The Branning Show - Review: 18.09.2012

This show has ceased to be EastEnders. It is now The Branning Show, with the largest and most unlikeable family in the Square front, centre and involved in everything, even if it's only peripherally.

Verdict on tonight's episode? OK, I want everyone to pay attention ... pukelator and peepot. Puke and piss. Nothing worth bragging about in tonight's episode. It was another teenfest, teen-oriented pukefest, because it's patently obvious that Lorraine Newman wants to target the lowest common denominator of viewer, the fanboy and weenie-girl who think the functionally illiterate greasy-haired pikey from Bexley is Walford's fit girl. With all the money she brags about making on her Facebook page - get that, EastEnders? Jacqueline Jossa has a Facebook page she's not supposed to have - maybe she'll fork out and hire a tutor to deal with her inveterately ignorant misspellings and her atrocious grammar. One wonders how she reads, much less learns, her lines.

Jacqueline Jossa should lay off Facebook, bragging about her wealth to dumbass young people silly enough to worship her ass; and her boss should lay off appealing to the Twitter'n Teen set, because that ain't EastEnders; and you'd think Newman would know better. I am sorry, but I am sensing a curious feeling of deja vu with Newman at the moment. Somehow, I keep thinking of Louise Berridge, whose tenure began the downward spiral of this show.

The only storyline at the moment not concerning the Brannings was the storyline concerning Syed - more about that later.

Let's get the shit out of the way, first.

As I've said before, time was when EastEnders showed young people being full of drive and ambition. They may not have wanted to conquer the world, but they certainly wanted to better themselves and their circumstances - Ian and his City and Guilds in catering; Michelle's struggle for a degree; Sonia's desire to be a nurse.

Tonight, we concentrated on two young people, who are spoiled, belligerant, entited, yobbish and rude. Who the flaming fuck do Joey the Mouth-Breather and Lauren the Upper-Lip Sucker think they are. (Please, please, please, please, please someone tell Jossa that this is not the stage. The film set has microphones, your make-up is subtle, which means the audience, the viewers, can see the soupcon of nuance in your look you wish to convey. There is no need to gurn and overract.)

For all the people who whined and moaned about Cary Wicks shouting her lines and waving her arms about during her first stint there, look at Jossa. If she raises that upper lip of hers in a sneer anymore, she's in danger of suffocating from inhaling it.

Joey and Lauren do nothing. I mean, absolutely nothing. Max and Tanya ordered Lauren to get a job when she quit sixth form. They each offered her employment in businesses they own, but when she refused to behave responsibly, they fucking gave up. Now, they allow her to come and go as she pleases, hand her money to splurge out on booze and say nothing, other than the odd catty remark. Lauren is rude, snarky, has no respect for either of her parents and expects to be supported fully, but be allowed to do what she wants.

This snide, little bitch should be rotting in some Juvenile Detention Centre someplace, watching her back in the showers whenever she bends over to pick up the soap.

Joey, on the other hand, is a Class A tosser. At least Mr Toad acknowledges what everyone else who perspicaciously watches the show recognises - that the wooden Tadpole is the spit of Daddy Dearest - both are liars, lazy, manipulative, brutal and bullying.

Joey ponces about, working the bar at R and R for minimum wage, porking a bag of bones  ...

Lucy Beale

and filling her pea-brain with poison about her father. So he's handed the keys to a lock-up which never legally belonged to the previous "owner" anyway, in order that he can develop his own business, and what does he do?

The only thing he and his nit-brained cousin can think of doing is get in some booze and destroy someone else's stock. Is Lauren that stupid that she thinks that just because Whitney is in Suffolk visiting Carol and the kids (a cover for McGarty's suspension), that Tyler has actually left Walford and has nothing for which to return? Is she stupid? She and Whitney were never far from each others' assholes. She would know from Whitney that Tyler had left to work with his father; she would also know that, sometimes, couples spend time apart, and that there had been no word of a break-up; but she is such a dumb twat, she thinks Tyler went off to loll about in the sun.

Are these people for fucking real and do the EastEnders' production crew expect us to like them?

