Tonight we said good-bye to Ben. Next week, we say good-bye to AntKnee. I didn't like Ben, and I don't like AntKnee. The difference is, as much as I hated his pukey, little character, I found Joshua Pascoe immensely watchable as Ben. Ben was a character you really weren't supposed to like. He wasn't cuddly or cute - even in his first incarnation by Charlie Jones. Ben was always the quirky, misfit son of Phil, who wasn't quite up to his old man's standard, and who wasn't really quite right in another respect.
People tend to blame Phil for a lot of what was wrong with Ben, and fair dos, he was responsible for a lot of it; but Ben was warped when he came to Walford - the beating of Freddie Mitchell was one thing, when he was willing to stand by until the last minute and watch Little Mo get prosecuted. And let's not forget that before Stella started baiting Ben, Ben baited Stella - the difference there, being that Ben baited her as a child might bait an adult, and Stella baited back as an evil child disguised as an adult. He learned enough from her to torture his little sister, and he overreacted when he hit and injured Jordan.
Steve McFadden, speaking on the EastEnders' Revealed review after Heather's murder, stated that was always Ben's forte - overreacting and causing an awful lot of bother.
Ben's killing of Heather was, according to Phil, "one mistake." Pretty harsh, especially in an episode coming on the day Anders Breivik got 21 years for making 77 "mistakes" on an island in Norway. Phil thinks it's not fair that Ben's in prison; well, it's not fair that Heather's dead.
And Phil's alone and doesn't like that feeling. It brings out his insecurities. It gives him time to think, and Ben sussed that tonight: Phil's main feeling is one of guilt at all the bad things Ben has done since having to deal with Stella. But it's mete that we all remember who pushed Stella onto Phil in the first place: Peggy. Peggy, who thought the plain, but nice and no-nonsense Stella, the well-brought up, nicely-spoken professional would be a good wife for Phil, a good mother for Ben and an upwardly-mobile daughter-in-law for Peggy.
It wasn't just Phil who failed Ben during the Stella months, it was Peggy as well.
Phil's at his lowest point, especially after his final good-bye to Ben tonight. (We all know what this means. We had it when Ben first went off to juvy, and he told Phil not to visit him. It means - if EastEnders is still around in ten years' time - or even five years - Ben will return, reformed and with a new head.) I am sure we'll see Ben again.
To watch Phil in the last frame of tonight's episode is to watch him at his lowest.
But Sharon's here now.
I'm not saying she's going to work miracles, and whatever will happen will not happen overnight. But since she's returned, her best scenes have been with Ian and Phil, and it's obvious from what she said to Ian tonight, that Phil's told Sharon more in one hour-long meeting than he's told Shirley in five months. The important thing to note: Sharon didn't judge either Phil or Ian.
The writing was better for her tonight, although there were a couple of inconsistency niggles. For example, since Ian was coerced into going off with Phil on a Ben-chase, I presume he didn't babysit for Dennis, but there Sharon was, doing her bit at the R and R. Who was watching Dennis? I can only assume Max, perhaps; or Lollygag, as she wasn't there propping up the bar with her stick insect arms and fluttering her false eyelashes at Toad Jr.
The other inconsistency was Katshit walking into the R and R. No reaction whatsoever from either Sharon or Katshit, aside from Katshit leering jealously at Jack. Honestly since she's started fucking DEREK (I'm taking bets that it's he), she seems to think every man with a member in Walford should worship her by whipping his out and waving it in her direction.
Sharon and Katshit have all sorts of history, nonetheless being Kat's perverting the course of justice (like Jay) in 2005 to get the fragrant Zoe, who struck the first blow to Den Watts's head, out of Walford. Yet tonight, they totally blanked each other.
And why is Janine, another character with an even richer history of associating with Sharon, still acting as though Sharon is a stranger? Lorraine Newman really needs to address these inconsistencies, because the long-term viewers are picking up on them and picking them apart.
And, finally, for the older tranche of weenie-weenies who still go on about Shannis and creamed their knickers at the vestigial resemblance Toad Jr bears to Dennis Rickman - and I'm talking about those one-brain-celled wonders wishing and hoping that Sharon would be all over him like a bad rash ... they didn't even glance in each other's direction.
In the first place, he's nothing like Dennis Rickman. In the second place, you can positively smell the steroids on him and in the third place, he's a mouth-breather.
