A week is a long time in politics. The world is just beginning to find out the sordid truth about Donald Trump that I knew way back in August, and last Tuesday, my broadband hub broke. Kaput. Gone. Dead as the proverbial dodo. It took four days to diagnose the problem, and a week to receive a new, all-singing-all-dancing device.
Since last Tuesday, I've stayed away from watching the show live. Taking a week off has given me new perspective, and so tonight - Wednesday 11 January - I sat down to watch last Tuesday's episode.
It was genuinely a good one, and watching it from the perspective of a week's distance gave me a fresh insight into the show as it was last week. Maybe it was the new hub, but the videotape or the filming of the show seemed more intimate and alive. It was jarring too, since I'd got out of Christmas and holiday mood, to see Christmas dekkos still about, remembering I was watching an episode which was supposed to have taken place the day after the New Year's bank holiday.
There were things about it I liked, and things I thought weren't so bright, but the episode worked for me.
It's All about Mick. It always is. This is Lee's problem, and Lee knows it, He fucked up, got caught and when he got found out, he turned to the only one of two people in the world whom he could expect to support him and love him unconditionally - his father. His mother is the other person, but she's not around at the moment. Instead, he's getting the coldest of shoulders from Mick, who - instead of helping someone who already has massive self-esteem issues, he's flattening Lee to the ground.
Lee would do well to remember the atrocious way in which Mick treated Nancy at the time of Ollie's accident. In the end, he really didn't come around to accepting her back into the family fold until she had decided to travel the world with Tamwar, and that was the nub of that - Nancy had to leave Walford in order to regain her father's love.
Listen, a parent is supposed to love a child, unconditionally. If he or she doesn't, then the parent has some serious maturity issues, and Mick is one massive, overgrown spoiled brat of a kid, a working-class Donald Trump who plays on his deprived past, which may have been deprivational economically, but not emotionally.
First of all, he had Shirley, at various times, catering to his every whim, and then Babe brought the little prince up, before Elaine allowed him to play house with her daughter with real babies taking the place of dolls. Mick takes his family on his terms. It's his way or the highway. Linda learned a long time ago to adjust to that. Even when he was treating Nancy like a piece of shit, Linda was tiptoeing on eggshells, squeezing Nancy's arm on the sly and whispering,
Ne'mind, love, your dad'll come around. He loves you, after all.
Bullshit to that. One wonders that, if Linda were there, if she'd find out about this. If Lee would break and tell her the truth, would she stand up to Mick, defend her son against his criminally immature attitude? I doubt it.
Everybody fears Mick, and because of that, everyone makes every issue about Mick, even if Mick doesn't make it about himself.
Look at the first scene in this episode. There's a new breakfast buffet at the Vic, and on the first day, it's packed. The place is heaving. It's a buffet, as Johnny points out, and there Mick sits, at the head of the bar, tea in hand, summarily demanding that Johnny serve him with another sausage. Even when the lad points out that it's a buffet, and the idea is to serve yourself, Mick's too good to do that.
Bring him a sausage. It's a command, and this is sublimely ironic. Mick ordering up a sausage, the most phallic symbol of meat by-products, as if to enhance his own masculinity, and ordering Johnny, his gay son, Linda's little "sausage" to serve such a symbol of Alpha male superiority on a plate.
Yech.
And this was the central theme throughout this vignette - the juxtaposition of Mick, the hunter-gatherer male, the figurehead family head, standing, powerful and all-encompassing, at the helm of his family kingdom - insuring Ollie got to his appointment, supported by Whitney, who seemed hopefully supportive of him in another context, behaving himself in front of the consultant - but only because the man told him what he wanted to hear - peppering his talk with incomprehensible Cockney slang to emphasize the "real man" aspect of his behaviour as compared with the more effete behaviour or the educated consultant.
And all the time, emphasizing Ollie's masculinity as well - Ollie likes "his grub" like his old man, and so forth.
But as well, there was the constant comparison of Mick's domineering, all-powerful male as opposed to what he perceives as Lee's total failure.
He can barely look at Lee. He treats the problems Lee is having at work with contempt. He doesn't even want to hear about them, and in not hearing about Lee's situation at work, he doesn't understand it. He doesn't understand it because such a thing has never happened to him. And what is his solution to the Oz problem? Get his address and give him a good hiding.
