Cracker of an episode tonight. The Thursday episodes rarely disappoint, and even Pete Lawson, a writer who's been known to take liberties with retconning without compunction for the sake of storytelling, even he remained true to continuity tonight.
With the latest revelations nudge-nudged and wink-winked in DTC's Radio Times interview, the stage is being set for the big guns to take centre stage again, but I have to say that I found most of the Carters as interesting as the rest of the episode tonight.
Mah SisTAHH and TMN.
DTC is clearly a fan of the Long Hello. We've had it with Stacey. We're having it with Kathy, and it's in full swing with the mysterious Vincent, who, in one fell swoop of an episode, has placed me firmly on the side of Team Kim and infinitely wishing that the psychopath in the wheelchair, emulating a gravelly-voiced Blauvelt of 007 fame, gets karma deep up her arse this time and leaves Walford in a box. I guess this is what good writing is supposed to do, as I've always been indifferent to Kim as a character before.
So ... we're being asked to believe that Ronnie spent all of December 2013, trolling the streets of London looking for Roxy as she ran around with Carl. Funny, that ... I didn't think Roxy and Carl either lasted that long as a couple nor did they wander that far from Walford or Albert Square.
Vincent, the latest TMN* to appear on the Square is a different sort of TMN to Ava, who was positive and boring. Vincent is supposed to be villainous. Well, he's villainous and boring.
This is not the way Vincent TMN is meant to inspire ...
I digress. In the course of Ronnie's trolling the streets in search of Roxy and Carl, she stumbles into Vincent's bar. Yep, folks, to paraphrase Humphrey Bogart, of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, Ronnie walks into Vincent's. So now we know, not only that Vincent is Kim's husband (that was confirmed tonight) and the father of her child, we know he owns a bar, into which the irresistable psychopath walks.
(Sigh) I suppose Vincent is a psychopath too. Well, he would have to be, He clearly feels more attracted, as Michael Moon initially did, to Ronnie than he does his wife and child. If this is the villanous path Ronnie's treading, then I hope she does get her just reward in the end.
Two things about the principal actors here:-
- Early doors says I'm not impressed at all with Blackwood. He comes over as a cross between a poor man's Shaft and Theophilas D Wildebeast ...
All of this "Blue Eyes" crapiola and cryptic references to the "winter" of 2013, which lasted all of a month alluded to yet more action that happened off-screen and which may or may not have happened. As we know with Kathy's non-death, anything can or cannot happen off-screen, depending on the Executive Producer, but sometime within that month he spent cavorting with Ronnie, sometime before Christmas, Vincent stepped inside a kebab shop ... of all the kebab shops in all the towns in all the world, he stepped into one where Kim was waiting in line to be served, and they decided to slope off to Marbella together, so really, he didn't romp around with Ronnie for more than a couple of weeks before he swanned off with Kim.
Really, Vincent? Really?
- The other bad impression I got was Samantha Womack. It's time for her to go. Seriously. The actress is committed to other ventures, and EastEnders is clearly there for her to fill up the empty weeks and months between other television ventures and pantomime, which entail her being off screen for months on end. The end result of that is she's phoning in the role of Ronnie.
The interesting angle to all of this is Ronnie and just how much she did know and hear of Roxy's and Charlie's confession. My bet is that she heard everything, and she's savvy enough a psycho to play the helpless victim, which will prey upon Roxy's sense of guilt, and she achieved the desired result. By pushing Roxy, innocently, back to Charlie, and by praising Roxy and thanking her effusively for being there for her, Ronnie forced Roxy's hand.
The last thing Roxy wants to do is hurt her "sisTAH", and maybe she remembers just how much her sisTAH is capable of hurting her, so she confesses.
Now, Ronnie is married, as she told Vincent TMN, and Vincent is married also, as he remembers to put his wedding band on.
My guess is that Ronnie and Vincent are going to effect the demise of one Charlie Cotton at some point during this year, and Roxy will eventually suss what they've done. As will Kim. And I'm sure that somewhere along the way, the Carters will be involved with things. (Sigh again).
Since villains, true villains, have a limited shelf life, I'm hoping Vincent doesn't last long and that this is the end of Ronnie the psychopath.
By the way, I loved the way Dot referred to Roxy as "Roxanne" when she reminded her that Charlie was her sister's husband.
