slept with her first cousin and who'd broken up a marriage before she was twenty? Lauren reckons it's best Abi not get involved with Ben. Well, that's sound advice, but I'd forgive Abi not following it, considering Lauren's track record.
Is Ben in denial or is he trying to play up Abi in order to make Johnny more interested? Or is he trying to brush off his former gay identity, a la Syed, in order to convince himself that he's heterosexual? Either way, Abi will get hurt in a far more awful way than she did with Jay dumping her - and Jay didn't even dump her for Lola, that was a figment of Abi's imagination. The context of those scenes, where Ben set Johnny up, confronted Lee and was leaving, was to establish Lee as a loose cannon - so loose that not only did he beat the living shit out of Ben, he would have killed him, had Nancy not intervened; and he was ready to knock her for six as well, until he realised who she was.
Could it be that Lee, inadvertantly, lost his temper about something and lashed out at Lucy? Now Nancy knows how volatile he is. Funny, but my abiding memory of the scene immediately after Ben's beating was Dexter standing there with a mouth doing a wordless impersonation of the Dartford Tunnel opening. Be thankful for small mercies - at least he was rendered speechless.
Team Cora. The briefest of scenes with Stan, but Ann Mitchell was the real star of the evening. I love the way Cora guards her grief about her husband. That's her territory, around which she's built a wall and no one, not even Stan, will pass the parameter. The strength of her line - Don't you DARE speak of my husband! He's ten times the man you'll ever be - laid bare how raw her grief still was and how Stan's illness brings this all back to her yet again. Those whom Cora has loved are either afflicted by pain (Patrick) or dying (Stan), and this only enhances her loneliness.
I know this was Shirley's episode, but far more sympathetic was Ann Mitchell's Cora in a simple three-minute exchange with Timothy West.
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