Not that he doesn't deserve it, but this actually makes Mick as low as Oz - because Mick has actually committed an assault. A crime. As bad as the one Lee committed. All of this was in the name of protecting his family, and at the same time, shaming his son, making his son feel even "less of a man," undeserving of the wife Lee has - when in actuality, Mick knows very little about Whitney at all.
One wonders if Mick and Linda know her sexual history - the sexual abuse is one thing and deserving of compassion, but the casual way she discarded boys whom she'd lead on for one reason, for a bad boy on a whim, her history of being a prostitute, all of this wouldn't sit easy with the Carters. Yet, to Mick, she's a gem, and he goes out of his way to tell Lee that whilst he'll bail Lee out of his immense debt, he'll do it only for Whitney, who doesn't deserve Lee. (One feels that, with Linda away, Mick might feel that he, himself, deserves the fragrant Whitney, who really isn't so fragrant at all, but a cheap tarted-up version of someone aspiring to respectability, but ultimately coming across as a scrubbed-up chav).
And as much as Lee is being bullied at work, Mick is bullying him in a different way at home, forcing him to put in an appearance at work, and forcing him to reveal the bits of his sordid story to Whitney that she didn't know already. Funny thing, that Mick isn't so bothered that Whitney knew about Lee's part in the raid. He foresaw the fact that she'd gaze up at him lovingly, with her moonful eyes and whine ...
I hated lying to you, Mick. (Flutter, flutter)
Eventually, Mick throttles Oz, and you wonder that Oz might not go to the police, himself, because surely he'll know who his assailant was, and Mick bears the marks of his assault. He made sure that Babe knew all about his woes - in fact, Mick presented a litany of supposed wrongs levelled against him - Linda is gone for the foreseeable future, leaving him alone to fend for himself whilst she worries over her stricken mother, and then having to deal with what he calls his "poor excuse of a son."
Who refers to their child in such terms? Really.
As for Whitney, I nearly fell off my chair at her reaction to Lee's confession. Seriously, she professed to never having been materialistic in any way. She swore that she never wanted a big wedding - when all the time we saw her creating situations wherein the wedding became bigger and bigger. She never wanted a flat, when all we heard, when she wasn't whining about living with Linda, was bagging a flat in trendy Stratford and moving to the 'burbs within a couple of years. It was Whitney who became pregnant, deliberately, without planning the event with Lee, and even more recently, she announced to Lee that they should try for a child again, not discussing this with him but announcing her decision. And why did Lee have to pay for her wedding, anyway? Bianca is her de facto mother, and she has a living brother. That was their responsibility.
When Lee sought to explain his actions being, in part, to please her, Whitney assumed the moral high ground and swore blindly that she never wanted the wedding, the flat or anything - just Lee, and that she was happiest when they had nothing. That was never true, because since her miscarriage, she sought to create the tension around which Lee had to perform, which, coupled with his growing poor self-esteem, resulted in this dire situation.
Even her self-righteous remark to Mick that she had to forgive Lee, because she loved him, had the self-appointed air or a martyr.
And so the decomposition of Lee's character and his very existence, continues, enabled by Mick.
When the Guest Begins to Smell. Millennial Michelle doesn't impress me in the least. I get that TPTB want to emphasize the similarities between her and her mother, but believe me, Michelle was never going to be Pauline Fowler. That was one of the reasons she sought higher education and, ultimately, to remove herself as far away from Pauline's sphere of influence as possible.
Michelle, as was, would no more evolve into her mother than a Dutchman would. I'm nothing like my mother either with my kids or with anyone else. There are some ways, mannerisms and ideas of hers that I've kept and propagated, but equally, there are others I've abjured, and I think Michelle would have done pretty much the same.
The worst part of this segment was the obvious rudeness. No matter if the person you visit is a close relative, you don't do something as arrogant and as entitled as run up someone else's utility bill - you don't monopolise the telephone, you don't take over the television and keep its audio level full blast when you know that there's an infant in the house, and you don't keep the heating turned up higher than your host has it, not without his permission.
Nice continuity that the show revealed that, after twenty years in Florida, Michelle was finding the dampness of a British winter something alien altogether, and that Martin's house was too cold for her liking. (I can identify with that. After over 30 years here, it's a constant battle between my husband and me about what constitutes a warm house and what does not). But the difference with that is that I live in my house, and I contribute to paying the bills.
