One Total Eclipse and a Fart - Review:- 29.04.2014

I wanted to wait before blogging about the final two David episodes, which were full of surprises of one sort or another, to see how his departure would pan out.

It's mildly amusing to read the effusive praise people are giving the character of David Wicks - viewers who weren't even born when he stuck around for about three years in the 90s. Hearing them declaim him as iconic is hilarious, as David was never iconic during his original tenure; in fact, in the general scheme of things, David originally ranked behind the likes of Grant and Phil Mitchell, Ian Beale, Frank Butcher, Mark Fowler and Ricky Butcher. 

He was important in establishing Bianca as a blooded Beale, in bringing Sam Mitchell back to Walford,and in Cindy Beale's exit line. After that, he was rather redundant and picked his moment to depart.

One thing for certain is that he and Carol were never the Frank-and-Pat of another generation, and he was never iconic.

The Heart Attack as a Comedy.

Of course, the entire episode was played against the backdrop of David's collapse and the fact that the one person who should have been made aware of that incident was nowhere about. Carol was taking and taking in an anger-pity tour of Walford, ending up in the park, but more of that later.

David collapsed with a heart attack, and it was a comedy of errors from then on out, starting with Liam discovering him. I know Liam is Son of Ricky and a dullard at the best of times, but come on! He was only listening to music on his telephone when he discovered his grandfather, in terrible distress. Now, common sense would tell you, whip out the phone and dial 999, then stay with your grandad, call the house in front of you to alert everyone and wait for the medical professionals to arrive.

Duuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhh! It's not rocket science.

But noooooooooooooooooooooo, in the words of he late great John Belushi, Liam runs inside to tell two of the biggest, dumbest twats imaginable about what happened to David - Bianca the Village Idiot and Nurse Honker, who run to his aid and do more harm than not.

Honker is supposed to be a nurse, when she can bother to go into work; so at least, she would have known to phone for an ambulance or, once she'd got him in her M-reg Fiat Punto, to phone ahead to the hospital, telling them she was accompanying a suspected myocardial infarction. Instead, she calls Carol, who can't be reached.

David's eye-glazing-over moment at that time held special significance.

A suspected heart attack is a serious thing, but when medical professionals discover that it's actually a cardiac embolism - a blood clot - that is, indeed, serious. Yet throughout the entire ordeal, Bianca and Honker were treating it as though it were a day out. David was strung out on morphine; that was his excuse.

We also find out that Honker actually works at Walford General and that since April, when NHS holiday year starts, Honker's managed to use up all 28 days of her annual leave. She'd lied to her nursing superior and taken a sickie, whilst studying an professional enhancement manual, which she reckoned she didn't need to read as Honker is wise and knows everything. Honker is also self-righteous and ugly too.

The trio are still playing it casually when David returns from having had an angioplasty, but blood clots aren't dispelled that quickly, and they were more interested in the "Sole Property of Mrs Wicks" posing pouch David happened to be wearing at the time of his crisis. 

Enter the dragon.

It took a life-threatening experience to bring the truth out in David. Actually, it was Carol who was having the niggling doubts all along, and whilst David was trying to be good (as he said to Janine), Carol uses the oppportunity of a man recovering from a very recent heart attack and blood clot, having had a surgical procedure, to rant and rail at him in a hospital room, actually accusing him of having a heart attack in order to avoid the wedding, citing her moanings to him in the previous week about his diet. (Actually, both she and Bianca should be concerned about Morgan's diet. I recall an episode where he took a huge bowl of crisps to eat, and tonight, he'd have had all that cake, if he were allowed).

David's actual epiphany came when the worm finally turned, and he stood up to Carol's bullying and bad attitude, saying death would have been a relief from life with her. Welcome to the real world, David.

But everyone will know that David started emotionally distancing himself from Carol the moment it dawned on him that committing to her might mean the rest of his life, as she just might weather the storm of cancer. David doesn't do commitment, after all.

A Hattrick of Teenaged Bitchery.

Meanwhile, back at the house Janine Butcher owns ...

Please stop insulting the viewers' intelligence with the awfully precocious and self-aware Maisie Smith's puberty-enhanced imitation of a ten year-old. The actress turns 13 in the summer, but it's obvious by her curves and certainly by the too-revealing-for-an-underaged-actress frock she wore to the BSAs that puberty is in full swing at the moment. Ten years old, she ain't. Stop pushing jailbait on us.

Hattrick ... Cindy the Unbearable. Tiffany the Unlikeable. And now Rebecca the Prig. I don't like Tiffany, but I didn't like her high-handed, condescending attitude. I have to check my e-mails. WTF? Who brings their laptop to a family gathering. Talk about Tiff being rude, and sniping at Morgan to turn his game off. She's as much a prig as Nurse Honker, and she's also the latest in what appears to be along line of younger hairy teenaged girls who look like boys in drag.

Only Connect.

