Angie's Den, one of the most articulate and perspicacious posters inhabiting the Walford Web kindergarten beautifully expresses an opinion with which I wholeheartedly concur:-
She continues:-
I couldn't have expressed this better, myself. In fact, I'll go on record asking now why the hell TPTB just don't change the title of the programme from EastEnders to BranningVille, because that's what we're currently treated to - another day in BranningVille.
In my opinion, that jumped-up bunch of scrubbed-up white trash pretending to be and aspiring to Middle Class respectability without conforming to the norms, are the reason the show is in crisis today.
There! I said it. In crisis. Because it is just that. And anyone, anyone, who says otherwise has his head up his arse so far, he'll be blinded by the light of day once he pulls it out. And, yes, that means you, Lorraine Newman, because you've steadily signed off on their increased inbreeding over the years.
Fine, Max was a great addition to the cast and as interesting and as nuanced and multi-faceted a character as Phil Mitchell. But everyone who came after him, including his floozy oif a wife, are surplus to requirements. Jack was created entirely for Ronnie, in someone's cack-handed attempt to recreate Steve and Mel Owen; but he quickly turned into a walking sperminator, sleeping his way through two Mitchell sisters and a cousin and impregnating all three, then borrowing his brother's wife and later enjoying a bonk with her drug-addled sister.
Now their storyline has him sleeping his way through a bevy of nameless girls and parading them at the breakfast table in front of his younger daughter and her mother, yet it's he and some of the more lame-brained viewers who seek to describe Amy's mum, Roxy Mitchell, as a slut incarnate with nary a word to say about Jack.
Abi apart, the Branning kids are played by a collection of talentless gurners, mouth-breathers and geeks. The only new kid on the block with a passable resemblance to normal (Alice) is soon to be chavved up, if her "make-over" in some chav lads' mag is any evidence.
Pat Evans, the lychpin and matriarch of the Square was subordinated at the end, to a quivering mass of jelly, scared shitless at the prospect of facing Derek Branning. Derek Branning?! A cartoon villain as frightening as Toad of Toad Hall on acid. This was the woman who stared down the likes of Den Watts, Grant and Phil Mitchell and Jonnie Allen. This was one of only two women whom Phil Mitchell respected, and she's frightened speechless of Derek Branning?
Her death scene was dominated by Brannings - threatened by Derek on her deathbed and visited by Max and cancer-cold-ridden Tanya, who'd never spoken to the woman in the six years they'd been on the show; and the gist behind that was Tanya's hyper-ventilated reaction to the fact that Pat was dying of cancer and Bouncy had a cancer cold, herself.
I'm a great, great fan of Sharon's, but I'll admit to being wary of her returning this time. After all, I was also a great fan of Kat's at one time, and I'd seen the fuck-up they'd made of her return. I witnessed the decimation of Bianca from a loving mother into a criminal chav with anger management issues and not a grain of common sense, someone clearly incapable of disciplining and taking care of her own children without an older woman (Pat and, subsequently, Carol) to take on the heavy lifting.
Why should Sharon be any different?
Sharon returned this time as a woman in her forties with a small child. The single defining factor of Sharon's character was her strength, her ability to rise like a phoenix from any catastrophe and to go forward. This is the reason she's so treasured by Phil Mitchell. She is his equal; she has his admiration and she has, to a great degree, a modicum of strength he craves for himself.
As a person ages, they find that new friendships are few and far between. People cling to the epiphany of that which or those which they find the most familiar. The last time Sharon was on the Square, she interacted exclusively with characters which were a part of her past - the Fowlers, Vicky, the Mitchells and the newer members of her own family (Chrissie and Dennis). Any interaction with newer characters occurred only in the way it impeded upon her closer connections.
Yes, there are fewer people with whom she's close this time around, but those people were involved in storylines where Sharon could easily have featured.
For example, it should have been Sharon (and not Zainab) who encouraged Ian to seek medical help for his breakdown. It should have been Sharon reading the riot act to Lucy Beale and sussing that that wooden-topped turd of a mouth-breather, Joey Branning, was poisoning her attitude to Ian.
It should have been Sharon listening to Phil's angst, on screen, as he agonised over Ben's fate. Instead, we got all those scenes implied off-screen, rather than showcase the talents of Steve McFadden and Letitia Dean. It should be Sharon helping Phil to move forward.
It should have been Sharon, empathising with a stressed-out Janine, dealing on her own with a tetchy baby and a recalcitrant husband. Sharon's been there and done that and has history with Janine. Instead, we got a totally bizarre scene where Sharon felt compelled to introduce herself to Janine as if they had no previous history whatsoever.