She knows Martin and Stacey struggle, yet she deliberately undermined Stacey when she turned the thermostat down. Martin thinks this visit is temporary, but even a couple of weeks of upping the thermostat will make a helluva difference in their gas bill. He's too snowed by her making tea just the way he likes it. She's just rude.
This is not Michelle. Did she behave like that when Pauline was alive, Pauline would have smacked her arse six ways until Sunday.
The Deaths in a Family. Once again, paired with Jake Wood, Scott Maslen rose to the occasion. Two days into grieving Ronnie (and Roxy), he has to face telling his children (and Ronnie's) about their deaths. The show did the mundanity of life proud, showing Max dealing with Jack, taking charge, clearing their hotel rooms and taking it upon himself to move into Jack's house to deal with Jack's grief, fixing breakfast for the kids and accompanying him to identify Ronnie's body.
It's clear now where Jack is going with his grief. He's found out from his FLO that Ronnie apparently dove into the pool in order to save Roxy from drowning. The irony is that Jack sees this as an analogy of Ronnie's life - always being pulled down by Roxy, whereas I see it more tragically - Roxy's dive into the pool and her subsequent death, was an attempt at freedom from Ronnie. She knew the move to Ongar would never suit her, and would sabotage Ronnie's relationship with her family, so - somehow - she contrived to drown herself, and seeing that Roxy had somehow, tragically, fucked up, Ronnie did what Ronnie always did - rescued Roxy from a supposed mess - or try to. And she died. And Roxy died.
But Jack sees this as Roxy "dragging Ronnie down" literally.
All of this played out against Billy and Honey's cack-handed visit of sympathy, awkward and unnecessary. Sometimes, a show of solidarity in times of grief isn't necessarily welcomed. Billy, being in the death trade, sorta kinda realised this, but I think Honey, and Emma Barton's stiff, affectations of genuine grief, pushed the ticket - remarking, in front of Jack how happy Ronnie was - in fact, the entire mess of making Ronnie some sort of redeemable saint who deserved happiness was, in and of itself, a complete and insulting joke. This woman was a murderer, and children or not, she deserved her fate. Besides, what's going to become of Matthew, tucked comfortingly in the crook of Jack's arm in this episode? Matthew is not Jack's child, and he has no rights to him, whatsoever. Matthew has a living father, and Dot should be in touch with Charlie, immediately.
As well, it played out against life going on in the Square, and the efforts the Mitchells made of trying to keep the Blisters' death a secret. Why? Because Jack was remiss about telling the kids? Watching Donna traipse about the Square, making remarks about the happy couple and Roxy screwing up, without knowing the circumstances - from the urbane normality of Ian and Steven sniping naturally at each other about disposing of a Christmas tree to Harry Reid awkwardly enacting a grief-stricken Ben, sitting with Billy in the pub and attempting to warn Donna off to Kathy exchanging smiling insults with Babe over the Vic's breakfast buffet, it was meant as a stark contrast, and it worked.
Kind of.
All of this was leading up to Jack ultimately telling Amy and Richard about Ronnie's and Roxy's death. Matthew's lost a mother, but he has a father somewhere. Amy's lost her mother and her aunt, so her loss is probably the greatest; but Ricky has lost no one. His mother is alive and kicking somewhere, and he still has his father.
As morbid as it was, the identification scene, including Glenda and Danny, was necessary. Too often, the show forgets absent and occasional parents in the events of death, or a far-flung sibling, like Carol, who phoned tonight from far away. Glenda's grief was raw, and it was Jack, rather than her son, who offered her strength.
However, they did tend to overplay the maudlin aspect of the situation, especially with Jack's finding of a stray earring ...
She was looking for that.
... before collapsing in paroxyms of grief. This is too stock a scene for any tale of grief and woe, as well as the duff-duff, announcing Jack's impending effort to reveal to Amy that her mother and her aunt were dead.
I don't wish to sound harsh, but Amy is 8 years old. Why does she talk like she's four? Maybe it was because when she was four on the show, she was a silent elf, saying nothing. She's seen her rabbit die from ingesting cocaine in her mother's flat. Jack needs to dispense with this "Mummy and Auntie Ronnie have gone away and aren't coming back" malarkey.