(I just remembered that Ingrid Bergman's character in Casablanca was named Elsa, and she was a cold fish too.)
Max the Knife.
Well, Jim had the better funeral. Better, because we knew the character better and because we knew the people who knew him and how they related to him. Stan could only be viewed in the context of his family situation. He was elderly, ill and infirm when he arrived on the Square, but Jim, although elderly, was part and parcel of the Square's life.
Dot's appearance put shame to the Branning siblings, and her behaviour and eventual speech proved that both Jim and Dot knew Max and Carol and their history with Jim better than they knew it, themselves.
Max's speech was bitter, vindictive, self-centred and selfish, and it totally epitomised everything the Brannings stood for in terms of putting themselves first. Whilst Carol joined Max in the days before the funeral in harping and carping about Jim, even she was shamed at the display he gave. There is substance to the phrase that it's evil to speak ill of the dead. What seemed to start off innocuously enough, turned sour the moment Max caught sight of Phil amongst the congregation.
The fact that the host of the congregation, led by Sonia and Abi, Jim's granddaughters, was appalled by the display shamed Max further.
Cora's parting shot was the line of the night.
Don't push people away, Max, or you'll end up on your own one day.
But Dot's poignant soliloquy for Jim saved the day. It was excellent in the continuity and adherence to the history of Jim's and Dot's relationship. Who knew that Jim had told Dot about his nailing Max in a coffin? Of course, Dot would rightly have been appalled by that, and maybe Jim was repenting his sin through confession as well in that act. Who knew that Dot knew about Jim's considering Carol a proper little homemaker, but never bothered to say anything to her? Dot knew he'd been a racist, but she also knew that his best friend was Patrick Trueman. And she also knew that, even as Jim had been a bad father, he was a good grandfather - to Bradley, Abi and Lauren, Sonia and Robbie. Most of all, it was heart-rending to hear Dot declare, in a way she's never done before because Dot can be somewhat of a stick and reticent about showing her emotions, her deep and abiding love for Jim.
OK, the spontaneous rendition of "My Way" by most of the congregation (pssst! did you see? Abi didn't know the words) was cheesy, but it worked a treat.
After the funeral, Max seems to have taken Cora's words to heart, because he confessed the reasons behind his bad behaviour - the fact that he'd been selling stolen cars bought from the elusive Karin Smart, and he's forced to go cap-in-hand to Phil for help.
The handshake meant nothing, I can tell you.
Farewell to Cora. We said good-bye to Cora tonight. She hasn't always been my favourite character. I don't know how either Kirkwood or Newman expected us to warm to a feckless, bullying, alcoholic ASBO granny, but Cora is one of DTC's hidden success stories.
Under DTC's tenure, we got to see Cora as a multi-layered individual. Yes, she was a functioning alcoholic, but also a woman who kept her feelings of hurt and loneliness buried deep inside her. She found illness and death hard to take, so she drowned herself in booze as her husband lay dying, but she never stopped loving or missing him. By keeping herself to herself and developing a prickly exterior, she masked her loneliness. One daughter she never knew, the other is a junkie, the third a money-grabbing gold-digger.
In the end, I liked Cora, and I had the sad feeling as she left the Square, not in a taxi, but with a single suitcase, that even though she had told everyone she was leaving to live with Tanya, that Tanya (who wouldn't pick up the phone) had no idea that her mother was imposing upon her.
That was a sad departure. I'll miss her, considering the sorts of elderly female characters left with which we have to contend.
You Know Who and Daddy Warbucks.
No, that's not Denny with a perm and in drag, that's Stan's Shirley Temple.
The best part of the Carters tonight was the interplay between Mick and Linda. Linda's the victim in all of this mess, and she's acting like the only adult in the room. She takes a sane approach to Shirley's, Buster Bloodvessel the Scrote's and Dean's crashing of the wake. She sweeps her family into the back room and tells Mick that she didn't want Shirley to miss the funeral, although Mick assured her that Shirley refused to come because Dean wasn't welcome. At least, parried Linda, let them stay for the wake. With Dean in the same room as the rest of them, he'd be easier to control
I don't understand Babe's game, however. Is she stirring shit as per usual? Offering sandwiches to the uninvited and then letting Mick think that Shirley and co had ordered them to be served.
