I was distracted last night and chose not to watch the show. I was distracted by a real life soap opera, a fuckfest of obstruction of justice, espionage, an illegal President and his weak-chinned, baby-faced son-in-law, who's about to be exposed as a Class A traitor and who'll probably end up as some hairy convict's bitch in the showers on Ryker's Island.
So I didn't watch the show. The good thing is that it gives me the distance of a day's perspective to approach it from a fresh viewing angle. The bad thing is ... that I didn't miss watching the show at all; and once having done so, I am now fully admitting that I only watch this now, out of habit. It's taken on the pall of watching a train de-rail in slow motion. You watch in horrific fascination. You become a rubbernecker. I can't even admit out of hope anymore that I'm watching it, willing it, expecting it to get better.
Because within my heart of hearts, I know it won't.
It's preachy. It's proselytising. It's high-mindedly trying to teach moral rectitude with characters as instruments of instruction who come across as decidedly unlikable to the point of being boring.
I'm bored with being expected to sympathise with Denise, who orchestrated her own situation by means of arrogance, pride and sheer stupidity.
I'm bored with the Beale sitcom, which, again, has a moral to the tale.
I'm bored with Mick the pudgy Alpha male and with Whitney the dirty girl, who only admits responsability for her foibles as a means of getting sympathy, another stab at self-victimisation.
I'm bored with the best-laid plans of Max and men, which are supposedly so complex and complicated that they've filled Max with such pain in their execution that he's taken to self-harming.
I'm bored with the bullying, the teens, Sharon and Michelle; but most of all, I'm bored by the latest atempt to suck viewers into the vortex by teasing a super-big, never-before-tried super-plot encomapssing the enitre cast.
So I eventually watched the programme.
It was the best episode of the week, but that was entirely down to the return of the fabulous Ann Mitchell, who always gives the rest of the cast a Masterclass in understated acting. But other than that, it was still as rank.
Putting Denise at the Forefront of This Show Is Sucking the Lifeblood from It. I know that I'm bound to be shouted down by the various FoxBots who've cropped up recently to sing the praises of Saint Denise, but I'm sorry. She is killing the programme.
Frankly, I'm tired of producers coming in and elevating or introducing their personal favourites into the limelight in a move, which rarely helps the show in any way at all. Putting the Brannings front and centre and expanding them to the point that they dominated every aspect of the show was a huge mistake. The same thing happened with DTC's fascination with his own creation, the Carters.
It came as no surprise for O'Connor to tag Diane Parish his favourite actress in the show, and he's obliging his own favouritism; but it's not working at all.
Yes, the actress is good,but "classic"? That's a matter of opinion. Lindsey Coulson is someone who's properly a "classic" actress, yet the show struggled to find viable storylines for her, and after one or two defined and definite storylines, she mainly functioned as a supporting character - a major supporting character, but one all the same. Parish,like Coulson, works well in defined storylines - something with a beginning, a climax and an end- the domestic abuse storyline with Owen, Lucas the serial killer-husband.
In fact, she should have left the show at the end of that storyline because she largely lost her relevance after that. Successive producers struggled to find a niche for her - straight man to Zainab, straight man to Kim, storylines which began but didn't finish, linking her with an established Square family by one producer only to have that squelched by the one who followed.
Time and again, people have cried out for her to have more screen time. OK, but people cried out for the following:-
So I didn't watch the show. The good thing is that it gives me the distance of a day's perspective to approach it from a fresh viewing angle. The bad thing is ... that I didn't miss watching the show at all; and once having done so, I am now fully admitting that I only watch this now, out of habit. It's taken on the pall of watching a train de-rail in slow motion. You watch in horrific fascination. You become a rubbernecker. I can't even admit out of hope anymore that I'm watching it, willing it, expecting it to get better.
Because within my heart of hearts, I know it won't.
It's preachy. It's proselytising. It's high-mindedly trying to teach moral rectitude with characters as instruments of instruction who come across as decidedly unlikable to the point of being boring.
I'm bored with being expected to sympathise with Denise, who orchestrated her own situation by means of arrogance, pride and sheer stupidity.
I'm bored with the Beale sitcom, which, again, has a moral to the tale.
I'm bored with Mick the pudgy Alpha male and with Whitney the dirty girl, who only admits responsability for her foibles as a means of getting sympathy, another stab at self-victimisation.
I'm bored with the best-laid plans of Max and men, which are supposedly so complex and complicated that they've filled Max with such pain in their execution that he's taken to self-harming.
I'm bored with the bullying, the teens, Sharon and Michelle; but most of all, I'm bored by the latest atempt to suck viewers into the vortex by teasing a super-big, never-before-tried super-plot encomapssing the enitre cast.
So I eventually watched the programme.
It was the best episode of the week, but that was entirely down to the return of the fabulous Ann Mitchell, who always gives the rest of the cast a Masterclass in understated acting. But other than that, it was still as rank.
Putting Denise at the Forefront of This Show Is Sucking the Lifeblood from It. I know that I'm bound to be shouted down by the various FoxBots who've cropped up recently to sing the praises of Saint Denise, but I'm sorry. She is killing the programme.