Her mother is dead. End of.
Good episode.
Since last Tuesday, I've stayed away from watching the show live. Taking a week off has given me new perspective, and so tonight - Wednesday 11 January - I sat down to watch last Tuesday's episode.
It was genuinely a good one, and watching it from the perspective of a week's distance gave me a fresh insight into the show as it was last week. Maybe it was the new hub, but the videotape or the filming of the show seemed more intimate and alive. It was jarring too, since I'd got out of Christmas and holiday mood, to see Christmas dekkos still about, remembering I was watching an episode which was supposed to have taken place the day after the New Year's bank holiday.
There were things about it I liked, and things I thought weren't so bright, but the episode worked for me.
It's All about Mick. It always is. This is Lee's problem, and Lee knows it, He fucked up, got caught and when he got found out, he turned to the only one of two people in the world whom he could expect to support him and love him unconditionally - his father. His mother is the other person, but she's not around at the moment. Instead, he's getting the coldest of shoulders from Mick, who - instead of helping someone who already has massive self-esteem issues, he's flattening Lee to the ground.
Lee would do well to remember the atrocious way in which Mick treated Nancy at the time of Ollie's accident. In the end, he really didn't come around to accepting her back into the family fold until she had decided to travel the world with Tamwar, and that was the nub of that - Nancy had to leave Walford in order to regain her father's love.
Listen, a parent is supposed to love a child, unconditionally. If he or she doesn't, then the parent has some serious maturity issues, and Mick is one massive, overgrown spoiled brat of a kid, a working-class Donald Trump who plays on his deprived past, which may have been deprivational economically, but not emotionally.
First of all, he had Shirley, at various times, catering to his every whim, and then Babe brought the little prince up, before Elaine allowed him to play house with her daughter with real babies taking the place of dolls. Mick takes his family on his terms. It's his way or the highway. Linda learned a long time ago to adjust to that. Even when he was treating Nancy like a piece of shit, Linda was tiptoeing on eggshells, squeezing Nancy's arm on the sly and whispering,
Ne'mind, love, your dad'll come around. He loves you, after all.
Bullshit to that. One wonders that, if Linda were there, if she'd find out about this. If Lee would break and tell her the truth, would she stand up to Mick, defend her son against his criminally immature attitude? I doubt it.
Everybody fears Mick, and because of that, everyone makes every issue about Mick, even if Mick doesn't make it about himself.
Look at the first scene in this episode. There's a new breakfast buffet at the Vic, and on the first day, it's packed. The place is heaving. It's a buffet, as Johnny points out, and there Mick sits, at the head of the bar, tea in hand, summarily demanding that Johnny serve him with another sausage. Even when the lad points out that it's a buffet, and the idea is to serve yourself, Mick's too good to do that.
Bring him a sausage. It's a command, and this is sublimely ironic. Mick ordering up a sausage, the most phallic symbol of meat by-products, as if to enhance his own masculinity, and ordering Johnny, his gay son, Linda's little "sausage" to serve such a symbol of Alpha male superiority on a plate.
Yech.
And this was the central theme throughout this vignette - the juxtaposition of Mick, the hunter-gatherer male, the figurehead family head, standing, powerful and all-encompassing, at the helm of his family kingdom - insuring Ollie got to his appointment, supported by Whitney, who seemed hopefully supportive of him in another context, behaving himself in front of the consultant - but only because the man told him what he wanted to hear - peppering his talk with incomprehensible Cockney slang to emphasize the "real man" aspect of his behaviour as compared with the more effete behaviour or the educated consultant.
And all the time, emphasizing Ollie's masculinity as well - Ollie likes "his grub" like his old man, and so forth.
But as well, there was the constant comparison of Mick's domineering, all-powerful male as opposed to what he perceives as Lee's total failure.
He can barely look at Lee. He treats the problems Lee is having at work with contempt. He doesn't even want to hear about them, and in not hearing about Lee's situation at work, he doesn't understand it. He doesn't understand it because such a thing has never happened to him. And what is his solution to the Oz problem? Get his address and give him a good hiding.