Dean could take a lot, but he couldn't take Mick's ire. I'm glad Mick's not warming to Buster Bloodvessel at all. What an odious man! And Shirley is still odious in her contempt for Linda and her reference to her as a liar.
Poor widdle Dean.
Life inside is'ard, reckons Bloodvessel, another woefully weak actor portraying an unnecessary character. Dean should know. Life was 'ard for him in prison when he went there for perverting the course of justice. Then he was just a pretty young boy. Now, however, he's a rapist, and - as Dean whines - anyone accused of rape in prison is scum.
Well, Dean, sorry to disabuse you, old bean, but you are a rapist and you are scum.
Dean's running for one reason - because he knows damned well that he did that of which he was accused, and even though he's a free man, he will have to live every day under Mick's unrelenting glare, and I don't think he can abide that. But toughwad Shirley has a solution.
She goes to Bank of Phil.
She needs a loan. Again. She's threatening him. She says she knows where he was the night of Ian's wedding.
Now wait a moment. Was this a bluff, as Phil parried it? Because the night of Ian's wedding, Shirley was stuck in the pub, partying whilst Dean tried to torch the place. I don't think she even saw Phil the entire evening. And I don't think - at least I hope he didn't - Phil would have confided:-
Oi, Shirl, I'm off out to meet my ex-wife, who's faked her death and that of her old man. She's Ian's mum and Ben's. Oh, and did I tell you? Her old man just happens to be Sharon's birth father?
I'd be disappointed if he'd told her only about Kathy, because that's the sort of shit Shirley would use to stir Sharon, but unless this were a bluff, why is DTC involving this woman in a storyline that's supposed to be all about Sharon, Ian, and Ben? Don't tell me, please, that Buster knows Gavin and was an associate?
I tell you, if DTC involves the Carters, or at least Shirley, in this storyline, there will be hell to pay with a lot of viewers.
Shirl gets her money. Again. And welding equipment from The Arches, currently owned by Max.
I detested that line she gave Mick when he ordered her from the pub.
I own it.
No, Shirley, you own one per cent of its worth, and your stupid little trick of cutting Mick and Linda's name off the licence and announcing that you are buying them out proves your stupidity. If they won't sell, you can't buy.
Please, just leave now with your dirty sperm donor and your rapist son. Cowards, the lot of you.
With the latest revelations nudge-nudged and wink-winked in DTC's Radio Times interview, the stage is being set for the big guns to take centre stage again, but I have to say that I found most of the Carters as interesting as the rest of the episode tonight.
Mah SisTAHH and TMN.
DTC is clearly a fan of the Long Hello. We've had it with Stacey. We're having it with Kathy, and it's in full swing with the mysterious Vincent, who, in one fell swoop of an episode, has placed me firmly on the side of Team Kim and infinitely wishing that the psychopath in the wheelchair, emulating a gravelly-voiced Blauvelt of 007 fame, gets karma deep up her arse this time and leaves Walford in a box. I guess this is what good writing is supposed to do, as I've always been indifferent to Kim as a character before.
So ... we're being asked to believe that Ronnie spent all of December 2013, trolling the streets of London looking for Roxy as she ran around with Carl. Funny, that ... I didn't think Roxy and Carl either lasted that long as a couple nor did they wander that far from Walford or Albert Square.
Vincent, the latest TMN* to appear on the Square is a different sort of TMN to Ava, who was positive and boring. Vincent is supposed to be villainous. Well, he's villainous and boring.
This is not the way Vincent TMN is meant to inspire ...
I digress. In the course of Ronnie's trolling the streets in search of Roxy and Carl, she stumbles into Vincent's bar. Yep, folks, to paraphrase Humphrey Bogart, of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, Ronnie walks into Vincent's. So now we know, not only that Vincent is Kim's husband (that was confirmed tonight) and the father of her child, we know he owns a bar, into which the irresistable psychopath walks.
(Sigh) I suppose Vincent is a psychopath too. Well, he would have to be, He clearly feels more attracted, as Michael Moon initially did, to Ronnie than he does his wife and child. If this is the villanous path Ronnie's treading, then I hope she does get her just reward in the end.
Two things about the principal actors here:-
- Early doors says I'm not impressed at all with Blackwood. He comes over as a cross between a poor man's Shaft and Theophilas D Wildebeast ...
