Sunday, April 26, 2015

BOGOF Funeral Episode - Review:- Tuesday 21.04.2015

Le BOGOF episode. Buy one, get one free. Actually, Phil had the line of the night: Two for the price of one.

Two funerals, two families, someone knows something he isn't telling, someone knows something she isn't telling ... and Shirley. That about sums up the episode.

Linda and the Liar.



There's a liar in the room, and it ain't Linda. He's a rapist too. Interesting to note that Shirley and Buster Bloodvessel ...


... have reverted to Shirley's original belief that Linda is the liar of the piece, that Linda's accusations against Dean were all lies, meant to hide her misbehaviour from Mick and to make Dean suffer.

It's common knowledge that the story of Linda's rape ordeal, which was meant to be an issue storyline emphasising how women find it difficult to report rape, how rapists can very well be someone who's known and who's closely associated with his victim, and how difficult it often is to prove rape, has degenerated into a story about Mick and Shirley, or rather, Shirley and her two sons.

The ideal outcome of all of this for Shirley would have been for Linda to have been proven the liar, Mick to split with her and Shirley, babydaddy Bloodvessel, Mick and Dean could have set up nicely in the Vic; but Mick loves Linda, and he believes her story.

And, sadly, what began last night with Linda taking control of a bad situation and seeking to rectify it, once again, becomes all about Mick's fractured relationship with Shirley.

The Carters are broken, and as long as Dean and the dirty piece of wankspittle whose sperm produced him are hanging about like bad smells, I want the Carters to be fractured. Shirley, sitting in the cafe after Mick interrupted a weakening Dean, as if she knew and expected Mick to appear (down to the rudimentary cup of tea as a peace offering), warned Mick not to make her choose between her sons.

Look, yes, Shirley's conflicted. In this state, she literally has to choose. Either she believes Dean for various reasons - because she feels guilty at abandoning, because she's never had any good blood for Linda, or because she genuinely believes him to be incapable of forcing himself on some woman against her will - or she believes Mick, which negates all of the foregoing in her mind.

Cain or Abel, which is it to be?

Linda is the adult in the room once again. She knows now that Dean is safe from the police and can't be prosecuted, although she is struggling to comprehend why the police didn't press charges.

~Because there were no charges to press~ Dean informs her, smugly.

Not entirely true. The CPS found that there wasn't enough evidence on hand to warrant securing a conviction in a court of law. It's certain that something went on, and probably the police believe Linda's version of events; however, there just isn't evidence or witnesses on hand to prove Dean's guilt.

Linda accepts that Dean is free, and now she wants the next best thing to a conviction. She wants Dean to look her in the eye and admit that he raped her. At first, Dean tries his old manipulative trick, and when he tried to tell her that she really wanted to have sex with him, that she was holding him in her arms, it weirdly seemed as if Dean were trying to convince himself that this was the way things played out on that day.

But it wasn't, and Linda wouldn't relent, calling upon Dean to look into his heart and just admit his guilt to her, there, alone in that room, even to the point of reminding Dean that she knew he had a heart, she'd seen him cry. 

And Dean begins to waver. It's almost as if he's brought face to face with the fact that he'd held a woman down and raped her.

Then it becomes the Mick-and-Shirley Show, with Mick barging in and issuing threats.

Don't get me wrong. I'm Team Mick on this one. He totally believes Linda, and knows exactly what sort of opinion in which she's held by Dean, by the odious Buster and, most hurtfully for Mick, Shirley. Mick bans all three from Stan's funeral, making the remark that today was the day he, Mick, was burying his dad - saying that pointedly to Buster, in particular.

I'm glad Mick isn't accepting this dirty old scrote as his father. Even a pejorative father figure like Stan at least was the man with whom he bonded and who raised him. Buster did nothing. And it stands to Shirley to remind Mick, yet again, that Stan was her dad, not Mick's.

Why is it that every time she says that to Mick, it comes across as the sort of thing a nasty, little schoolgirl would say on the schoolground? Even Linda was urging Mick to (yawn) reconcile with Shirley, and whilst he's willing for Shirley to attend Stan's funeral, as is her right, she won't go without Dean, and she doesn't.

However, what she does is even nastier and disrespectful of both Mick, and certainly, of Linda - crashing the wake, Buster, Shirley and Dean, by standing at the bar and lifting the first toast.

I hope Mick sees red.