David Witts AFTER the Green Room
David Witts BEFORE the Green Room
The mouth-breathing remains the same.
I was actually going to leave the worst for last, but I'll put it in the middle and get it the hell out of the way.
The most interesting dynamic tonight was Phil and anyone or Ian and anyone; but we had the pleasure tonight - a rare one - of seeing the five worst characters on the show actually on the show altogether - the Moon Goons, Toad Jr, Fatboy and Katshit. Many were in the same scenes.
Jesus H Christ-on-a-bike, if Lorraine Newman cannot see how fucking dire Tony Discipline and David Witts are, she's blind and she needs to re-evaluate her position as Executive Producer. These boys have no diction. Their speech is gutteral and unintelligible. Please, if they're keeping these bits of beefcake on the show for the sake of pre-pubescent girls or the lowest common denominator of woman, at least fork out for fucking diction lessons.
Discipline's smell-the-fart acting combined with Witt's protuberant tongue, which seems so large that his mouth cannot shut properly, is really off-putting.
However, my understanding is that Tyler is supposed to be Mr Positive, whilst Toad Jr is supposed to be Mr Negative. (Any doubt about the latter for the brain-dead amongst the viewers was reiterated by Toad Jr at the club as he expressly described himself to Kim as an undesireable.) Perhaps that was more than just a nuance in the direction of Kim, as permission for her to make an unfunny double entendre remark.
AntKnee's sudden passion for the virginal Alice is boring. AntKnee is boring. We don't need this prolonged shit with a character who was a loser from day one - simply because he was in over his head and because he was hired by an EP who fancied him and had no directional arc for his character.
Just-the-fuck-GO.
And not only is Alice geeky, she's unfashionably virginal as well. Lucky girl, that she's chosen nice Poppy for a friend, who was understanding of her "predicament." Her bitchy cousin and Lollygag would have giggled insanely and made fun of her.
I like Alice. I like Poppy. They both have jobs (although, I'm certain it won't be long before Alice is sacked from whatever it is she does - thus enabling her to work on the market/at the carlot/at McKlunky's/sweeping the streets/whatever.) In fact, I'd dispense with the other three entitled madams and keep these two girls.
I didn't mention Whitney. I detest Whitney with my life, especially the Shitney duo. However, I actually like her when she interacts with Janine - but, lordy, why all of a sudden is she going for the ghoulish whore look? The lathered-on lipstic and the Egyptian eyes? It looks cheaper than cheap and her look almost makes Walford's resident whore, Kat, look decent.
Speaking of Kat, what a deceiving bitch. How anyone can drink happily in an environment where you have to suffer her greasy slutface is beyond me. I hate the openly condescending way she treats Alfie now as well. I know he annoys a lot of people, but Alfie is one of the genuinely good people in the Square. OK, he gave Fatboy bad advice and he feels responsible. Actually, having Fats work the bar might not be bad, if Alfie could get him to tone down the Ali-G act and just be Arthur. Kat's pithy remark about Fatboy reminding Alfie of himself sucked, as did the look on her face when Alfie told her to go to ladies' night at the R and R, the cheating skank. I can't wait for him to find out what she's been doing, and to kick her cheap arse to the gutter where it belongs. I want her to go.
Janine and Shirley are always watchable, and Janine is particularly poignant. She's so insecure with her trust issues, and Michael thinks it's all a tease game and doesn't understand. I just feel if more time at the beginning of the year had been spent delving into both their trust and daddy issues, having them explore those with each other, instead of Shitney with balloons, EastEnders may not be in the state it's in at the moment.
That said, Janine put all the women on that show to shame tonight when she dolled up to the nines to go to the club. She looked understated, elegant and classy.
Shirley is in hate mode now - hating Phil, hating Ben and hating Jay. Most of all, I think, she's hating herself, especially for her behaviour to Heather during the days leading up to her death. Yes, Ben killed Heather. Yes, Phil and Jay covered this up. But Shirley forsook Heather as well, and that can't be an easy cross to bear. So now it looks as though she's going to focuse all her energies on an all-out war with Phil, including Sharon in that situation. Her calling Sharon "Tinkerbell" tonight was unnecessary. Sharon had nothing to do with this, but her unseen presence hung over Shirley's relationship with Phil like the Sword of Damocles, because Shirley knew Phil loved and still loves Sharon. Sharon made Shirley look smal, blowing off Shirley's remark about Phil never staying long in a relationship.
