I'm behind in watching this show, and it isn't bothering me at all. In fact, it seems a chore to bother with catching up, and - after watching Monday's episode - I'm beginning to think I was right not to bother.
It was a Daran Little episode, and usually he's at the top of his game, but how do you write about a show where nothing significant happens? Maybe I'm too harsh. Significant things did happen in this episode.
Lauren finally admitted that she didn't love Steven ...but the viewing public knew that a along.
We found out that the father of Bernadette's baby was a kid named Callum in her year at school - someone who really does look his age and (just for social commentary purposes) appears to be the victim of his abusive father ... but we barely know Bernadette enough even to care who the father of her child is, without there being a hint of possible incest, and we don't know her babydaddy at all. In fact, this episode was his first appearance.
We were properly introduced, after Friday's fleeting appearance, to the new character played by George Maguire. Felix Moore, a tip to the hipsters invading the area. He's a trendy-wendy, tattooed, bearded and man-bunned, a nice enough bloke who deals in vintage items - in other words, a fancy name for selling old tat.His introduction was the background for Robbie flexing his muscles and ending up in the rubbish bin.
And of course, after an absence of about three episodes, we have the return of Denise, front and centre, strutting about the Market, gurning like the cat who's got the canary, arrogant, condescending, overrated, over-exposed and overbearing. One of O'Connor's two muses, the other being NuMichelle. Denise gets the Council job she wanted, although that would never happen in a million years in real time.
So all of the above did, indeed, happen, but who the fuck cares? The show was all about unlikable characters (Denise, Lauren), in predictable storylines or characters too knew for the public even to give a rat's arse about.
It's Over. This storyline about Lauren and Steven should have been well over ages ago. There are so many plotholes in this situation I don't know where to begin.
Ben Hardy left the show. Peter and Lauren left, ostensibly, for a new life in New Zealand, a living joke in and of itself. New Zealand is very particular about whom it lets immigrate to its shores, and neither Peter nor Lauren had any sort of educational or professional skills wanted by that country. Allegedly, Peter is still there, spaced out or drunk, face down in some gutter, living hand-to-mouth, which doesn't sound like Peter Beale at all.
The truth of the matter is that DTC couldn't be arsed to re-cast the role and brought Aaron Sidwell back as Steven instead, inventing what appeared to be a mysterious attraction between Steven and Lauren and a weird abandonment of Peter by her. None of it made sense, and nothing was ever followed through about where Peter was, why Lauren left him and why she took up with Steven ... who, ten years ago, was gay.
Apart from a curious five-second look exchanged between Steven and Johnny Carter when Steven first arrived, Steven doesn't even identify either as bi-sexual nor does he even make reference to the gay interlude in his life. He's had a sexual relationship with Lauren and has had two instances of angry sex with Abi. Yet another character on the show who doles it out in portions between siblings.
Friday's episode saw Steven break down completely over Lauren's confession that things weren't "good" between them, and that she was really only with him because he was so good with Louis. Of course, she confessed this to Josh, who alleges that he has feelings for her, himself.
Steven's way of dealing with this knowledge is to detach himself from the reality of the situation. He doesn't even notice that Lauren flinches from his touch, and even she is using her son's teething as a means of avoiding Steven whenever she can, and to date, she's been an indifferent mother. So, with his detachment from the reality of this - as per his insistence to Abi, after again offering herself to him on a plate, that he's totally invested in Lauren, I wonder if he's entering into a psychotic phase? He's been psychotic before, remember?
He's actually convinced himself that Lauren refused Josh's advances because of her feelings for him. He's totally blocked out the babysitter bit ... until he realises, by spying on her, that she actually isn't at work that afternoon and tracks her to the local park, where, indeed, she is with Josh.
Lauren's convinced herself of the nobility of her feelings, when actually, what she's probably done all weekend is gee herself up into moving away from Steven because Josh and everything he has, has convinced her that she deserves better - as not only in a job for which she has no qualifications, but a rich partner, who can shower her with money and show her some excitement. If Josh has promised any of that - and he hasn't, all he's said is that he has feelings for her, which just means he's horny for her - then it's debatable that he'd want a ready-made family that would include Louis. She even asserts that Steven deserves better too -and she's right about that, except that "better" isn't Abi.
The BabyDaddy Is Actually a Baby. The Taylors continue to ooze social commentary, so much that it confuses me. Friday we were led to believe that this family of cartoon chavs actually just might include another take on the Whitney-Tony affair, with an older family member (Keanu) sexually abusing his younger, but older-looking, sister. Tonight it moved into the realm of Demi Miller.
