I know the unpleasant Beale family was supposed to be the focus of this episode, but, for me, Denise and Patrick stole it. The murder mystery is ongoing, but far more relevant to contemporary life, is the situation which Denise and Patrick are facing. Diane Parish and Rudolph Walker owned this episode and made the histrionic antics of the Beale household look plebeian, embarrassing and trite.
Leave It to Bobby. I had a curious sense of déja vu with tonight's appearance of Bobby III. I couldn't shake the feeling that I'd seen this Bobby someplace before in a different place and time, and then it dawned on me ... (TimWil will appreciate this).
Bobby Beale is the English equivalent of The Beaver. This Bobby is the total anti-thesis of Bobby II, who was posh, well-spoken and constantly smirking. (Well, his older brother and sister are and were posh, well-spoken and constantly smirking). Even though Bobby II was made to dress, on occasion, like a Dickensian street urchin, this Bobby had the language, the grammar and the syntax of the same. In fact, he was so much a stage school kid, portraying an EastEnd working-class child of a snobby, upwardly mobile, tactless, greedy dad, I expected this ...
... or something of that sort.
On the continuity track, it's nice to see DTC has kept the remnants of a particularly odious storyline involving Tiff and Bobby - remember the walkie-talkies and the pre-pubescent Romeo and Juliet?
The whole "Bobby-goes-missing" contrivance was the biggest load of bunkum in the Lucy mystery storyline. The real discovery lay at the allotments, a bubbling cauldron hotter than the flask of soup sent to Denise by Patrick via Jay, who just happened to be responsible for placing the figurative can of worms just dug up by Denise.
Instead, we get an embarrassing melée of dross served up on a trowel by Ian, Jane and rude remarks by Cindy, who proves, once again, that - like the people with whom she lives - she's really not a very nice person.
I felt hugely sorry for Bobby when he left the last time, in the wake of Ian blurting out at him at the breakfast table that he wasn't Cindy - meaning he didn't have he Cindy Snr gene. Bobby left, and Cindy Jnr, a child with no blood relationship to Ian at all and a living reminder of the fact that her mother once tried to have Ian killed.
Here's some food for thought: Cindy and Ian don't address each other as an adolescent would address an adult, much less the way an adolescent would address an adult in a paternal or avuncular position in her social dynamic - and vice versa. Ian doesn't speak to Cindy as though she were a teenager. They speak as adults to one another. And for the past couple of weeks, Ian and Cindy have been sharing Ian's house on their own. Nothing untoward, mind you, but Ian rushes home to goo-goo-da-da over Cindy's baby, and Cindy treats Ian as though it's Ian's paternal right to care for the child.
She was nothing less than rude today to DI Keeble, yet she wasn't reprimanded in any way. I don't like this kid. There's no charm or insouciance about her, apart from the ever-present open-mouthed pout we haven't seen since Lucy and Joey Branning left the screen. It's not attractive, and she really isn't a sympathetic character. She's finding a baby hard work? Welcome to the real world, sunshine. No one told you to get pregnant, and if you're going to experiment with sex, do so responsibly. She misses school? Why hasn't Ian made arrangements for her return? Basically, she sees her peers out having a good time, and she's horrified at the thought that now she has this baby, who won't go away. My guess is that she will, and the baby will be left with Jane and Ian ...
Then there's Jane. I'm not the biggest fan of Jane, since her return earlier this year, although I do like Laurie Brett; but somehow, her acting was way off mark in this one. I cannot fathom Jane allowing Bobby to hoodwink her the way he did. The seminal line of stupidity for the night was Jane belloweathering after Cindy had been dispatched to rifle through Bobby's bag only to find a folder of clippings surrounding Lucy's murder investigation ...
He's been planning this and all this time I thought he was upstairs with his Harry Potter stories!
Considering the fact that at the age of four, Bobby could totally floor Jane with a bottle of ketchup, I'm not surprised. I'm not surprised that Bobby would want to come back to London, even to a father who thinks him third best to his twin half-siblings and to someone who's no relation at all but who carries the dint of Beale royalty in being descended from Saint Cindy, or that he wants his mother to return to the fold as well, if only because Ian can look after her incompetence.
