Well, that didn't take long, did it? Follow up what has arguably been Sean O'Connor's best week thus far as EP, with an episode penned by Katie Douglas.
Why is that woman still allowed to write for this programme? Or maybe they just hand her the episodes which are fillers and which really serve no purpose but to re-hash the same things over and over and over and over and over and over again ... like the increasingly dire Fox situation.
That's right. Denise Fox is becoming like Fox news - boring, repetitive and mean-spirited.
Finish This Baby Shit Already! As well as a strong strand of misogyny, there seems to be a heavy strand of bullying trending through the show right now. Once again, we get the same scenes, although through a falsely different perspective, about Denise, Kim and the wedge her adopted baby has thrown between them.
I am so fucking tired of hearing Kim whine about that baby "being raised by strangers," I could scream. She's like Trump and his creature Kellyann Conway and their alternative fact universe, which is a euphemism for a lie. EastEnders' penchant for describing adoption and farming a kid out to be "raised by strangers" is offensive and repugnant, both to adoptees and people who have adopted children. Please don't insult my intelligence by saying that this is just the way the show wants to portray the ignorant, insipid, selfish and narcissistic Kim (those adjectives describe Trump); EastEnders has always had this agenda about birth relations superseding adopted relations. This is why so many of its characters either find their birth parents or unrealistically get adopted children returned to them.
We know that this child will inevitably end up back on the Square, either in Phil's custody or Denise's or them living together as a couple and raising him. There have been too damned many mentions of this child for it not to feature in the future.
How many times, as I rhetorically asked, do we have to hear Kim wail about "my nephew being raised by strangers?" How many times does Denise have to say she doesn't regret giving the baby up for adoption? Look, either this is a positive and educational storyline about the efficacy of adoption and the courage of someone who opts to give her baby up for adoption, or it's the standard common-and-garden soap bumpf which becomes maudin and melodramatic and results in a particularly trite soap trope.
Because, you see, I think this storyline is a fraud. It sounds as though Denise is trying to convince herself that she did the right thing - we have the constant wringing of the hands, the clinging to Libby, Patrick and Grandma Medusa, the constant reference to people gossiping, when actually people may be more understanding of her situation than she thinks.
The ingratitude of Denise actually knows no bounds. Her supposed best friend, Carmel, enjoying an epiphany moment and who has apologised to Denise for her tactlessness, offers her help and moral support. Denise turns her nose up as though she's encountered a bad smell. This is after rushing out of the house to avoid the bickering of Grandma Medusa and Patrick.
Tonight's episode was particularly embarrassing for both Patrick and Vincent. We had to suffer the awfully silly and just plain bad scene of Grandma Medusa attempting to do some housework and smacking Patrick about with cushions just to get him to move from one position on the sofa to another, instead of asking him to move. That was for the comic effect, and it tanked.
I'm tired of seeing po-faced Libby, Patrick and Grandma tiptoeing about on eggshells at the risk of upsetting the already fragile Denise's ego, and I'm tired of the various attempts to reconcile Denise with Kim. Granny's tried and failed. Vincent's tried and failed. Now Libby's tried and failed. She took it upon herself to visit Kim and, in unison with Vincent, who - again - was reduced to a giggling, simpering, emasculated male making a bad joke about his mother-in-law - her ploy was to emphasize how much Denise missed Kim, and how much Kim missed Denise.
But Kim wouldn't budge on the whine about the baby being raised by strangers, and refused to budge on the idea that Denise was still the same person as she always was. Kim is too immature to suck it up and accept that Denise's decision was best for her and the child. This one action has defined Denise in Kim's narrow-minded eyes for the rest of her days.
All through this circular rigamarole, something suddenly dawned on me that Kim and Denise are this producer's Roxy and Ronnie - a co-dependent relationship, again, with the question of a child at the core. I wish the show would move away from this sibling friend shit, a theme introduced by John Yorke and continued until this day.
EastEnders hasn't yet solved its big problem of circular storylines. Either get the kid back or shut up about it.
The Mitchell Situation and Michelle. Michelle's interposed herself into the Mitchell dynamic, and it's just a teeny weeny bit weird. On the one hand, I can understand her concern for Sharon. Sharon is her best friend, her oldest friend and she hones in immediately on Sharon's tense demeanor, her currying favour with Phil by being over-protective of him, running around like a headless chicken, waiting on his kids hand and foot, trying to keep him happy.