Not that he doesn't deserve it, but this actually makes Mick as low as Oz - because Mick has actually committed an assault. A crime. As bad as the one Lee committed. All of this was in the name of protecting his family, and at the same time, shaming his son, making his son feel even "less of a man," undeserving of the wife Lee has - when in actuality, Mick knows very little about Whitney at all.
One wonders if Mick and Linda know her sexual history - the sexual abuse is one thing and deserving of compassion, but the casual way she discarded boys whom she'd lead on for one reason, for a bad boy on a whim, her history of being a prostitute, all of this wouldn't sit easy with the Carters. Yet, to Mick, she's a gem, and he goes out of his way to tell Lee that whilst he'll bail Lee out of his immense debt, he'll do it only for Whitney, who doesn't deserve Lee. (One feels that, with Linda away, Mick might feel that he, himself, deserves the fragrant Whitney, who really isn't so fragrant at all, but a cheap tarted-up version of someone aspiring to respectability, but ultimately coming across as a scrubbed-up chav).
And as much as Lee is being bullied at work, Mick is bullying him in a different way at home, forcing him to put in an appearance at work, and forcing him to reveal the bits of his sordid story to Whitney that she didn't know already. Funny thing, that Mick isn't so bothered that Whitney knew about Lee's part in the raid. He foresaw the fact that she'd gaze up at him lovingly, with her moonful eyes and whine ...
I hated lying to you, Mick. (Flutter, flutter)
Eventually, Mick throttles Oz, and you wonder that Oz might not go to the police, himself, because surely he'll know who his assailant was, and Mick bears the marks of his assault. He made sure that Babe knew all about his woes - in fact, Mick presented a litany of supposed wrongs levelled against him - Linda is gone for the foreseeable future, leaving him alone to fend for himself whilst she worries over her stricken mother, and then having to deal with what he calls his "poor excuse of a son."
Who refers to their child in such terms? Really.
As for Whitney, I nearly fell off my chair at her reaction to Lee's confession. Seriously, she professed to never having been materialistic in any way. She swore that she never wanted a big wedding - when all the time we saw her creating situations wherein the wedding became bigger and bigger. She never wanted a flat, when all we heard, when she wasn't whining about living with Linda, was bagging a flat in trendy Stratford and moving to the 'burbs within a couple of years. It was Whitney who became pregnant, deliberately, without planning the event with Lee, and even more recently, she announced to Lee that they should try for a child again, not discussing this with him but announcing her decision. And why did Lee have to pay for her wedding, anyway? Bianca is her de facto mother, and she has a living brother. That was their responsibility.
When Lee sought to explain his actions being, in part, to please her, Whitney assumed the moral high ground and swore blindly that she never wanted the wedding, the flat or anything - just Lee, and that she was happiest when they had nothing. That was never true, because since her miscarriage, she sought to create the tension around which Lee had to perform, which, coupled with his growing poor self-esteem, resulted in this dire situation.
Even her self-righteous remark to Mick that she had to forgive Lee, because she loved him, had the self-appointed air or a martyr.
And so the decomposition of Lee's character and his very existence, continues, enabled by Mick.
When the Guest Begins to Smell. Millennial Michelle doesn't impress me in the least. I get that TPTB want to emphasize the similarities between her and her mother, but believe me, Michelle was never going to be Pauline Fowler. That was one of the reasons she sought higher education and, ultimately, to remove herself as far away from Pauline's sphere of influence as possible.
Michelle, as was, would no more evolve into her mother than a Dutchman would. I'm nothing like my mother either with my kids or with anyone else. There are some ways, mannerisms and ideas of hers that I've kept and propagated, but equally, there are others I've abjured, and I think Michelle would have done pretty much the same.
The worst part of this segment was the obvious rudeness. No matter if the person you visit is a close relative, you don't do something as arrogant and as entitled as run up someone else's utility bill - you don't monopolise the telephone, you don't take over the television and keep its audio level full blast when you know that there's an infant in the house, and you don't keep the heating turned up higher than your host has it, not without his permission.
Nice continuity that the show revealed that, after twenty years in Florida, Michelle was finding the dampness of a British winter something alien altogether, and that Martin's house was too cold for her liking. (I can identify with that. After over 30 years here, it's a constant battle between my husband and me about what constitutes a warm house and what does not). But the difference with that is that I live in my house, and I contribute to paying the bills.
