Sunday, February 1, 2015

Surprise Surprise - Review:- 30.01.2015

I am REALLY pissed off, not at EastEnders, because this was a genuinely good episode, but because I was 3/4 of the way through the review, when the husband commadeered the laptop, as out of three, the back-up pc is the only one working - grabbed it to check on transfer football news "just for a minute"... and shut the browser down when he finished with it. Result? The whole thing is gone.

Apologies for the truncated version, and I hope his team gets whalloped tomorrow.

A Tale of Two Mothers. Well, it looks as though all roads are going to lead to CarterVille and Shirley as she's now acquired another grandchild, and the Masoods will become Carter satellites, ethnicising them the way Ava the Rava ethnicised the Brannings. They even have their own Ava now that Tamwar has been dispatched to walk the streets of Walford.

Lines have been drawn, and prior to Dean's arrest, the Square had been abub with the gossip of the possible affair between Dean and Linda. Who fanned those flames? Sides have been chosen, with Denise and Kim firmly Team Dean. As Shirley said, Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty?

I don't fault Shirley for defending Dean. She's doing what any mother in Walford - what Pat, Pauline, Peggy and certainly Dot would have done: defending her son's innocence. That's a credit to her. She'd be a poor mother if she didn't believe him. The problem is that she's using this as a stick with which to beat Linda in an effort to separate Mick from his wife, and that's pretty low. As Mick says of her, she's a mug, and this gave Linda fair occasion to rise above the din and repay Shirley a year's worth of undermining, snide asides and emotional blackmail, by telling her that she, Linda, understands Shirley's defence of Dean. He's her son, and Linda would probably refuse to believe either of her boys could be a rapist. But Dean raped her, and when the truth will out, Linda will enjoy seeing Shirley fall.

The Maiden's Tale. Well, that was a turn-up for the books, eh? In actual fact, it was a clever and believeable construction of a backstory, with plenty of good continuity reference. Yes, Shabnam was a party girl who partied with Dawn and Carly. In 2008, she was more into leaving Walford to get away from the stifling presence of Zainab and a directionless life. The line she fed Zainab about Pakistan was just a story to buy her some time for herself. It's conceiveable that she got as far as Poplar and called Dawn for a night out. It's even more plausible that she ran into a drunken Dean, post-prison and bitter, and they had the encounter in the loos (a direct lift from Chelsea and Jack in the toilet of the Ahjee Bahjee.) The times match. So she had the baby in Poplar and left it on the doorstep of Uncle Imzamam's house. He gets a mention as well.

Her daughter, and Dean's daughter, would be almost six now. The same age where Sonia and Martin got Rebecca back unbelieveably. Of course, if Roya has been adopted, there really isn't any way or right Shabnam has to her - the Rebecca tale was totally impossible in real time. However, if she's been in a children's home this time - and that's plausible as some mixed-race children are hard to place in adoption - she's in with a shot.

The Stacey-Shabnam friendship is developing along the lines of Sharon and Michelle - supportive, non-judgemental - as much as Stacey assured Shabnam she wasn't judging her, it couldn't stop Shabnam from judging herself. Hence the turn to religion, the pilgrimage, the prayers for forgiveness, the hard-bitten front. And wasn't there a whisp of the reason Shabnam returned to Walford was the hope that Dean would be there? He doesn't even remember the act.

So now, we have a situation where Shabnam's daughter may be the half-sibling to Linda's baby, and Shirley gains another grandchild. This is a bit too much Jack Branning here, but now I see why Dean might be staying on.

Unitnentional comedy tonight with Tamwar showing up at an inappropriate moment with Stacey and Shabnam, only to be given the double look of death and silent exile by them both.

The Knight-Errant's Tale. Dean knows exactly what he did, and once he hears that a prison sentence is in the offing, self-preservation kicks in. Dean doesn't lie so much as he bends the truth, but he technnically relates exactly what happened in the kitchen, except that Linda did say no initially. However, when he threw her over the table, she offered no resistance, she froze. Although the copper stated that tacity isn't permission, Dean retaliated by saying that she never said no, she never resisted. And the clincher? The next day he was eating lunch at her house.

This looks bad for Linda. 

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