The emotional scenes shared by Ian and Jane as "worry" about Bobby didn't ring right at all. It was as if they were conscious of playing a role for a viewing audience. Yes, Adam Woodyatt does emotion very well - it's his party trick; and sometimes Laurie Brett does as well - I'm thinking of the time she bared all about her marital difficulties to the members of the book club preparing for a night out at Zainab's whilst Ian hid in the understairs cupboard, but she fell flat tonight. Totally panto, that was, especially with Cindy sniping comments from the peanut gallery. That was embarrassing. Even moreso, Ian, especially, behaved like a prick to the police. They should be extremely grateful that the Met police took such an immediate interest in this case, and Keeble was only trying to phrase the suspicions of a paedophile in words that wouldn't allow either Ian or nitwit Jane to jump to the obvious conclusion.
Masood is truly a nice man, that he would take such an active interest in Jane and concern for helping her with Bobby, after the shit she dished him the last time she was there. Jane should feel ashamed of her behaviour with him.
And now that Denise is out of the equation, it's a different kettle of fish for Jane to consider staying in London with Ian now. Even though she balked at the thought of sticking around, she'll soon be back on board Captain Beale's vessel. Awful woman. Really embarrassing melodrama, and the fact that Bobby was found, sleeping rough in a sleeping bag on a London common next to the spot where his sister's body was found, I found to be more contrived than poignant.
I know the Beales are Walford royalty and that, even with the Mitchells' presence, the Beales are probably the First Family of Walford. That doesn't detract from the fact that, as people, they aren't very likeable - and the ultimate irony was that the lead they needed for Bobby's whereabouts came from Bianca and Tiffany, the Beales' chav relatives, about whom they don't like to think.
The Real First Family. Dot and Nick were absolutely hilarious, Nick especially. I'm enjoying John Altman's return this time, simply because he's so obviously enjoying it and making such a tour de force of his performance this time around. The Saga of the Cigarettes was a hoot, and the absolute line of the night belonged entirely to Nick:-
They say I'm a psychopath!
This entire storyline was, once again, pure pantomime, coming right before the real pantomime season begins. Dot's exaggerated reactions and facial expressions ...
Dot: you ain't no psychopath!
Nick: If I am, what does that make you!
Dot: You don't get that from me!
Or this hooter:-
Dot (to Nick about Ian): You ought to be more careful, Nick. What if he'da heard you?
Nick: Then Ida had to have killed him.
The measures to which Dot had to resort in order to get a cigarette was hilarious, resorting to phoning a woman with whom she wasn't on speaking terms to ask that she buy her cigarettes, only to have them snatched by Nick and having to chase him down the hall. Equally funny was Nick's reminding Dot, in his own inimitable way, that she really was as big a liar as he was when expediency determined it.
Nurse Ava. Does Sonia ever go home? She was around Carol's having a sandwich and plotting surreptitiously what to do with the money she'd fleeced from people for the charity calendars, when she could just as easily have left from her own home. When does she see her child? When does she work, indeed?
Is this a 21st Century version of Arthur Fowler's desperate scam? Please go, Sonia. Fly far, far away. You won't be missed.
The Stars of the Show. This episode belonged entirely to Rudolph Walker and Diane Parish. Denise is unraveling. She's worked to a frazzle, doing all hours at The Minute Mart, caring for Patrick. She has no support and no one to whom she might turn for emotional support and help. Desperate, she takes out her frustration on Patrick, who's only focused on the fact that the Council want to take his allotment from him, which frustrates Denise, who's worried about her own employment situation.
The Masoods came up trumps tonight, especially Shabnam, who's developing into a prickly, but compassionate character. The actress even has Zainab's mannerisms down to a tee; it's like watching a younger Zainab. Interesting to note the shift of laborial power at The Minute Mart as Shabnam, Denise's employee, takes charge of the situation to enable Denise to function and give her some breathing space. I do wish Denise would have taken Shabnam's offer of doing the earlier shifts, in order that Denise could spend more time with Patrick.
Food for thought (pun intended): Denise goes off to the allotment to gather some of the vegetables Patrick planted in the spring. You what? It's the end of November. Those crops would have been harvested in September, early October. As for digging potatoes, she's lucky to get the ones she got and that they hadn't been rotted by the autumn rains and excessively wet soil. Still, it had to be done, because Denise had to find Lucy's purse and phone, planted (again. pun intended) there by Jay, who happens to be on the way to the allotment with a surprise for Denise. He's about to get a surprise, himself.
Pot-Pourris. Sharon floating by - dropping by the Beales to offer words of comfort and support to Jane's crocodile tears and issuing fleeting orders to Jay and Ben to troop up to help Johnny at The Albert.
Then, there's the reconciliation between Johnny and Ben, and we get a soupcon of what might have been, had Sam Strike not decided to leave. Ben's gone back into the closet, but not for himself - for Phil. As he reminded Johnny, Your dad's not my dad.