And tonight we were given a real and rare treat - an exhibition of the highest order in watching the inestimable Mr Tony Discipline and the efficacious Mr David Witts show us their diverse acting talents and warn the world that this is the future of British acting. First, we had Mr Witts's unintelligible tongue-lolling technique, with his mouth agape all the time. Then, we were presented with Mr Discipline's singular smell-the-fart method acting.

Matt LeBlanc, the Master of Smell-the-Fart Techique

Tony Discipline, introducing Smell-the-Fart Technique to EastEnders

The One Who Farted But Smelled Her Upper Lip

Add in Fatboy to the equation, because Fatboy has taken on the identity of the pushover, nice guy - the one who has a job in the Vic, but who gets rolled over to provide free drinks for a bunch of losers; tonight, he's "commanded" to bring his laptop and DJ the Branning sprogs' impromptu party. Joey and Lauren treated Fatboy like their personal servant, and I wonder if the old Branning racist trait is showing through here, as Fatboy is mixed race. I'd love for EastEnders to tackle this pejorative trait exhibited by two generations of Brannings, but Newman doesn't have the nous, the integrity or the b-a-l-l-s. So we'll pretend their treatment of Fatboy is something else, shall we?

And the show must truly be on its last legs, if I actually found myself liking Tyler Moon tonight. Tyler's become the proverbial nice boy in the background, which means that someplace along the line, his greasy girlfriend, Whitney, will probably fuck Turd Branning.

Oh, and Jacqueline Jossa's hair needed a good wash. Icky. And finally, for fuck's sake, Tyler's brother is Anthony - pronounced An-tho-ny. Not Ananee. Who the hell says that name like that? I almost prefer the Slater verson of AntKnee.

Now to the adult shit.

I'm still trying to figure out who suggested Letitia Dean's current hairstyle. It's horrendous. Her big hair has big hair. That's not even an 80s style. In fact, it's the cheapest trailer trash end of Nashville 1950s style. It's got Tammy Wynette's tease, Loretta Lynn's length and Dolly Parton's peroxide. 

I'm very angry at the moment of the Branningisation of Sharon, the way they've made her an appendage of that family. She spends more screentime with them than she does with Phil or Ian - albeit Ian got a mention tonight as being the favourite babysitter of DamienDen. Honestly, her character is all over the place, and tonight she was a vehicle for Jack Branning.

There are few women on the Square in Jack's generation who aren't related to him, so to people who knew better on the production team, it made sense to pair him with Sharon. There was even a tribute to Ronnie tonight as he ceremoniously threw a letter addressed to her in the bin. Jack's story tonight even peripherally brought him into the frame of Michael's storyline, for it was Michael's soliloquy at the beginning, as he jiggled Scarlett on his lap at the boxing club and wondered aloud how Janine could totally remove her assets from his grasp that brought Jack's mind around to Sharon.

I almost puked again when I heard Michael describe himself as the brains behind Janine's operation. She was doing just fine without him before he came into her life (and he only wanted to know her when she inherited her fortune), and Janine obviously thought that Michael would only result in reducing her to penury. He's lucky she left a roof over his head.

But it was Michael who propelled Jack to Sharon - but not before he had reminded Jack that, not only did he have two failed marriages, but kids dropped all over the place. People cannot remind Jack of that enough for me.

And Sharon was all over the place. Yes, I know she was always a flirt, but her behaviour around Jack is so forced and phoney. I hate the way she goes all coy and simpering and purses up her lips in a moue of a pout. It only enhances the overt blowsiness in which they've enveloped her now. I can't express how much this annoys me - Sharon, Bianca and Kat were three of my favourite characters, three strong, iconic females from three different eras, and within the past two years, this lot in charge now at EastEnders have fucked them over big time.

Where the hell is John Yorke and why isn't he chewing nails and pissing rust over this? Fair dos for Sharon putting Jack in his place for presuming to "arrange" Tanya to babysit DamienDen, whilst he and Mommy Dearest got down to jiggle duties, but Sharon was quick to dump Denny with Uncle Ian (which is all Ian seems to do for her these days). Jack showed how much he didn't know about kids when Sharon spied a dinner of sweets for DamienDen ... glucose and ADHD on the horizon.