This episode was worth the effort, if only for the beautiful park scene between Carol and Ian. Lindsey Coulson is brilliant as ever, and Adam Woodyatt rose to the occasion. Carol's worked for Ian for years, and she is involved with his brother, yet this end of the Beale spectrum is the side of the family Ian disdains - the chav side, the dodgy dealing side - so it was interesting, poignant and evocative to see Ian and Carol connect in a conversation that proved what long-term viewers have realised all along: that David and Ian were as alike as two peas in a pod.

 Honestly, that was one of the best scenes I've ever witnessed in this programme, and without being blatant, showed totally the tragic flaw shared by the brothers from a different mother. Ian and David aren't so very different at all - they are vulnerable, weak and insecure mummy's boys, with a massive daddy issue thrown in for good measure. David got Pete's charm, Ian got his work ethic; but both are out to prove to their lost mothers that they've made something out of themselves. Their entire lives have been an act of arrogance, bravado and condescension - all the time chasing the mummy figure for comfort.

Now, they've been stripped bare. Ian's lost a child, and David's facing his mortality. I loved the way Ian and Carol linked up, naturally reaching out to each other through personal struggle. It made sense Carol opening up to David's brother, and I loved their exchanged remarks about neither had mentioned Lucy or breast cancer, each having navel-gazed for so long so recently about themselves, this is one of the few instances in recent times on this show where two characters have actually listened to what the other has said.

Ian's utter disbelief that David envied him, whilst Ian had always envied David ended up a revelation that both men grew up hating themselves.

Lovely, poignant scene.

And Christopher Reason is one of the few writers who actually gets Sharon right. It was good that he was chosen to write these two episodes, primarily featuring long-established characters. Sharon was back to her old self - the one DTC really doesn't want to feature because her inherent goodness detracts from the soulless mooching of his entitled heroine Shirley. Her scene with Ian and her concern about his prescription drugs for dulling the grief over Cindy was Sharon at her best.

The Bank of Phil.

As someone on an EastEnders' forum pointed out, it's strange that for Mick and Shirley, that Stan's so vile, but the money they demanded and took from him isn't.

Stan is EastEnders' gold. He's a master manipulator who knows exactly what a prize turd he's spawned in Shirley, and he's up for showing both Mick and Dean - especially Dean - what a piece of shit she is as a mother. He's contriving a situation wherein Shirley is forced to choose between children - a Solomon in reverse, forcing Shirley to reveal to Dean that the reason she left him and his siblings was that he was and could never be her precious Mick.

The entire Carter dynamic came out smelling fecal in this situation. Rather than allow Stan to call in his debt and pay him the money he loaned them, Shirley would rather see her son, Dean, in hock up to his eyeballs to Phil Mitchell. So Shirley decides to "call in some debts." In other words, she goes to the Bank of Phil.

That's right. Shirley still considers Phil to be her personal slush fund of hush money. That Phil Mitchell should smile and open his safe to her is yet another example of prime emasculation rampant at the moment on EastEnders.

Phil owes Shirley nothing. He did what he could to protect his son in the aftermath of Heather's killing. Was it right? Of course not, but Shirley had ample opportunity to reveal Phil's part in covering up the identity of Heather's killer, but she chose, instead, to protect Phil. She was offered a new start in life and a home with her daughter and grandson, but she chucked that aside to come back to the gutters of Walford, throw herself a pity party and obsess after Phil. She's tried on two occasions previously to blackmail money from him, the last lot being taken by Carl. Now, the moment Stan calls in the "loan" he made to his son, who thinks that this is money to which he is entitled and which Shirley thinks is hers by right and which both think is money owed them, in a cack-handed way of protecting the Crown Prince whilst providing for the Young Pretender, Shirley makes a beeline to Phil.

Yes, for Shirley, Phil is the bank of Walford. So Phil "loans" her the money. Is she so stupid not to realise that Phil now holds the strings on Dean's salon too? That he'll at least expect to be repaid from some of the proceeds of the Salon or the pub. He's fronted money from the Albert, and you can bet Sharon cuts a share of the profit his way. But will Phil waive that from the retconned and wizened "love of his life" Shirley? The more I see this crap panned out from such a divisive marmite character, who's totally vile and unlikeable - and remember, this is someone who thought she was entitled to vandalise and trash Ian Beale's restaurant because Ben was Ian's brother and she perceived Ian protecting him (when Ian was being bullied into doing so by her heartthrob Phil) - the more I want Sharon to leave, shoving Phil the stiff middle finger. Then we can set Johnny Carter and Ben up in The Albert and the Mitchell-Carter Empire can grow accordingly. Maybe they can even find a place for Lee at the Arches, when he eventually leaves the Army.

Of course, you realise that DTC is trying to create yet another "bruv" dynamic with Mick and Dean? This is highly reminiscent of the Steinbeck's book East of Eden. Instead of brothers united, we're going to have one broher racked with jealousy of another. And poor pitiful Shirley caught inbetween in an effort to make the public sympathise with her.