As far as her son goes, Sharon would have gained strength from him and she would be raising him in that strength in honour of his father and grandfather. She and he are from sterner stuff, and Sharon brooked no nonsense.
Instead, we get this quivery, shaky, overbearing mother, obsessing about a clearly effeminate little boy (haul out Ben's tap-dancing shoes), who spent her first night back in Walford, sleeping with Jack Branning, whom she'd known less than a day and who could have been anyone. This is something Sharon would never have done.
Since that time, she's spent virtually every episode, simpering up to Jack, breathing heavily and doubling down on the sexual innuendos, when she isn't - as Angie's Den beautifully put it - paying homage at the court of Queen Tanya. I mean, what an insulting scene, with Sharon virtually begging Tanya to be a bridesmaid at her wedding! And Tanya throwing it back at her that she "simply wasn't her best friend enough yet."
Well, of course she isn't. And what does she really know about the Brannings, a family from whose collective smelly arses Sharon can't seem to drag her head?
Does she know that Jack was Ronnie Mitchell's husband or that he fathered kids on her, her sister Roxy and Sam Mitchell (who used to be Sharon's sister-in-law?) I mean, if Sharon were still married to Grant, she'd be Richard's aunt.
Does she know that Jack used to be a bent copper, so in thrall to promoting drugs' barons that when they thought he'd snitched on them, they crippled his daughter?
Does she know that Jack has at least two children on the Continent that he selfom sees and barely remembers? That qualifies him to be such a good father figure for Denny. Jack's only cultivating the kid as a means of fucking Sharon, so Denny's her inadvertant pimp.
Does she know that Jack spent a year fucking around with Tanya and was prepared to take her skanky fat arse away from Walford with Max's children (illegally)?
Does she know that Jack slept with Tanya's drug-addled sister, Rainie?
Does she know, in fact, that Jack is a male slut, who - when he hasn't been able to bag Sharon again in his bed - has been parading a plethora of nameless beauties past the breakfast table where his younger daughter is sitting? Maybe Sharon should be tested for STI infections?
As for Tanya, does she know that when her new BFF was eighteen, she'd broken up a marriage, got up the duff by Max and implored him to abandon his wife and child? Does she know how Tanya laughed at reminiscences of that -the fact that Max had to treat her to cheap dates at the beginning of their relationship as he was supporting a wife and kid at home?
Does she know that when Tanya found out Max, a serial cheat, was shagging his son's girlfriend, that she drugged Max and buried him alive? Does she know that, in the wake of the first break-up of her marriage to Max, she fucked the local psycho in order to get him onside to help her murder Max.
Does she know that she lied through her pearly teeth about what she was really up to in order to get Dot to babysit her kids whilst she romped the beds with Jack Branning?
Does she know that she covered for her pithy, spoiled, entitled and gurning daughter Lauren, who also tried to kill Max?
Does she know that she wasn't married to Gormless Greg for five minutes before she was fucking Max and having a laugh about "Bob-the-Builder" babysitting their son?
Does she know that Tanya robbed Roxy Mitchell blind?
Does she know that the fragrant Tanya helped her father kill himself when she was only thirteen?
No, I don't suppose she'd know any of that, nor would the slimey, evasive, morally bankrupt Brannings venture to tell her as such.
And - oh, my godfathers! - what the hell have they done with Sharon's appearance, especially last night. "Blowsy" isn't the word. She looks like the lovechild gone wrong of Dolly Parton and Diana Dors - obviously all for the benefit of making Queen Tanya look good.
Sharon is one of the original cast members of EastEnders, the adopted daughter of a truly iconic couple who made the Vic the place to be; yet this lot of people in charge have turned her into a third-rate Branning satellite.
Lorraine Newman, who started working on the programme at the time of Sharongate, should know this character inside out. If she doesn't, she isn't doing her job.
Smack her and sack her, before anymore ruination is done.
Boring episode tonight and sorry if this rubs anyone the wrong way but I'm bitterly disappointed that Sharon has quite clearly been brought back to be a supporting character in BranningEnders. It's blatantly obvious the writers have used an iconic character to make the Brannings seem more important. Tanya and Sharon? Give me break! Jack and Sharon? Do me a favour! All she's done for almost the entire duration of this stint so far is play backup to the Brannings. I can't be the only Sharon fan pissed off at this but if I am then I'm happy to stand alone and state that her comeback so far has been absolute pants.
Just like Pat's exit, Sharon's comeback has been used as a promotion piece for the Branning family. Thanks a lot, EastEnders, for dragging one of the last remaining legends into the gutter with that awful family and being so opportunistic as to use probably the biggest fan favourite character to boost them up.
