There's an interesting debate going on on the Digital Spy soaps' forum. You can view the thread here.
The original poster posits that forum members and Eastenders' fora in general are being totally hypocritical in their negative comments and opinions about Kat, as opposed to other morally corrupt people - Tanya, Max, Jack and Glenda, being mentioned.
Oh, boo-hoo! We mustn't look pejoratively at our Katshit. No siree, we simply have to hold our noses and accept the dirty girl for what she is.
Bullshit.
And here's were a lot of good opinions come to the fore on that thread.
I've said in another blog that Kat is a spent character and should be shown the door. Seriously, Lorraine Newman has got to sharpen up and wield that axe because lazy actors like Jessie Wallace aren't going anyplace without a push. Besides, Wallace has brought hardware back for display in the Eastenders trophy cabinet, and in soap terms that means an actor has a job for life - or until he or she decides to leave; because TPTB sure ain't gonna hack off someone who's brought the gold back for them.
Wallace left "by mutual consent" in 2005 (read: she was surplus so requirements and got the boot for being difficult to work with); she's not going to look a gift horse in the mouth twice, although I strongly suspect that the three-month (five-month) "break" in order to recover from yet another cad breaking her heart was, in fact, a suspension for having mouthed off at someone she shouldn't have (probably Kirkwood, himself). But that's just my opinion. I'm just the pleb whose licence fee pays her salary.
I also suspect that the reason we're not seeing the axe wielded on Kat's lycra-encrusted, crusty, cheating ass is down to the fact that it was the Eastenders' writing/production staff, themselves, who fucked her character up and sent an iconic character spiralling downward from hero to zero in record time. Really, such a descent would have brought another gold for Britain in character disparagement.
Normally, when a character generates as much hatred and dislike as this human embodiment of Katshit has engendered in the past two years, and especially now, TPTB realise that they need to get the character off the screen and out of the soap altogether. Think Danny Mitchell. Think Callum Monks. Think Kerry Skinner.
But in all the years I've watched Eastenders, I've never known the show to destroy the character of someone who'd become so iconic. Until now. And this is why they refuse to ditch her character, even though she's totally unredeemable, and it would be beyond belief to have her reconcile with the husband she's so awfully mistreated in many ways. However, they fucked up a character who was essentially fine, so I suppose now they're literally shitting themselves for a way in which to repair her.
Here's my advice: give up. Stop it. She wasn't broken, but you decided to fix her, and in doing so, you fucked up. Sometimes, the only way to rectify a mistake is to walk away from it, whistling. The vast majority of viewers hate Kat now, hate the sight of her and fast-forward every time she appears. The minority who don't hate her are the lowest common denominator and you really shouldn't bother with them anyway. So stuff her. Call her a casualty of Bryan Kirkwood's bad judgement; learn from his mistake and get Roxy and Alfie together.
The debate about hypocrisy on Digital Spy wonders why we cut Kat so little slack in comparison to other characters - specifically, those whom I've mentioned.
Let's deal with the small fry first: Jack and Glenda.
Jack's a free agent at the moment. He's not in any relationship and is a divorced man. He's free to sleep with a different girl every night, even with two at once, if he so desires. Yes, he's got children in three different European countries and should be gadding about constantly, spending time with each of them. Jack isn't a good father at all. His idea of parenting is reluctanly agreeing to care for Amy when pressed, speaking with Penny on Skype and sending money to Sam for Richard. Jack becomes a hypocrite when he presumes to give others advice on how to be a good parent.
Glenda, also, wasn't committed to anyone in particular. Yes, she was wrong in seducing a married man (Ian) and another who appeared to be in a committed relationship (Phil). But Glenda never pretended to be anything other than what she was - a pretty attractive fiftysomething whore.