Decent enough episode, but the main storyline was the weakest link.
Leave It to Bobby. I had a curious sense of déja vu with tonight's appearance of Bobby III. I couldn't shake the feeling that I'd seen this Bobby someplace before in a different place and time, and then it dawned on me ... (TimWil will appreciate this).
Bobby Beale is the English equivalent of The Beaver. This Bobby is the total anti-thesis of Bobby II, who was posh, well-spoken and constantly smirking. (Well, his older brother and sister are and were posh, well-spoken and constantly smirking). Even though Bobby II was made to dress, on occasion, like a Dickensian street urchin, this Bobby had the language, the grammar and the syntax of the same. In fact, he was so much a stage school kid, portraying an EastEnd working-class child of a snobby, upwardly mobile, tactless, greedy dad, I expected this ...
... or something of that sort.
On the continuity track, it's nice to see DTC has kept the remnants of a particularly odious storyline involving Tiff and Bobby - remember the walkie-talkies and the pre-pubescent Romeo and Juliet?
The whole "Bobby-goes-missing" contrivance was the biggest load of bunkum in the Lucy mystery storyline. The real discovery lay at the allotments, a bubbling cauldron hotter than the flask of soup sent to Denise by Patrick via Jay, who just happened to be responsible for placing the figurative can of worms just dug up by Denise.
Instead, we get an embarrassing melée of dross served up on a trowel by Ian, Jane and rude remarks by Cindy, who proves, once again, that - like the people with whom she lives - she's really not a very nice person.
I felt hugely sorry for Bobby when he left the last time, in the wake of Ian blurting out at him at the breakfast table that he wasn't Cindy - meaning he didn't have he Cindy Snr gene. Bobby left, and Cindy Jnr, a child with no blood relationship to Ian at all and a living reminder of the fact that her mother once tried to have Ian killed.
Here's some food for thought: Cindy and Ian don't address each other as an adolescent would address an adult, much less the way an adolescent would address an adult in a paternal or avuncular position in her social dynamic - and vice versa. Ian doesn't speak to Cindy as though she were a teenager. They speak as adults to one another. And for the past couple of weeks, Ian and Cindy have been sharing Ian's house on their own. Nothing untoward, mind you, but Ian rushes home to goo-goo-da-da over Cindy's baby, and Cindy treats Ian as though it's Ian's paternal right to care for the child.
She was nothing less than rude today to DI Keeble, yet she wasn't reprimanded in any way. I don't like this kid. There's no charm or insouciance about her, apart from the ever-present open-mouthed pout we haven't seen since Lucy and Joey Branning left the screen. It's not attractive, and she really isn't a sympathetic character. She's finding a baby hard work? Welcome to the real world, sunshine. No one told you to get pregnant, and if you're going to experiment with sex, do so responsibly. She misses school? Why hasn't Ian made arrangements for her return? Basically, she sees her peers out having a good time, and she's horrified at the thought that now she has this baby, who won't go away. My guess is that she will, and the baby will be left with Jane and Ian ...
Then there's Jane. I'm not the biggest fan of Jane, since her return earlier this year, although I do like Laurie Brett; but somehow, her acting was way off mark in this one. I cannot fathom Jane allowing Bobby to hoodwink her the way he did. The seminal line of stupidity for the night was Jane belloweathering after Cindy had been dispatched to rifle through Bobby's bag only to find a folder of clippings surrounding Lucy's murder investigation ...
He's been planning this and all this time I thought he was upstairs with his Harry Potter stories!
Considering the fact that at the age of four, Bobby could totally floor Jane with a bottle of ketchup, I'm not surprised. I'm not surprised that Bobby would want to come back to London, even to a father who thinks him third best to his twin half-siblings and to someone who's no relation at all but who carries the dint of Beale royalty in being descended from Saint Cindy, or that he wants his mother to return to the fold as well, if only because Ian can look after her incompetence.
The emotional scenes shared by Ian and Jane as "worry" about Bobby didn't ring right at all. It was as if they were conscious of playing a role for a viewing audience. Yes, Adam Woodyatt does emotion very well - it's his party trick; and sometimes Laurie Brett does as well - I'm thinking of the time she bared all about her marital difficulties to the members of the book club preparing for a night out at Zainab's whilst Ian hid in the understairs cupboard, but she fell flat tonight. Totally panto, that was, especially with Cindy sniping comments from the peanut gallery. That was embarrassing. Even moreso, Ian, especially, behaved like a prick to the police. They should be extremely grateful that the Met police took such an immediate interest in this case, and Keeble was only trying to phrase the suspicions of a paedophile in words that wouldn't allow either Ian or nitwit Jane to jump to the obvious conclusion.
