Once again, the Boxing Day episode exceeds the Christmas Day extravaganza in events and in acting. This was a better episode by far and one perfect ten.
From small to large ...
Moon Muck. Well, now we know. It's as I said - 2015 will be spent with Kat fucking up and fucking around and Alfie picking up the pieces in an effort to win her back.
Don't bother, Alfie. She isn't worth it. We already know that she's going to be dropping her underwear, once again, for a stranger, and this is the same Kat who gave Whitney the dirty-girls-can-turn-it-around pep talk back in the summer of 2013 in what was, arguably, the best episode Lorraine Newman produced. But that was BDTC (get it - instead of "Before Christ", we have "before Dominic Treadwell-Collins") ...
You do know "Dominic" is another name version of "God ..."
Anyway, that was before the current EP took over, and as it seems that everything before his arrival has been pretty much wiped out, I guess that pep talk didn't happen, and Kat is still a dirty girl.
Whilst I know it's fashionable to hate Alfie, she is still coming across as a judgemental bitch. How many times must it be reiterated, that Alfie did something stupid out of desperation, that the intense fire and explosion was an accident, more to do with Big Mo than Alfie, and that he didn't know Kat had returned? FFS, he was the one who rescued her. Whereas everything she's done to him - the psychological abuse, the public humiliation, the repeated infidelities, not to mention Alfie assuming the role of father to the son she got by sleeping with his cousin.
Yet Kat's allowed to sit in judgement on Alfie and allocate a mere hour on Christmas Day for him to spend with his children.
So in 2015, the big Moon story we have on offer is Alfie pursuing Kat again, when we just got over a year of Kat mooning (pun intended) after Alfie.
What is this? Two thousand variations on Kat-and-Alfie-break-up-to-make-up? Because if that's the only storyline DTC can manage to produce for this couple, then maybe it's time he summoned up enough courage to break free of both of them.
That's right - both of them. Kat is a woman in her mid-forties with three young children. She shows no sign of gaining any wisdom from the mistakes she's made in life, and the brief, ridiculous Mother Teresa blip Newman had her undergo in her so-called "journey" was all for nowt. Stacey shows more maturity and inisght than Kat will ever know, and a Kat without Alfie is just another bad combination of Bianca and Roxy, bumming around the market stall, dropping her trousers for various men, whining about feeding her kids and Stacey, like Carol or Ronnie, will have to be on hand to pick up the pieces.
Kat was right that Alfie only sees what he wants to see, forgetting that what he saw in her was someone worth saving through love and appreciation; she also forgets that when Alfie sees what he wants to see, he has a curious way of making his perception into reality.
So, yeah, at the end of this storyline, the Moons should bow out. They were once an iconic couple, and now they have the singular distinction of being the only iconic characters created by a soap and ruined by that selfsame soap.
Thank Bryan Kirkwood for that.
Cotton-Eyed: The Living Dead.
Watching events unfold at chez Cotton is like watching a gothic horror comedy tinged with poignancy. What's so creepy about the set-up is how Ronnie has virtually moved in and assumed command in Operation Get Rid of Nick. She dictates and the family obeys.
And what's happened to Charlie Cotton's balls? As a matter of fact, what's happened to Charlie Cotton? Here was a once-interesting and intriguing character, someone who may or may not be bad, but once he's tasted Veronica, his manhood's sapped to a dry twig. People used to say that Jack sucked the life out of Ronnie; well, it may have been the other way around, because Ronnie's certainly sucked the life out of Charlie.
He's a mere shadow of himself, quietly deferring to Ronnie's obsessive judgement. She decides that, instead of waiting until Boxing Day, as planned, Nick needed to go today - ne'mind that Nick is Dot's son and in Dot's house. Ronnie lays down the law,
Tonight's episode saw two mothers with tragic histories dealing with wayward sons. Dot's scenes with Nick were totally moving. Having watched the Dot-Nick dynamic unfold from the beginning, watching what he was capable of doing to her and what she never failed to do for him, it was evident tonight that, as warped as certainly Nick's actions have been toward Dot, the two have genuine love for one another.