She knows Martin and Stacey struggle, yet she deliberately undermined Stacey when she turned the thermostat down. Martin thinks this visit is temporary, but even a couple of weeks of upping the thermostat will make a helluva difference in their gas bill. He's too snowed by her making tea just the way he likes it. She's just rude.
This is not Michelle. Did she behave like that when Pauline was alive, Pauline would have smacked her arse six ways until Sunday.
The Deaths in a Family. Once again, paired with Jake Wood, Scott Maslen rose to the occasion. Two days into grieving Ronnie (and Roxy), he has to face telling his children (and Ronnie's) about their deaths. The show did the mundanity of life proud, showing Max dealing with Jack, taking charge, clearing their hotel rooms and taking it upon himself to move into Jack's house to deal with Jack's grief, fixing breakfast for the kids and accompanying him to identify Ronnie's body.
It's clear now where Jack is going with his grief. He's found out from his FLO that Ronnie apparently dove into the pool in order to save Roxy from drowning. The irony is that Jack sees this as an analogy of Ronnie's life - always being pulled down by Roxy, whereas I see it more tragically - Roxy's dive into the pool and her subsequent death, was an attempt at freedom from Ronnie. She knew the move to Ongar would never suit her, and would sabotage Ronnie's relationship with her family, so - somehow - she contrived to drown herself, and seeing that Roxy had somehow, tragically, fucked up, Ronnie did what Ronnie always did - rescued Roxy from a supposed mess - or try to. And she died. And Roxy died.
But Jack sees this as Roxy "dragging Ronnie down" literally.
All of this played out against Billy and Honey's cack-handed visit of sympathy, awkward and unnecessary. Sometimes, a show of solidarity in times of grief isn't necessarily welcomed. Billy, being in the death trade, sorta kinda realised this, but I think Honey, and Emma Barton's stiff, affectations of genuine grief, pushed the ticket - remarking, in front of Jack how happy Ronnie was - in fact, the entire mess of making Ronnie some sort of redeemable saint who deserved happiness was, in and of itself, a complete and insulting joke. This woman was a murderer, and children or not, she deserved her fate. Besides, what's going to become of Matthew, tucked comfortingly in the crook of Jack's arm in this episode? Matthew is not Jack's child, and he has no rights to him, whatsoever. Matthew has a living father, and Dot should be in touch with Charlie, immediately.
As well, it played out against life going on in the Square, and the efforts the Mitchells made of trying to keep the Blisters' death a secret. Why? Because Jack was remiss about telling the kids? Watching Donna traipse about the Square, making remarks about the happy couple and Roxy screwing up, without knowing the circumstances - from the urbane normality of Ian and Steven sniping naturally at each other about disposing of a Christmas tree to Harry Reid awkwardly enacting a grief-stricken Ben, sitting with Billy in the pub and attempting to warn Donna off to Kathy exchanging smiling insults with Babe over the Vic's breakfast buffet, it was meant as a stark contrast, and it worked.
Kind of.
All of this was leading up to Jack ultimately telling Amy and Richard about Ronnie's and Roxy's death. Matthew's lost a mother, but he has a father somewhere. Amy's lost her mother and her aunt, so her loss is probably the greatest; but Ricky has lost no one. His mother is alive and kicking somewhere, and he still has his father.
As morbid as it was, the identification scene, including Glenda and Danny, was necessary. Too often, the show forgets absent and occasional parents in the events of death, or a far-flung sibling, like Carol, who phoned tonight from far away. Glenda's grief was raw, and it was Jack, rather than her son, who offered her strength.
However, they did tend to overplay the maudlin aspect of the situation, especially with Jack's finding of a stray earring ...
She was looking for that.
... before collapsing in paroxyms of grief. This is too stock a scene for any tale of grief and woe, as well as the duff-duff, announcing Jack's impending effort to reveal to Amy that her mother and her aunt were dead.
I don't wish to sound harsh, but Amy is 8 years old. Why does she talk like she's four? Maybe it was because when she was four on the show, she was a silent elf, saying nothing. She's seen her rabbit die from ingesting cocaine in her mother's flat. Jack needs to dispense with this "Mummy and Auntie Ronnie have gone away and aren't coming back" malarkey.
Her mother is dead. End of.
Good episode.
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