Frankly, I'm tired of producers coming in and elevating or introducing their personal favourites into the limelight in a move, which rarely helps the show in any way at all. Putting the Brannings front and centre and expanding them to the point that they dominated every aspect of the show was a huge mistake. The same thing happened with DTC's fascination with his own creation, the Carters.
It came as no surprise for O'Connor to tag Diane Parish his favourite actress in the show, and he's obliging his own favouritism; but it's not working at all.
Yes, the actress is good,but "classic"? That's a matter of opinion. Lindsey Coulson is someone who's properly a "classic" actress, yet the show struggled to find viable storylines for her, and after one or two defined and definite storylines, she mainly functioned as a supporting character - a major supporting character, but one all the same. Parish,like Coulson, works well in defined storylines - something with a beginning, a climax and an end- the domestic abuse storyline with Owen, Lucas the serial killer-husband.
In fact, she should have left the show at the end of that storyline because she largely lost her relevance after that. Successive producers struggled to find a niche for her - straight man to Zainab, straight man to Kim, storylines which began but didn't finish, linking her with an established Square family by one producer only to have that squelched by the one who followed.
Time and again, people have cried out for her to have more screen time. OK, but people cried out for the following:-
- Phil and Shirley to get together as a couple
- The return of Kathy from the dead
- The introduction of Mark Wotsit, secret son of Grant
- The re-casting of Michelle Fowler
Tell me, how well did all of the above work out for you? Now that Denise is dominating the scene, with a record number of storylines, culminating in this one, which is an abject and total insult to the genuine poor and suffering in May's Britain, we're asked to sympathise with someone who's patently the most arrogant, rude and ungrateful character on the show because she put herself in a spot of bother she's singularly too stupid to admit is her making and now is too proud to ask for help?
The absolute highlight of this episode was the return of Cora, who genuinely tried to help Denise, even if that did resort to telling her a few necessary home truths. Cora had been in a far worse way than Denise.Cora was actually homeless, dropped from a great height by the self-obsessed Carters, and literally abandoned by Tanya. She lived rough, and drank rough. When Cora initially tried to help her, we got the same old, same old with Denise, who accused her of "judging" the high and mighty Denise, but who wasn't above judging Cora on her own past - thinking herself far too high above someone whom she'd seen hit rock bottom, who was now reaching out to help her.
And now we know the real reason Denise won't approach Kim for help - because Kim would, as she said, only throw money at her and tell her to sort out her life.
Well? Why not?
Because that's what she needs. She needs money for the moment, if only to stock her fridge with food,and she genuinely does need to sort her life out. She needs to find work, any work, because some employer is going to want a reference from The Minute Mart. If she won't share her difficulties with her family, who are supposed to love her, then she needs to accept charity in the reduced state in which she finds herself - which is all of her own making because she willfully quit her job and then spent weeks lolling about and fucking Kush.
At the height of her encounter with Cora,she throws a hissy fit, remarking that she's 48 years old and this is all she has to show for her life.
I ask again:Whose fault is that?
Plainly speaking, Denise doesn't have to be in this predicament. She could have submitted to attending Anger Management Classes. She certainly needed it. Barring that, she could have immediately started looking for work after quitting. She did neither. She waited until she was down to her last couple of pounds - and convenience stores in London which use zero hours' contracts must pay inordinately well for Denise's meagre wage to last as long as it did -before suddenly realising that she actually did need money to buy food.
Instead, all we got was this harping on and on and on and on about the GCSE in Literature, in dialogue singularly lacking in English grammar.
She's 48 years old and cannot look after herself properly. We know, of course, where all of this will lead. It will eventually lead back to a reconciliation with Kush, because it's implied that Denise can't look after herself on her own, she'll need a big, strong,muscle-bound man to rescue her. And then, after he does, she can carry on treating him like a recalcitrant adolescent to feed his Oedipal complex,because that's the way of Sean O'Connor's dysfunctional world.
Even after Cora gently coerced her into returning to the jam-packed food bank and got her filled up with food and toiletries, she ends up giving her food to the children of the single mother who, allegedly, knew the ropes of the food bank, but who, this time, it seems, didn't have the requisite voucher needed.
And where does that leave Denise? Trudging back to the Square, exhausted from hunger, only to pluck surreptitiously from a bin, a schoolboy's discarded McKlunky's box and eat from it.
Seriously.
Cora, who ate from enough bins, herself, was abandoned by her family. Denise's family has been breathing down her neck forever. Denise abandoned them with her pretensions.
Please, give this character a much-needed hiatus from our screens. Eating rubbish from a bin and retuning to a home worth about three-quarters of a million quid in that part of London, where she still has the electricity turned on and internet access. And loads of gold bling on her fingers.
Of Max and Men. So Max has targeted Mick, and now he's working on Jack and using Charlie as his pawn.
I know we're supposed to feel sorry for Jack,but I don't. Jack is one of the plethora of people on this show who desperately need some sort of psychological help. It was made evident tonight that he actually doesn't give a fig about his children, not even responding to the school repeatedly ringing him to come collect them at the end of the schoolday. Instead, they had to ring Max.