Then there are the Brannings. Tanya's hypocrisy is based on her essentially selfish nature. They Brannings are classic co-dependent couple, meaning that Tanya's behaviour often feeds Max's and vice versa. Max cheats on Tanya; they split and, instead of focusing on her children and their needs, Tanya focuses on hers - another man, preferably with a fat wallet, in her bed, another bottle of bubbly in the fridge to feed her alcohol dependency; and yet, her behaviour - and, make no mistake, she was a budding slut at eighteen who didn't give a rat's ass about chasing a man who already had a wife and a child - is never blameable. Tanya is without sin. Even her own mother criticised her selfishness. Yet everything bad Tanya has ever done, Max made her do it. Max made her pregnant, so he had to leave Rachel and Bradley and marry her. Max slept with Stacey, so that made Tanya try to kill him. Max made her sleep with him after she'd married Greg. Hell, Max probably even gave her cancer - and that much, he could have done, considering the nature and cause of cervical cancer. With Tanya, everything is always about Tanya. Tanya first, and the kids be damned.
Max, however, is a different kettle of fish.
Max Branning is the most amoral character on the programme. He's a serial cheat, content to have a cuddly wife and kids at home, whilst still enjoying the thrill of the chase. He's sardonic, sarcastic and often cruel in his criticism. He's as selfish as Tanya and not above putting himself first and doing whatever it takes to accomplish what he wants.
Yet whenever Max is caught out in any bad deed, be it infidelity or scamming or whatever, Max steps up to the plate, puts his hands up, takes responsibility and apologises. There's no shifting of blame, no reference to past childhood trauma in a quest for pity, nothing. Max knows exactly what he is and owns it.
But there's a difference with the Brannings as a couple and with Max, in particular, as opposed to Kat.
First, both Max and Tanya have good sides to their natures. Tanya isn't a particularly good mother in that she strives too much to be a friend to her children. Max, in and of himself, is the better parent; but there's no doubt that they both love their children, even if they overload them with a lot of their own phobia and issues to the extreme from time to time, and even if they do spoil them remorselessly. At least, they pay attention to their kids.
They are also compassionate people, as their rescue and concern for Ian Beale proved last week.
Katshit, Kirkwood's Kat, is an abysmal mother - indifferent to the point of resentment, only showering her son with attention when she wishes to use him as a shield in order to avoid or punish her husband. As far as concern and compassion goes, Kat shows this in spades to one person and one person only - Jean. Jean gets all the love and attention that Alfie and Tommy should have. To hell with them, as long as Jean is happy, Katshit is happy as well. As far as showing concern for others, I think the incipient storyline where Katshit takes ultimate pleasure in disclosing to Janine the fact that Michael remarked on his wedding day that he had trouble loving Janine and the baby shows how callous and cruel Katshit, in this reincarnation, totally is.
Kat's rationale for continuously cheating on a husband who loves the bones of her is the whine that she's "a dirty girl." She looks like a slut and smells like a slut; men respond to that and she can't help it. In short, that entire point of reasoning is euphemistic for "I like to shag around, this is the way I am, deal with it."
Plain truth is, that this Kat likes to cat around with strange men. Extramarital, sneaky, dirty sex is her thing - the sneakier, the dirtier. She's a narcissicist who requires her husband's undivided praise and attention 24/7, or else she thunders off in a strop in order to shag the nearest willing punter - always dressed and made up to the nines like the roughest whore, always sidling up and openly flirting to all and sundry.
But what transpires is never Kat's fault. It wasn't Kat's fault that she slept with her husband's cousin and got pregnant by him. It wasn't Kat's fault that she's regularly unfaithful to a man who loves her and stands by her. Yet, the writers ask that we view this dreg with sympathy and blame her husband for her behaviour? They didn't even ask that much of us when Tanya tried to kill Max or when she cheated on Greg with him.
And still she feels she's able to take the moral high ground over Alfie. She is the eternal victim, a stock female character in Walford these days, using and re-using a traumatic event from her past in order to justify her inappropriate and cruel behaviour.