Masood is truly a nice man, that he would take such an active interest in Jane and concern for helping her with Bobby, after the shit she dished him the last time she was there. Jane should feel ashamed of her behaviour with him.
And now that Denise is out of the equation, it's a different kettle of fish for Jane to consider staying in London with Ian now. Even though she balked at the thought of sticking around, she'll soon be back on board Captain Beale's vessel. Awful woman. Really embarrassing melodrama, and the fact that Bobby was found, sleeping rough in a sleeping bag on a London common next to the spot where his sister's body was found, I found to be more contrived than poignant.
I know the Beales are Walford royalty and that, even with the Mitchells' presence, the Beales are probably the First Family of Walford. That doesn't detract from the fact that, as people, they aren't very likeable - and the ultimate irony was that the lead they needed for Bobby's whereabouts came from Bianca and Tiffany, the Beales' chav relatives, about whom they don't like to think.
The Real First Family. Dot and Nick were absolutely hilarious, Nick especially. I'm enjoying John Altman's return this time, simply because he's so obviously enjoying it and making such a tour de force of his performance this time around. The Saga of the Cigarettes was a hoot, and the absolute line of the night belonged entirely to Nick:-
They say I'm a psychopath!
This entire storyline was, once again, pure pantomime, coming right before the real pantomime season begins. Dot's exaggerated reactions and facial expressions ...
Dot: you ain't no psychopath!
Nick: If I am, what does that make you!
Dot: You don't get that from me!
Or this hooter:-
Dot (to Nick about Ian): You ought to be more careful, Nick. What if he'da heard you?
Nick: Then Ida had to have killed him.
The measures to which Dot had to resort in order to get a cigarette was hilarious, resorting to phoning a woman with whom she wasn't on speaking terms to ask that she buy her cigarettes, only to have them snatched by Nick and having to chase him down the hall. Equally funny was Nick's reminding Dot, in his own inimitable way, that she really was as big a liar as he was when expediency determined it.
Nurse Ava. Does Sonia ever go home? She was around Carol's having a sandwich and plotting surreptitiously what to do with the money she'd fleeced from people for the charity calendars, when she could just as easily have left from her own home. When does she see her child? When does she work, indeed?
Is this a 21st Century version of Arthur Fowler's desperate scam? Please go, Sonia. Fly far, far away. You won't be missed.
The Stars of the Show. This episode belonged entirely to Rudolph Walker and Diane Parish. Denise is unraveling. She's worked to a frazzle, doing all hours at The Minute Mart, caring for Patrick. She has no support and no one to whom she might turn for emotional support and help. Desperate, she takes out her frustration on Patrick, who's only focused on the fact that the Council want to take his allotment from him, which frustrates Denise, who's worried about her own employment situation.
The Masoods came up trumps tonight, especially Shabnam, who's developing into a prickly, but compassionate character. The actress even has Zainab's mannerisms down to a tee; it's like watching a younger Zainab. Interesting to note the shift of laborial power at The Minute Mart as Shabnam, Denise's employee, takes charge of the situation to enable Denise to function and give her some breathing space. I do wish Denise would have taken Shabnam's offer of doing the earlier shifts, in order that Denise could spend more time with Patrick.
Food for thought (pun intended): Denise goes off to the allotment to gather some of the vegetables Patrick planted in the spring. You what? It's the end of November. Those crops would have been harvested in September, early October. As for digging potatoes, she's lucky to get the ones she got and that they hadn't been rotted by the autumn rains and excessively wet soil. Still, it had to be done, because Denise had to find Lucy's purse and phone, planted (again. pun intended) there by Jay, who happens to be on the way to the allotment with a surprise for Denise. He's about to get a surprise, himself.
Pot-Pourris. Sharon floating by - dropping by the Beales to offer words of comfort and support to Jane's crocodile tears and issuing fleeting orders to Jay and Ben to troop up to help Johnny at The Albert.
Then, there's the reconciliation between Johnny and Ben, and we get a soupcon of what might have been, had Sam Strike not decided to leave. Ben's gone back into the closet, but not for himself - for Phil. As he reminded Johnny, Your dad's not my dad.
Decent enough episode, but the main storyline was the weakest link.
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