Whilst still a very good episode, it had its downside; but I'm finding I'm attracted more to the horror side of the story.
Tomorrow is Good Friday - the same holiday, although not the same date (as Easter is the Spring Solstice, which falls on a different date each year), but everyone is cognizant about Good Friday's meaning to Ian - none moreso than Queen Bitch Jane, who'll even use that incident to manipulate emotionally.
The Long Good Friday.
Watching the repulsive Beales is like rubbernecking a ten-car pile-up on a motorway. You can't avoid watching the crash that's about to happen. The Beales completely disregard Cindy, especially her wish to put her daughter up for adoption. They simply pretend nothing's happened at all and are already treating the baby as their own and Cindy as the recalcitrant older sister.
I'm not a Cindy fan, but I'm totally on her side in this instance. She's just a kid. She allowed herself to be emotionally manipulated into having a child she wanted to abort, then found that she wasn't ready for motherhood at all. Instead of keeping the child and going through the motions reluctantly, she wants to do what's best, both for the child and for herself. One thing she knows for certain is that she does not want that child brought up by the Beales -- for obvious reasons.
There sat Ian tonight, on the floor of the front room, ironically on the spot where his daughter met her grisly end at the hands of her psychopathic younger brother, blissfully playing with an infant who has no blood relation to him whatsoever, but who possesses the Cindy gene. If you examine the Beale front room closely, you'll notice a prominent picture of Beth's grandmother, Ian's first and best-loved wife on the sideboard. Jane must love that, and if she gets her way and raises the baby, she'll have a reminder of Cindy forever.
Ian't planted on the deathspot of the past, playing with what he perceives to be redemption for his sins of the past in giving Cindy Snr's three other children such a crap upbringing that they've all turned into monsters of a sort - one, a dead monster, but a monster all the same.
Cindy Jnr, however, can be as stiff as the Beales are stout. She wants an answer to her proposal - either the Beales keep Beth or they keep her. Beth stays, Cindy goes. Cindy stays, Beth goes. Those are the options. Thing is, for the Beales even to hope to adopt Beth, they need a small thing like Cindy's written permission, which I don't think she's too keen to give.
Who can blame her? Would you want to see your kid brought up by an Oedipal weasel and a controlling, sociopathic wife, who hid her part in Lucy's death for almost a year, who took her husband's child, dumped her into the boot of her car, dragged her body across a cold Common and left her exposed to the elements? Then, there's the younger child who kills.
Cindy's off for a day of revision - even studying is better than being around the bullying Beales, billing and cooing over a child in an effort to make Cindy feel so excluded that she will accede to their demands and live on in the house as Beth's "sister."
And Liam the Lug is a Beale, after all. His straight-faced conniving was well worthy of Ian - plying Cindy with food and cups of tea all day, whilst subtly passive-aggressively bullying her into the Beales' way of thinking. To a degree, Cindy withstood his cack-handed charm offensive.
Did Cindy want to go upstairs? (No, she assured him. The last thing she wanted was another baby). I must admit, Mimi Keane's facial expressions throughout this piece were classic. Liam likes Cindy, and he was determined to get her to like him, but she couldn't be planer and more outspoken about the fact that, whilst she liked him as a friend, she had sex with him out of boredom, and used him for her own amusement. One thing Cindy is determined not to do and that is to sit down to dinner with Queen Bitch Jane ...
... and the crying weasel Ian ...
... only to have them emotionally manipulate and run roughshod over her desires for her child.
Cindy is sixteen years old. In the eyes of the law, she is an adult. She can do as she pleases, and she's convinced that the Beales will choose to keep Beth, so she's out of there. (Actually, think about it ... doing this, Cindy has forced the Beales' hand; without Cindy's permission, they cannot adopt Beth, and Social Services will be forced to intervene, take the child, put her in foster care for adoption, and Cindy has achieved what she set out to achieve.) Now, you may well say that the Beales wouldn't welcome her back after a trick like that, but Bobby the Basher has spoken: he's seen Ian drive Peter away, and Lucy is dead. He. Wants. Cindy. Back.
The Beales would have no choice. Jane the Evil Cow and Ian the Crying Weasel are being held to ransom by a psychopathic eleven year-old.