Le Grand Adieu.



I would say Stan's funeral got top billing in this episode. One hopes Jim's receives due attention in Thursday's episode. There was a hint of humour with Billy confusing the corpses, and a lot of tit-tat at the crematorium. Tina gave the eulogy, which was a bit off-kilter remembering the very small Mick and herself, fighting to sit beside Stan alongside a much older Shirley, who would have been married to the forgotten Kevin and mothering Jimbo by then.

(By the way, disabuse yourselves of the notion that Shirley abandoned her three children because she found looking after Jimbo too much. That's a load of horseshit, and that has never been established. Only one remark was made, briefly, by Shirley, three years ago during Carly's brief visit three years ago, and that was that Jimbo was "so needy." That says nothing, and it doesn't justify abandoning three children, and if this is the case, that Shirley walked, rather than deal with her disabled son, for which she would have been receiving help from Social Services and the NHS, then that's despicable. Anyone propagating this reason for Shirley's abandonment of her children does Shirley no favours).

Tina struggles with the eulogy, dresses like a forty year-old who thinks she's eighteen and reads the thing like the five year-old she wants everyone to think she is.

The shock of the piece came with Cora telling Patrick that she's leaving Walford for good, but not without a bang and a noted glance in Babe's direction. I liked how Cora sussed that Billy had taken the wrong body, and that she got to ride in the funeral care and Babe didn't. I'll miss Cora, a character who's benefited from DTC's tenure.

Three women in Stan's life? I knew Babe carried a torch for him, but I thought he hated her, and I've a feeling that Sylvie doesn't really know Stan's dead either.

Branning Breakdown.



Max is worried, and he's taking his frustration out on a corpse and anyone else who's standing in his way. There's a curious parallel between Stan and Jim, both of whom didn't know the other. 

Stan and Jim were abysmal fathers, at times petty and mean, but they were men who genuinely loved their families in their own way. I still remember Carol breaking down in Jim's arms over Billie's death; I remember Jim in a wheelchair, kissing Max's hand at Bradley's funeral and Max saying a tender goodbye to Jim as he left the Square for the final time. Yet here are Carol and Max talking about their hatred of Jim and how Carol wants to hide this for funeral purposes.

Confronted by Tina's dilemma at writing a eulogy, Carol decides that there really shouldn't be a eulogy at all. Max behaved despicably to that vicar, and Carol was fortunate that the vicar interpreted his behaviour as grief. It wasn't. Max is scared shitless by the prospect of having to sell stolen cars furnished him by Karin Smart.

After the brouhaha of the Carter funeral, it was right and fitting that Dot got the duff-duff as she clasped Jim's familiar hat and prepared to tell him good-bye.

The Blisters.



What happened to Charlie's ultimatum to Ronnie? Even as she took Matthew away (clever change, that; the Matthew who left Dot's house was totally different to the Matthew who arrived at the hospital), Charlie was sorta kinda begging her for some sort of "understanding." (Ahem).

It seems he either really does love her or he simply can't get enough of her. 

Ronnie's the "she" who knows something but isn't telling. She totally knows that Roxy and Charlie have been sleeping together, and in her own manipulative way - who can be more appealing that mah sisTAH lying helpless in a hospital bed. Roxy, people like Ronnie are at their most dangerous when they appear to be helpless. Ronnie urges Roxy to attend Jim's funeral in order to "support Charlie." Ronnie's forcing the pair of them together because she knows what will happen, and she's right. Charlie can't resist Roxy nor she, him, which will only enhance Roxy's guilt, which she'll be unable to hide.

But Ronnie has a visitor of her own - Vincent, Kim's husband. I won't go into the obvious retcon of a fact that DTC has established that explains their backstory now. There's time for it when whoever brings it out into the open. Just remember that when Roxy returned from Ibiza last year, she said that Ronnie hadn't ventured out of the hotel room until the night they went clubbing, and Ronnie glassed the off-duty cop, resulting in their being deported the next day. And just remember that Kim and Vincent left Walford, initially, for Marbella, as Denise related to the Beales and Patrick at Christmas 2013.

Someone Else Has a Secret Too. Phil. Clock his face when Sharon was wondering if her birth father were already dead, and she hadn't got to know him. Phil knows different. He knows who her birth father is and, most importantly, where he is.

Kathy, come home. Ian needs his mother, and Sharon needs her dad.

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