How not to gain new and returning viewers:- After an exceptional week of episodes, just get Katie Douglas to write two of the episodes in a three-episode week. If last night's episode was bad, this one was worse. It was a big, hunk of steaming shit which accomplished nothing, and the worrying thing is that, Max apart, the storylines we appear to be being offered are circular and offensive (Denise, Kim), boring and uninteresting and fronted by unlikable characters (Rebecca, Louise, Shakil), uninspiring and stereotypical (the Carters) or simply repetitive and insulting (Phil and Sharon).
The only thing keeping me going with this shower is wanting to know what Max's game is and who his benefactor is. But they appear to have dropped that storyline like a hot potato, and by the time it's resumed, half the viewers will have forgotten about it, and the other half simply won't care.
But, hey ... as long as we have Bad-Dialogue Katie on the payroll, we're all right.
Phil Is a Cock, and Sharon Should Smack the Shit Out of Him. There, I said it. He's a selfish, self-centred cock who doesn't give a damn about Sharon. Think about this: Eric treated Peggy like a piece of shit. He drank, he cheated on her and he beat her repeatedly. Yet it was Peggy who suffered from Stockholm Syndrome, and who ended up preaching the Mantra of Mitchell until her dying day.
Sharon's destined for the same thing. Phil thinks nothing of her. He spends a night canoodling with her - at Michelle's suggestion (and, face it, he shouldn't need a suggestion off the back of a woman whom he hates to be kind and attentive to his wife). Phil is a classic coward. He's the Alpha Male who really isn't an Alpha Male. In fact, he's a chicken hawk, a mummy's boy who doesn't know what to do without his mother around to poke and prod him here and there. He's petulant and petty, reminding me of the ultimate ManBaby in the most powerful position in the world, attended by his craven acolytes, Farage and Piers Morgan.
When Phil was ill and being carted off to the operating room, when it was thought he might not even survive the operation, the last thing he called as he was being wheeled from the room was to tell Sharon how much he loved her. All it took was his release from hospital to forget all of that and start treating Sharon, at best, like the fixtures and fittings, at worst like a bastard at a family reunion.
Nothing's changed with Phil. The moment Sharon walks out of the room, he's on the phone, and you know that dippy Black Widow Antoinette, doing a bad impersonation of a cross between 'Allo Allo's Yvette and Fawlty Towers' Mrs Peignoir, was on the other end of the line.
Phil's now suffering from Survivor's Guilt; he's also suffering from Interminable Cock Syndrome and Headuparseitis, laced with a strong dose of stupidity. He thinks that a luxury manicure on top of a night of middle-aged sex will rock Sharon's boat.
That's insulting to Sharon.
The saddest thing about this situation is watching Sharon literally beg for Phil's acceptance, love and approbation, to worry at the thought of his slightest absence meaning that he's gone off her or that he doesn't love her. Maybe, deep down, she knows that he doesn't; and I have to say that I think the catalyst for this recognition on Phil's part was him learning of the existence of Denise's baby.
Until Sharon told him, I think Phil was genuinely satisfied with Sharon and looking forward to adopting Dennis. However, since that incident, we haven't seen Phil interacting with Dennis at all - in fact, we've not even seen Dennis. Instead, we've seen Phil be drawn by his guilt at surviving liver failure, into the fatherless, husbandless web of Antoinette and spoiled brat, Aaron.
Obviously, Antoinette has had a change of heart, considering the last time she showed herself around the Mitchells, shouting the odds, and quite rightly, about Phil giving her son a wad of money to buy the trainers he whined about (along with the games console and the trip to Orlando). My guess is that there was something in the message Phil either left on her phone or around her house - apparently, he's determined to look after her and Tony's son. This is Tony, a man Phil only knew for a matter of months.
To his credit, at least he was honest with Sharon about where he went when he disappeared, and she wasn't happy about that; but within minutes, the fragrant Antoinette is rocking up on the Mitchell doorstep, whining about Tony being dead, and ho she now had to be mother and father to Aaron (nudge, nudge, wink, wink).
I don't blame Sharon for being annoyed and telling that white lie about Jack coming over, reminding Phil that Jack is family and needs their emotional support more than this grifting stranger and her whining, snotty little kid. And Sharon is right - their situation is not Phil's responsibility. Had Phil died, I doubt Tony would be around the Mitchell household every day, drying Sharon't tears and playing footie with Dennis. I'm glad she told him that she was glad Tony had died, because if he hadn't, then it would have been Phil who died.