Liam's duplicity was surprising, but it was a totally sneaky Beale thing that he did. He must have texted Jane Cindy's intentions as Cindy packed her clothing upstairs at the Beales, then stalled for time by fixing her something to eat, just to give Jane enough time to arrive with her latest guilt-inducing manipulation.
Cindy is adamant that she's going. She's brutally honest in driving it home to Liam the Lug that she wouldn't even stay for him. (Get the picture, Liam? She's just not that into you). That's when Jane uses her trump card: Cindy can't leave because the next day is Good Friday. Ian will be having anniversary anxiety regarding Lucy's death - ne'mind that he seemed happy as a pig in mud playing with Beth, although it will most likely all be brought home to him once dippy, nosy Pam sticks her oar in with the lillies she's congregating. Of course, Jane isn't sure if Ian will have a severe reaction, but she wants to lay a guilt trip on Cindy in order to bully her into staying - the bitch.
Jane is due some heavy karma sooner rather than later. Cindy should simply take her baby and make a beeline for the nearest Social Services office, then make a beeline for Devon, sticking a stiff middle finger up at the Beales.
Dreadful people.
Phil's Animal House Moment.
It's all high testosterone in the Mitchell household, when Phil returns home, with scratches on his arm and Ben's clothes, which he plops in the washing machine. Line of the night went to the insipid Abi, who reckoned she could have stopped Phil running off with Ben by lying down in front of the car. (Phil would have done us all a favour and ran over her like a speed bump). Now, she's gazing into the recesses of the washing machine.
Jay: What are you doing?
Abi: Looking for blood.
Turns out, all Phil's done is take Ben out to the motorway, strip him of his clothing and left him there naked, to make his way home. As you do. As the frat boys or the Bullingdon Boys do.
So the police bring him back, and Ben reminds Phil that he's on licence and could have been sent back to prison. (So, Phil is still out on bail. How did he manage to go abroad?)
Ben is destined for rough treatment, as Phil slings him to the ground for hiding behind Sharon's skirts. He's given an ultimatum - either work for Max or help Phil get The Arches back from Max.
The Arches is Phil's lifeblood. Every dodgy deal Phil Mitchell has ever done has come out of The Arches. We know Ben's worked against Phil before. How will he swing this time?
The King Lear Carters.
The stinker of the pile tonight was Tina. I cannot abide her, nor her affected childlike ways. Yes, I get it, she loves her father; but her father is ill, with terminal cancer; and having seen my own mother in the throes of this disease, it isn't easy for the family to cope with the nursing demands of a dying patient.
Kudos to Linda Henry tonight, who had very little dialogue, but who conveyed so much emotion with her haunted face. Shirley was the one who stepped up to the plate and told Stan that he wouldn't be coming home. Mick couldn't do that, and Danny Dyer played a blinder as well. I know there are some who say he's not the greatest actor, and maybe he isn't; but I'm enjoying his performances, and he stepped up to the plate tonight and gave a beautifully sad and poignant scene with Timothy West as they both shared a drink, and Mick told Stan in a lovely and sad emotional moment, how he hoped to remember Stan - on the fishmarket at Billingsgate, roaring at Napoleon ... and measuring his height against the door of their old flat.
The worst moment of that part of the episode was when the vile Court Jester pulled rank to remind Mick that he wasn't Stan's son. Sod off, Tina, and take Sonia with you.
Shirley, however, is terribly conflicted. She's holding in her emotions in order to stay strong for the rest of the family. She's losing her father, and he wants to see Dean, her son. Shirley believes she sent Dean away, and she doesn't know about what happened between Dean, Mick and Nancy the night of the Beale wedding. Nancy thinks Dean is dead. Who knows what Mick thinks, except that if Dean reappears, then that will cause strife to the family.
I liked Nancy's concern about Shirley holding back her emotions.
Nancy: It's all right to cry.
Shirley: I know. But if I did, I'd never stop.
So Shirley does what we all expect Shirley to do - open a bottle of vodka and drink alone.
The Dirty Girl.
Side observation: I have a sneaking suspicion that there was a different Tommy beneath that mask today. I know in a couple of scenes recently, when he's been in bed and such, it's been a different child, but I suspect this was the reason for the masked costume. Just saying.
