Monday, April 3, 2017

Mommy Men, Pathetic Women and Tina - Review:- Monday 03.04.2017

On a scale of 1 to 10, I gave that episode a resounding 3! Simply because of the skewed message this show is sending out about adults, middle-aged adults, engaging in sexual affairs with adolescents.

I know people will go on and on about how what happened between Michelle and Preston was totally legal in this country - it actually would have entailed her still losing her job, because she would have been guilty of gross professional misconduct; but the affair didn't initiate in Britain, it initiated in the United States, specifically Florida, where the age of consent is 18. 

Take a look at this link. Do you want to know something ironic? If they had kept Michelle living in Alabama (that's the blue area right above the green of the Florida panhandle where she was living at the time she slept with 16 year-old Prestonovich), they wouldn't have made such a pig's ear of this storyline. Why? Because in Alabama, the legal age of consent is ... SIXTEEN. 

What happened between Michelle and Preston was against the law, a crime. Here, it became a smutty little bunk-up, which turned into a revolting game, where both Preston and Michelle weren't above using Michelle's niece as part of their little bait-and-switch sexual foray, where Michelle wasn't above trying to manipulate, psychologically, the son of her best friend to the point that she reacted to his juvenile attempts to blackmail her like the frightened-face chicken protagonist in Chicken Run, and ended up assaulting him, his fifteen year-old sister and lying, lying, lying about everything. 

And why aren't the police questioning her? Surely the hospital would have taken blood tests which would have shown that she'd been drinking and taking barbiturates. That's criminal damage she did to Ian's business, besides taking Sharon's car without anyone's consent.

But the two most putrid parts of this sordid tale emerged, first, with the wimpiest of Sharons, cowering hesitantly by Michelle's bedside, in full apologetic mode. Never mind that Michelle hit Sharon's son. Sharon cut her birth father dead for disciplining a disobedient Dennis with a smack. She's fully understanding of the reason Michelle smacked Dennis; indeed, her attitude implies tacit approval. If that's the case, Sharon is as rancid as Michelle.

Yes, Dennis aptly perceived her moral weakness and used it to try it on with juvenile attempts at blackmail, but the reason Michelle smacked him was totally because he uttered a puerile, albeit exaggerated, version of a particularly bitter home truth.

He called her a paedophole, which wasn't exactly true, but he understood enough of that term to realise that she was, or had been, a person in a position of truxt, authority and respect, the adult in the room, and someone who was legally considered to be a child approached her seeking sexual favours and she returned the favour in kind. Dennis, at ten - Dennis, grandson of Den and Gavin, son of Dennis Rickman - knew that Michelle's behaviour with Preston was morally and ethically wrong; and when he called her out about it, she struck him.

Does Sharon accept everything Michelle does, blithely? It seems that Michelle could do the worst kind of sin, and Sharon would defend her.

Sometimes she can be her own worst enemy. So said Sharon to the grammatically-deficient Chinese nurse (You done good) tonight, and this has always been true of Michelle; but Michelle needed no one to fight her battles for her, and although she inevitably made her bed hard, she rose to the challenge of lying in it.

Not this pathetic woman, consumed with self-pity and longing for her lover who, in his own country, was still considered legally a child. To hear Sharon cravenly apologising for having sent Preston packing with the ubiquitous flea in his ear by telling him that he meant nothing to Michelle, whining about how she was doing her best for Michelle, and then piteously promising to return the next day, to take Michelle "home", turned my stomach.

Does she think that Dennis and Louise would countenance Michelle's presence in that house? She's assaulted both of them. If Sharon doesn't care about her son and what Michelle did to him, then Phil will surely care about his daughter. Michelle was worried about Ian's chippy and Phil's car, both of which Sharon dismissed with a wave of her hand. Ian's uninsured, and Phil probably doesn't know about the car yet.

That was sickening enough, but the duff-duff turned my stomach even more, after Michelle tried phoning Preston only to find that he'd changed his mobile number immediately he returned to the States - or rather, Mommy and Daddy probably did that, because they probably pay for his phone contract. She reacted like a spoiled adolescent, banging the phone until she'd cracked its screen.

