After hearing that Emmerdale thrashed EastEnders in a head-to-head last night and after being thoroughly disgusted at Lorraine Newman's ostrich-like attitude in her recent interview, I have to ask, seriously, if this show has really hit crisis level?
Because I think it has.
And I'm wondering why TPTB at the Beeb aren't chewing nails and pissing rust. Well, I do know why. They're concerned with their reputation being shredded over their harbouring of a vicious paedophile and their badgering of an innocent man whom they'd labeled as one. Still, one wonders if some sort of terminal rot hasn't set in at the Beeb and that it's trickled down to affect EastEnders.
You see, I actually think the show has been in decline for the past ten years, starting with Berridge's tenure and continuing through Harwood and Hutchison. There was a brief uplift under Santer, but examined closely, this had more to do with sensationalist storylines - the likes of which were continued under Bryan Kirkwood - than anything else.
Kirkwood's reign saw the show in freefall, and Newman, quite honestly, seems clueless as to how to staunch the bleeding. The fact that she's spent twelve years firmly ensconced as the Series Producer tells me that she's a good second in command who takes orders and asks no questions. In other words, she'll continue what Kirkwood started.
Reading her interview again, in which she said a lot of nothing and little of anything, I garnered this:-
Because I think it has.
And I'm wondering why TPTB at the Beeb aren't chewing nails and pissing rust. Well, I do know why. They're concerned with their reputation being shredded over their harbouring of a vicious paedophile and their badgering of an innocent man whom they'd labeled as one. Still, one wonders if some sort of terminal rot hasn't set in at the Beeb and that it's trickled down to affect EastEnders.
You see, I actually think the show has been in decline for the past ten years, starting with Berridge's tenure and continuing through Harwood and Hutchison. There was a brief uplift under Santer, but examined closely, this had more to do with sensationalist storylines - the likes of which were continued under Bryan Kirkwood - than anything else.
Kirkwood's reign saw the show in freefall, and Newman, quite honestly, seems clueless as to how to staunch the bleeding. The fact that she's spent twelve years firmly ensconced as the Series Producer tells me that she's a good second in command who takes orders and asks no questions. In other words, she'll continue what Kirkwood started.
Reading her interview again, in which she said a lot of nothing and little of anything, I garnered this:-
- that she's saving Kat and redeeming her, only because she was part and parcel of the creative force behind the character.
- that the Masoods are getting another character added to their fold
- that the adolescent characters in the show are now considered the "staple" of the programme.
Apart from the Masoods, this doesn't bode well, if this is the most important information Newman was willing to divulge. The main problems with EastEnders, at least in the past two years, have been a plethora of unlikeable characters thrust to the forefront of the show, in whom the public have been unwilling to invest any emotional involvement, the over-emphasis and over-extension of the Branning family as the principal family in the Square and the over-reliance on characters from the 16-23 age dynamic as a dramatic force.
On all of the above, that's a resounding three strikes and EastEnders is out.
At present, there are more characters with unlikeable traits than those whom we find sympathetic. Somehow, EastEnders managed to take an iconic female character, Kat Moon, and turn her from hero to zero to the point that she is now deemed an unforgiveable hard bitch and who best serves the show by leaving.
Kat's not the only character who's been ruined. The writers took the equally iconic Bianca and re-moulded her into a senseless, chav travesty who thinks more of going ass-head-over-heels in debt for a television rather than feed her children, and who somehow has an aversion to claiming benefits she's due in favour of near-Dickensian poverty. She also has a strident voice and anger management issues.
And then there's the biggest icon of them all: Sharon. An original character, a feisty woman who was the daughter of Den Watts and the ex-wife of Grant Mitchell, the ex-lover of Phil Mitchell, who's been turned into a Branning satellite, trading sex with Jack Branning in a bad imitation of Miss Piggy on downers in return for a place to stay. And when she's not simpering up Jack, she's worshipping at the altar of Queen Tanya, desperate for a few crumbs of her hypocritical friendship. She has become a Branning satellite.