Dot's taking leave of Nick, with the line I've only just got you back, and now I'm losing you again really brought a lump to my throat, as did Nick's response ~ Never mind, Ma; you got Charlie now and he's a better man than me~ . Not only Dot, but Yvonne and Charlie were affected Nick's going, everyone but Ronnie, who sat sullenly in her chair and pulled bored faces.
It matters not that Nick is Dot's only son, and this is Dot for whom she was supposed to feel some sort of fondness, but in recent times she's tried to manipulate. She cares nothing for what Dot might feel or, indeed, for what Charlie might feel about losing his father. She only wants Nick out of the way to suit her own purposes, and this storyline is so convoluted that I can't remember what her purposes are, except to keep Charlie out of prison.
And since when did Phil Mitchell become Murder Incorporated?
I mean the scene in the Vic where Phil reminds Ronnie of the set-up at the Cottons with whom she's getting involved, citing her baby's heritage - the grandson of a thief and a junkie (and also a murderer), and the great-grandson of a bigamist and con artist. Phil didn't mention Charlie's contribution to that collective gene pool, although he alluded to Ronnie, when he as good as offered to kill Nick, and Ronnie demurred.
This time last year, you didn't break sweat.
Unusual scene, but not without a reason. Phil Mitchell may be many things, but he's no killer. The death of the kid in the car lot was a tragic accident, but Phil couldn't kill anyone. He couldn't kill Archie, and he's admitted that he's no killer, so why the line? Was that a subtle allusion and suggestion to what Ronnie should do to Nick? Because I can't imagine Phil Mitchell doing that. That would be the pinnacle of disrespect and patronising of Dot, as well as an evil act in and of itself.
Nick isn't that easy to get rid of, as a cancelled ferry proved, because Nick, money scammed by Ronnie from Ian Beale, stayed put in Dot's front room, and Ronnie's face was a picture.
Mothers and Sons.
This was the aftermath of what happened before, and that's stating the bleeding obvious. For everyone who complained about last night's episode being underwhelming, it was always only ever leading to this.
It's debatable which reveal takes precedence over the other - Linda's rape or Mick's parentage. It doesn't matter, really, this ultimately came down to being all about Mick and the destruction of his world as he knew it. In one fell swoop, everything he'd recognised as warm and familiar had changed - the sad, demented woman in the corner whom he thought of as his missing mother turned out to be his grandmother, his sister is now his mother, his father is his grandfather, his other sister his aunt, and some geezer he'd only seen once in his life, Buster, is his real dad. And the rapist is his brother, not his nephew.
The only thing left constant in his life is Linda, and she's been raped by Dean.
The twist in the tale for me is the fact that Mick's initial reaction to Shirley being his mother is rejection, captured so perfectly in response to Shirley's whine about seeing "her two boys" at each other's throats ...
I am NOT your boy.
Very deliberate, very serious and very meaningful.
Mick is having a TMI moment. He's been fed too much information about who he was when he's spent 38 years thinking he's someone else. The penny dropping for Stan was an exercise in acting without uttering a word, but I recall the episode of the drowning reveal, when Stan came close to telling Mick that Shirley tried to drown him and ended up saying it was Mick's mother. Irony, or did Stan know, himself, that Shirley really was Mick's mother.
As if to confirm things, Sylvie suddenly had a moment's worth of lucidity attesting that Mick wasn't her son, he was Shirley's ... with the caveat but don't tell anyone. And we learned more about the secret birth. Present in the miniscule caravan at the time were Shirley, Sylvie, Babe and Tina as a toddler. And that the ultimate plan for Sylvie and Stan to raise Mick as their own was organised by Babe, as Sylvie, she asserted, wanted the baby put out for adoption.
So is that why Sylvie left?