I hate how the Carters resent Dean and his relationship with Stan. It reveals their own hypocrisy. Dean may be receptive to Stan's ideas and aims because Stan has the money to invest in Dean's ambition, but this was the exact same reason Mick, Linda and everyone else played nicely to Stan. Keep him sweet and follow the money. Stan knows where Shirley's real feelings lie, and he's going to show her up for what she is regarding Dean. He really is the second-rate son, and now we know she left three young children and eventually rocked up with "the secret son", it makes that desertion deplorable. I hated how Mick played the moral high ground, insinuating that Dean should "thank" his grandfather for the loan. Did Mick or Shirley ever thank Stan? No. They continued to trash-talk him and treat him with spite. Mick even left him stranded in the street in his wheelchair.

This storyline is bringing out the worst in this family.

Dean and Linda ... watch this space.

Mrs Malaprop's Mystery.

Honey is back and used the first of many malapropisms tonight. But why is she here? Well, the air was blue with remarks about Billy spending as much quality time with the kids as possible and Billy and Honey remaining friends, coupled with that cryptic phonecall she made at the end.

Honey's not going to die, but she (and the kids) are going away.

Good episode.

Entitlement Issues - Review:- 27.05.2014

Here was a really big week in SoapLand, a week featuring love and death, amongst other things - or, as the French would say l'amour et la mort.

Along with Britain's Got Talent, the Big Two pulled out all the stops - EastEnders had the aftermath of the mother-and-child reunion, with their own version of The Beverly Hillbillies, the Carters, followed by their Deliverance cousins, the Butcher-Beale-Jacksons, preparing for a wedding that wasn't, complete with a mutton-dressed-as-lamb bride and a bubba groom.

Meanwhile, just up the M1, Corrie was showing us what one should do with a gobby, self-righteous, little mare who positioned herself as the moral arbitre of a community only to end up breaking up a marriage by an affair with a much older man. Stuart Blackburn killed off MancStacey Tina in a double blow. As someone remarked, she survived one accident, only to meet her end by the efforts of her big gob. Too bad Tanya never had a brother.

EastEnders had yet another good episode. What a shame the viewing figures don't reveal it.

The Addams Family of Walford.

Thus was Dean's description of his relatives. Scary? Well, Shirley Queen of Scrotes certainly can be, but Mick Prince of Dicks can veer between charming niceness and utter ugly entitlement bordering on bitter jealousy as we saw in this episode.

I've sussed Stan. His mojo is "divide and conquer." He wants to pit Dean against Mick, just to watch Shirley's torment. Once again, however, Team Dean comes out on top. Fair dos, however, to Mick. He recognises the money Stan provided was a loan. Queen Shirley is still bleating on and on about Stan "owing" them the money for the way he treated them? What did he do, precisely? Max Branning's father nailed him inside a box for a night, and I don't see Max with his hand out for money to which he reckons he's entitled from Jim. Pete Beale was a crap dad to both his boys, but neither of them ever demanded money due for lax parenting?

He never beat his children, he didn't sexually abuse them. He was a drunk,and after the wife left, he found he couldn't cope with the demands of three children... but we know better. 

Shirley, Queen of Scrotes, the patron saint of whining self-perpetuating victims who never claim responsibility for their own actions and use any action against them in the past to validate their own vile behaviour in the present.

Shirley thinks they are "owed" Stan's money, which is rich; but Linda was worse tonight. She thought they were entitled to it. At least, Mick recognised that Stan loaned them the money; his rationale was surprise that Stan wanted it back so quickly. In truth, I don't think Mick really intended repaying theh debt, rather he thought Stan would conveniently forget that over time as long as they provided him with a roof over his head, a warm meal and the odd brew. But Mick was tinged with jealousy as well, thinking that Stan was actually investing in Dean by giving him the money to start his own business, at the expense of Dean.

I wonder if Mick would have reacted so adversely if Stan had reclaimed the money in order to give it to Lee or to help Johnny with his uni fees? I don't think so.

Shirley was even worse. When presented with Stan's intentions, she was conflicted for precisely one minute, before she was back bleating on against Stan to Mick. I hated how she used the phrases "our home" and "our business" as if she made everything possible for them, when in truth, she revealed their own naivete and inexperience, for all the years spent managing Elaine's pub - buying a creaking old pub without a survey or solicitors. If she'd put them onto a sound property and had they gone the proper route, they would have had no need for Stan's money. 

Stan did this deliberately and for a reason. He wants both of Shirley's sons there with her smack dab in the middle, forcing her to choose between the pair - Mick,the son who was raised as her brother, and Dean, her real son, whom she willfully abandoned. This is Shirley's last chance saloon to prove herself as a mother of sorts. Shirley wouldn't even defend Dean against Linda second-guessing a lad she doesn't even know when Linda maligned Dean by saying he'd take Stan's money and run with it.

You saw what he was like in'ere yesterday.

As if Dean were in the wrong. Sorry, Linda, but Dean wasn't the one stinking up the pub on Monday. Shirley said absolutely nothing. If a relative by marriage made a character assumption about one of my kids like that, she'd certainly answer to me.