Kat's on a downswing. I must admit that, the day she burned the mattress, it wasn't until awhile after the episode, that I sussed that Tommy had seen everything from the upstairs window. The kid is four years old, and he's frightened by such antics. This is Kat's selfishness searing through. Yes, I know she was angry about Mo's deception. I know she's bothered by the connnotation of the money and Harry, but she seriously needs to start thinking like an adult and like a mother in relation to her children. Some things do scare small kids, and watching his mother shriek and shout and set fire to someone else's property in broad daylight is likely to awaken all sorts of imaginary horrors in a child's mind.
So Tommy hides behind a mask and clings to his dad. He's wetting himself at the thought of being around Kat. Kat, in her panic, resorts to shouting at him for being rude and wearing a mask. (Pot, meet kettle). Of course, Kat's all too unaware of what's been bothering Tommy, and when dinner is spoiled and Alfie treats them all to a meal in the pub (how?), she opens up about her feelings.
She feels like a teenager. She's Kat Slater again, except the teenaged Kat was being diddled by Harry. When no one believed her, she went onto enact the tart image. Then she got pregnant and found she couldn't do that anymore, especially now that Zoe wanted nothing to do with her.
Having watched the whole Kat saga unfurl previously between 2000 and 2005, including the "You're not mah muvvah" scene, I can't help but think that we're going over old ground here. This is the episode where the duff-duff proclaims that Kat is contemplating suicide ...
One more for the road
... which will play out in the next episode, which will end in Alfie rescuing her, which will lead to ... you get the picture. We've been there, done that, read the book, seen the movie and bought the teeshirt about the Moons.
In Tuesday's episode, everyone was pitch perfect. In addition to Tina, the bleeding obvious about Kat confronting her past again failed to do anything for me. Was it Alfie or Stacey who told Kat that no one sees her as a victim, but she continuously sees herself as such, and this is what is the most annoying thing about her - that she uses this traumatic event in the past as a licence to behave inappropriately. But this time, she resorts to a suicide attempt again.
It would be nice if, in the wake of this, the show actually had the balls to show her getting therapy, but it won't.
I was hoping the duff-duff would go to Cindy telling Jane to get stuffed.
Still, a good one.
Tomorrow is Good Friday - the same holiday, although not the same date (as Easter is the Spring Solstice, which falls on a different date each year), but everyone is cognizant about Good Friday's meaning to Ian - none moreso than Queen Bitch Jane, who'll even use that incident to manipulate emotionally.
The Long Good Friday.
Watching the repulsive Beales is like rubbernecking a ten-car pile-up on a motorway. You can't avoid watching the crash that's about to happen. The Beales completely disregard Cindy, especially her wish to put her daughter up for adoption. They simply pretend nothing's happened at all and are already treating the baby as their own and Cindy as the recalcitrant older sister.
I'm not a Cindy fan, but I'm totally on her side in this instance. She's just a kid. She allowed herself to be emotionally manipulated into having a child she wanted to abort, then found that she wasn't ready for motherhood at all. Instead of keeping the child and going through the motions reluctantly, she wants to do what's best, both for the child and for herself. One thing she knows for certain is that she does not want that child brought up by the Beales -- for obvious reasons.
There sat Ian tonight, on the floor of the front room, ironically on the spot where his daughter met her grisly end at the hands of her psychopathic younger brother, blissfully playing with an infant who has no blood relation to him whatsoever, but who possesses the Cindy gene. If you examine the Beale front room closely, you'll notice a prominent picture of Beth's grandmother, Ian's first and best-loved wife on the sideboard. Jane must love that, and if she gets her way and raises the baby, she'll have a reminder of Cindy forever.
Ian't planted on the deathspot of the past, playing with what he perceives to be redemption for his sins of the past in giving Cindy Snr's three other children such a crap upbringing that they've all turned into monsters of a sort - one, a dead monster, but a monster all the same.
Cindy Jnr, however, can be as stiff as the Beales are stout. She wants an answer to her proposal - either the Beales keep Beth or they keep her. Beth stays, Cindy goes. Cindy stays, Beth goes. Those are the options. Thing is, for the Beales even to hope to adopt Beth, they need a small thing like Cindy's written permission, which I don't think she's too keen to give.