In that respect, Michelle was right to call Phil out on his perceived taking advantage of Sharon's good nature. And that was about time. At least we got a semblance of a conversation between Phil and Sharon, but because the subject of Phil's son got dropped almost as soon as it was brought up after the birth, and attention was paid on other situations, it had the effect of coming out of the blue and it featured in only one scene, but it was a scene laden with foreshadowing.
Somewhere in the conversation it was established that Sharon didn't want Phil to have custody of this child, although an exploration of her reasons might have done more in revealing her insecurity about the relationship. She's afraid of Phil hating her because somehow he knew or realised that she didn't want the kid.
Did I miss something? Because in that scene she shared with Phil on the day he found out about the baby, she made an eloquent defense of adoption and people who were adopted, but ended by supporting Phil had he wished to seek custody of the child.
Now Phil's saying that he decided not to go for custody of the child in deference to Sharon, before reiterating what Denise had said that about him making a mess of bringing up his own children and about his age in question. Sharon brings up another infuriating idea - the idea that this child is "a Mitchell."
Sorry, no, he isn't. We can't be defined by our genetic make-up. Phil provided the sperm and the requisite DNA contribution to this child. This child is no more a Mitchell than Michelle Fowler's son is. The child will be more influenced by his environment and by his adoptive family than he will the Foxes or the Mitchells. Even this idea of inherited traits is a myth propagated by this show. Sharon offers this perspective to Phil on a plate, cooked and ready to serve with her insecurity as dessert. She thinks that Phil, the ultimate manchild, will come to hate her for refusing to raise a child borne of his infidelity on a drunken one night stand he couldn't even remember.
I'm sorry, when Phil promised her that she and Dennis were his second chance, I didn't believe it for a moment. To begin with, there's his recent dead friend Tony's widow and child, and I think Phil will drift toward these two out of guilt; and Sharon will suffer. And by the time he's got that situation out of his system, someone will probably think of a reason for him or Denise to get the Holy Child back, and Sharon and Dennis will probably get shafted on that one too.
On a second instance, who the hell does Michelle think she is, offering to go to Walford High and talk with Louise's teachers about the bullying she's suffering at the hands of Keegan and his mates? She is no relation to Louise. She didn't even know her before this extended visit, and the teachers in question wouldn't give her the time of day. Surely, she knows that - or is she that stupid or arrogant? The only people with whom the school would treat in relation to Louise are Phil, Sharon or, should she ever show up, Lisa. Is this something stupid Douglas stumbled upon and thought sounded good?
Teenaged Angst. Once again, a circular storyline. Where is this going? Is this some sort of bullying storyline about Louise, who is being made the cruel brunt of Keegan's jokes? If this were a story about bullying - and cyberbullying in particular, it might be interesting - because it's very prevalent and relevant, and it also heightens awareness of a particularly ugly strain of misogyny aimed at Louise. It's actually quite disturbing, and you get the feeling she may get hurt - and I mean, physically - in all of this.
But it's been tempered down as a plot device to the silly lovelorn tale of Rebecca the Smug and Shakil the Unintelligible. Can she look more smug? Can someone please tell the actress that throwing her head back and jutting her chin forward for all her dialogue doesn't look natural.
I get it that SOC wants to show some intricacy in teenaged romantic relationships as opposed to the loyalty of friendship, but this is just boring - and it's boring because the teens in question are so unlikable.
And the Rest. Sam remembers Ronnie and Roxy died, almost a month after it happened, but she doesn't remember she has a son. Stacey and Martin have reverted to background characters, and I gather the sole content of their conversations from here on out are about the planned Fowler child - until she finds out that Martin was injured in the baby-making department.
Mick is having a Chinese night, and the fact that he got his friend, whose parents were Thai, to cook Chinese food, is very subtly racist - as in "all Orientals look alike." We get it that the Carters are desperate to earn money, but I gather that Princess Whitney has been packed off to Whitfield to visit King Drip. At least Mick, in his guilt for snogging his son's wife, is treating Lee with a bit more kindness, going by his remarks.
Abi, who was curiously absent during the bus collision, remarks to Jack that she has heard of her father's heroics - all the while, we know what Max is plotting.
Max, like Vincent, is having mother-in-law problems, which means he'll probably sleep with Glenda before long.
Jay and Ben are getting a flat together, then they aren't. Clock how Jay's terse explanation to Michelle that he got in a spot of bother and can't be around young girls was rendered. They have something in common. Does that mean they'll share a flat?