She is the worst sort of hypocrite, and that is why she is hated.
The original poster posits that forum members and Eastenders' fora in general are being totally hypocritical in their negative comments and opinions about Kat, as opposed to other morally corrupt people - Tanya, Max, Jack and Glenda, being mentioned.
Oh, boo-hoo! We mustn't look pejoratively at our Katshit. No siree, we simply have to hold our noses and accept the dirty girl for what she is.
Bullshit.
And here's were a lot of good opinions come to the fore on that thread.
I've said in another blog that Kat is a spent character and should be shown the door. Seriously, Lorraine Newman has got to sharpen up and wield that axe because lazy actors like Jessie Wallace aren't going anyplace without a push. Besides, Wallace has brought hardware back for display in the Eastenders trophy cabinet, and in soap terms that means an actor has a job for life - or until he or she decides to leave; because TPTB sure ain't gonna hack off someone who's brought the gold back for them.
Wallace left "by mutual consent" in 2005 (read: she was surplus so requirements and got the boot for being difficult to work with); she's not going to look a gift horse in the mouth twice, although I strongly suspect that the three-month (five-month) "break" in order to recover from yet another cad breaking her heart was, in fact, a suspension for having mouthed off at someone she shouldn't have (probably Kirkwood, himself). But that's just my opinion. I'm just the pleb whose licence fee pays her salary.
I also suspect that the reason we're not seeing the axe wielded on Kat's lycra-encrusted, crusty, cheating ass is down to the fact that it was the Eastenders' writing/production staff, themselves, who fucked her character up and sent an iconic character spiralling downward from hero to zero in record time. Really, such a descent would have brought another gold for Britain in character disparagement.
Normally, when a character generates as much hatred and dislike as this human embodiment of Katshit has engendered in the past two years, and especially now, TPTB realise that they need to get the character off the screen and out of the soap altogether. Think Danny Mitchell. Think Callum Monks. Think Kerry Skinner.
But in all the years I've watched Eastenders, I've never known the show to destroy the character of someone who'd become so iconic. Until now. And this is why they refuse to ditch her character, even though she's totally unredeemable, and it would be beyond belief to have her reconcile with the husband she's so awfully mistreated in many ways. However, they fucked up a character who was essentially fine, so I suppose now they're literally shitting themselves for a way in which to repair her.
Here's my advice: give up. Stop it. She wasn't broken, but you decided to fix her, and in doing so, you fucked up. Sometimes, the only way to rectify a mistake is to walk away from it, whistling. The vast majority of viewers hate Kat now, hate the sight of her and fast-forward every time she appears. The minority who don't hate her are the lowest common denominator and you really shouldn't bother with them anyway. So stuff her. Call her a casualty of Bryan Kirkwood's bad judgement; learn from his mistake and get Roxy and Alfie together.
The debate about hypocrisy on Digital Spy wonders why we cut Kat so little slack in comparison to other characters - specifically, those whom I've mentioned.
Let's deal with the small fry first: Jack and Glenda.
Jack's a free agent at the moment. He's not in any relationship and is a divorced man. He's free to sleep with a different girl every night, even with two at once, if he so desires. Yes, he's got children in three different European countries and should be gadding about constantly, spending time with each of them. Jack isn't a good father at all. His idea of parenting is reluctanly agreeing to care for Amy when pressed, speaking with Penny on Skype and sending money to Sam for Richard. Jack becomes a hypocrite when he presumes to give others advice on how to be a good parent.
Glenda, also, wasn't committed to anyone in particular. Yes, she was wrong in seducing a married man (Ian) and another who appeared to be in a committed relationship (Phil). But Glenda never pretended to be anything other than what she was - a pretty attractive fiftysomething whore.