The real kick in the gut came when the Chinese nurse managed to mend the phone, along with a little hokey philosophy about "everything can be mended if you try" - implying totally that Michelle, as the broken person she's depicted as, will inevitably be mended - after Michelle's laughable confession that six months previous to this time, she was being considered to be head of her school's English Department (me and Ian ain't coming to your wedding, on account of Ian ain't well). That was bad enough. I can buy Panhandle Florida being sufficiently DeliveranceLand enough that they might consider anyone with a British accent to be the epitome of sophistication, culture and education, but I don't think Michelle had ever read a book in her life before she, somehow, got a place at the local polytechnic and studied some sort of airy-fairy sociology-based course, and she ends up teaching English literature, grammar and composition to a passel of swampbrats of which Prestonovich seemed to be the most civilised and spoiled?

The real clincher came at the end of the episode, when the Chinese nurse, again assumed the sickly sweet picture of Michelle gazing adoringly at Prestonovich on her phone was a picture of Michelle and her son, only to have Michelle correct her and tell her that he was her lover - and to gain the wide approbation of the nurse.

Way to go, EastEnders, condoning what is essentially statutory rape. It matters not that, because of the age of consent, it isn't considered thus in this country, the situation began in an area where such a relationship was illegal, and even had it occurred here, it would be condemned as ethically wrong. Imagine, if you will, that this wasn't Michelle, but Ian Beale, who'd had an affair with Louise Mitchell. I doubt he'd be lauded as having accomplished something spectacularly congratulatory. People were uncomfortable enough with Ian sleeping with Janine and with Max Branning sleeping with Lucy Beale, when both women were consenting adults, if only for the reason that Ian and Max, both, had known these women when they, themselves, were adults and the women in question were children.

This, juxtaposed, with yet another ret-conned rememberance by Martin of some trip he and Vicky took to the seaside with Michelle and Rachel Komiskey - something which never happened in a million years because when Rachel wasn't sleeping with Tricky Dicky, she was sleeping with Mark, and Michelle was a student at the polytechnic then and didn't have two pennies to rub together enough to book a caravan for a seaside stay - at least made Martin's revulsion totally understandable. Unlike the wishy-washy Sharon, Martin is disgusted at Michelle's treatment of his daughter. Michelle is his sister, and he can see how she mistreated his child, why can't Sharon? Bottom line: adults don't hit children.

So, way to go, EastEnders, I thought you'd hit the bottom with DTC making everyone morally reprehensible. DTC allowing a rapist to get away with his crime through lack of evidence was tragic for the victim (before the story became all about the victim's husband and his old ma), but this time, O'Connor makes excuses for a woman whoh has sex with an underaged boy, something by which she celebrates her strength and her feminism.

Well, I'm a feminist, and I know this: adults don't have sex with people who are under the legal age of consent, and teachers don't sleep with their students.

This show has lost it.

The Mommy Man. Sorry, but Denise and Kush are on a hiding to nothing. Both are moral cowards. Denise needed a lot of convincing even to help Kush on his stall. She used every excuse imaginable, but basically, the reason she didn't want to be out and about in his company was she didn't have the moral fibre to face Carmel.

Firstly, their relationship is based entirely on sex. That much is obvious. They have a vast age difference as well - not as vast as Michelle's and Preston's, but still Denise is technically old enough to be Kush's mother. Both of them are people who tend to rush headlong into a relationship, and Kush is someone who has always fucks first, asks questions later and inevitably runs. Denise's judgement in men is questionable, to say the least.

The real proof of their relationship will come when they get beyond the sex stage, when they really have to sit down and talk to one another. Because I don't think they have anything in common apart from a physical attraction, and that is transient, considering the sixteen years' difference in their ages.

It was kind of sleazy watching their reaction to the prospect of facing Carmel. Neither was comfortable with that, judging by the way they fussed, worried and looked over their shoulders for any impending sight of Carmel. The two "cougar" stories in this episode were both concerned, to a great degree, with perceived judgement. 