Jack is simply lost in the memory of Ronnie and the obsession with her son. Jack actually thinks more of Matthew than he does his own children, and the looks on both of their faces in this episode indicates that this is registering strongly with Amy and Ricky. Yes, Jack is still grieving for Ronnie,but I still say that his obsession with Matthew is partly because he is the last manifestation of Ronnie he has left, and also, he's projecting onto Matthew every iota of emotions he's had stored within him for James.
Jack never loved Amy's or Ricky's mothers. He never wanted to know Ricky from the time he was an infant, and he blames Roxy for Ronnie's death. If Glenda claimed Amy and Sam returned for Ricky, it wouldn't affect him half as much as the prospect of losing Matthew. In fact, give him the choice of losing Ricky and Amy in order to keep Matthew, and he'd gladly give them up, with promises of visiting them as often as he doesn't visit Penny.
Max is subtly keeping score of the times Jack is coming across as a bad dad in all of this, but Charlie is also getting uncomfortable with being a part of Max's screwy games.
Beale's Meals. Seriously, Ian's afraid of dying? So he storms out of the doctor's surgery and pigs out?
When Jane remarked that there was more to this than Ian's over-eating, I was ready for them to have a talk about how Ian had resorted to comfort eating in light of Lucy's death and its repercussions, or what happened to Bobby, whose name they never mention.
But no, nothing of that.It's simply that Ian's afraid of dying. Being diagnosed with diabetes is his mortality check,and he's cured of his phobia by Jane spending a horde of money on chocolate bars and pretending to eat them to show him how inane his phobia is.
Yet another BabyMan propped up by a woman who fulfills Ian's Oedipal desires.
Nothing happening here. Move on.
They Killed Roxy Mitchell for This Shit? What was all that shit with Kim sabotaging Kush's date? That was the height of rudeness, and I felt sorry for the girl who'd showed up for the date.
Kush's relationship with Denise was none of Kim's business, and as far as she's concerned, Denise ended the relationship of her own accord, so he is a free agent, who can do as he pleased.
The date was doomed from the start, not because of Martin's and Shrimpy's presumption in making the date for Kush, who'd signed up to an online agency, and not entirely because Kim was openly rude and belligerant toward him and especially the girl to the point that Kush felt intimidated and guilt-tripped by Kim's presence and behaviour.
I don't think Kush is capable of maintaining a relationship with a woman from his own age demographic, simply because he is so Oedipal - yet another BabyMan. Kush's relationship with Shabnam involved a huge infusion of Carmel's presence and influence. Once she showed up on the scene, once she knew the secret about Arthur, he became co-dependent on her to the point that his own relationship with his wife was undermined. Carmel would be just as big a presence and malignant influence on any relationship he undertook with Sarah. With Denise, he's got the mother-figure who'll treat him like a naughty boy and then crawl into bed and fuck him. That's the BabyMan's ultimate dream.
He's fucked.
Home Truths: The Alpha Man and The Dirty Girl. Woody hit the nail right on the head: Mick was jealous of the fact that Woody had bedded Whitney. There was a let-down, however. When Mick accused him of leading the sweet and innocent Whitney down the primrose path, I thought Woody would correct him by saying, truthfully, that it was Whitney who'd come onto him, instead of emphasizing the shoplifting episode, which obviously wasn't the first time she'd done what she did, judging by the cache of clobber under that bed.
What was curiously lacking in all of this was any mention of Linda. Oh, there was, in passing, but when Mick found the object of his illicit desire in bed with Woody, there was no mention of it being Linda's bed, only his.
There is so much of this that stinks, it signifies all of what I hate about this show at the moment and what I hate about this character, in particular, and he's another prime example of a BabyMan.
Everyone - especially Shirley - is conniving to keep him in the dark about selling the freehold of the Vic, something which he is bound to find out sooner, rather than later. There was even a broad hint by Woody that didn't set well with Mick, about Linda having sent Woody down to manage the bar because she knew what a mess Mick would make of the place, which is testament to the fact that Linda is the real power behind the throne in that relationship, and that Mick is just coddled and contrived into believing he's the main player.
Then there's the incessant demonification of Lee, with Mick consoling the calculating little slut that is Whitney by implying that Lee was stupid enough to let his solicitor influence him in words about ending his marriage and wanting a divorce. Whitney's enormous ego is bruised because someone dumped her and is citing divorce for a valid reason - her unreasonable behaviour. But she then implies that all her woes came about because Mick "abandoned" her- she's arrogant and entitled enough to accuse him of that, openly implying that his family in Walford- chiefly, Whitney - needed him more than his injured child.
These two scurves will have an affair, and they'll contrive to blame all of this on Linda, putting her sick mother's needs first, besides being the one to agree to selling the freehold of the Vic. The episode only goes to show how abundantly stupid Mick is for believing that Shirley had come into enough of a windfall to fix the roof, pay for the dog's treatment and bury Sylvie.
BabyMen and needy, whining women. That's Sean O'Connor's EastEnders.
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