She continues:-
It's the worst comeback of a major character in a soap I can ever remember. She has done absolutely nothing except fuss after Denny and play support to the Brannings. All I keep asking myself is ''Why did they bring her back?''. The only answer I can come up with is because she's a well known face that they've brought back to prop up the Brannings. Imagine if Den, Grant, Peggy, Kat, Bianca, Janine or any of the others had returned to the show and been given absolutely nothing of substance to do. I cringed tonight at Sharon basking in the glory of Queen Tanya and holding out her hand to be asked to be her bridesmaid. Sharon Watts a ''background character''. Hell has truly frozen over. I remember sitting through all the sensationalized Branning crap over the last 6 years and wishing Sharon would return to give me a break from it. Never in my wildest dreams did I think she'd end up being a bit player in their storylines
I couldn't have expressed this better, myself. In fact, I'll go on record asking now why the hell TPTB just don't change the title of the programme from EastEnders to BranningVille, because that's what we're currently treated to - another day in BranningVille.
In my opinion, that jumped-up bunch of scrubbed-up white trash pretending to be and aspiring to Middle Class respectability without conforming to the norms, are the reason the show is in crisis today.
There! I said it. In crisis. Because it is just that. And anyone, anyone, who says otherwise has his head up his arse so far, he'll be blinded by the light of day once he pulls it out. And, yes, that means you, Lorraine Newman, because you've steadily signed off on their increased inbreeding over the years.
Fine, Max was a great addition to the cast and as interesting and as nuanced and multi-faceted a character as Phil Mitchell. But everyone who came after him, including his floozy oif a wife, are surplus to requirements. Jack was created entirely for Ronnie, in someone's cack-handed attempt to recreate Steve and Mel Owen; but he quickly turned into a walking sperminator, sleeping his way through two Mitchell sisters and a cousin and impregnating all three, then borrowing his brother's wife and later enjoying a bonk with her drug-addled sister.
Now their storyline has him sleeping his way through a bevy of nameless girls and parading them at the breakfast table in front of his younger daughter and her mother, yet it's he and some of the more lame-brained viewers who seek to describe Amy's mum, Roxy Mitchell, as a slut incarnate with nary a word to say about Jack.
Abi apart, the Branning kids are played by a collection of talentless gurners, mouth-breathers and geeks. The only new kid on the block with a passable resemblance to normal (Alice) is soon to be chavved up, if her "make-over" in some chav lads' mag is any evidence.
Pat Evans, the lychpin and matriarch of the Square was subordinated at the end, to a quivering mass of jelly, scared shitless at the prospect of facing Derek Branning. Derek Branning?! A cartoon villain as frightening as Toad of Toad Hall on acid. This was the woman who stared down the likes of Den Watts, Grant and Phil Mitchell and Jonnie Allen. This was one of only two women whom Phil Mitchell respected, and she's frightened speechless of Derek Branning?
Her death scene was dominated by Brannings - threatened by Derek on her deathbed and visited by Max and cancer-cold-ridden Tanya, who'd never spoken to the woman in the six years they'd been on the show; and the gist behind that was Tanya's hyper-ventilated reaction to the fact that Pat was dying of cancer and Bouncy had a cancer cold, herself.
I'm a great, great fan of Sharon's, but I'll admit to being wary of her returning this time. After all, I was also a great fan of Kat's at one time, and I'd seen the fuck-up they'd made of her return. I witnessed the decimation of Bianca from a loving mother into a criminal chav with anger management issues and not a grain of common sense, someone clearly incapable of disciplining and taking care of her own children without an older woman (Pat and, subsequently, Carol) to take on the heavy lifting.
Why should Sharon be any different?
Sharon returned this time as a woman in her forties with a small child. The single defining factor of Sharon's character was her strength, her ability to rise like a phoenix from any catastrophe and to go forward. This is the reason she's so treasured by Phil Mitchell. She is his equal; she has his admiration and she has, to a great degree, a modicum of strength he craves for himself.
As a person ages, they find that new friendships are few and far between. People cling to the epiphany of that which or those which they find the most familiar. The last time Sharon was on the Square, she interacted exclusively with characters which were a part of her past - the Fowlers, Vicky, the Mitchells and the newer members of her own family (Chrissie and Dennis). Any interaction with newer characters occurred only in the way it impeded upon her closer connections.
Yes, there are fewer people with whom she's close this time around, but those people were involved in storylines where Sharon could easily have featured.
