OK, maybe it's because I've only just returned from America, itself, but this episode, airing on Monday 24th of September had a creepy American feel about it - sort of a blend of Brannings meet cheesy American daytime soap crossed with Brannings in cheesy American sitcom.
Here's Paul Simon with his tribute:-
Basically, it was a very weak episode. When the highlight of the thing, for me, was watching Roxy and AJ couple, then I know it's a soap in the doldrums. Roxy is a character who, previously this year, showed much potential. Backburnered and downplayed in favour of the Ice Queen of Tragedy (her sister), Roxy suffered for almost five years from lack of character development, She's the material girl caught eternally in a web of perpetual adolescence-cum-twentysomething, when she's really a single mother on the wrong side of thirty with no job and no ambition and - until recently - a powerful crush on Alfie Moon, which was probably the first time in her life she's actually loved someone who was a bona fide adult.
This is why people erroneously and continuously remark about the vast age difference between her and Alfie - with some assholes incapable of critical thinking, showing their ignorance by referring to her nickname for him ("Grandad"). Some sharpster even reckoned that there was a twenty year age gap in Alfie and Roxy.
Listen, Roxy is 35 and Alfie is 47. That's twelve years. There was a twelve-year age gap in Grant and Tiffany. There were twenty-year age gaps in Billy Mitchell and both his wives, but no one remarked upon it.
People liked the combination of Alfie and Roxy. They had charisma and sexual attraction. The characters genuinely liked and cared about one another. An Alfie-Roxy combination would give both characters the rejuvenation and shot in the arms their characterisation needs. Instead, Roxy's being sacrificed at the altar of Saint Kat, so we'll see Roxy the eternal party girl once again - which is what we saw in this episode: hanging out, waiting for Christian, who's moved on as he's planning his wedding, accepting an offer of a drunken afternoon with AJ, another eternal child who sleeps until noon and mooches off his relatives the way Roxy does. Jack's got Amy - always bad news for Roxy when she's about to misbehave. Jack's the worst kind of father who doesn't hesitate to take the moral high ground, as do all of the Brannings.
And what else does the AJ-Roxy combination lead to? Another faux comedy moment with the Masoods and a sexual coupling upstairs, with Zainab verbally restrained, in solid British sitcom fashion by Mas and her newfound BFF, Christian.
Roxy, the eternal material girl and background character. She so deserves better.
Wherein Jack and Sharon Enter the Realm of The Bold and the Beautiful
Sharon has plans for the R and R, and all of a sudden, TPTB are trying to promote Joey the wooden talking dick
Here's Paul Simon with his tribute:-
Basically, it was a very weak episode. When the highlight of the thing, for me, was watching Roxy and AJ couple, then I know it's a soap in the doldrums. Roxy is a character who, previously this year, showed much potential. Backburnered and downplayed in favour of the Ice Queen of Tragedy (her sister), Roxy suffered for almost five years from lack of character development, She's the material girl caught eternally in a web of perpetual adolescence-cum-twentysomething, when she's really a single mother on the wrong side of thirty with no job and no ambition and - until recently - a powerful crush on Alfie Moon, which was probably the first time in her life she's actually loved someone who was a bona fide adult.
This is why people erroneously and continuously remark about the vast age difference between her and Alfie - with some assholes incapable of critical thinking, showing their ignorance by referring to her nickname for him ("Grandad"). Some sharpster even reckoned that there was a twenty year age gap in Alfie and Roxy.
Listen, Roxy is 35 and Alfie is 47. That's twelve years. There was a twelve-year age gap in Grant and Tiffany. There were twenty-year age gaps in Billy Mitchell and both his wives, but no one remarked upon it.
People liked the combination of Alfie and Roxy. They had charisma and sexual attraction. The characters genuinely liked and cared about one another. An Alfie-Roxy combination would give both characters the rejuvenation and shot in the arms their characterisation needs. Instead, Roxy's being sacrificed at the altar of Saint Kat, so we'll see Roxy the eternal party girl once again - which is what we saw in this episode: hanging out, waiting for Christian, who's moved on as he's planning his wedding, accepting an offer of a drunken afternoon with AJ, another eternal child who sleeps until noon and mooches off his relatives the way Roxy does. Jack's got Amy - always bad news for Roxy when she's about to misbehave. Jack's the worst kind of father who doesn't hesitate to take the moral high ground, as do all of the Brannings.
And what else does the AJ-Roxy combination lead to? Another faux comedy moment with the Masoods and a sexual coupling upstairs, with Zainab verbally restrained, in solid British sitcom fashion by Mas and her newfound BFF, Christian.
Roxy, the eternal material girl and background character. She so deserves better.
Wherein Jack and Sharon Enter the Realm of The Bold and the Beautiful
Sharon has plans for the R and R, and all of a sudden, TPTB are trying to promote Joey the wooden talking dick
Joey Branning
as an up-and-coming businessman with a flair for ideas and bad timing. The scene at the club with Sharon airing business ideas with an unintelligible, garbling Joey, whose line delivery was amateurish, rushed and just downright o-f-f was embarrassing for the show and the actress, but what followed was pure shit from the worst of American soaps.
Jack: Know what I'm doing tonight.
Sharon (pursing her lips and fluttering her eyelashes): No, but I'm sure you're going to tell me.
Jack: I'm taking you to dinner.
You get the gist. All cooing and oohing and Sharon making breathy dialogue with double entendre facial expressions. Cue soap opera music:=
Of course, the scene ends with a totally American bad soap opera attempt at comedy with Joey waiting just outside the door, still talking business shit.
All one had to do was watch that bad, totally pukeworthy performance by Letitia Dean with Jack the Walking Penis Branning and then watch her scene at the end of the show with Steve McFadden to see the real Sharon. McFadden and Dean were electric. Maslen and Dean were, well ...
At least now we know that Sharon, like Phil, is an addict, and one can only live in hope that this connection will bind them together as a couple rather than using her to justify the continued bad performance of a mediocre actor as a character everyone finds more Joke than Jack.
And Now for Something Completely Different
Please can Lola go now? I don't like her, don't like her attitude and she's another character who never learns. She is as bad as the overbearing social worker in a different way. And as Mas now seems to be a postman again during the noontime rush at the Arjee Bahjee, instead of the teaching assistant he briefly was the other week, have TPTB forgotten that Abi Branning is supposed to be in sixth form college? Instead, she's pallin' around with a no-mark like Lola and allowing her to coerce her into breaking into business premises to steal cleaning goods?
What was even more disappointing was the way she managed to "charm" Patrick around to condoning her actions. Patrick was right initially - stealing is stealing, and if she gets away with taking stuff Michael doesn't even care about, she'll go onto something bigger and better. Please, stop trying to foist this entitled and ungrateful, little bitch onto us as a sympathetic creature; because she's not.
The instant where Patrick caught Lola and Abi in the Butcher's Joints premises, with Lola giving that sickly sweet little smile and telling Patrick to grab a mop was American sitcomdom at its lowest level. Puke.
Line of the Night: Chubby Boy
That said, Fatboy was totally obnoxious tonight. His attitude to Phil was lazy and disrespectful. He was whining, whingeing and off-colour about having to sort the cellar out. I actually felt sorry for Phil, especially when he found that Ben was being tried for murder; and there was the ubiquitous Branning involvement with Cora playing the entire Greek chorus, advising Phil about the state of his garage doors. Cue creepy music ...
OMIGOD ... who could have splashed the graffiti on Phil's garage door? OMIGOD ... I can feel MonaLisa's excitement ... could it be Shirley?
All in all a pathetic episode.
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