Line of the night goes to Stan, looking directly at Sylvie and demanding to know the truth about Mick, when Babe suddenly intervenes:-
I'm talking to the organ grinder not the bleedin' monkey!
The only way Mick can deal with this is to compartmentalise what has happened. The only thing definite that he knows he wants is Dean out of his sight. He also wants to know that Linda is OK. And until he can deal further with Shirley's repercussions, he wants her out of sight too. Linda lays down the law there before Mick can say anything. She knows what Shirley's suffered must have been difficult, but all the same, she wants her out of the pub. With reason. Shirley's position as Mick's mother now reinforces her potential dominance.
Mick's prime concern, however, is Linda and opening time being ten minutes away. In the middle of their crisis, Linda is distracted by greetings from Sharon and Phil, and she determines that the pub needs to be opened with business as usual.Both she and Mick need to know that each other can get through this emotionally, and Linda charges Mick not to tell anyone about the rape. No one must know, not even the kids. She knows, Mick knows, Shirley and Dean know, but no one else could know.
There was another outstanding scene between Stacey and Linda, when Linda came looking for Mick. Stacey wonders why Mick would come to the flat in which she's squatting (because she is), and Linda says she thought he'd be looking for Dean. Then she tells Stacey of the ways Dean has manipulated her, almost to the point where she wonders if Dean really believes that the act was consensual.
Stacey assures her that, deep down, Dean knows what he did was rape and wrong. He's trying to convince himself that a lot of this was down to Linda, but calling upon her time in prison, she says that most people inside assert their innocence, because they don't want to admit to themselves that they are capable of committing bad acts.
Amidst all of this confusion, two things happen that are significant:- when Stan attempts to make sense of the reveal and to assert to Mick that nothing need change, except the fact that Dean now has a brother, prompting Mick to tell Stan and a remarkably mature Tina that Dean raped Linda, and he wants nothing to do with Dean - all told as Linda eavesdropped outside. Mick has betrayed her yet again. Then we had the ubiquitous exchange between Mick and Shirley, with Mick referring to Dean as "that thing", prompting Shirley to sweep to Dean's defence, alleging that the rape allegations were all lies on Linda's part because she wanted to keep Mick.
Amidst all of this was yet another poignant mother-and-son scene, the final reconciliation between Dean and Shirley. Dean's lost everything, he's even lost the flat he still rents. (Squatters' rights, anyone?) He does what a boy does when he doesn't know what to do - he turns to his mother. At last, and in the wrong circumstances, he reaches out for Shirley and she is there, and Dean is reduced, once more, to a child looking for his mother, even referencing Jimbo's death leaving him missing and wanting a big brother.
Finally, we had the ritual Christmas destruction of the Vic, but done in a different way and for a different reason. This Vic demolishment was done during business hours, with a gaggle of people herded from the pub when Mick hoisted the Queen Vic bust into the cabinet behind the bar. (That bust has been cracked over Archie's head, through Phil Mitchell's window and now against the glass cabinet in back of the bar. Glasses were shattered, hands burst through glass-framed pictures and all because Mick had discovered that Linda had left him. Left him and left behind the replica Lady Di engagement ring.
Linda has left Mick. Again. And she reminded me vaguely of Peggy, striding from the Square, in her stilettos, dragging her pink suitcase behind her.
Good episode. The Carters are a world away from who and where they were a year ago.
The credits in this episode go to Matt di Angelo, Linda Henry, Danny Dyer and Kellie Bright.
Final Observation: The Brannings are pigs, especially Max, dictating to Emma, whom I'm beginning to like more and more, about what exactly her role is in his dynamic. Emma wants to cart Lauren down to the copshop, she comes to him first. Well, Lauren, as she reminds us often, is an adult. So now Max is going to destroy this footage of Lauren going to the Beale house, which, on second sight, doesn't appear that she turns around and walks away.