I don't think Phil even appreciated that. After his little bonding session with Ben and Jay, he gave his blessing to Ben leaving home and moving in with Jay, Phil returns home and makes some cryptic remark to Sharon about things changing around the Mitchell household.
I totally understand where Sharon's coming from. First, she witnessed Phil pointedly cutting her and Dennis out of his will, implying that Sharon and Dennis mattered not at all because they weren't blood Mitchells, ne'mind the fact that his death would leave them with nothing. Then she found out about Denise's child, and that's what's really worrying her. She remembers all too well how Wicksy abandoned her to be with Cindy and their son, but Sharon's middle-aged, with a young child, herself, and she's actually sacrificed her integrity to stay with Phil, even granting a deathbed promise to Peggy.
She's worried now that Phil's dwelling on the "lost Mitchell" and worried that the child will materialise again and that he'd go off with Denise and worried that he blames her. Once he's contained her fears on that account, now he proposes to play Daddy and Provider to two veritable strangers over the loss of a man who, had he not been ill, he'd never have known. Last night, Phil was pledging himself to Sharon and Dennis and tonight he's saying he owes something to the widow and son of a man no one knows from Adam.
I can understand Sharon craving Ben's presence around the house. He's her tool for insuring Phil remains on side. She really needs to rise up from this situation, kick his fat arse into touch and leave him. And although Michelle means well, she has her own problems, and it won't be long before her constant nagging at Phil to buck up will rub him the wrong way too.
Too Many Cooks Spoiling the Broth. It's a big mistake for Stacey to let Carmel have access to Arthur. Kush had stepped back, willingly, and until this time, he'd forbidden Carmel to do so. But now she's buying present after present for him. Martin is raising him. For all intents and purposes, Martin is his father. The child has Martin's surname.
Give Carmel and inch, and she naturally thinks she's entitled to a mile. (By the way, did anyone clock how appallingly awful her first lines of dialogue were? I mean who talks that way to workmen?) Her entitlement was evident the way she barged her way into the Beales and invited herself to have lunch with Jane and Stacey, just so she could offer commentary about the way Stacey was bringing up Arthur.
I think Martin feels insecure enough with Max hanging about - and where the hell is Max? By the time the re-introduce him, half the audience will have forgotten what's happened and the other half won't care. Martin is insecure enough about Max, just think how he'll react with Carmel hanging about like a bad smell; and if this is a storyline leading into male infertility, that will drive down Martin's self-esteem altogether.
Round and Round the Garden with Denise. Again. I am sorry, but I still maintain that Denise is irrelevant. The previous producer couldn't even finish a storyline he started with her; now this producer sends her spinning in circles, round and round, the same scene being replayed in a different setting each day. They should put her and Kim on a loop, and save the BBC some money.
Once again, we have Kim pouting about Denise's baby "being raised by strangers." Once again, we have Denise looking guilty, insecure and fragile, and everyone around her treating her as if she were some sort of delicate flower who must be nursed and nourished. I thought it hilarious that she went into work, expecting to "get her head down" and do some reading - meaning that she'd slope behing the counter with her head in a book whilst Honey did all the legwork. I thought it rich that Honey was rewarded with the classic Denise sneer when she informed Denise that she had to go out that morning for a meeting with Janet's teacher.
The story of the rats and the pile-up of rubbish bags on the Square is something else that's getting old too. Where I live, we have fortnightly rubbish collections. We also live near a canal - a natural breeding spot for rodents, and we have no rats. In case the residents of Walford haven't cottoned onto something, here's a hint: There's such a thing as an amenity tip. A dump. It's quite simple to use. You simply load the rubbish in a black bin bag, put it in the boot of your car and off you go to the dump.
But nooooooo ... Sean O'Connor has to use this as some sort of contrivance catalyst for the rest of the storylines. The day of the crash, Honey was seen chasing a rat out of the Minute Mart. Well, that does give the stereotypically brash, young area manager the speculation that if they have rats coming into the story - and not the human variety - it does say something for the overall hygiene. And so we have the story of noble, put-upon Denise, slaving away in the store and eventually dressing down her superior for his lack of manners. (Pot, meet kettle).