And now we get a little closer to Shirley's psyche as a mother, or rather a non-mother, when we hear a bit more about the drowning episode. Mick was a baby who got caught up in he family's redecorating the flat. He got red paint on him, and Shirley ran a bath to wash it off him. But Mick, being a baby, didn't like the water and started thrashing his fists about ... you can surmise the rest. Shirl, never the most patient of people, lost her cool and tried to drown him. So the drowning escapade was a good old fit of Shirley's temper, which hasn't matured all that much since adolescence.

Consider this: Shirley was fourteen when Mick was born, but she wasn't much older - seventeen - when she was married to Kevin and a mother to Jimbo. She spoke the truth, at last, tonight, when she admitted to Mick that she wasn't cut out to be a mother, and I would suppose that therein lies the reason she abandoned her three other children and why she lost her rag and tried to drown Mick. Some people aren't cut out to be parents, and Shirley's failed epically on two grand occasions.

But she's exonerated from this claim by Mick, who points out that Shirl wasn't a mum, and how heavy hang those words. And if I had a pound coin for every time a character admonished another with the phrase "no more lies," I'd be wealthy. The Carter dynamic, like everyone else in Walford, is based on lies.

Line of the night - Dean referring to the rest of that lot as "the Addams family." I'm still Team Dean, and I hope he rocks up on their doorstep just to incur Mick's insecurities and jealousies (because deep down, Crown Prince Mick knows Shirley is his mother), but I think, somehow, that Dean is going to chew the entire dynamic up and spit it right back in their faces.

I am so Team Dean in this one, especially watching the Carters sniping after Stan and trash-talking him as soon as he's out of the way. I'm going to enjoy watching Stan pull strings.

The Addams Family? Nope. More along the lines of ...

Can't you just see Shirley's miserable mug sat atop that truck in the rocking chair?

The Deliverance Wedding.

Carol's waited thirty-seven years and fifty-nine men to get to this moment. She's bought a white dress, to signify her status as a self-perpetuating virgin, whilst giving a good imitation of mutton dressed as lamb.

It used to amuse me how Tanya used to buy a brand new white wedding dress for whatever annual wedding she planned on having. These women amaze me, with their man-dependency juxtaposed with their so-called self-imagery as strong women.

Carol is such a miserable scrote of a woman, and David, Beale that he is, is looking for a mummy figure with whom he can have some comfort sex.

This was the wedding that wasn't, and the end of the Great Carol-and-David retcon, which tonight, included a photoshopped picture of a teenaged Lindsey Coulson with a spotty-faced Michael French. Carol and David hung out together, but it was never a great romance, and Carol shared her favours with several other young swains. When David got her up the duff, he conned the money for an abortion out of Pete, she took it, had her three older brothers (Carol had three older brothers when she related the story to Pat and Pauline twenty years ago) beat David up and run him out of the area. But this was never a great romance.

Even if we hadn't any idea of what was about to happen to David, you would know from the innate happiness radiated by Carol, that this was only ever going to end in tears. And the foreshadowing - talk about laying it on thick! Especially near the end, when Morgan broke the "something borrowed" caketop piece, splitting the happy couple in half. (On a more subtle note, as this was Sonia's wedding present, that's also a foreshadowing of what's in store for The Sellf-Righteous One and much-maligned Martin). Then, we watched Carol knot David's tie in an increasingly tighter knot as she sat in the car awaiting his return, and with every tightening of it, we watched David - ironically on the opposite side of the hedge separating the green from the actual Square, David collapsed in a heap, suffering a heart attack. The irony of all of that was David had to suffer an "attack of the heart" to save him from the binding a committed heart attachment and the damage it would do, not only to him, but also to Carol.

I don't think David will die, but I do think this is the end of David and Carol and the departure of Michael French, who will be sorely missed.

Mrs Malaprop's Surprise.

Just as one Village Idiot is leaving, is another about to return?

Surprise of the night - seeing Honey again! That was nice. What wasn't so nice is that Billy is stealing from an employer again. Has there ever been a time when he hasn't? He stole from Billy when he worked for him previously. Then he stole from Janine. Now he's back stealing from Ian again. Billy points out that there's only one wage coming into the household at the moment. Wait a moment - Peter lives there. Doesn't Peter at least contribute to the housekeeping, chipping in on food etc?

And ...

I'm glad they're pulling away from Ian's grief somewhat, and Sharon was shown at her best tonight, with Ian and lastly, with David and another reminiscence of Pat and an unspoken thought about Dennis. Sharon saying she didn't have a second chance at happiness ... hmmm, with a certain Mr Kemp waxing nostalgic about his days at EastEnders recently, might Sharon just have that chance? 

The Fortunate Son - Review:- 26.05.2014

Monday's offering, in the wake of Thursday's revelations was a tale of two sets of brothers - one unaware of the other's existence and two who have finally come to terms with their filial relationship.

This was a genuinely good episode.

The Fortunate Son.

It's the day before Stan's court case, and he's sporting a rather spiffy cravat which happens to be hiding a rather spiffy bruise on his neck. Dean comes to call, and this provokes some bother.