Carol and Sonia kissing Billy under the mistletoe and Fatboy's comical look when Mick went on a rampage? Really?
From small to large ...
Moon Muck. Well, now we know. It's as I said - 2015 will be spent with Kat fucking up and fucking around and Alfie picking up the pieces in an effort to win her back.
Don't bother, Alfie. She isn't worth it. We already know that she's going to be dropping her underwear, once again, for a stranger, and this is the same Kat who gave Whitney the dirty-girls-can-turn-it-around pep talk back in the summer of 2013 in what was, arguably, the best episode Lorraine Newman produced. But that was BDTC (get it - instead of "Before Christ", we have "before Dominic Treadwell-Collins") ...
You do know "Dominic" is another name version of "God ..."
Anyway, that was before the current EP took over, and as it seems that everything before his arrival has been pretty much wiped out, I guess that pep talk didn't happen, and Kat is still a dirty girl.
Whilst I know it's fashionable to hate Alfie, she is still coming across as a judgemental bitch. How many times must it be reiterated, that Alfie did something stupid out of desperation, that the intense fire and explosion was an accident, more to do with Big Mo than Alfie, and that he didn't know Kat had returned? FFS, he was the one who rescued her. Whereas everything she's done to him - the psychological abuse, the public humiliation, the repeated infidelities, not to mention Alfie assuming the role of father to the son she got by sleeping with his cousin.
Yet Kat's allowed to sit in judgement on Alfie and allocate a mere hour on Christmas Day for him to spend with his children.
So in 2015, the big Moon story we have on offer is Alfie pursuing Kat again, when we just got over a year of Kat mooning (pun intended) after Alfie.
What is this? Two thousand variations on Kat-and-Alfie-break-up-to-make-up? Because if that's the only storyline DTC can manage to produce for this couple, then maybe it's time he summoned up enough courage to break free of both of them.
That's right - both of them. Kat is a woman in her mid-forties with three young children. She shows no sign of gaining any wisdom from the mistakes she's made in life, and the brief, ridiculous Mother Teresa blip Newman had her undergo in her so-called "journey" was all for nowt. Stacey shows more maturity and inisght than Kat will ever know, and a Kat without Alfie is just another bad combination of Bianca and Roxy, bumming around the market stall, dropping her trousers for various men, whining about feeding her kids and Stacey, like Carol or Ronnie, will have to be on hand to pick up the pieces.
Kat was right that Alfie only sees what he wants to see, forgetting that what he saw in her was someone worth saving through love and appreciation; she also forgets that when Alfie sees what he wants to see, he has a curious way of making his perception into reality.
So, yeah, at the end of this storyline, the Moons should bow out. They were once an iconic couple, and now they have the singular distinction of being the only iconic characters created by a soap and ruined by that selfsame soap.
Thank Bryan Kirkwood for that.
Cotton-Eyed: The Living Dead.
Watching events unfold at chez Cotton is like watching a gothic horror comedy tinged with poignancy. What's so creepy about the set-up is how Ronnie has virtually moved in and assumed command in Operation Get Rid of Nick. She dictates and the family obeys.
And what's happened to Charlie Cotton's balls? As a matter of fact, what's happened to Charlie Cotton? Here was a once-interesting and intriguing character, someone who may or may not be bad, but once he's tasted Veronica, his manhood's sapped to a dry twig. People used to say that Jack sucked the life out of Ronnie; well, it may have been the other way around, because Ronnie's certainly sucked the life out of Charlie.
He's a mere shadow of himself, quietly deferring to Ronnie's obsessive judgement. She decides that, instead of waiting until Boxing Day, as planned, Nick needed to go today - ne'mind that Nick is Dot's son and in Dot's house. Ronnie lays down the law,
Tonight's episode saw two mothers with tragic histories dealing with wayward sons. Dot's scenes with Nick were totally moving. Having watched the Dot-Nick dynamic unfold from the beginning, watching what he was capable of doing to her and what she never failed to do for him, it was evident tonight that, as warped as certainly Nick's actions have been toward Dot, the two have genuine love for one another.