Her attitude was too much for Andrew. I got the impression that his gazing at Heather's empty flat meant the end of an era for him in Walford. I won't miss him.
Decent episode. Get rid of the unnecessary youths, mind you.
People tend to blame Phil for a lot of what was wrong with Ben, and fair dos, he was responsible for a lot of it; but Ben was warped when he came to Walford - the beating of Freddie Mitchell was one thing, when he was willing to stand by until the last minute and watch Little Mo get prosecuted. And let's not forget that before Stella started baiting Ben, Ben baited Stella - the difference there, being that Ben baited her as a child might bait an adult, and Stella baited back as an evil child disguised as an adult. He learned enough from her to torture his little sister, and he overreacted when he hit and injured Jordan.
Steve McFadden, speaking on the EastEnders' Revealed review after Heather's murder, stated that was always Ben's forte - overreacting and causing an awful lot of bother.
Ben's killing of Heather was, according to Phil, "one mistake." Pretty harsh, especially in an episode coming on the day Anders Breivik got 21 years for making 77 "mistakes" on an island in Norway. Phil thinks it's not fair that Ben's in prison; well, it's not fair that Heather's dead.
And Phil's alone and doesn't like that feeling. It brings out his insecurities. It gives him time to think, and Ben sussed that tonight: Phil's main feeling is one of guilt at all the bad things Ben has done since having to deal with Stella. But it's mete that we all remember who pushed Stella onto Phil in the first place: Peggy. Peggy, who thought the plain, but nice and no-nonsense Stella, the well-brought up, nicely-spoken professional would be a good wife for Phil, a good mother for Ben and an upwardly-mobile daughter-in-law for Peggy.
It wasn't just Phil who failed Ben during the Stella months, it was Peggy as well.
Phil's at his lowest point, especially after his final good-bye to Ben tonight. (We all know what this means. We had it when Ben first went off to juvy, and he told Phil not to visit him. It means - if EastEnders is still around in ten years' time - or even five years - Ben will return, reformed and with a new head.) I am sure we'll see Ben again.
To watch Phil in the last frame of tonight's episode is to watch him at his lowest.
But Sharon's here now.
I'm not saying she's going to work miracles, and whatever will happen will not happen overnight. But since she's returned, her best scenes have been with Ian and Phil, and it's obvious from what she said to Ian tonight, that Phil's told Sharon more in one hour-long meeting than he's told Shirley in five months. The important thing to note: Sharon didn't judge either Phil or Ian.
The writing was better for her tonight, although there were a couple of inconsistency niggles. For example, since Ian was coerced into going off with Phil on a Ben-chase, I presume he didn't babysit for Dennis, but there Sharon was, doing her bit at the R and R. Who was watching Dennis? I can only assume Max, perhaps; or Lollygag, as she wasn't there propping up the bar with her stick insect arms and fluttering her false eyelashes at Toad Jr.
The other inconsistency was Katshit walking into the R and R. No reaction whatsoever from either Sharon or Katshit, aside from Katshit leering jealously at Jack. Honestly since she's started fucking DEREK (I'm taking bets that it's he), she seems to think every man with a member in Walford should worship her by whipping his out and waving it in her direction.
Sharon and Katshit have all sorts of history, nonetheless being Kat's perverting the course of justice (like Jay) in 2005 to get the fragrant Zoe, who struck the first blow to Den Watts's head, out of Walford. Yet tonight, they totally blanked each other.
And why is Janine, another character with an even richer history of associating with Sharon, still acting as though Sharon is a stranger? Lorraine Newman really needs to address these inconsistencies, because the long-term viewers are picking up on them and picking them apart.
And, finally, for the older tranche of weenie-weenies who still go on about Shannis and creamed their knickers at the vestigial resemblance Toad Jr bears to Dennis Rickman - and I'm talking about those one-brain-celled wonders wishing and hoping that Sharon would be all over him like a bad rash ... they didn't even glance in each other's direction.
In the first place, he's nothing like Dennis Rickman. In the second place, you can positively smell the steroids on him and in the third place, he's a mouth-breather.
David Witts AFTER the Green Room
The mouth-breathing remains the same.
I was actually going to leave the worst for last, but I'll put it in the middle and get it the hell out of the way.