Then, there are the Brannings, themselves. They are dysfunctional losers, poor whites masquerading as middle class, with a propensity for spouse-sharing and sensationalism. Occasionally, they try to kill one another. The fact that Tanya has slept with Max and Jack (whilst married to Max) doesn't shame her in the least. I'm just surprised Max never fucked Ronnie, but if she'd stayed long enough, he would have done so. The fact that they increase abundantly is disturbing also - we've had a yield of three, fully grown and largely unlikeable in the past year, alone.
Many of them are the youthful element which is rotting the soul of the show. Bad enough that we had to watch and were begged to tolerate, love and understand Whitney Dean as she discarded one dependable bloke after another in order to sleep with the latest bad boy, who would summarily dump her and then she'd play the poor, pitiful victim, who was special and entitled to misbehave due to the fact that she was sexually abused.
Only for so long can anyone tolerate using a past trauma as a licence to behave inappropriately and abscond from responsibility.
We then had Twitney - the golden couple Tyler and Whitney - thrust upon us. Now we're being asked to cheer for the incestuous duo of Joey and Lauren Branning. Tony Discipline and David Witts, who play Tyler and Joey respectively, are arguably the worst actors ever to appear in the soap. The female teens - Lauren, Lucy and Whitney - are all lazy, entitled, directionless, rude, and pejorative. Alice, the only one who works, is a near-idiot. Lauren is a drunk. Even more disconcerting is the revelation that Newman casts the actor ad hoc, irrespective of whether these youngsters have any kind of acting experience, and then moulds the character they play to the actor's own personality.
I'm sorry, but that's not what acting is about. In fact, it's the reverse. So these kids basically have an easy ride of playing themselves.
Once again, they're boring, unlikeable and pejorative. No one long-term viewer gives a rat's ass about them.
Finally, there's the shoddy writing and poor research which goes into the production of this show. Suddenly, the impossible becomes a fact. Christian announces in the morning that he's moving to America and seeks to leave that night - with no visa, no Green Card and no money. Does anyone realise that an emigration attempt like that would be met with instant deportation?
Cora knows the adopted last name of her long-lost daughter because a nurse told her before she left the hospital after giving birth, when the reality of that would make it impossible. Adoption records were sealed in the 1960s and when a child was given up for adoption, he/she was sent immediately to a children's home (orphanage by another name) to await prospective parents, and the process took a minimum of six months. There is no way in hell, even if she stayed glued to her hospital bed for six months, neither Cora nor the "nurse" who told her would ever have ascertained Ava's adopted surname.
If astute and mature viewers can pick up poor incidents like this and other things, what future does the show have, or are TPTB content to throw the long-term viewer under the proverbial bus and pander to the slobbering, semi-literate tweenie fanbois and girls and the desperate-to-the-point of rudeness shippers like dan2008, who fervently repeat the mantra of "the ratings will go up" after every wipe-out in the ratings' stakes, which seem more often than not these days.
That the BBC's flagship show couldn't garner more than five million viewers for the departure of two supposedly popular characters, that it couldn't garner more than five million in the middle of November on the run up to the Christmas stories, then something is rotten in Elstree, and since (as the Greeks say) a fish stinks from its head, the rot has to stop with Lorraine Newman, and she may have to use an axe to stop it, both in front of and behind the camera.
On all of the above, that's a resounding three strikes and EastEnders is out.
At present, there are more characters with unlikeable traits than those whom we find sympathetic. Somehow, EastEnders managed to take an iconic female character, Kat Moon, and turn her from hero to zero to the point that she is now deemed an unforgiveable hard bitch and who best serves the show by leaving.
Kat's not the only character who's been ruined. The writers took the equally iconic Bianca and re-moulded her into a senseless, chav travesty who thinks more of going ass-head-over-heels in debt for a television rather than feed her children, and who somehow has an aversion to claiming benefits she's due in favour of near-Dickensian poverty. She also has a strident voice and anger management issues.