Who can blame her? Would you want to see your kid brought up by an Oedipal weasel and a controlling, sociopathic wife, who hid her part in Lucy's death for almost a year, who took her husband's child, dumped her into the boot of her car, dragged her body across a cold Common and left her exposed to the elements? Then, there's the younger child who kills.
Cindy's off for a day of revision - even studying is better than being around the bullying Beales, billing and cooing over a child in an effort to make Cindy feel so excluded that she will accede to their demands and live on in the house as Beth's "sister."
And Liam the Lug is a Beale, after all. His straight-faced conniving was well worthy of Ian - plying Cindy with food and cups of tea all day, whilst subtly passive-aggressively bullying her into the Beales' way of thinking. To a degree, Cindy withstood his cack-handed charm offensive.
Did Cindy want to go upstairs? (No, she assured him. The last thing she wanted was another baby). I must admit, Mimi Keane's facial expressions throughout this piece were classic. Liam likes Cindy, and he was determined to get her to like him, but she couldn't be planer and more outspoken about the fact that, whilst she liked him as a friend, she had sex with him out of boredom, and used him for her own amusement. One thing Cindy is determined not to do and that is to sit down to dinner with Queen Bitch Jane ...
... and the crying weasel Ian ...
... only to have them emotionally manipulate and run roughshod over her desires for her child.
Cindy is sixteen years old. In the eyes of the law, she is an adult. She can do as she pleases, and she's convinced that the Beales will choose to keep Beth, so she's out of there. (Actually, think about it ... doing this, Cindy has forced the Beales' hand; without Cindy's permission, they cannot adopt Beth, and Social Services will be forced to intervene, take the child, put her in foster care for adoption, and Cindy has achieved what she set out to achieve.) Now, you may well say that the Beales wouldn't welcome her back after a trick like that, but Bobby the Basher has spoken: he's seen Ian drive Peter away, and Lucy is dead. He. Wants. Cindy. Back.
The Beales would have no choice. Jane the Evil Cow and Ian the Crying Weasel are being held to ransom by a psychopathic eleven year-old.
Liam's duplicity was surprising, but it was a totally sneaky Beale thing that he did. He must have texted Jane Cindy's intentions as Cindy packed her clothing upstairs at the Beales, then stalled for time by fixing her something to eat, just to give Jane enough time to arrive with her latest guilt-inducing manipulation.
Cindy is adamant that she's going. She's brutally honest in driving it home to Liam the Lug that she wouldn't even stay for him. (Get the picture, Liam? She's just not that into you). That's when Jane uses her trump card: Cindy can't leave because the next day is Good Friday. Ian will be having anniversary anxiety regarding Lucy's death - ne'mind that he seemed happy as a pig in mud playing with Beth, although it will most likely all be brought home to him once dippy, nosy Pam sticks her oar in with the lillies she's congregating. Of course, Jane isn't sure if Ian will have a severe reaction, but she wants to lay a guilt trip on Cindy in order to bully her into staying - the bitch.
Jane is due some heavy karma sooner rather than later. Cindy should simply take her baby and make a beeline for the nearest Social Services office, then make a beeline for Devon, sticking a stiff middle finger up at the Beales.
Dreadful people.
Phil's Animal House Moment.
It's all high testosterone in the Mitchell household, when Phil returns home, with scratches on his arm and Ben's clothes, which he plops in the washing machine. Line of the night went to the insipid Abi, who reckoned she could have stopped Phil running off with Ben by lying down in front of the car. (Phil would have done us all a favour and ran over her like a speed bump). Now, she's gazing into the recesses of the washing machine.
Jay: What are you doing?
Abi: Looking for blood.
Turns out, all Phil's done is take Ben out to the motorway, strip him of his clothing and left him there naked, to make his way home. As you do. As the frat boys or the Bullingdon Boys do.
So the police bring him back, and Ben reminds Phil that he's on licence and could have been sent back to prison. (So, Phil is still out on bail. How did he manage to go abroad?)
Ben is destined for rough treatment, as Phil slings him to the ground for hiding behind Sharon's skirts. He's given an ultimatum - either work for Max or help Phil get The Arches back from Max.