But generally, all this storyline has devolved into is fifty different ways we can watch Kim snub Denise, fifty different ways we can see Denise lift her head and say she's a better person than Denise and fifty different ways Grandma Medusa can tell Denise that Kim will "come around," because, after all, Denise almost died.
Change the record. At least, po-faced Libby returned to Oxford. Hooray!
I'm tired of the same old same old in this instance, I'm tired of the subject of this adoption, I'm tired of the egregious theme EastEnders promotes of adoption being a bad, bad thing. That's irresponsible and untrue. But then this storyline is typical of all of Denise's storylines - they either fall at the first hurdle and aren't continued; or they go around and around and around doing the same old same old until they're dropped suddenly. This storyline, in particular, hasn't done a tired character any favours at all; in fact, it's only served to emphasise Denise's worst character points.
It Was the Best of Times, Now It's the Worst of Times. Wow, the Carters go from hero to zero with Sean O'Connor. Somebody doesn't like them. Since O'Connor took over, they haven't had too great a time. Like Denise, they seem to be stuck in a rut with this storyline of Lee's depression and Mick's inappropriate attachment to Whitney.
Add money problems to the mix, hence the various forays into theme nights at the pub or, as was in evidence on Tuesday, a quiz night. For all Mick's condemnation of Lee's debt, now he's up to his eyeballs as well, but his luck is on the downswing at the moment.
Johnny's uni mates and his lack of culinary skill ruined Italian night. Chinese night was a big success, thanks to Mick's Thai friend who specialised in Chinese cuisine as well as others. The inference when Panit first appeared - a Thai cooking a Chinese buffet - had veiled racial overtones at best (all Orientals looking alike, anyone?), but Tuesday's episode fell further down the slippery slope.
Why Tina pressed Mick about Sylvie doing some dance routine from her long-forgotten youth as some sort of Grade Z "exotic" dancer was beyond me. Who wants to see a little old lady in her late seventies, suffering from dementia, doing a specialty routine. As things turned out, she started off singing a song which may have been au fait with the punters in the 1950s (ending the routine with the Goons' Ying Tang song, which had nothing to do with Chinese, but just enough to reinforce the stereotypical racism implied in the pidgin song pronunciation of Sylvie's performance), but it went down a bomb in the 21st Century.
People were offended enough to flee the pub in distaste.
But that wasn't the last of Mick's problems. Sitting in the kitchen, he notices that the roof of the Vic has a major leak and is dripping a big pool onto the kitchen floor. Rather than take a call from Linda, however, Mick elects to take it on the chin, even using the insipid phrase to Babe about promising Linda he'd "keep the home fires burning." FFS, this is a leak in the roof, not the Blitz.
Look, it's on the cards that the Carters are going to lose the Vic. Rather than Max and the Mystery Man taking this over and doing whatever it is they'll have to do, I'm hoping Sharon takes over the licence and the Carters remain to manage if for her. Danny Dyer's only recently signed an extended contract, and like Shane Richie, I can't see him functioning or staying outside of running the pub.
The Return of the (Drunken) Native. A significant amount of Lauren's dialogue - in fact, almost all of it, in this episode centred around reminiscences of Tanya. I found it telling that one of Lauren's lasting memories of Tanya was her getting drunk and getting thrown out of a pub quiz with Max for shouting out the answers.
Tanya is one of a legion of characters in the Square who have serious drink problems. In fact, after Shirley, I'd say she was the closest thing to a female alcoholic on the Square, except Tanya, like her mother, is a functioning alcoholic, and like Cora, she always had a drink in her hand to add to the buzz throughout the day. Remember her amazingly over-large wine glass?
There were Tanya reminiscences, Lauren remarking that it had been a long time since she'd seen Tanya, in fact - has Tanya ever seen her grandson? And of course, now Max is back in the area, what could be more original than re-uniting EastEnders' ultimate dysfunctional co-dependent couple? Because the only thing anyone could think of doing with Max is getting him back together with Tanya. I thought he'd turned her pathetic little attempt at a reconciliation down a couple years ago. I don't miss her and her bitchy, little material girl ways; but I guess the work's winding down for Jo Joyner, and the school fees must be kicking in.