For example, it should have been Sharon (and not Zainab) who encouraged Ian to seek medical help for his breakdown. It should have been Sharon reading the riot act to Lucy Beale and sussing that that wooden-topped turd of a mouth-breather, Joey Branning, was poisoning her attitude to Ian.
It should have been Sharon listening to Phil's angst, on screen, as he agonised over Ben's fate. Instead, we got all those scenes implied off-screen, rather than showcase the talents of Steve McFadden and Letitia Dean. It should be Sharon helping Phil to move forward.
It should have been Sharon, empathising with a stressed-out Janine, dealing on her own with a tetchy baby and a recalcitrant husband. Sharon's been there and done that and has history with Janine. Instead, we got a totally bizarre scene where Sharon felt compelled to introduce herself to Janine as if they had no previous history whatsoever.
As far as her son goes, Sharon would have gained strength from him and she would be raising him in that strength in honour of his father and grandfather. She and he are from sterner stuff, and Sharon brooked no nonsense.
Instead, we get this quivery, shaky, overbearing mother, obsessing about a clearly effeminate little boy (haul out Ben's tap-dancing shoes), who spent her first night back in Walford, sleeping with Jack Branning, whom she'd known less than a day and who could have been anyone. This is something Sharon would never have done.
Since that time, she's spent virtually every episode, simpering up to Jack, breathing heavily and doubling down on the sexual innuendos, when she isn't - as Angie's Den beautifully put it - paying homage at the court of Queen Tanya. I mean, what an insulting scene, with Sharon virtually begging Tanya to be a bridesmaid at her wedding! And Tanya throwing it back at her that she "simply wasn't her best friend enough yet."
Well, of course she isn't. And what does she really know about the Brannings, a family from whose collective smelly arses Sharon can't seem to drag her head?
Does she know that Jack was Ronnie Mitchell's husband or that he fathered kids on her, her sister Roxy and Sam Mitchell (who used to be Sharon's sister-in-law?) I mean, if Sharon were still married to Grant, she'd be Richard's aunt.
Does she know that Jack used to be a bent copper, so in thrall to promoting drugs' barons that when they thought he'd snitched on them, they crippled his daughter?
Does she know that Jack has at least two children on the Continent that he selfom sees and barely remembers? That qualifies him to be such a good father figure for Denny. Jack's only cultivating the kid as a means of fucking Sharon, so Denny's her inadvertant pimp.
Does she know that Jack spent a year fucking around with Tanya and was prepared to take her skanky fat arse away from Walford with Max's children (illegally)?
Does she know that Jack slept with Tanya's drug-addled sister, Rainie?
Does she know, in fact, that Jack is a male slut, who - when he hasn't been able to bag Sharon again in his bed - has been parading a plethora of nameless beauties past the breakfast table where his younger daughter is sitting? Maybe Sharon should be tested for STI infections?
As for Tanya, does she know that when her new BFF was eighteen, she'd broken up a marriage, got up the duff by Max and implored him to abandon his wife and child? Does she know how Tanya laughed at reminiscences of that -the fact that Max had to treat her to cheap dates at the beginning of their relationship as he was supporting a wife and kid at home?
Does she know that when Tanya found out Max, a serial cheat, was shagging his son's girlfriend, that she drugged Max and buried him alive? Does she know that, in the wake of the first break-up of her marriage to Max, she fucked the local psycho in order to get him onside to help her murder Max.
Does she know that she lied through her pearly teeth about what she was really up to in order to get Dot to babysit her kids whilst she romped the beds with Jack Branning?
Does she know that she covered for her pithy, spoiled, entitled and gurning daughter Lauren, who also tried to kill Max?
Does she know that she wasn't married to Gormless Greg for five minutes before she was fucking Max and having a laugh about "Bob-the-Builder" babysitting their son?
Does she know that Tanya robbed Roxy Mitchell blind?
Does she know that the fragrant Tanya helped her father kill himself when she was only thirteen?
No, I don't suppose she'd know any of that, nor would the slimey, evasive, morally bankrupt Brannings venture to tell her as such.
And - oh, my godfathers! - what the hell have they done with Sharon's appearance, especially last night. "Blowsy" isn't the word. She looks like the lovechild gone wrong of Dolly Parton and Diana Dors - obviously all for the benefit of making Queen Tanya look good.
Sharon is one of the original cast members of EastEnders, the adopted daughter of a truly iconic couple who made the Vic the place to be; yet this lot of people in charge have turned her into a third-rate Branning satellite.
Lorraine Newman, who started working on the programme at the time of Sharongate, should know this character inside out. If she doesn't, she isn't doing her job.
Smack her and sack her, before anymore ruination is done.
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