And Michelle is secretly necking vodka like Shirley Carter because her husband doesn't want to know her. What next?
Why is that woman still allowed to write for this programme? Or maybe they just hand her the episodes which are fillers and which really serve no purpose but to re-hash the same things over and over and over and over and over and over again ... like the increasingly dire Fox situation.
That's right. Denise Fox is becoming like Fox news - boring, repetitive and mean-spirited.
Finish This Baby Shit Already! As well as a strong strand of misogyny, there seems to be a heavy strand of bullying trending through the show right now. Once again, we get the same scenes, although through a falsely different perspective, about Denise, Kim and the wedge her adopted baby has thrown between them.
I am so fucking tired of hearing Kim whine about that baby "being raised by strangers," I could scream. She's like Trump and his creature Kellyann Conway and their alternative fact universe, which is a euphemism for a lie. EastEnders' penchant for describing adoption and farming a kid out to be "raised by strangers" is offensive and repugnant, both to adoptees and people who have adopted children. Please don't insult my intelligence by saying that this is just the way the show wants to portray the ignorant, insipid, selfish and narcissistic Kim (those adjectives describe Trump); EastEnders has always had this agenda about birth relations superseding adopted relations. This is why so many of its characters either find their birth parents or unrealistically get adopted children returned to them.
We know that this child will inevitably end up back on the Square, either in Phil's custody or Denise's or them living together as a couple and raising him. There have been too damned many mentions of this child for it not to feature in the future.
How many times, as I rhetorically asked, do we have to hear Kim wail about "my nephew being raised by strangers?" How many times does Denise have to say she doesn't regret giving the baby up for adoption? Look, either this is a positive and educational storyline about the efficacy of adoption and the courage of someone who opts to give her baby up for adoption, or it's the standard common-and-garden soap bumpf which becomes maudin and melodramatic and results in a particularly trite soap trope.
Because, you see, I think this storyline is a fraud. It sounds as though Denise is trying to convince herself that she did the right thing - we have the constant wringing of the hands, the clinging to Libby, Patrick and Grandma Medusa, the constant reference to people gossiping, when actually people may be more understanding of her situation than she thinks.
The ingratitude of Denise actually knows no bounds. Her supposed best friend, Carmel, enjoying an epiphany moment and who has apologised to Denise for her tactlessness, offers her help and moral support. Denise turns her nose up as though she's encountered a bad smell. This is after rushing out of the house to avoid the bickering of Grandma Medusa and Patrick.
Tonight's episode was particularly embarrassing for both Patrick and Vincent. We had to suffer the awfully silly and just plain bad scene of Grandma Medusa attempting to do some housework and smacking Patrick about with cushions just to get him to move from one position on the sofa to another, instead of asking him to move. That was for the comic effect, and it tanked.
I'm tired of seeing po-faced Libby, Patrick and Grandma tiptoeing about on eggshells at the risk of upsetting the already fragile Denise's ego, and I'm tired of the various attempts to reconcile Denise with Kim. Granny's tried and failed. Vincent's tried and failed. Now Libby's tried and failed. She took it upon herself to visit Kim and, in unison with Vincent, who - again - was reduced to a giggling, simpering, emasculated male making a bad joke about his mother-in-law - her ploy was to emphasize how much Denise missed Kim, and how much Kim missed Denise.
But Kim wouldn't budge on the whine about the baby being raised by strangers, and refused to budge on the idea that Denise was still the same person as she always was. Kim is too immature to suck it up and accept that Denise's decision was best for her and the child. This one action has defined Denise in Kim's narrow-minded eyes for the rest of her days.
All through this circular rigamarole, something suddenly dawned on me that Kim and Denise are this producer's Roxy and Ronnie - a co-dependent relationship, again, with the question of a child at the core. I wish the show would move away from this sibling friend shit, a theme introduced by John Yorke and continued until this day.
EastEnders hasn't yet solved its big problem of circular storylines. Either get the kid back or shut up about it.
The Mitchell Situation and Michelle. Michelle's interposed herself into the Mitchell dynamic, and it's just a teeny weeny bit weird. On the one hand, I can understand her concern for Sharon. Sharon is her best friend, her oldest friend and she hones in immediately on Sharon's tense demeanor, her currying favour with Phil by being over-protective of him, running around like a headless chicken, waiting on his kids hand and foot, trying to keep him happy.