All of this "Blue Eyes" crapiola and cryptic references to the "winter" of 2013, which lasted all of a month alluded to yet more action that happened off-screen and which may or may not have happened. As we know with Kathy's non-death, anything can or cannot happen off-screen, depending on the Executive Producer, but sometime within that month he spent cavorting with Ronnie, sometime before Christmas, Vincent stepped inside a kebab shop ... of all the kebab shops in all the towns in all the world, he stepped into one where Kim was waiting in line to be served, and they decided to slope off to Marbella together, so really, he didn't romp around with Ronnie for more than a couple of weeks before he swanned off with Kim.
Really, Vincent? Really?
- The other bad impression I got was Samantha Womack. It's time for her to go. Seriously. The actress is committed to other ventures, and EastEnders is clearly there for her to fill up the empty weeks and months between other television ventures and pantomime, which entail her being off screen for months on end. The end result of that is she's phoning in the role of Ronnie.
The interesting angle to all of this is Ronnie and just how much she did know and hear of Roxy's and Charlie's confession. My bet is that she heard everything, and she's savvy enough a psycho to play the helpless victim, which will prey upon Roxy's sense of guilt, and she achieved the desired result. By pushing Roxy, innocently, back to Charlie, and by praising Roxy and thanking her effusively for being there for her, Ronnie forced Roxy's hand.
The last thing Roxy wants to do is hurt her "sisTAH", and maybe she remembers just how much her sisTAH is capable of hurting her, so she confesses.
Now, Ronnie is married, as she told Vincent TMN, and Vincent is married also, as he remembers to put his wedding band on.
My guess is that Ronnie and Vincent are going to effect the demise of one Charlie Cotton at some point during this year, and Roxy will eventually suss what they've done. As will Kim. And I'm sure that somewhere along the way, the Carters will be involved with things. (Sigh again).
Since villains, true villains, have a limited shelf life, I'm hoping Vincent doesn't last long and that this is the end of Ronnie the psychopath.
By the way, I loved the way Dot referred to Roxy as "Roxanne" when she reminded her that Charlie was her sister's husband.
(I just remembered that Ingrid Bergman's character in Casablanca was named Elsa, and she was a cold fish too.)
Max the Knife.
Well, Jim had the better funeral. Better, because we knew the character better and because we knew the people who knew him and how they related to him. Stan could only be viewed in the context of his family situation. He was elderly, ill and infirm when he arrived on the Square, but Jim, although elderly, was part and parcel of the Square's life.
Dot's appearance put shame to the Branning siblings, and her behaviour and eventual speech proved that both Jim and Dot knew Max and Carol and their history with Jim better than they knew it, themselves.
Max's speech was bitter, vindictive, self-centred and selfish, and it totally epitomised everything the Brannings stood for in terms of putting themselves first. Whilst Carol joined Max in the days before the funeral in harping and carping about Jim, even she was shamed at the display he gave. There is substance to the phrase that it's evil to speak ill of the dead. What seemed to start off innocuously enough, turned sour the moment Max caught sight of Phil amongst the congregation.
The fact that the host of the congregation, led by Sonia and Abi, Jim's granddaughters, was appalled by the display shamed Max further.
Cora's parting shot was the line of the night.
Don't push people away, Max, or you'll end up on your own one day.
But Dot's poignant soliloquy for Jim saved the day. It was excellent in the continuity and adherence to the history of Jim's and Dot's relationship. Who knew that Jim had told Dot about his nailing Max in a coffin? Of course, Dot would rightly have been appalled by that, and maybe Jim was repenting his sin through confession as well in that act. Who knew that Dot knew about Jim's considering Carol a proper little homemaker, but never bothered to say anything to her? Dot knew he'd been a racist, but she also knew that his best friend was Patrick Trueman. And she also knew that, even as Jim had been a bad father, he was a good grandfather - to Bradley, Abi and Lauren, Sonia and Robbie. Most of all, it was heart-rending to hear Dot declare, in a way she's never done before because Dot can be somewhat of a stick and reticent about showing her emotions, her deep and abiding love for Jim.
OK, the spontaneous rendition of "My Way" by most of the congregation (pssst! did you see? Abi didn't know the words) was cheesy, but it worked a treat.
After the funeral, Max seems to have taken Cora's words to heart, because he confessed the reasons behind his bad behaviour - the fact that he'd been selling stolen cars bought from the elusive Karin Smart, and he's forced to go cap-in-hand to Phil for help.