The Arches is Phil's lifeblood. Every dodgy deal Phil Mitchell has ever done has come out of The Arches. We know Ben's worked against Phil before. How will he swing this time?
The King Lear Carters.
The stinker of the pile tonight was Tina. I cannot abide her, nor her affected childlike ways. Yes, I get it, she loves her father; but her father is ill, with terminal cancer; and having seen my own mother in the throes of this disease, it isn't easy for the family to cope with the nursing demands of a dying patient.
Kudos to Linda Henry tonight, who had very little dialogue, but who conveyed so much emotion with her haunted face. Shirley was the one who stepped up to the plate and told Stan that he wouldn't be coming home. Mick couldn't do that, and Danny Dyer played a blinder as well. I know there are some who say he's not the greatest actor, and maybe he isn't; but I'm enjoying his performances, and he stepped up to the plate tonight and gave a beautifully sad and poignant scene with Timothy West as they both shared a drink, and Mick told Stan in a lovely and sad emotional moment, how he hoped to remember Stan - on the fishmarket at Billingsgate, roaring at Napoleon ... and measuring his height against the door of their old flat.
The worst moment of that part of the episode was when the vile Court Jester pulled rank to remind Mick that he wasn't Stan's son. Sod off, Tina, and take Sonia with you.
Shirley, however, is terribly conflicted. She's holding in her emotions in order to stay strong for the rest of the family. She's losing her father, and he wants to see Dean, her son. Shirley believes she sent Dean away, and she doesn't know about what happened between Dean, Mick and Nancy the night of the Beale wedding. Nancy thinks Dean is dead. Who knows what Mick thinks, except that if Dean reappears, then that will cause strife to the family.
I liked Nancy's concern about Shirley holding back her emotions.
Nancy: It's all right to cry.
Shirley: I know. But if I did, I'd never stop.
So Shirley does what we all expect Shirley to do - open a bottle of vodka and drink alone.
The Dirty Girl.
Kat's on a downswing. I must admit that, the day she burned the mattress, it wasn't until awhile after the episode, that I sussed that Tommy had seen everything from the upstairs window. The kid is four years old, and he's frightened by such antics. This is Kat's selfishness searing through. Yes, I know she was angry about Mo's deception. I know she's bothered by the connnotation of the money and Harry, but she seriously needs to start thinking like an adult and like a mother in relation to her children. Some things do scare small kids, and watching his mother shriek and shout and set fire to someone else's property in broad daylight is likely to awaken all sorts of imaginary horrors in a child's mind.
So Tommy hides behind a mask and clings to his dad. He's wetting himself at the thought of being around Kat. Kat, in her panic, resorts to shouting at him for being rude and wearing a mask. (Pot, meet kettle). Of course, Kat's all too unaware of what's been bothering Tommy, and when dinner is spoiled and Alfie treats them all to a meal in the pub (how?), she opens up about her feelings.
She feels like a teenager. She's Kat Slater again, except the teenaged Kat was being diddled by Harry. When no one believed her, she went onto enact the tart image. Then she got pregnant and found she couldn't do that anymore, especially now that Zoe wanted nothing to do with her.
Having watched the whole Kat saga unfurl previously between 2000 and 2005, including the "You're not mah muvvah" scene, I can't help but think that we're going over old ground here. This is the episode where the duff-duff proclaims that Kat is contemplating suicide ...
One more for the road
... which will play out in the next episode, which will end in Alfie rescuing her, which will lead to ... you get the picture. We've been there, done that, read the book, seen the movie and bought the teeshirt about the Moons.
In Tuesday's episode, everyone was pitch perfect. In addition to Tina, the bleeding obvious about Kat confronting her past again failed to do anything for me. Was it Alfie or Stacey who told Kat that no one sees her as a victim, but she continuously sees herself as such, and this is what is the most annoying thing about her - that she uses this traumatic event in the past as a licence to behave inappropriately. But this time, she resorts to a suicide attempt again.
It would be nice if, in the wake of this, the show actually had the balls to show her getting therapy, but it won't.
I was hoping the duff-duff would go to Cindy telling Jane to get stuffed.
Still, a good one.
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