Michelle's great whine about Sharon ridding the place of Prestonovich, was to accuse Sharon of "judging" her, which was rich, considering Michelle's relationship with Sharon has existed mostly of her sitting in judgement about Sharon's relationships with various Mitchells. With Kush and Denise, they nearly piss themselves at the prospect of Carmel's disapproval. Kush anticipates professional reprisal from his mother; Denise is just thinking of being anyplace but where the wrath of Carmel might directly affect her.

If they are judged at all, it comes from the snide look of cynicism directed at Denise by Donna, who's pretty sharp in these situations, and from Shakil, who, surprisingly, came across as extremely sympathetic in tonight's episode. I felt sorry for him in the café, simply trying to pay for his breakfast, and Kathy being distracted several times to the point of forgetting he was even there - listening to Tina's woes, getting caught up in a pithy conversation with Derek, reprimanding Lauren's utter stupidity at uttering a tactless remark about cougars, all the while with Shakil waiting to pay his bill.

A significant moment and a change in direction of his character for me came when he stopped briefly outside the café to offer his sympathy to Tina on her mother's death.

It was a mixture of sad and pathetically comical to watch Denise's and Kush's apprehensions grow, with Kush transferring his concern about Carmel's approbation to his brother's apparent blanking of him by refusing to help on the stall because of his revision schedule.

The excuse for Carmel's non-appearance all day is that she's nursing a bad headache, which Kush and Carmel take to mean a massive sulk in disapproval of their relationship. Kush is used to being the centre of his mother's universe. A careful eye will notice the huge picture of him and Carmel, still centrepiece on the flat's fireplace mantel. The most Oedipal of men has to have a woman in his bed old enough to be his mother, yet the boy in him needs his ma as well - to the point that when Denise offers to go see Carmel, Kush is quick to volunteer to go, instead. Kush can freely use the "we" factor all he wants when it's just he and Denise about, but he's cognizant of the fact that Carmel is less than ready to acknowledge a relationship that has little hope of success, in Carmel's view.

However, when he arrives at Carmel's house, he finds only Shakil, studying. Carmel has gone to Essex to stay for a few days with a friend, and in the meantime, she hasn't uttered Kush's name for the entire weekend. This conflicts Kush, and this dichotomy will continue to plague him throughout his relationship with Denise.

How long will it be before they notice that they have nothing in common except sex? When the menopause and hot flashes begin with Denise? Or when her snide, arrogant, big mouth takes over?

The Real Star of the Show. Luisa Bradshaw-White continues to shine, front and centre. Watching her deal with the aftermath of Sylvie's death was immensely affecting - alone in her flat, going through Sylvie's clothing, much of which appeared to be carry-overs from the mod world of the 1960s, listening to 60s music and poignantly trying on items of Sylvie's clothing in an effort to bring her aura closer, in an effort to bring her mother to life one more time.

She tries to work and is unable to do so. She can't bring herself to enter the pub. The scene which began in the playground and ended at Coker and Sons when Billy tentatively approached her, suggesting that Tina begin to honour Sylvie by giving her the sort of good-bye she thought Sylvie would want to have - a subtle way of drumming up business.

Her grieving comes to a head when she attempts to retrieve the last thing closest to Sylvie at the moment of her death - the dress she'd bought for her at the charity shop, which was the last thing Sylve wore before she died.

Bradshaw-White captures the inward trajectory of deep, personal grief perfectly, and the scene where the direction is contrived to see life going on as normal, but not normal, through Tina's eyes is very effective.

This is the storyline which is catching and holding everyone's attention at the moment.

The Unfunny Beale Comedy Hour. An issue storyline about diabetes and obesity becomes yet another unfunny comedy routine, and yes, Ian Beale is now the official sad, fat clown.

The absurd muscle toning belt, which Ian thinks will allow him to snack and snack as before, his silly reaction to the effects of the belt and his sneak eating. Jane got the line of the night, as Ian wittered on about the cost of rebuilding the chippy, combined with the difficulty of dieting.

We've dealt with much worse, haven't we? And come through?

Yes, Jane, like covering up a murder, protecting a murderer and continuing to live in the house and sleep on the spot where the murder was committed.

It's all a gentle ha-ha-he-he in this Beale family sitcom, which started out as a health issue storyline and ended in a tale about an unfunny fat man.

Pretty awful episode.

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