The most interesting dynamic tonight was Phil and anyone or Ian and anyone; but we had the pleasure tonight - a rare one - of seeing the five worst characters on the show actually on the show altogether - the Moon Goons, Toad Jr, Fatboy and Katshit. Many were in the same scenes.
Jesus H Christ-on-a-bike, if Lorraine Newman cannot see how fucking dire Tony Discipline and David Witts are, she's blind and she needs to re-evaluate her position as Executive Producer. These boys have no diction. Their speech is gutteral and unintelligible. Please, if they're keeping these bits of beefcake on the show for the sake of pre-pubescent girls or the lowest common denominator of woman, at least fork out for fucking diction lessons.
Discipline's smell-the-fart acting combined with Witt's protuberant tongue, which seems so large that his mouth cannot shut properly, is really off-putting.
However, my understanding is that Tyler is supposed to be Mr Positive, whilst Toad Jr is supposed to be Mr Negative. (Any doubt about the latter for the brain-dead amongst the viewers was reiterated by Toad Jr at the club as he expressly described himself to Kim as an undesireable.) Perhaps that was more than just a nuance in the direction of Kim, as permission for her to make an unfunny double entendre remark.
AntKnee's sudden passion for the virginal Alice is boring. AntKnee is boring. We don't need this prolonged shit with a character who was a loser from day one - simply because he was in over his head and because he was hired by an EP who fancied him and had no directional arc for his character.
Just-the-fuck-GO.
And not only is Alice geeky, she's unfashionably virginal as well. Lucky girl, that she's chosen nice Poppy for a friend, who was understanding of her "predicament." Her bitchy cousin and Lollygag would have giggled insanely and made fun of her.
I like Alice. I like Poppy. They both have jobs (although, I'm certain it won't be long before Alice is sacked from whatever it is she does - thus enabling her to work on the market/at the carlot/at McKlunky's/sweeping the streets/whatever.) In fact, I'd dispense with the other three entitled madams and keep these two girls.
I didn't mention Whitney. I detest Whitney with my life, especially the Shitney duo. However, I actually like her when she interacts with Janine - but, lordy, why all of a sudden is she going for the ghoulish whore look? The lathered-on lipstic and the Egyptian eyes? It looks cheaper than cheap and her look almost makes Walford's resident whore, Kat, look decent.
Speaking of Kat, what a deceiving bitch. How anyone can drink happily in an environment where you have to suffer her greasy slutface is beyond me. I hate the openly condescending way she treats Alfie now as well. I know he annoys a lot of people, but Alfie is one of the genuinely good people in the Square. OK, he gave Fatboy bad advice and he feels responsible. Actually, having Fats work the bar might not be bad, if Alfie could get him to tone down the Ali-G act and just be Arthur. Kat's pithy remark about Fatboy reminding Alfie of himself sucked, as did the look on her face when Alfie told her to go to ladies' night at the R and R, the cheating skank. I can't wait for him to find out what she's been doing, and to kick her cheap arse to the gutter where it belongs. I want her to go.
Janine and Shirley are always watchable, and Janine is particularly poignant. She's so insecure with her trust issues, and Michael thinks it's all a tease game and doesn't understand. I just feel if more time at the beginning of the year had been spent delving into both their trust and daddy issues, having them explore those with each other, instead of Shitney with balloons, EastEnders may not be in the state it's in at the moment.
That said, Janine put all the women on that show to shame tonight when she dolled up to the nines to go to the club. She looked understated, elegant and classy.
Shirley is in hate mode now - hating Phil, hating Ben and hating Jay. Most of all, I think, she's hating herself, especially for her behaviour to Heather during the days leading up to her death. Yes, Ben killed Heather. Yes, Phil and Jay covered this up. But Shirley forsook Heather as well, and that can't be an easy cross to bear. So now it looks as though she's going to focuse all her energies on an all-out war with Phil, including Sharon in that situation. Her calling Sharon "Tinkerbell" tonight was unnecessary. Sharon had nothing to do with this, but her unseen presence hung over Shirley's relationship with Phil like the Sword of Damocles, because Shirley knew Phil loved and still loves Sharon. Sharon made Shirley look smal, blowing off Shirley's remark about Phil never staying long in a relationship.
Her attitude was too much for Andrew. I got the impression that his gazing at Heather's empty flat meant the end of an era for him in Walford. I won't miss him.
Decent episode. Get rid of the unnecessary youths, mind you.
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