The handshake meant nothing, I can tell you.
Farewell to Cora. We said good-bye to Cora tonight. She hasn't always been my favourite character. I don't know how either Kirkwood or Newman expected us to warm to a feckless, bullying, alcoholic ASBO granny, but Cora is one of DTC's hidden success stories.
Under DTC's tenure, we got to see Cora as a multi-layered individual. Yes, she was a functioning alcoholic, but also a woman who kept her feelings of hurt and loneliness buried deep inside her. She found illness and death hard to take, so she drowned herself in booze as her husband lay dying, but she never stopped loving or missing him. By keeping herself to herself and developing a prickly exterior, she masked her loneliness. One daughter she never knew, the other is a junkie, the third a money-grabbing gold-digger.
In the end, I liked Cora, and I had the sad feeling as she left the Square, not in a taxi, but with a single suitcase, that even though she had told everyone she was leaving to live with Tanya, that Tanya (who wouldn't pick up the phone) had no idea that her mother was imposing upon her.
That was a sad departure. I'll miss her, considering the sorts of elderly female characters left with which we have to contend.
You Know Who and Daddy Warbucks.
No, that's not Denny with a perm and in drag, that's Stan's Shirley Temple.
The best part of the Carters tonight was the interplay between Mick and Linda. Linda's the victim in all of this mess, and she's acting like the only adult in the room. She takes a sane approach to Shirley's, Buster Bloodvessel the Scrote's and Dean's crashing of the wake. She sweeps her family into the back room and tells Mick that she didn't want Shirley to miss the funeral, although Mick assured her that Shirley refused to come because Dean wasn't welcome. At least, parried Linda, let them stay for the wake. With Dean in the same room as the rest of them, he'd be easier to control
I don't understand Babe's game, however. Is she stirring shit as per usual? Offering sandwiches to the uninvited and then letting Mick think that Shirley and co had ordered them to be served.
Dean could take a lot, but he couldn't take Mick's ire. I'm glad Mick's not warming to Buster Bloodvessel at all. What an odious man! And Shirley is still odious in her contempt for Linda and her reference to her as a liar.
Poor widdle Dean.
Life inside is'ard, reckons Bloodvessel, another woefully weak actor portraying an unnecessary character. Dean should know. Life was 'ard for him in prison when he went there for perverting the course of justice. Then he was just a pretty young boy. Now, however, he's a rapist, and - as Dean whines - anyone accused of rape in prison is scum.
Well, Dean, sorry to disabuse you, old bean, but you are a rapist and you are scum.
Dean's running for one reason - because he knows damned well that he did that of which he was accused, and even though he's a free man, he will have to live every day under Mick's unrelenting glare, and I don't think he can abide that. But toughwad Shirley has a solution.
She goes to Bank of Phil.
She needs a loan. Again. She's threatening him. She says she knows where he was the night of Ian's wedding.
Now wait a moment. Was this a bluff, as Phil parried it? Because the night of Ian's wedding, Shirley was stuck in the pub, partying whilst Dean tried to torch the place. I don't think she even saw Phil the entire evening. And I don't think - at least I hope he didn't - Phil would have confided:-
Oi, Shirl, I'm off out to meet my ex-wife, who's faked her death and that of her old man. She's Ian's mum and Ben's. Oh, and did I tell you? Her old man just happens to be Sharon's birth father?
I'd be disappointed if he'd told her only about Kathy, because that's the sort of shit Shirley would use to stir Sharon, but unless this were a bluff, why is DTC involving this woman in a storyline that's supposed to be all about Sharon, Ian, and Ben? Don't tell me, please, that Buster knows Gavin and was an associate?
I tell you, if DTC involves the Carters, or at least Shirley, in this storyline, there will be hell to pay with a lot of viewers.
Shirl gets her money. Again. And welding equipment from The Arches, currently owned by Max.
I detested that line she gave Mick when he ordered her from the pub.
I own it.
No, Shirley, you own one per cent of its worth, and your stupid little trick of cutting Mick and Linda's name off the licence and announcing that you are buying them out proves your stupidity. If they won't sell, you can't buy.
Please, just leave now with your dirty sperm donor and your rapist son. Cowards, the lot of you.
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