On the one hand, we had Karen confronting Keanu with the accusation that he got his sister pregnant, and he's righteously repelled. Which is good, because we're supposed to see Keanu, funny name and all, as the square peg in a round hole full of chavs. Were the Taylors American, they'd be Southern rednecks, spaced out on methamphetamines and oxycontin, but Keanu would have been the smartest kid in the class who wins a scholarship to Harvard, leaves home and never returns, until he's elected Senator or something. I mean, Keanu is the one the viewers want to stay ... until he starts to bonk Whitney whenever she returns.
Turns out that Bernadette's babydaddy is a scrawny little kid - who really does look fifteen - named Callum, who's in her year at school and who has an abusive father. When she tells him that she's pregnant, he cries, offers her his life savings of sixteen quid and suggests that they get married. In the end, she's horsing around with her big brother, whilst Karen smiles benevolently.
Except ... except ... all of this amounts to nothing. We don't know these people; they're blank slates, they're new - and horribly already with the potential to spread across the Walford canvas like a cancer - the twins' father, Keegan's father, Bernadette's father ... the possibilities are endess. In fact, their sole purpose is to carry on ticking stereotypical boxes until they morph into the noble spokesmen of working-class Britain. In this episode, we got the inevitable soliloquy about how the rest of the neighbourhood viewing them as scum. Has Walford really become so gentrified?
The Inevitable Purpose of the Bins. George Maguire properly joined the cast tonight as Felix Moore, the trendy, man-bunned (yes, another one) hipster fronting the latest second-hand tat stall on the market - at the expense of Donna, a situation rife with all sorts of unsaid accusations.
First, Robbie, who's turned into the typically unfunny inept martinet boss, suggested a team-building action day to build bonding amongst the traders. Donna, rightly, enquired if there were facilities for the disabled at the site Robbie wanted to use, which put him on the spot, After that incident, he was all over the place with Donna and always doing wrong for attempting to do right.
When he re-organised the function, making certain that there were facilities for the disabled, Donna bridled and remarked that she wanted to be treated like anyone else, which is also reasonable. Today, after several warnings, Robbie called time on her stall, because she owed three weeks' of pitch fees.
Them's the rules, but remember all the other kerfuffle with pitch fees, especially the way Kat and Bianca treated Mr Lister and abused Tamwar? This time, all Donna can do is whine about the fact that she was unable to pay her fees (for three weeks running) because she "bought bad stock" and play the martyr when Kush offers to pay her fees that she owes.
Yes, Robbie was obnoxious. Yes, he's probably on a roll because he left Walford as the market sweeper and returned to control the actual market, itself. Yes, he's a dipshit; but he was actually only doing his job. Instead, he got intimidated and humiliated before the new trader he was signing up. However charming Felix might have been and still might be, he now knows that the Market Inspector has actually no real power in the united face of the market traders, themselves. In one of Daran Little's appallingly weak moments, the line about Robbie berating Martin for rubbish around his stall (Rubbish belongs in the bins), with a wry tip to O'Connor's most consistent theme since he took over, inspired what we knew was coming - Kush and Martin dumping Robbie in the bins.
I am no fan of Robbie's by a long shot, but in this instance, he was only trying to do his job, even though he was being obnoxious about it. Donna couldn't pay, so she lost the pitch to someone who'd paid his fees up front. And he's punished and humiliated for doing that. How is that right? It wasn't even funny. It was, like everything else, predictable.
Denise. It was unavoidable that we couldn't go one week without seeing her smug face. Denise spent the majority of this episode whining about Kim. Kim is hard going. She's self-absorbed, selfish and stupid. Tonight, at the end of their segment, when Denise decided to take Kim's free holiday offer up, she confessed that she hadn't yet TOLD Kush they were going - it never crossed her mind to ask him if he'd like to go. She and Kim TELL, they never ASK; and Kim reinforced that, even commenting on how much of an emasculated man the increasingly unseen Vincent has become.
Ne'mind, because, unbelievably, Denise got a job on the Council. Seriously. Denise, with her criminal record and a less-than-salubrious reference from the Minute Mart,not to mention her appalling spoken grammar.
But she does have ond GCSE.
Even more unbelievable, she starts in 2 weeks, and is planning a holiday for shorty afterward. As you do. Well, as Denise does. And she quits working for Kim, which is another example of her stupidity. She'll probably get paid one month in arears, which means she'd have to work two months before she sees one month's wages.
I suppose she's not to proud to live off Patrick, Kim and Kush for the next couple of months.
