What the bloody hell was that all about? A detailed examination of an amateur show, people acting like Broadway divas, the Square bursting into song on an ordinary work day, Phil Mitchell having a bona fide soliloquy ...
What's happened to this show?
And don't even mention Christmas. For an episode in the seminal week running up to Christmas, that had to be one of the worst episodes I've ever seen on EastEnders.
Most of the cast gave a trailer trash-meets-idiot's version of A Christmas Carol, complete with in-fighting and petty squabbles, Derek had a hissy fit, Mick went shopping for Linda, Lee got further into debt, and Phil gave a soliloquy.
The Cratchits (Oh, Spare Me). Don't get me wrong; I really like Martin and Stacey, but that was just embarrassing tonight. For one moment, when the rest of the market broke into song with Martin, singing Madness's Our House, I thought that EastEnders had gone from sitcom to musical, complete with dancing, the way Martin was twirling the miserable po-faced Rebecca about.
I don't get this with her and TurdHead. I thought he'd dumped her and left it at that. What the fuck does she gain by sitting and staring at the interface of her expensive Smartphone?
The only voice of reason was Stacey, and she was right. Rebecca isn't the first girl to be dumped by an idiot, and she won't be the last. Shakil isn't important; Martin is - because he's her father.
The make-up scene was maudlin and schmaltzy, and once again, we have the situation where a parent is made to apologise to a child.
I don't think the Rebecca-Shakil shit has finished, but I wish they'd go.
Michael Goes Shopping. I thought Mick and Linda had both bought each other, unknowingly, made-up front page wedding announcements of their marriage the previous year, but maybe that's for their anniversary.
This entire segment had cliché written all over it. Mick, the typical man, who doesn't know what to buy Linda for Christmas and has to ask Whitney, someone who's not known Linda very long at all, but knows exactly what would float her boat at Christmas. I thought Linda's necklace that was stolen was some sort of heirloom from her grandmother, but it seems Holly Willoughby has the exact same necklace, prompting a subtle innuendo comment, from both Mick and Tina the Court Jester about Willoughby's most famous two assets ...
The purpose of the shopping trip was, at its end, a contrivance for Whitney to sigh and make a remark about how she wished Lee were more like Mick or something to that effect, and for Mick to reassure her and tell her that he thought she and Lee were just like him and Linda, solid for life; and that a lot of Lee's problems - and he wasn't far from being right, albeit for the wrong reasons - were his adjustment from the army to an office job, which seemed to be doing his head in.
Of course, we know that Lee and Whitney are anything but solid. He's slowly crumbling beneath her blithe inability to want to know what's irking him. The other problems the Carters are having is waiting for the insurance pay-out from the robbery, and whilst Linda's whining on the phone to Lee about that, Whitney's whining in the other ear, reminding him to ask for champagne flutes for the Christmas dinner.
Lee and Whitney live in one of the Branning kids' old bedrooms, with an en suite added. They're tripping over each other as it is now. They have a hotplate, a couch, an armchair, a flat-screen television and a bed. I guess the Carters will have to stand up to eat.
Of course, Lee's new problems come when Whitney shows him the matching earrings she's bought for them to give as a Christmas gift for Linda. For some reason, this sets Lee off on one of his loan-hunting larks. I don't get this - surely Whitney paid for them, herself? Or did she use Lee's credit card? Whatever it was, he felt the need to seek out another loan, all the while a package, left mistakenly with him for another tenant, held a virtual reality headset, something Lee could probably sell for a pretty penny.
And once again, we have Whitney telling him how proud she is of him. Every time she tells him something of that ilk, we see Lee sink lower and lower.
How long before he disappears?
The Mitchell Tragedy Unfolds. The highlight of the episode to me was Phil's soliloquy, delivered against the backdrop of a Ronald Reagan Western and to Jay. He confessed to Jay the real reason he'd given up hope for the future and was prepared to die.
It's nothing to do with his liver or his illness, although serious ailments of any sort occur on a regular basis as people get older. No, what's bugging Phil is exactly that: He's getting older. It wasn't his illness or the seriousness of his illness that causes Phil's distress, it's the fact that he's getting older, past his prime, and he isn't King of the Cock anymore. This was brought home to him in his trip to West Ham's new stadium, where he witnessed two City yuppies, drinking and being obnoxious - the sort of people whom Phil, in his prime, would have "sorted" without compunction and without thought.
Phil remembers what the weekends of his youth involved - drinking and fighting - bantam cocks establishing their territory, and daring others to invade their pitch. He defended his manor, and for the majority of the 90s and the Millennium, Walford was Phil's manor.
Now, he can only sit on the sidelines and watch life go by; he can't even claim his territory anymore. He's ready to die, because without the ability to defend his pitch, without his ability to fight and stand his ground, he's less of a man and not worthy of life. He claims he has nothing to live for.
Jay listens to all of this, listens to Phil pronounce him a "good kid" (when only weeks before, he was calling him a nonce) and simply shakes his hand. He says nothing, this after finding out that the meeting with Billy Jay interrupted was, in fact, Phil planning his own funeral for Billy - to save Sharon the heartache of doing that.
She's been through so much ...
Yes, she certainly has. She's been beaten up, cheated on, insulted, accused of all sorts and treated like the doormat she's become, and so he's sparing her the expense and the trauma of organising yet another funeral.
But the amazing thing is this: That Phil Mitchell has a wife who loves him unconditionally, a daughter, a son, a stepson and a surrogate son, as well as an extended family who, for some benighted reason, look up to him, and yet they mean nothing to him. He has nothing to live for - not his wife, not his children - nothing matters to Phil but the loss of face, the loss of power, prestige and his innate masculinity, the loss of youth. He's mortal.
On the other side of the coin, we have Sharon spending extensive time with Ben, trying to explain to him how frightened Phil is and how Phil is a man whose actions speak louder than words - the two examples Sharon gives Ben are of how he supported Ben after Paul's death and collapsed going to his rescue when he was kidnapped. But Ben is right also - Ben was never good enough for Phil, he was never the son Phil wanted or expected, and that much is true also; but Sharon does the snow job on Ben and convinces him to spend Christmas with the Mitchell family, she emotionally blackmails him into spending what could be Phil's last Christmas here.
Sharon has at least sussed Phil's fear, but I am so not invested in this storyline, knowing what will happen. Phil was totally fucked up by DTC, beyond redemption, and Steve McFadden is phoning it in, grunting, breathing like a stentor and whispering even more broadly. He's a parody of himself.
A Comedy Tonight. I thought bringing Derek back would be a moment of consequence, a character connected with Martin's adolescence and a positive force in his life. However, Ian Lavender, like Gwyneth Strong, is simply a luxury guest appearance, for one purpose only. Derek is there as the prissy, fussy, fanatical amateur director, who's a bit of a comic martinet - a Basil-Fawlty-meets-Colonel-Mainwaring person. Once the Christmas season is over, he'll be gone, and he only had a scene with Martin which lasted less than a minute.
The play was presented as a farce and a comedy - Mick playing Scrooge's nephew as Danny Dyer getting frustrated because someone in the audience was eating crisps ...
This is he theatre!
Donna and Martin taking a dose of Dutch courage to get them through the ordeal. Martin being over-awed by the local crowd to the point of falling mute, Steven getting caught up in his chain prop, and Kush taking a swan dive off the rear of the stage, Carmel offering dramatic advice and Derek keeping everyone behind for a dressing down and storming off in a huff.
This was like a very typical British sitcom. I kept expecting to see Nicholas Lyndhurst or Anton Rodgers putting in an appearance.
What the fuck was that all about?
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