Rather than bring back old characters, especially the show's signature yo-yo couple, I want to see O'Connor introduce new characters. With Babe going, could Panit be the new cook at the Vic, because that's the last thing Ian Beale would want to see in Walford - genuine competition?
Woeful episode.
The only thing keeping me going with this shower is wanting to know what Max's game is and who his benefactor is. But they appear to have dropped that storyline like a hot potato, and by the time it's resumed, half the viewers will have forgotten about it, and the other half simply won't care.
But, hey ... as long as we have Bad-Dialogue Katie on the payroll, we're all right.
Phil Is a Cock, and Sharon Should Smack the Shit Out of Him. There, I said it. He's a selfish, self-centred cock who doesn't give a damn about Sharon. Think about this: Eric treated Peggy like a piece of shit. He drank, he cheated on her and he beat her repeatedly. Yet it was Peggy who suffered from Stockholm Syndrome, and who ended up preaching the Mantra of Mitchell until her dying day.
Sharon's destined for the same thing. Phil thinks nothing of her. He spends a night canoodling with her - at Michelle's suggestion (and, face it, he shouldn't need a suggestion off the back of a woman whom he hates to be kind and attentive to his wife). Phil is a classic coward. He's the Alpha Male who really isn't an Alpha Male. In fact, he's a chicken hawk, a mummy's boy who doesn't know what to do without his mother around to poke and prod him here and there. He's petulant and petty, reminding me of the ultimate ManBaby in the most powerful position in the world, attended by his craven acolytes, Farage and Piers Morgan.
When Phil was ill and being carted off to the operating room, when it was thought he might not even survive the operation, the last thing he called as he was being wheeled from the room was to tell Sharon how much he loved her. All it took was his release from hospital to forget all of that and start treating Sharon, at best, like the fixtures and fittings, at worst like a bastard at a family reunion.
Nothing's changed with Phil. The moment Sharon walks out of the room, he's on the phone, and you know that dippy Black Widow Antoinette, doing a bad impersonation of a cross between 'Allo Allo's Yvette and Fawlty Towers' Mrs Peignoir, was on the other end of the line.
Phil's now suffering from Survivor's Guilt; he's also suffering from Interminable Cock Syndrome and Headuparseitis, laced with a strong dose of stupidity. He thinks that a luxury manicure on top of a night of middle-aged sex will rock Sharon's boat.
That's insulting to Sharon.
The saddest thing about this situation is watching Sharon literally beg for Phil's acceptance, love and approbation, to worry at the thought of his slightest absence meaning that he's gone off her or that he doesn't love her. Maybe, deep down, she knows that he doesn't; and I have to say that I think the catalyst for this recognition on Phil's part was him learning of the existence of Denise's baby.
Until Sharon told him, I think Phil was genuinely satisfied with Sharon and looking forward to adopting Dennis. However, since that incident, we haven't seen Phil interacting with Dennis at all - in fact, we've not even seen Dennis. Instead, we've seen Phil be drawn by his guilt at surviving liver failure, into the fatherless, husbandless web of Antoinette and spoiled brat, Aaron.
Obviously, Antoinette has had a change of heart, considering the last time she showed herself around the Mitchells, shouting the odds, and quite rightly, about Phil giving her son a wad of money to buy the trainers he whined about (along with the games console and the trip to Orlando). My guess is that there was something in the message Phil either left on her phone or around her house - apparently, he's determined to look after her and Tony's son. This is Tony, a man Phil only knew for a matter of months.
To his credit, at least he was honest with Sharon about where he went when he disappeared, and she wasn't happy about that; but within minutes, the fragrant Antoinette is rocking up on the Mitchell doorstep, whining about Tony being dead, and ho she now had to be mother and father to Aaron (nudge, nudge, wink, wink).
I don't blame Sharon for being annoyed and telling that white lie about Jack coming over, reminding Phil that Jack is family and needs their emotional support more than this grifting stranger and her whining, snotty little kid. And Sharon is right - their situation is not Phil's responsibility. Had Phil died, I doubt Tony would be around the Mitchell household every day, drying Sharon't tears and playing footie with Dennis. I'm glad she told him that she was glad Tony had died, because if he hadn't, then it would have been Phil who died.