In that respect, Michelle was right to call Phil out on his perceived taking advantage of Sharon's good nature. And that was about time. At least we got a semblance of a conversation between Phil and Sharon, but because the subject of Phil's son got dropped almost as soon as it was brought up after the birth, and attention was paid on other situations, it had the effect of coming out of the blue and it featured in only one scene, but it was a scene laden with foreshadowing.
Somewhere in the conversation it was established that Sharon didn't want Phil to have custody of this child, although an exploration of her reasons might have done more in revealing her insecurity about the relationship. She's afraid of Phil hating her because somehow he knew or realised that she didn't want the kid.
Did I miss something? Because in that scene she shared with Phil on the day he found out about the baby, she made an eloquent defense of adoption and people who were adopted, but ended by supporting Phil had he wished to seek custody of the child.
Now Phil's saying that he decided not to go for custody of the child in deference to Sharon, before reiterating what Denise had said that about him making a mess of bringing up his own children and about his age in question. Sharon brings up another infuriating idea - the idea that this child is "a Mitchell."
Sorry, no, he isn't. We can't be defined by our genetic make-up. Phil provided the sperm and the requisite DNA contribution to this child. This child is no more a Mitchell than Michelle Fowler's son is. The child will be more influenced by his environment and by his adoptive family than he will the Foxes or the Mitchells. Even this idea of inherited traits is a myth propagated by this show. Sharon offers this perspective to Phil on a plate, cooked and ready to serve with her insecurity as dessert. She thinks that Phil, the ultimate manchild, will come to hate her for refusing to raise a child borne of his infidelity on a drunken one night stand he couldn't even remember.
I'm sorry, when Phil promised her that she and Dennis were his second chance, I didn't believe it for a moment. To begin with, there's his recent dead friend Tony's widow and child, and I think Phil will drift toward these two out of guilt; and Sharon will suffer. And by the time he's got that situation out of his system, someone will probably think of a reason for him or Denise to get the Holy Child back, and Sharon and Dennis will probably get shafted on that one too.
On a second instance, who the hell does Michelle think she is, offering to go to Walford High and talk with Louise's teachers about the bullying she's suffering at the hands of Keegan and his mates? She is no relation to Louise. She didn't even know her before this extended visit, and the teachers in question wouldn't give her the time of day. Surely, she knows that - or is she that stupid or arrogant? The only people with whom the school would treat in relation to Louise are Phil, Sharon or, should she ever show up, Lisa. Is this something stupid Douglas stumbled upon and thought sounded good?
Teenaged Angst. Once again, a circular storyline. Where is this going? Is this some sort of bullying storyline about Louise, who is being made the cruel brunt of Keegan's jokes? If this were a story about bullying - and cyberbullying in particular, it might be interesting - because it's very prevalent and relevant, and it also heightens awareness of a particularly ugly strain of misogyny aimed at Louise. It's actually quite disturbing, and you get the feeling she may get hurt - and I mean, physically - in all of this.
But it's been tempered down as a plot device to the silly lovelorn tale of Rebecca the Smug and Shakil the Unintelligible. Can she look more smug? Can someone please tell the actress that throwing her head back and jutting her chin forward for all her dialogue doesn't look natural.
I get it that SOC wants to show some intricacy in teenaged romantic relationships as opposed to the loyalty of friendship, but this is just boring - and it's boring because the teens in question are so unlikable.
And the Rest. Sam remembers Ronnie and Roxy died, almost a month after it happened, but she doesn't remember she has a son. Stacey and Martin have reverted to background characters, and I gather the sole content of their conversations from here on out are about the planned Fowler child - until she finds out that Martin was injured in the baby-making department.
Mick is having a Chinese night, and the fact that he got his friend, whose parents were Thai, to cook Chinese food, is very subtly racist - as in "all Orientals look alike." We get it that the Carters are desperate to earn money, but I gather that Princess Whitney has been packed off to Whitfield to visit King Drip. At least Mick, in his guilt for snogging his son's wife, is treating Lee with a bit more kindness, going by his remarks.
Abi, who was curiously absent during the bus collision, remarks to Jack that she has heard of her father's heroics - all the while, we know what Max is plotting.
Max, like Vincent, is having mother-in-law problems, which means he'll probably sleep with Glenda before long.
Jay and Ben are getting a flat together, then they aren't. Clock how Jay's terse explanation to Michelle that he got in a spot of bother and can't be around young girls was rendered. They have something in common. Does that mean they'll share a flat?
And Michelle is secretly necking vodka like Shirley Carter because her husband doesn't want to know her. What next?
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