Then there are the Brannings. Tanya's hypocrisy is based on her essentially selfish nature. They Brannings are classic co-dependent couple, meaning that Tanya's behaviour often feeds Max's and vice versa. Max cheats on Tanya; they split and, instead of focusing on her children and their needs, Tanya focuses on hers - another man, preferably with a fat wallet, in her bed, another bottle of bubbly in the fridge to feed her alcohol dependency; and yet, her behaviour - and, make no mistake, she was a budding slut at eighteen who didn't give a rat's ass about chasing a man who already had a wife and a child - is never blameable. Tanya is without sin. Even her own mother criticised her selfishness. Yet everything bad Tanya has ever done, Max made her do it. Max made her pregnant, so he had to leave Rachel and Bradley and marry her. Max slept with Stacey, so that made Tanya try to kill him. Max made her sleep with him after she'd married Greg. Hell, Max probably even gave her cancer - and that much, he could have done, considering the nature and cause of cervical cancer. With Tanya, everything is always about Tanya. Tanya first, and the kids be damned.
Max, however, is a different kettle of fish.
Max Branning is the most amoral character on the programme. He's a serial cheat, content to have a cuddly wife and kids at home, whilst still enjoying the thrill of the chase. He's sardonic, sarcastic and often cruel in his criticism. He's as selfish as Tanya and not above putting himself first and doing whatever it takes to accomplish what he wants.
Yet whenever Max is caught out in any bad deed, be it infidelity or scamming or whatever, Max steps up to the plate, puts his hands up, takes responsibility and apologises. There's no shifting of blame, no reference to past childhood trauma in a quest for pity, nothing. Max knows exactly what he is and owns it.
But there's a difference with the Brannings as a couple and with Max, in particular, as opposed to Kat.
First, both Max and Tanya have good sides to their natures. Tanya isn't a particularly good mother in that she strives too much to be a friend to her children. Max, in and of himself, is the better parent; but there's no doubt that they both love their children, even if they overload them with a lot of their own phobia and issues to the extreme from time to time, and even if they do spoil them remorselessly. At least, they pay attention to their kids.
They are also compassionate people, as their rescue and concern for Ian Beale proved last week.
Katshit, Kirkwood's Kat, is an abysmal mother - indifferent to the point of resentment, only showering her son with attention when she wishes to use him as a shield in order to avoid or punish her husband. As far as concern and compassion goes, Kat shows this in spades to one person and one person only - Jean. Jean gets all the love and attention that Alfie and Tommy should have. To hell with them, as long as Jean is happy, Katshit is happy as well. As far as showing concern for others, I think the incipient storyline where Katshit takes ultimate pleasure in disclosing to Janine the fact that Michael remarked on his wedding day that he had trouble loving Janine and the baby shows how callous and cruel Katshit, in this reincarnation, totally is.
Kat's rationale for continuously cheating on a husband who loves the bones of her is the whine that she's "a dirty girl." She looks like a slut and smells like a slut; men respond to that and she can't help it. In short, that entire point of reasoning is euphemistic for "I like to shag around, this is the way I am, deal with it."
Plain truth is, that this Kat likes to cat around with strange men. Extramarital, sneaky, dirty sex is her thing - the sneakier, the dirtier. She's a narcissicist who requires her husband's undivided praise and attention 24/7, or else she thunders off in a strop in order to shag the nearest willing punter - always dressed and made up to the nines like the roughest whore, always sidling up and openly flirting to all and sundry.
But what transpires is never Kat's fault. It wasn't Kat's fault that she slept with her husband's cousin and got pregnant by him. It wasn't Kat's fault that she's regularly unfaithful to a man who loves her and stands by her. Yet, the writers ask that we view this dreg with sympathy and blame her husband for her behaviour? They didn't even ask that much of us when Tanya tried to kill Max or when she cheated on Greg with him.
And still she feels she's able to take the moral high ground over Alfie. She is the eternal victim, a stock female character in Walford these days, using and re-using a traumatic event from her past in order to justify her inappropriate and cruel behaviour.
She is the worst sort of hypocrite, and that is why she is hated.
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