I don't think Phil even appreciated that. After his little bonding session with Ben and Jay, he gave his blessing to Ben leaving home and moving in with Jay, Phil returns home and makes some cryptic remark to Sharon about things changing around the Mitchell household.
I totally understand where Sharon's coming from. First, she witnessed Phil pointedly cutting her and Dennis out of his will, implying that Sharon and Dennis mattered not at all because they weren't blood Mitchells, ne'mind the fact that his death would leave them with nothing. Then she found out about Denise's child, and that's what's really worrying her. She remembers all too well how Wicksy abandoned her to be with Cindy and their son, but Sharon's middle-aged, with a young child, herself, and she's actually sacrificed her integrity to stay with Phil, even granting a deathbed promise to Peggy.
She's worried now that Phil's dwelling on the "lost Mitchell" and worried that the child will materialise again and that he'd go off with Denise and worried that he blames her. Once he's contained her fears on that account, now he proposes to play Daddy and Provider to two veritable strangers over the loss of a man who, had he not been ill, he'd never have known. Last night, Phil was pledging himself to Sharon and Dennis and tonight he's saying he owes something to the widow and son of a man no one knows from Adam.
I can understand Sharon craving Ben's presence around the house. He's her tool for insuring Phil remains on side. She really needs to rise up from this situation, kick his fat arse into touch and leave him. And although Michelle means well, she has her own problems, and it won't be long before her constant nagging at Phil to buck up will rub him the wrong way too.
Too Many Cooks Spoiling the Broth. It's a big mistake for Stacey to let Carmel have access to Arthur. Kush had stepped back, willingly, and until this time, he'd forbidden Carmel to do so. But now she's buying present after present for him. Martin is raising him. For all intents and purposes, Martin is his father. The child has Martin's surname.
Give Carmel and inch, and she naturally thinks she's entitled to a mile. (By the way, did anyone clock how appallingly awful her first lines of dialogue were? I mean who talks that way to workmen?) Her entitlement was evident the way she barged her way into the Beales and invited herself to have lunch with Jane and Stacey, just so she could offer commentary about the way Stacey was bringing up Arthur.
I think Martin feels insecure enough with Max hanging about - and where the hell is Max? By the time the re-introduce him, half the audience will have forgotten what's happened and the other half won't care. Martin is insecure enough about Max, just think how he'll react with Carmel hanging about like a bad smell; and if this is a storyline leading into male infertility, that will drive down Martin's self-esteem altogether.
Round and Round the Garden with Denise. Again. I am sorry, but I still maintain that Denise is irrelevant. The previous producer couldn't even finish a storyline he started with her; now this producer sends her spinning in circles, round and round, the same scene being replayed in a different setting each day. They should put her and Kim on a loop, and save the BBC some money.
Once again, we have Kim pouting about Denise's baby "being raised by strangers." Once again, we have Denise looking guilty, insecure and fragile, and everyone around her treating her as if she were some sort of delicate flower who must be nursed and nourished. I thought it hilarious that she went into work, expecting to "get her head down" and do some reading - meaning that she'd slope behing the counter with her head in a book whilst Honey did all the legwork. I thought it rich that Honey was rewarded with the classic Denise sneer when she informed Denise that she had to go out that morning for a meeting with Janet's teacher.
The story of the rats and the pile-up of rubbish bags on the Square is something else that's getting old too. Where I live, we have fortnightly rubbish collections. We also live near a canal - a natural breeding spot for rodents, and we have no rats. In case the residents of Walford haven't cottoned onto something, here's a hint: There's such a thing as an amenity tip. A dump. It's quite simple to use. You simply load the rubbish in a black bin bag, put it in the boot of your car and off you go to the dump.
But nooooooo ... Sean O'Connor has to use this as some sort of contrivance catalyst for the rest of the storylines. The day of the crash, Honey was seen chasing a rat out of the Minute Mart. Well, that does give the stereotypically brash, young area manager the speculation that if they have rats coming into the story - and not the human variety - it does say something for the overall hygiene. And so we have the story of noble, put-upon Denise, slaving away in the store and eventually dressing down her superior for his lack of manners. (Pot, meet kettle).
But generally, all this storyline has devolved into is fifty different ways we can watch Kim snub Denise, fifty different ways we can see Denise lift her head and say she's a better person than Denise and fifty different ways Grandma Medusa can tell Denise that Kim will "come around," because, after all, Denise almost died.