The more I see of Kim and Denise, the more I miss Ronnie and Roxy, and I didn't like Ronnie at all.
It was a Daran Little episode, and usually he's at the top of his game, but how do you write about a show where nothing significant happens? Maybe I'm too harsh. Significant things did happen in this episode.
Lauren finally admitted that she didn't love Steven ...but the viewing public knew that a along.
We found out that the father of Bernadette's baby was a kid named Callum in her year at school - someone who really does look his age and (just for social commentary purposes) appears to be the victim of his abusive father ... but we barely know Bernadette enough even to care who the father of her child is, without there being a hint of possible incest, and we don't know her babydaddy at all. In fact, this episode was his first appearance.
We were properly introduced, after Friday's fleeting appearance, to the new character played by George Maguire. Felix Moore, a tip to the hipsters invading the area. He's a trendy-wendy, tattooed, bearded and man-bunned, a nice enough bloke who deals in vintage items - in other words, a fancy name for selling old tat.His introduction was the background for Robbie flexing his muscles and ending up in the rubbish bin.
And of course, after an absence of about three episodes, we have the return of Denise, front and centre, strutting about the Market, gurning like the cat who's got the canary, arrogant, condescending, overrated, over-exposed and overbearing. One of O'Connor's two muses, the other being NuMichelle. Denise gets the Council job she wanted, although that would never happen in a million years in real time.
So all of the above did, indeed, happen, but who the fuck cares? The show was all about unlikable characters (Denise, Lauren), in predictable storylines or characters too knew for the public even to give a rat's arse about.
It's Over. This storyline about Lauren and Steven should have been well over ages ago. There are so many plotholes in this situation I don't know where to begin.
Ben Hardy left the show. Peter and Lauren left, ostensibly, for a new life in New Zealand, a living joke in and of itself. New Zealand is very particular about whom it lets immigrate to its shores, and neither Peter nor Lauren had any sort of educational or professional skills wanted by that country. Allegedly, Peter is still there, spaced out or drunk, face down in some gutter, living hand-to-mouth, which doesn't sound like Peter Beale at all.
The truth of the matter is that DTC couldn't be arsed to re-cast the role and brought Aaron Sidwell back as Steven instead, inventing what appeared to be a mysterious attraction between Steven and Lauren and a weird abandonment of Peter by her. None of it made sense, and nothing was ever followed through about where Peter was, why Lauren left him and why she took up with Steven ... who, ten years ago, was gay.
Apart from a curious five-second look exchanged between Steven and Johnny Carter when Steven first arrived, Steven doesn't even identify either as bi-sexual nor does he even make reference to the gay interlude in his life. He's had a sexual relationship with Lauren and has had two instances of angry sex with Abi. Yet another character on the show who doles it out in portions between siblings.
Friday's episode saw Steven break down completely over Lauren's confession that things weren't "good" between them, and that she was really only with him because he was so good with Louis. Of course, she confessed this to Josh, who alleges that he has feelings for her, himself.
Steven's way of dealing with this knowledge is to detach himself from the reality of the situation. He doesn't even notice that Lauren flinches from his touch, and even she is using her son's teething as a means of avoiding Steven whenever she can, and to date, she's been an indifferent mother. So, with his detachment from the reality of this - as per his insistence to Abi, after again offering herself to him on a plate, that he's totally invested in Lauren, I wonder if he's entering into a psychotic phase? He's been psychotic before, remember?
He's actually convinced himself that Lauren refused Josh's advances because of her feelings for him. He's totally blocked out the babysitter bit ... until he realises, by spying on her, that she actually isn't at work that afternoon and tracks her to the local park, where, indeed, she is with Josh.
Lauren's convinced herself of the nobility of her feelings, when actually, what she's probably done all weekend is gee herself up into moving away from Steven because Josh and everything he has, has convinced her that she deserves better - as not only in a job for which she has no qualifications, but a rich partner, who can shower her with money and show her some excitement. If Josh has promised any of that - and he hasn't, all he's said is that he has feelings for her, which just means he's horny for her - then it's debatable that he'd want a ready-made family that would include Louis. She even asserts that Steven deserves better too -and she's right about that, except that "better" isn't Abi.
The BabyDaddy Is Actually a Baby. The Taylors continue to ooze social commentary, so much that it confuses me. Friday we were led to believe that this family of cartoon chavs actually just might include another take on the Whitney-Tony affair, with an older family member (Keanu) sexually abusing his younger, but older-looking, sister. Tonight it moved into the realm of Demi Miller.