Before that, however, we got a nifty little gander at the newly-painted Vic, with Nancy Carter giving a cosy vote of confidence to beloved Auntie Shirl, for waving her magic wand and giving them the Vic.

WTF?

Add to that the concern of Phil Mitchell for what was revealed to him about Shirley Queen of Scrotes's drunken revelation about her sibling-son Mick. Gee, I guess that now makes Mick the Crown Prince of Cocks.

Anyway, look for a future storyline about Phil Mitchell getting lung cancer from having to breathe in Shirley's fag-stenched breath. Ugh! Can you imagine what it must have been like for him to kiss her? Like sucking in an ashtray, I should imagine.

In Carterville, there's more than a smidgeon of jealousy rising on Mick's part and suspicion about the entire family on Dean's. Dean's not as dumb as he used to be. He's had years of grafting and probably grifting on his own, and he is able easily to recognise a lie. The Carters, as a whole, came off a lot worse than Dean did tonight - from the self-righteous judgement of Nancy and Johnny, to Shirley's simple hypocrisy to Mick's growing jealousy of Dean.

Everyone in the pub is nice to Stan now for obvious reasons - trying to walk on eggshells around poor, pitiful Shirley. Isn't Mick interested, even in a lie, about how and why she attempted to drown him? Their invitation to Dean to break bread was as hollow a pie crust promise as anything, once they saw him cosying up to Stan, as if that were their sole prerogative, especially once he asked about the scarf around Stan's neck. They're also nice to Stan because now they realise that, were it not for his money, they wouldn't have the Vic, or they'd be a lot worse off - as well, they're crediting Queen Shirley for securing them their new business. The pedestal can't be built high enough.

It was actually quite sick to see Shirley respond to Dean's offer of reconciliation, when the viewer knew she was taking second best when she couldn't have the son who was actually on her mind. It dawned on me that when Shirley left Kevin, after several years, she ended up with Mick (when she burned down his pub), so she really did reject her subsequent three children in order to be a part of his life. Whenever this reveal comes about, it's going to have tremendous repercussions on Dean.

The scene in the front room of the Vic, when the moral recidivist section of the Carter family rounded on Dean for cosying up to Stan and getting an old man to "take the blame" for Dean's crime was one of the highlights of this episode, especially when Dean managed to show them their hypocrisy. No matter how long he's been away from Shirley or how long her lot have not known him, Dean has the measure of them. He knows the old man is lying, and he knows that Mick and silent Shirley are taking the cover too.

But the best part came in the kitchen scene, when Stan confessed to giving Dean an "incentive" to stick around his family, and calling in the debt Mick owed him. I couldn't believe the look of indignant entitlement on Mick's face. Did these people, two of whom (Mick and Shirley), had spent the better part of their lives trash-talking Stan and treating him like a piece of shite, really assume he'd give them the money to restore the Vic? We're not talking about children children here - Bobby or Tiff - we're talking about people in their late thirties and in their fifties. When any adult family member gives money to another adult family member, the form is to pay the money back, unless it's specifically a gift, and Stan never said that the money he gave to Mick was that. Even if he didn't, it's right and mete to want to repay money; instead, Queen Shirley changed the goalposts and claimed the money was her stake in the Vic, making her landlady as well as Linda (and this reveal is going to have as big a repercussion on Linda as on Dean).

Stan loaned the money to Mick. The pub's proving an earner. Now he wants to invest in a business for Dean, so he wants the money repaid. Mick's affronted, but how is his sister-mummy going to react? Will she want to see her "stake" in the Vic with Number One Son go to help establish Number Two Son in a business?

I like Dean. I love the way he reads these people like a book and takes no shit off any of them. I'm Team Dean here, all the way.

The Brothers from Different Mothers.

Pat and Kathy got mentions tonight ... hooray! That was a lovely scene between David and Ian, especially with Ian asking David to help him go through Lucy's things, which led to the mini discussion about Pat. That was absolutely lovely, Ian remembering that Pat had told him about Cindy's death and was on hand when he told the kids of her death, wishing Pat were on hand now because Pat "always knew what to do." That's true. She did. Ian misses Pat, David misses Pat, the whole damned show misses Pat.

Shirley is not and never will be Pat.

I'm liking how odd little details are being dropped into the episodes which - when the viewer picks them up - you know that this is going to lead to something major - David finding a prescription for Ian, most probably for something to make him sleep or to calm his nerves, was one such hint, but the other one was even more subtle: David rubbing the left side of his neck in discomfort after walking away from Nikki. That's called misplaced pain and it's one of the warning signs of a myocardial infarction. Heart attack, I'm guessing, what with the amount of starchy, fatty foods he manages to put away, along with the stress of his job, this impending wedding, his niece's death and Nikki pestering him.

The Off-White Wedding Blues.