Change the record. At least, po-faced Libby returned to Oxford. Hooray!
I'm tired of the same old same old in this instance, I'm tired of the subject of this adoption, I'm tired of the egregious theme EastEnders promotes of adoption being a bad, bad thing. That's irresponsible and untrue. But then this storyline is typical of all of Denise's storylines - they either fall at the first hurdle and aren't continued; or they go around and around and around doing the same old same old until they're dropped suddenly. This storyline, in particular, hasn't done a tired character any favours at all; in fact, it's only served to emphasise Denise's worst character points.
It Was the Best of Times, Now It's the Worst of Times. Wow, the Carters go from hero to zero with Sean O'Connor. Somebody doesn't like them. Since O'Connor took over, they haven't had too great a time. Like Denise, they seem to be stuck in a rut with this storyline of Lee's depression and Mick's inappropriate attachment to Whitney.
Add money problems to the mix, hence the various forays into theme nights at the pub or, as was in evidence on Tuesday, a quiz night. For all Mick's condemnation of Lee's debt, now he's up to his eyeballs as well, but his luck is on the downswing at the moment.
Johnny's uni mates and his lack of culinary skill ruined Italian night. Chinese night was a big success, thanks to Mick's Thai friend who specialised in Chinese cuisine as well as others. The inference when Panit first appeared - a Thai cooking a Chinese buffet - had veiled racial overtones at best (all Orientals looking alike, anyone?), but Tuesday's episode fell further down the slippery slope.
Why Tina pressed Mick about Sylvie doing some dance routine from her long-forgotten youth as some sort of Grade Z "exotic" dancer was beyond me. Who wants to see a little old lady in her late seventies, suffering from dementia, doing a specialty routine. As things turned out, she started off singing a song which may have been au fait with the punters in the 1950s (ending the routine with the Goons' Ying Tang song, which had nothing to do with Chinese, but just enough to reinforce the stereotypical racism implied in the pidgin song pronunciation of Sylvie's performance), but it went down a bomb in the 21st Century.
People were offended enough to flee the pub in distaste.
But that wasn't the last of Mick's problems. Sitting in the kitchen, he notices that the roof of the Vic has a major leak and is dripping a big pool onto the kitchen floor. Rather than take a call from Linda, however, Mick elects to take it on the chin, even using the insipid phrase to Babe about promising Linda he'd "keep the home fires burning." FFS, this is a leak in the roof, not the Blitz.
Look, it's on the cards that the Carters are going to lose the Vic. Rather than Max and the Mystery Man taking this over and doing whatever it is they'll have to do, I'm hoping Sharon takes over the licence and the Carters remain to manage if for her. Danny Dyer's only recently signed an extended contract, and like Shane Richie, I can't see him functioning or staying outside of running the pub.
The Return of the (Drunken) Native. A significant amount of Lauren's dialogue - in fact, almost all of it, in this episode centred around reminiscences of Tanya. I found it telling that one of Lauren's lasting memories of Tanya was her getting drunk and getting thrown out of a pub quiz with Max for shouting out the answers.
Tanya is one of a legion of characters in the Square who have serious drink problems. In fact, after Shirley, I'd say she was the closest thing to a female alcoholic on the Square, except Tanya, like her mother, is a functioning alcoholic, and like Cora, she always had a drink in her hand to add to the buzz throughout the day. Remember her amazingly over-large wine glass?
There were Tanya reminiscences, Lauren remarking that it had been a long time since she'd seen Tanya, in fact - has Tanya ever seen her grandson? And of course, now Max is back in the area, what could be more original than re-uniting EastEnders' ultimate dysfunctional co-dependent couple? Because the only thing anyone could think of doing with Max is getting him back together with Tanya. I thought he'd turned her pathetic little attempt at a reconciliation down a couple years ago. I don't miss her and her bitchy, little material girl ways; but I guess the work's winding down for Jo Joyner, and the school fees must be kicking in.
Rather than bring back old characters, especially the show's signature yo-yo couple, I want to see O'Connor introduce new characters. With Babe going, could Panit be the new cook at the Vic, because that's the last thing Ian Beale would want to see in Walford - genuine competition?
Woeful episode.
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