My EastEnders' Wish List for 2013

Walford Web kindergarten have a thread about how the bullies the fanboys babies in the kindergarten want to see EastEnders improved in 2013.

Some of their suggestions are viable - like cutting down the number of Brannings on the show. Others are totally ludicrous - like seeing a romantic attachment between Ian Beale and Jean ...

having Billy get Alzheimers or bringing Peter Beale back with a pregnant girlfriend (like all you need is a nineteen year-old with a pregnant babymamma and a sprog).

From the sublime to the ludicrous, eh?

Well, here are some of the things I think and hope should be done to elevate EastEnders to its former status in 2013.

• I would like to see Lorraine Newman develop some balls and do what has to be done to salvage and improve the programme - that means wielding the ax for A-Listers in the acting department and, most notably, in the writing department, starting with ...
• Getting rid of Simon Ashdown. Like, totally. He's only interested in the Brannings anyway. If need be, get the BBC to fund a spin-off featuring only Branning characters, but get him the hell out of the writers' room.
• Call for Tony Jordan or Sarah Phelps to return to head the writing room.

That's just the first bit. Here's the hard part. We know that Syed, Christian, Tanya and Derek are going. Here are some other characters who should leave Walford forever ... Starting with:-

• Kat: Alfie should kick her ass back to the gutter when he finds out she's still lying to him about the identity of Shaggerman. Before she goes, he should find out that Tommy really is his son. If he doesn't kick her out, she should do a Shirley and just leave. But don't come back. Yes, I know Kat's the only character EastEnders has built up and then shat on from a great height; but the fact remains that now she's virally hated and serves no purpose. She's one of the many victim characters on the show, and EastEnders has to get rid of that sick victim motif it's pushing.
• With Kat should go Big Mo and Jean. God, please, axe Jean. I'm sick to death of her New Age counselling, based on a myth that mad people are prescient. She's not mad or mentally ill, she's just thick as pig shit and stupid. I also hate her creepy concern for people coupled with her virulent hatred of certain people she really has it in for (like Janine). She should bugger off and live with Stacey. She should not link up romantically with Ian, and she should stay the hell away from Scarlett.
• Bye bye Brannings ... starting with Jack, who has really served no purpose since Ronnie left. There's nothing left for Jack in Walford, when Sharon dumps him for Phil; and I wouldn't waste my breath feeling sorry for him either. Jack has other things more important to do - like reconnecting with Penny in France or Richard in Portugal.
• Joey the Turd and Alice the Goon. Mouth-breather meets Pollyanna. I hope it's Joey who kills Derek. And I hope he gets life. Awful character and awful actor. Maybe David Witts can use his severance pay to get his adenoids done.
• Call time on Bianca and the kids. Ricky didn't work without her, and she won't work without Ricky. She's burned her bridges with Janine (who's left since Bianca's been in prison) and Ian, so that branch of her relations won't be too keen to have her working for them again. The Brannings have never offered her any support, except a roast dinner and a box of wine, plus a dodgy electric meter key. They won't touch her with a barge pole. Besides, she's a known thief. Send her and her awful sprogs, including the dire Tiffany, off to live with Ricky. The thought of Tiffany Butcher and Denny Rickman sharing a scene fills me with sickness and despair.
• Lauren can suffocate on her upper lip and inhale Whitney with her. Both need to go. Get rid of this lot of pejorative teens and then introduce some who have drive, purpose, education and ambition. Lauren thinks the world owes her a living and Whitney is another perpetual victim and self-perpetuating virgin. The show could benefit without either.
• Tyler Moon ... bye bye ...LONG overdue. If he's serious about acting, let him take some proper elocution lessons.
• Lola can disappear with the baby. Another deeply pejorative teen, who only decided to have a baby to reap benefits from the government. She "loves" Lexie, but can't quite fathom that when she has nappy rash, she sees a doctor and gets a free (yes, a government benefit) prescription. Instead, she has to steal from Janine. She's got a bad attitude and will be pejorative in behaviour issues for her child as she grows older. Lexi's better off in care - hell, she's better off with Phil Mitchell.
• The jury's out on Jay and Abi, although Lorna Fitzgerald has been phoning her role in since her return from hair bleaching classes. She's treading a fine line, however, as is he.

The Brannings, actually, could be pared right back to the only ones worth watching - Max and Carol - although Max should retain at least one kid (Abi, being the most likeable), so he can be portrayed as a single dad.- a character type on which EastEnders hasn't focused much in the past. Also, we really ought to get past Carol as a Mother Hubbardly-sort of character. She needs a romance with someone in her own age bracket - cue new characters.