Dot's taking leave of Nick, with the line I've only just got you back, and now I'm losing you again really brought a lump to my throat, as did Nick's response ~ Never mind, Ma; you got Charlie now and he's a better man than me~ . Not only Dot, but Yvonne and Charlie were affected Nick's going, everyone but Ronnie, who sat sullenly in her chair and pulled bored faces.
It matters not that Nick is Dot's only son, and this is Dot for whom she was supposed to feel some sort of fondness, but in recent times she's tried to manipulate. She cares nothing for what Dot might feel or, indeed, for what Charlie might feel about losing his father. She only wants Nick out of the way to suit her own purposes, and this storyline is so convoluted that I can't remember what her purposes are, except to keep Charlie out of prison.
And since when did Phil Mitchell become Murder Incorporated?
I mean the scene in the Vic where Phil reminds Ronnie of the set-up at the Cottons with whom she's getting involved, citing her baby's heritage - the grandson of a thief and a junkie (and also a murderer), and the great-grandson of a bigamist and con artist. Phil didn't mention Charlie's contribution to that collective gene pool, although he alluded to Ronnie, when he as good as offered to kill Nick, and Ronnie demurred.
This time last year, you didn't break sweat.
Unusual scene, but not without a reason. Phil Mitchell may be many things, but he's no killer. The death of the kid in the car lot was a tragic accident, but Phil couldn't kill anyone. He couldn't kill Archie, and he's admitted that he's no killer, so why the line? Was that a subtle allusion and suggestion to what Ronnie should do to Nick? Because I can't imagine Phil Mitchell doing that. That would be the pinnacle of disrespect and patronising of Dot, as well as an evil act in and of itself.
Nick isn't that easy to get rid of, as a cancelled ferry proved, because Nick, money scammed by Ronnie from Ian Beale, stayed put in Dot's front room, and Ronnie's face was a picture.
Mothers and Sons.
This was the aftermath of what happened before, and that's stating the bleeding obvious. For everyone who complained about last night's episode being underwhelming, it was always only ever leading to this.
It's debatable which reveal takes precedence over the other - Linda's rape or Mick's parentage. It doesn't matter, really, this ultimately came down to being all about Mick and the destruction of his world as he knew it. In one fell swoop, everything he'd recognised as warm and familiar had changed - the sad, demented woman in the corner whom he thought of as his missing mother turned out to be his grandmother, his sister is now his mother, his father is his grandfather, his other sister his aunt, and some geezer he'd only seen once in his life, Buster, is his real dad. And the rapist is his brother, not his nephew.
The only thing left constant in his life is Linda, and she's been raped by Dean.
The twist in the tale for me is the fact that Mick's initial reaction to Shirley being his mother is rejection, captured so perfectly in response to Shirley's whine about seeing "her two boys" at each other's throats ...
I am NOT your boy.
Very deliberate, very serious and very meaningful.
Mick is having a TMI moment. He's been fed too much information about who he was when he's spent 38 years thinking he's someone else. The penny dropping for Stan was an exercise in acting without uttering a word, but I recall the episode of the drowning reveal, when Stan came close to telling Mick that Shirley tried to drown him and ended up saying it was Mick's mother. Irony, or did Stan know, himself, that Shirley really was Mick's mother.
As if to confirm things, Sylvie suddenly had a moment's worth of lucidity attesting that Mick wasn't her son, he was Shirley's ... with the caveat but don't tell anyone. And we learned more about the secret birth. Present in the miniscule caravan at the time were Shirley, Sylvie, Babe and Tina as a toddler. And that the ultimate plan for Sylvie and Stan to raise Mick as their own was organised by Babe, as Sylvie, she asserted, wanted the baby put out for adoption.
So is that why Sylvie left?