But if that isn't bad, TPTB make Sharon the man-eater, who comes on full force with Jack. It's Sharon who wants a piece of the action, so even though she was loathe to leave Denny previously that evening, she managed to get Ian to babysit him long enough, she hoped, to secure a fuck from Jack. Ah, but it's Jack, the noble male, who has a bit of soliloquy of his own - a bit of old tripe with a red herring thrown in - explaining to Sharon that he's had his fill of ONS's, with nameless girls and married women (psssst ... that's the red herring that's supposed to make all the numpties say, "Ooooh, I'll bet 'e's Kat's Shagger.")

The Miserable Masood: You just know Chryed's about to leave. They have a storyline. I was never the biggest Syed fan. I always felt he was a character who arrived with loads of potential - the blacksheep son who'd embezzled from the family business and had to leave in shame for that - but who devolved into a character totally defined by his sexuality. Not only that, he ticked two boxes for politically correct quotae - he was the gay Muslim.

During his tenure on the show, Syed's acquired no friends. He half-heartedly had a job as a masseur, but that's fallen by the wayside. Somehow, he seems to have acquired custody of his daughter, and Zainab seems to have joined the Society of 21st Century Liberal and Broad-minded Folk in being thrilled to bits that Syed and Christian have set a date for the wedding. In two years, she's gone from zero to hero, once describing Syed as "depraved," and crossing the street whenever she saw Christian.

For me, Syed is just wet. And filled with self-pity, and he's also low enough to use his brother's business problems as a means of solving his own. Illegally, of course.

Tamwar, on the other hand, is just a miserable little shit, who allows himself to be bullied by Zainab. Tamwar fought so hard to be with Afia, and then when he married her, he threw her under the proverbial bus, siding with Mummy and behaving more like the dutiful son than the responsible husband. Well, Afia left, and he's done nothing but wallow in self-pity since then. Bah, be gone! You bore me.

I guess we're supposed to like Lola now that she plays at being a responsible mum, but responsible mothers don't run out of nappies and leave a kid to be bound in a tea towel. That social worker looks like a real hardnosed bitch, and I'll bet anything Lexi gets taken away from Lola. I'd actually like for Lola to get taken away from Walford, preferably in a police wagon.

And what's all this shit about Jay's real name? When you change your name by deed poll, your new name is your real name. Jay should seriously think about reverting to Jay Brown, considering the appalling way the Mitchells have treated him.

Having said that, Billy and Michael were the watchable ones tonight. I know a lot of people don't like Billy, but he does try so hard, including with the unfunny bit about Kim and Mr Buff. But I'm glad they showed some familiarity between Billy and Sharon, who go back a fair way. It was a hodgepodge and more than a bit stupid that Billy sacked the cleaning staff and then took on three new clients. Did he seriously think nasty-nice Michael would deign to clean toilets, himelf? Now that he's unemployed, this is another nail in the coffin for Lola's attempt to keep Lexi.

Michael trying to cope with Scarlett - dancing about the boxing club's office (which looked none too clean for an infant) then sprinting with her, lapping the Square. He's having trouble coping.

Pisspoor episode. Too many Brannings.

Update:  Goodness knows, I am no Tyler Moon fan, but I have to say this to all the know-it-alls on Walford Web kindergarten and that's this: Tony Discipline has won a gong for the show, and that means he ain't going anywhere Besides, he's part of a couple constructed for publicity purposes to sell the show, and as long as Jacqueline Jossa's in gurning mood, Discipline won't be far behind. I'll be the first to say, I'd like nothing better than for an EP, any EP (as this EP obviously is too timid to do this), to hand the untalented likes of Discipline and Witts their walking cards, along with Jossa and McGarty, two lazy actresses who believe their own hype and rate themselves higher than their z-list celebrity status. At the moment, however, Discipline is no longer the worst actor on EastEnders. That accolade belongs to the steroidically-enhanced wooden boy wonder, David Witts.

And since when did Christian morph into Tintin? Does that mean Syed is officially Milou?

Final Update: Shoutout to the Masoods tonight, Zainab in particular for the line uttered when Syed expressed reluctance to help his brother. "You're not donating a kidney."

Tribute there to what is arguably the worst storyline in EastEnders' history (before Shaggergate): the Ferreiras and Kidneygate.