On the one hand, we had Karen confronting Keanu with the accusation that he got his sister pregnant, and he's righteously repelled. Which is good, because we're supposed to see Keanu, funny name and all, as the square peg in a round hole full of chavs. Were the Taylors American, they'd be Southern rednecks, spaced out on methamphetamines and oxycontin, but Keanu would have been the smartest kid in the class who wins a scholarship to Harvard, leaves home and never returns, until he's elected Senator or something. I mean, Keanu is the one the viewers want to stay ... until he starts to bonk Whitney whenever she returns.
Turns out that Bernadette's babydaddy is a scrawny little kid - who really does look fifteen - named Callum, who's in her year at school and who has an abusive father. When she tells him that she's pregnant, he cries, offers her his life savings of sixteen quid and suggests that they get married. In the end, she's horsing around with her big brother, whilst Karen smiles benevolently.
Except ... except ... all of this amounts to nothing. We don't know these people; they're blank slates, they're new - and horribly already with the potential to spread across the Walford canvas like a cancer - the twins' father, Keegan's father, Bernadette's father ... the possibilities are endess. In fact, their sole purpose is to carry on ticking stereotypical boxes until they morph into the noble spokesmen of working-class Britain. In this episode, we got the inevitable soliloquy about how the rest of the neighbourhood viewing them as scum. Has Walford really become so gentrified?
The Inevitable Purpose of the Bins. George Maguire properly joined the cast tonight as Felix Moore, the trendy, man-bunned (yes, another one) hipster fronting the latest second-hand tat stall on the market - at the expense of Donna, a situation rife with all sorts of unsaid accusations.
First, Robbie, who's turned into the typically unfunny inept martinet boss, suggested a team-building action day to build bonding amongst the traders. Donna, rightly, enquired if there were facilities for the disabled at the site Robbie wanted to use, which put him on the spot, After that incident, he was all over the place with Donna and always doing wrong for attempting to do right.
When he re-organised the function, making certain that there were facilities for the disabled, Donna bridled and remarked that she wanted to be treated like anyone else, which is also reasonable. Today, after several warnings, Robbie called time on her stall, because she owed three weeks' of pitch fees.
Them's the rules, but remember all the other kerfuffle with pitch fees, especially the way Kat and Bianca treated Mr Lister and abused Tamwar? This time, all Donna can do is whine about the fact that she was unable to pay her fees (for three weeks running) because she "bought bad stock" and play the martyr when Kush offers to pay her fees that she owes.
Yes, Robbie was obnoxious. Yes, he's probably on a roll because he left Walford as the market sweeper and returned to control the actual market, itself. Yes, he's a dipshit; but he was actually only doing his job. Instead, he got intimidated and humiliated before the new trader he was signing up. However charming Felix might have been and still might be, he now knows that the Market Inspector has actually no real power in the united face of the market traders, themselves. In one of Daran Little's appallingly weak moments, the line about Robbie berating Martin for rubbish around his stall (Rubbish belongs in the bins), with a wry tip to O'Connor's most consistent theme since he took over, inspired what we knew was coming - Kush and Martin dumping Robbie in the bins.
I am no fan of Robbie's by a long shot, but in this instance, he was only trying to do his job, even though he was being obnoxious about it. Donna couldn't pay, so she lost the pitch to someone who'd paid his fees up front. And he's punished and humiliated for doing that. How is that right? It wasn't even funny. It was, like everything else, predictable.
Denise. It was unavoidable that we couldn't go one week without seeing her smug face. Denise spent the majority of this episode whining about Kim. Kim is hard going. She's self-absorbed, selfish and stupid. Tonight, at the end of their segment, when Denise decided to take Kim's free holiday offer up, she confessed that she hadn't yet TOLD Kush they were going - it never crossed her mind to ask him if he'd like to go. She and Kim TELL, they never ASK; and Kim reinforced that, even commenting on how much of an emasculated man the increasingly unseen Vincent has become.
Ne'mind, because, unbelievably, Denise got a job on the Council. Seriously. Denise, with her criminal record and a less-than-salubrious reference from the Minute Mart,not to mention her appalling spoken grammar.
But she does have ond GCSE.
Even more unbelievable, she starts in 2 weeks, and is planning a holiday for shorty afterward. As you do. Well, as Denise does. And she quits working for Kim, which is another example of her stupidity. She'll probably get paid one month in arears, which means she'd have to work two months before she sees one month's wages.
I suppose she's not to proud to live off Patrick, Kim and Kush for the next couple of months.
The more I see of Kim and Denise, the more I miss Ronnie and Roxy, and I didn't like Ronnie at all.
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