Line of the night goes to Stan, looking directly at Sylvie and demanding to know the truth about Mick, when Babe suddenly intervenes:-
I'm talking to the organ grinder not the bleedin' monkey!
The only way Mick can deal with this is to compartmentalise what has happened. The only thing definite that he knows he wants is Dean out of his sight. He also wants to know that Linda is OK. And until he can deal further with Shirley's repercussions, he wants her out of sight too. Linda lays down the law there before Mick can say anything. She knows what Shirley's suffered must have been difficult, but all the same, she wants her out of the pub. With reason. Shirley's position as Mick's mother now reinforces her potential dominance.
Mick's prime concern, however, is Linda and opening time being ten minutes away. In the middle of their crisis, Linda is distracted by greetings from Sharon and Phil, and she determines that the pub needs to be opened with business as usual.Both she and Mick need to know that each other can get through this emotionally, and Linda charges Mick not to tell anyone about the rape. No one must know, not even the kids. She knows, Mick knows, Shirley and Dean know, but no one else could know.
There was another outstanding scene between Stacey and Linda, when Linda came looking for Mick. Stacey wonders why Mick would come to the flat in which she's squatting (because she is), and Linda says she thought he'd be looking for Dean. Then she tells Stacey of the ways Dean has manipulated her, almost to the point where she wonders if Dean really believes that the act was consensual.
Stacey assures her that, deep down, Dean knows what he did was rape and wrong. He's trying to convince himself that a lot of this was down to Linda, but calling upon her time in prison, she says that most people inside assert their innocence, because they don't want to admit to themselves that they are capable of committing bad acts.
Amidst all of this confusion, two things happen that are significant:- when Stan attempts to make sense of the reveal and to assert to Mick that nothing need change, except the fact that Dean now has a brother, prompting Mick to tell Stan and a remarkably mature Tina that Dean raped Linda, and he wants nothing to do with Dean - all told as Linda eavesdropped outside. Mick has betrayed her yet again. Then we had the ubiquitous exchange between Mick and Shirley, with Mick referring to Dean as "that thing", prompting Shirley to sweep to Dean's defence, alleging that the rape allegations were all lies on Linda's part because she wanted to keep Mick.
Amidst all of this was yet another poignant mother-and-son scene, the final reconciliation between Dean and Shirley. Dean's lost everything, he's even lost the flat he still rents. (Squatters' rights, anyone?) He does what a boy does when he doesn't know what to do - he turns to his mother. At last, and in the wrong circumstances, he reaches out for Shirley and she is there, and Dean is reduced, once more, to a child looking for his mother, even referencing Jimbo's death leaving him missing and wanting a big brother.
Finally, we had the ritual Christmas destruction of the Vic, but done in a different way and for a different reason. This Vic demolishment was done during business hours, with a gaggle of people herded from the pub when Mick hoisted the Queen Vic bust into the cabinet behind the bar. (That bust has been cracked over Archie's head, through Phil Mitchell's window and now against the glass cabinet in back of the bar. Glasses were shattered, hands burst through glass-framed pictures and all because Mick had discovered that Linda had left him. Left him and left behind the replica Lady Di engagement ring.
Linda has left Mick. Again. And she reminded me vaguely of Peggy, striding from the Square, in her stilettos, dragging her pink suitcase behind her.
Good episode. The Carters are a world away from who and where they were a year ago.
The credits in this episode go to Matt di Angelo, Linda Henry, Danny Dyer and Kellie Bright.
Final Observation: The Brannings are pigs, especially Max, dictating to Emma, whom I'm beginning to like more and more, about what exactly her role is in his dynamic. Emma wants to cart Lauren down to the copshop, she comes to him first. Well, Lauren, as she reminds us often, is an adult. So now Max is going to destroy this footage of Lauren going to the Beale house, which, on second sight, doesn't appear that she turns around and walks away.
Carol and Sonia kissing Billy under the mistletoe and Fatboy's comical look when Mick went on a rampage? Really?
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