Really, you just know that Carol being so happy, getting a trip to the Florida Keys and a wedding with all the trimmings is the biggest foreshadowing that it ain't gonna happen, if there ever was one. Apart from the rubbish rumble with Nikki, this was the Bianca I like, when she leaves off the shouting and screeching and hunkers down to find out the truth. Bianca knows David better than anyone, and she was right when she said that Nikki wasn't the threat - or even the "fret". David was. Because David, as much as he tries, doesn't do commitment. He's walked on a wife and two young children once before, he's walked out of every relationship when things began to get heavy, and whatever he might say, he was indeed, attracted to Nikki. David and Ian are similar in one thing - they like a cosy woman at home for comfort sex (Jane and Carol), but their types are more brassy, trophy blondes (Cindy, Mel and Glenda for Ian, Sam Mitchell, Cindy Beale, Naomi and Nikki for David) for excitement.

Honestly Honesty.

Whoever thought Whitney and "honesty" would fit together conveniently?

For me the biggest shock was finding out that Whitney was the phantom sympathy card troll. It was a shock, but it illustrated perfectly what I mean when I say that this murder storyline is as much a character study of the deceased as it is the people surrounding her. For me, Whitney came across as immensely sympathetic, even if her gesture was impulsive, childish and, on the surface, cruel. Throughout this storyline to date, Whitney has been the most honest depiction of someone's reaction to Lucy. Lucy was not a nice person. Like Ian, she looked down her nose at most of the community. She hated Whitney, and Whitney casually hated her back. They tolerated each other for Lauren's sake, but now we know that Lucy trolled and tormented Whitney through texts about her weight and the way she dressed.

The Beales might choose to beatify their dead, but others in Walford remember Lucy for what she was, and those are the people who accord Ian scant respect because of the way he's condescended to people in the community.

Marmite as Main Course - Review:- 23.05.2014

I waited to do this review for two reasons - first, because I wanted to see how EastEnders fared at the BSAs this year, and second, the entire episode annoyed me, even though it was, by and large, a good episode.

On the first note, EastEnders bombed. Again. They did bag an Off-Screen Lifetime Achievement Award, and the magnificent Maddie Hill, who playes Nancy Carter, the least-seen and most underused member of the clan, deservedly was named Best Newcomer; but anyone thinking the show would win anything more is frightfully deluded.

The show had an abysmal year, and even though WonderBoy has come in like the cavalry to the rescue ...

... it's early days yet, and some of his attempts at salvation have resulted in a distinctly dodgy smell ...

No, he's not the Messiah, and he is a very naughty boy for what transpired in Thursday's episode. It combined retconning and re-hashing in the worst way and for a cynical reason.

It's cynical enough that Hollyoaks, a teenaged wet dream filled with the wrong sort of fantasy, won Best Soap, when that show doesn't get a million viewers in a single setting, manages to find 3 million votes to secure it a major gong at the British soap Oscars; it would have been cynical beyond belief if Dame Lacey Turner and that eminent thespian, Danny Dyer, spiked gongs as Best Actress and Best Actor, when one of them spent a dire month running around with her face screwed up as though she'd encountered a ripe smell, and he hasn't been around long enough to be blamed for putting the smell about.

That doesn't mean, however, that Dominic Treadwell-Collins isn't the worst sort of cynic, as well as being an egotist and that he's determined to get what he wants from this programme, at the expense of a certain dynamic of viewer.

What we got served on Thursday was a load of retconned rehash in order to promote a marmite character whom he describes as iconic.

Most viewers got an overdose of Marmite.

The Hidden Child Meme.

The 90s saw the incessant meme of the long-lost mother. How many characters turned up whose mum had done a runner? Let's see ... Sarah and Tony Hills's mum came back and was about to marry Tiffany's dad, when Tiffany's long-lost mother turned up to stop the wedding because she was still married to him. Sandra di Marco turned up. Even the Irish Fowlers had a mother running rampant in London - Connor's wife and Mary's mother. Had they stuck around a bit longer, we'd surely have seen her.

Now we're stuck in another meme - the sibling mother. I didn't want to believe it, but from the first line of dialogue emanating from Shirley's mouth tonight, you knew what the denouement of this piece was always going to be. Every syllable of dialogue told, screamed at the audience what the inevitable outcome in the whole charade would be.

A surprise that wasn't a surprise.

Contrived.

Rather than the "sibling-mother," I'd call this the "hidden child" meme. I read a lot of Camilla Lackberg, who's sorta kinda like a 21st Century Agatha Christie, only Swedish. One of her books is entitled The Hidden Child, and it concerns the main character's mother carrying a secret of having had an illegitimate baby by a young Nazi years before her subsequent marriage. Her husband knew of the child, but not her two daughters, who found evidence of his existence long after her death and even traced the person to his adoptive home.

The story concerned the author's quest to speak with people who had been her mother's adolescent friends, and she was astounded to find that they knew of the pregnancy. The more people who know a secret results in the secret eventually coming out. The gist behind this discovery was a sad one - the main character came to understand the reason behind her mother's innate coldness and lack of affection: she couldn't love her subsequent children without thinking of the firstborn she gave up.

That was a believeable story, but somehow, this one rankles, not only me, but a lot of other viewers, judging by the reaction on various fora.

Nope, this could only be one thing ...

A sympathy-getter for a vile and unlikeable character. 