The Masoods need working on as well. Let's start - and it pains me to say this - by axing Tamwar. Tamwar has gone from being the very sensible, sardonically witty son with a penchant for mimicry to a lump of miserable, Mummy-clinging flesh. Tamwar was Rude Masood. Tamwar was Darren's wingman - remember the hilarious scene of Darren and Tamwar bemoaning their lack of love life whilst reclining in one of Max's cars? Tamwar, now, doesn't work. If he gets anymore depressed he'll melt into the earth, and he certainly doesn't work with Fatboy. Send him away - travelling the world or back to university, because there's really nothing more that can be done with him.

And that brings me to AJ. AJ is cute, and he certainly is believeable as Mas's brother; but as Christian goes, I feel he's going to be lumped into the rather useless category of ageing partyboy who hangs around the R and R with Kim and Roxy. He's already had a one-nighter with Roxy, for no purpose whatsoever; how long before there's a row between Kim and Ray and  Kim and AJ party down? He appears to be morphing into another stereotypically unfunny comedic character, whose only purpose in life is to appear habitually hungover, fearing commitments, always looking lairy-eyed and serving no purpose at all. I thought he was going to be a bad boy for Denise. And whilst I'm not really keen on any association with Roxy, if she isn't going to become the next Mrs Moon, then do something with her and AJ and do it as a good storyline, only just DO something with these characters.

Someone needs to stop writing Ray as another stereotype - or someone from Hampstead Heath's idea of an angry black man.

When Janine returns, please don't let the local yokels (led by the awful Jean) approach and treat her as "evil Janine." Janine left her husband and her child, only after having her self-esteem and vulnerabilities chipped away callously by a husband who is incapable of normal expressions of love. There's such a thing as character development and one of the few things Bryan Kirkwood did was move Janine away from grifting and blackmailing Ian Beale. One of the ways Janine worked best was in her friendship with Whitney, which even made Whitney likeable. Give her a friend, a mentor - Sharon. They've more in common than most characters with their daddy issues, their children and their Vic obsessions. Instead of retconning them as strangers, this relationship should be established and built upon. 

At the moment, I couldn't give a rat's ass whether she stays with Michael or not. I don't see Steve John Shepherd making EastEnders his life's professional commitment; but if they are going to reunite them as a couple, for fuck's sake, stop trying to have one out-quirk the other. Michael Moon is in serious risk of turning into a cartoon vampire. All he needs is the cape.

The central focus of the Square should be Sharon and Phil - as a couple. I wouldn't be averse to seeing Ross Kemp return to reprise Sharongate from another perspective, ending in a pregnancy and the mother of all "who's the daddies." People forget that Pam St Clement was roughly the same age as Sharon when she showed up as Pat Wicks on the Square. Let Sharon  grow into the matriarch figure. Matriarchs evolve, they aren't ready-made. In that respect, Cora should just simmer in the background as the drunken old lag ASBO granny, sticking her oar in where it's not needed.

As for returning characters, let's call an end to that, but not after Dean and Carly Wicks (and their respective partners) return in order to give Shirley some focus and redemption as the abysmal mother she proved to be.

And, for God's sake, give us some new blood that isn't a Moon, a Beale, a Mitchell or another bloody fucking Branning.

Update: Many of the babies in Walford Web kindergarten are clamouring for Abi's and Jay's relationship to become "more mature." Please, let's stop thinking that the only thing a girl needs to do as a rite of passage when she turns sixteen is to pop her cherry.

Abi is better than that and she shouldn't exist as a character for the sole purpose of fucking Jay/getting pregnant/getting married and divorced before she's twenty. That dog don't bark. It's old and predictable. I'm pretty sure this is on the minds of all the well-spoken, Hampstead Heath-living middle class writers' minds when Abi returned from a science field trip to Cost Rica looking like she'd spent 8 weeks getting her hair bleached, her acrylic nails done and learning how to apply false eyelashes, all in an attempt to make her look older and not like a Baby Huey-type latent adolescent. Abi still looks much the same as she did when she was ten years old ...

which is pretty much like a Baby Huey sort of character ...

Having her have sex with Jay would almost seem paedophilic. Jay's a horny little wotsit anyway, and now that he's been effectively exorcised from the Mitchell dynamic, he's slotted back in with  Billy and Lola as the third wheel in a trio of grifting losers. Abi deserves better. Even that pernicious pill Libby Fox deserved and got better than Darren, but Darren always had ambition to do something better with himself. Jay's content to lurk around the fringes of legality, and whilst he could strut about Walford without compunction when he was part of the strong Mitchell dynamic, now he's been reduced to the small-time yobbery of a fringe Mitchell. He should get with Lola. She's more his grade. Stop bringing Abi down.