The shadow of Ben hangs heavily across Albert Square. He's everywhere. He could even be revealed to be Shaggerman somehow.
Eastenders has heavily emphasized babies lately, pushing two of the most unsympathetic characters in the show's history as being souls for whom we should care deeply. We don't.
If anything, Michael Moon's plight makes me realise how much I miss Janine. It also makes me realise how much the writing room at EastEnders is going to follow the usual course of "evil Janine", who now adds baby abandonment to her dossier of dislike. Of course, they couldn't do anything out of the ordinary.
As intriguing as Steve John Shepherd made Michael Moon originally, after the character settled down, and as dynamic as he was in his initial association with Janine, his twists and turns and character foibles have got distinctly boring now. Maybe it was because, after SJS and Charlie Brooks were mooted as a pair, Brooks decided on her six-month sabbatical, which meant that something that could have been a big thing, suddenly had to become a tragic quirk.
And the quirk's resulted in everyone who didn't realise what was actually going on behind closed doors after Scarlett was born is going to pin this one down on "evil Janine."
I wanted to scream at the screen at that veritable moral ethicist Kat telling Michael that Janine's leaving wasn't his fault. (It was. We saw how he undermined her, how he lied to her repeatedly, how his deliberate secrecy drove her mad, when she was already post-partum hormonal and suffering from post-natal depression). He had no compassion for Janine.
How many EastEnders' viewers recall Michael's eagerness, when Scarlett came home, how he was the one always bending over the bed, holding her, bathing her. How Janine remarked to Tanya how good Michael was with the baby. Or was that only for show to emphasize and undermine Janine's already fragile psyche?
Maybe, left alone with his daughter, he's feeling a form of guilt at what he'd done - judging by his expressions at the photos he had of Janine with Scarlett and on their wedding day, maybe he is. But Michael's cry of woe in this episode, his poor-pitiful-me-unloved-by-Janine-Daddy-Mummy didn't quite ring poignant.
It reeked of self-pity.
And it proved the perfect foible to re-establish SuperKat, the heroine who can make miracles happen ...
(Cue the music Simon Ashdown would love to have introduce Kat's every scene ... Didn't you just know this was a Simon Ashdown vehicle?)
Kat made Phil give her and Alfie a second chance. She stopped Michael from abandoning Scarlett. She left a note on Shaggerman's bedsit mirror, telling him that she loved Alfie ... but she hasn't got that extra ounce of courage to tell Alfie with whom she's been having a regular fuck. Instead, she fobs him off with the standard lie that Shaggerman is no one Alfie knows; all the while, giving Michael a pep talk and guilting Alfie into admitting that, if Kat walked away, he'd soldier on with Tommy, to which Alfie agreed. Now she's got her licence for departure.
Please, also, if anyone is in any doubt that Derek isn't the Shagger, the scene in the pub when the Brothers Grimm entered should leave no one in any doubt. The clues were there.
Derek was the only one of the Brannings who met Kat's gaze consistently. Jack was more interested in needling Phil over the incident with Sharon and Dennis; Max's mind was on appeasing Abi by getting Phil to agree to his re-hiring of Jay. Then, the clincher was Derek's line about the lads retiring to a table with Kat serving their drinks there - and the rejoinder by Derek that he "liked a nice head on his."
That gives you a clue to the sort of things that she and Derek got up to in their spare time.
I'm not buying her blatant declaration of love for Alfie either. He's the dependable bloke who always takes her back when her dirty girl antics have been discovered and cleans up the mess. The sooner he's shot of her ass, the better. I truly hope it's Kat who kills Derek.
So now Phil knows what we all knew - that Ben is Lexie's father, told only in a moment of desperation. The girl gang, led by that lollipop-headed woman playing at being a fifteen year-old (like Danielle Harold, but without the lollipop head) were laughable.
Of course, we know that Alexa would know how to play the system in order to get revenge on Lola, and we remember that CCTV caught Billy threatening Heather, so Lola is basically fucked as far as custody of Lexie is concerned. Now Phil knows, we know what his next step will be - the mother of all custody battles with Billy.
I still feel no sympathy for Lola. She reacted adversely, no matter that Simon Ashdown & co orchestrated it so that it would render a sympathetic response from viewers. The screamfest at the end of the episode was trite.
Again, a watchable episode, but please stop trying to redeem characters who are really irredeemable.
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