Poor Shirl. She had a baby at fourteen. Like Punk Mary from the 1980s. Like Carol. Like Demi Miller. Like Kat. Like Cindy Williams Jnr. Poor Shirl. What's next? PND? Most likely, that's the sympathy card to be played to explain why she tried to drown Mick. Anything to get the audience to love and accept the chosen heroine.

And here's the newest meme - a carry-on from Newman's dynamic with Ava and Cora: the mother who gives up her firstborn child and is unable to love sufficiently her subsequent children. Now we have that with Shirley and her newfound baby boy. And Dean will end up the loser and all the more meaner for it.

Now here's the funny part of this - and it was the same with Cora. Prior to Newman's creation of Ava, we had absolutely no clue at all that the ASBO granny had had a biracial, illegitimate child years before. The summer before Ava, Cora spent living it up and drinking happily in the Vic. Then suddenly, there was the mention of Ava and Cora remarked how she "never stopped thinking of her," something we knew just wasn't true.

This is much the same with Shirley. She was a mother who walked away from her children, who cheated repeatedly on her husband, who treated her best friend, at times, like shite, a deeply unpleasant and rude person, but she never mentioned any other child other than Carly, Dean and James.

At least, with the Slater storyline, probably the only true iconic storyline of the current century, this was something that was established early on in the tenure of the characters, almost from the very beginning, even if it were another year before Zoe found out the truth about her parentage. Shirley has been a character on the programme for the better part of almost a decade - 8 years - and during that time, she's only ever obsessed (if you can call it that) about emotionally linking with Carly and Dean, her two surviving children. As late as Tuesday of last week, she was identifying herself as the mother of three children.

Granted, people have commented on the undue closeness between her and Mick, and I was truly hoping the show wouldn't go this way, because it seems like the re-hash of an old theme (You're not mah muvvah) in an effort to one-up that storyline in order to promote to the fore, the character which is a particular favourite of this EP.

There's a difference: People actually liked and identified with Kat ca 2001; either you like Shirley or you abhor her, and most people dislike the character.

The issue of Shirley's abandonment of her three children should have been addressed back in 2008, after Kevin's death and when Dean had been released from prison, but someone decided that the Wicks's kids were surplus to requirements and wanted to develop Shirley along the lines of a lone wolf peripheral character, mentoring Heather (when she wasn't treating her like shit) and drinking. Shirley's alcoholism is yet something else that needs addressing, but then ... the entire dynamic revolving around Shirley has been changed, hasn't it?

And with that,  the entire Carter dynamic. And why? To establish a situation wherein Shirley's position becomes matriarchal. No longer is Linda the principal female in the Carter household. She now becomes the daughter-in-law. Not even second-in-command, but third since the appalling Tina moves up the rung by becoming Mick's aunt. Queen Shirley rules supreme now. She's the grandmother of Lee, Johnny and Nancy. She can undermine Linda's position all she wants now - it's her remit as Queen Bee. 

Shirley is now in the prime position, as landlady of the Queen Vic (which is what her name above the door essentially means), to be what Dom-Dom wants her to be - the absolute mother of all matriarchs: a rich amalgamation of Pat (the wise counsellor), Pauline (whose family was better than anyone elses) and Peggy (giving her the right to bellow Get ourramah pub).

All along I said that the Carters were a smokescreen by which Shirley would become the star of the piece and the central figure in Dominic Treadwell-Collins's interpretation of EastEnders, and I don't think I'm wrong. This is insulting to the viewers' intelligence and it reeks of cynicism.
The one you feel tremendously sorry for is Dean, who's about to be shafted yet again. It's Mick who's the apple of Shirley's eye now, and Dean becomes secondary. You get the feeling that James. Carly and Dean were secondary to "the lost boy," and that's not only tragic, that's abhorrent. The Wicks kids were strictly second-best, because they weren't St Mick, the prodigal son. She walked away from them, abandoned them, because Mick was all-important.

And now Dean will become angrier. And meaner when he finds out. He'll become the loser brother, the afterthought in the shadow of the newly-found big bubba.

And it has to be Phil who knows the secret. Oh well, when TPTB get through demolishing Sharon's character, then Phil can couple with Shirley and unite the almighty Mitchells with the Carters to create a super-dynasty.

Here's something to ponder: When Shirley first rocked up in Walford, she had a locket which bore baby pictures of her three Wicks children. There was never any hint, not a soupcon of another child. Not even a passing oblique reference.

And here's another thing to ponder: In Dean's conversation with Phil, he referenced having tried to look for Shirley at the time of James Wicks's death. Dean would have been a schoolboy, and as was proven, neither Dean nor Carly had any idea of what Shirley was like or what she even looked like. They didn't even recognise her. So Dean saying that was yet another retconned fact - retcon, retcon, retcon ... all to make Shirley more sympathetic, when the only thing that screams out the screen is her obvious and overplayed self-pity.

I can't believe that she didn't tell Kevin this safe-guarded secret, which makes her disregard for her "original" three children all the more heartless, because she abandoned them to go back to Number One. 