And then there's the biggest icon of them all: Sharon. An original character, a feisty woman who was the daughter of Den Watts and the ex-wife of Grant Mitchell, the ex-lover of Phil Mitchell, who's been turned into a Branning satellite, trading sex with Jack Branning in a bad imitation of Miss Piggy on downers in return for a place to stay. And when she's not simpering up Jack, she's worshipping at the altar of Queen Tanya, desperate for a few crumbs of her hypocritical friendship. She has become a Branning satellite.
Then, there are the Brannings, themselves. They are dysfunctional losers, poor whites masquerading as middle class, with a propensity for spouse-sharing and sensationalism. Occasionally, they try to kill one another. The fact that Tanya has slept with Max and Jack (whilst married to Max) doesn't shame her in the least. I'm just surprised Max never fucked Ronnie, but if she'd stayed long enough, he would have done so. The fact that they increase abundantly is disturbing also - we've had a yield of three, fully grown and largely unlikeable in the past year, alone.
Many of them are the youthful element which is rotting the soul of the show. Bad enough that we had to watch and were begged to tolerate, love and understand Whitney Dean as she discarded one dependable bloke after another in order to sleep with the latest bad boy, who would summarily dump her and then she'd play the poor, pitiful victim, who was special and entitled to misbehave due to the fact that she was sexually abused.
Only for so long can anyone tolerate using a past trauma as a licence to behave inappropriately and abscond from responsibility.
We then had Twitney - the golden couple Tyler and Whitney - thrust upon us. Now we're being asked to cheer for the incestuous duo of Joey and Lauren Branning. Tony Discipline and David Witts, who play Tyler and Joey respectively, are arguably the worst actors ever to appear in the soap. The female teens - Lauren, Lucy and Whitney - are all lazy, entitled, directionless, rude, and pejorative. Alice, the only one who works, is a near-idiot. Lauren is a drunk. Even more disconcerting is the revelation that Newman casts the actor ad hoc, irrespective of whether these youngsters have any kind of acting experience, and then moulds the character they play to the actor's own personality.
I'm sorry, but that's not what acting is about. In fact, it's the reverse. So these kids basically have an easy ride of playing themselves.
Once again, they're boring, unlikeable and pejorative. No one long-term viewer gives a rat's ass about them.
Finally, there's the shoddy writing and poor research which goes into the production of this show. Suddenly, the impossible becomes a fact. Christian announces in the morning that he's moving to America and seeks to leave that night - with no visa, no Green Card and no money. Does anyone realise that an emigration attempt like that would be met with instant deportation?
Cora knows the adopted last name of her long-lost daughter because a nurse told her before she left the hospital after giving birth, when the reality of that would make it impossible. Adoption records were sealed in the 1960s and when a child was given up for adoption, he/she was sent immediately to a children's home (orphanage by another name) to await prospective parents, and the process took a minimum of six months. There is no way in hell, even if she stayed glued to her hospital bed for six months, neither Cora nor the "nurse" who told her would ever have ascertained Ava's adopted surname.
If astute and mature viewers can pick up poor incidents like this and other things, what future does the show have, or are TPTB content to throw the long-term viewer under the proverbial bus and pander to the slobbering, semi-literate tweenie fanbois and girls and the desperate-to-the-point of rudeness shippers like dan2008, who fervently repeat the mantra of "the ratings will go up" after every wipe-out in the ratings' stakes, which seem more often than not these days.
That the BBC's flagship show couldn't garner more than five million viewers for the departure of two supposedly popular characters, that it couldn't garner more than five million in the middle of November on the run up to the Christmas stories, then something is rotten in Elstree, and since (as the Greeks say) a fish stinks from its head, the rot has to stop with Lorraine Newman, and she may have to use an axe to stop it, both in front of and behind the camera.
dan2008's opinion is worth about as much as the dogshit I stepped in this morning. A fanatical apologist who bases his love for EastEnders around the ratings. The only reason the fool hates 2004/2005/2006 so much is because those years rated low, though not as regularly as 2012. What a loser.
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