I hope Dean gives her hell.

This is DTC's jump-the-shark moment.

Not even the fanbois are cheering.

I Want Sharon to Go.

I love Sharon to bits, but I want to see her go. After she recovers from her attack, I want to see her shove the stiff middle finger right up Phil's nose and walk away from the Square forever. That way, Phil can couple with fag-breathed Shirley, Ben can canoodle with Johnny with the pair of them running The Albert, and the Carter-Mitchell conundrum can rule the Square. With more Carters on the way, it's obvious that they are the new Brannings, and the show will shortly be inundated with them. 

I expect Stacey to be united with Dean, and Whitney to pair up with Lee. Nancy may be destined for Tamwar. They'll infiltrate every fibre of the programme to a degree that will border on incestuous.

I'm just sad to admit that I want an original and really iconic character, Sharon, to call it a day and go. For all DTC's blather about Sharon being his favourite character, his two predecessors fucked her up and over, and his nose is so far up Shirley's rank arse that he can't be bothered to see that she's written properly. She should leave with her dignity intact. Between him, Kirkwood and Newman, we have an entire generation of cack-minded Millennials hating a much-loved character.

Once again, TPTB attempt to present Sharon as the bitch in the ointment as opposed to poor, pitiful Shirley. This regime, with their total lack of understanding of Sharon, forget that Sharon has one relative in the entire world: her son. And she is all the boy has. Forget Sharon's birth family. Unless one of her two brothers or her sister show up, seeking to establish contact with her, she has no one but the child.

TPTB's attempt to show Sharon in a bad light, compared to poor, pitiful Shirley, forget that Sharon was the rejected child, adopted by a couple who hated each other whilst adoring her. She was the buffer in a warzone and had to suffer her father impregnating her best friend, which was yet another form of rejection. Then when she found her birth mother, she was rejected again. Both her father and her husband were murdered. She was morally thrown under the bus by the Mitchells, but she rose above it.

As much as Shirley, Sharon is the mistress of her own fate, but she's never wallowed in self-pity. If Sharon's only ever attained financial and personal success "on her back" as the vile, stinking drunk on the sofa told her, at least she's never emotionally blackmailed anyone or stolen from people or deliberately set fires which caused other people ruin. She's given back with interest. 

Shirley's remark about Phil not loving Sharon? Well, according to EastEnders' history, that's not true, but since this version of EastEnders is written for and probably by Millennials, history is bunk. Maybe Millennial Phil doesn't love Sharon, who, in the Millennial mind, is a Class A Bitch, but Sharon took that remark and handed Shirley her arse. Far more important than Shirley or Phil or anyone or even Sharon herself, her son was her focus. She loved him beyond all others.

Shirley made a vile remark about Sharon achieving everything she has, professionally, on her back. Whilst not entirely true, Sharon did come by her businesses through her association with men. The Mitchell brothers bought the Vic for Sharon, and she was the landlady. Later when she returned, she bought the Vic in 2001, with the help of Steve Owen, and later inherited it from her father. On all of the three previous occasions, she either signed over the tenancy to a Mitchell or she sold or gave it back to them. Whatever Shirley's achieved as a gift from Phil, she's managed to run it into the ground.

MummyMan.

Now that Jane's knocked Ian back, all of a sudden he's clinging to Denise for sweet life. 

He loves her?

Denise should know better.

And here's another lying weasel - all those words of love he had for Denise in that episode. How she's always been there during this crisis, how she's been a rock, yadda yadda ... does he think Denise is a fool? Ian was saying the exact opposite about Denise to Jane. In fact, Ian tells Jane he loves her, Jane recoils and within the next hour, he's telling Denise he loves her - after weeks and months of pushing her away and treating her like "the help."

Denise knows the score, yet even through all this, she is compassionate enough to worry about Ian. With her gone, all Ian wants to do is wallow in self-pity. He doesn't want Bobby back, masking this behind Bobby being better off with Jane. The truth is that Bobby doesn't carry the Cindy gene. Peter does, but Peter isn't a female carrier of the gene. One wonders how Ian would have responded had Peter suggested bringing Cindy Williams back to Walford. I doubt Ian would have refused that.

CindyBoy Williams? As soon as she's sixteen in November, it wouldn't surprise me if Ian's shagging her. People forget that Ian likes young flesh too.

The Man of Constant Sorrow.

Max is another wallowing in self-pity, who's awfully sorry that he got caught doing what he did. I know that both Max and Lucy were single and consenting adults, but Max is such a watchable smarmer, I almost gagged a maggot when Lauren clocked that he only put money into their business for Lucy's sake and not hers. Her disgust at Max's lie to the contrary was palpable. However, if she's disgusted at Max's behaviour - having sex with a woman he'd watched grow from a child, surely Peter can apprise her of the fact that Ian has done precisely the same ... with Janine.

Speaking of the Butcher-Beale-Jackson clan, the shit's about to hit the fan once more.

Good episode but for the wrong reasons. And the thought of Shirley as the star of the show fills my mouth with bile.