The Branning Show: Mouth and Mouth-Breather - Review 27.11.2012

Here's a song Joey should adopt for his personal theme:-

The episode opens tonight with Joey hulking morosely and directionlessly onto the Square, mouth agape and looking as clueless as someone who's failed an audition for the Incredible Hulk. TPTB would love for the audience to hear the mellifluously sad strains of Liszt's Pathetique which would convey his aura of hopelessness and heartbreak, but that's too much to expect from a fanbase of one brain-celled teenaged girls and self-obsessed fanbois ... and xTonix, who would derive pleasure from an Eastenders episode if it consisted only of Derek grunting behind a bathroom door.

After a reasonably watchable episode last night, we're back in filler mode tonight. Another day in BranningVille, another normal day with more secrets piling upon more lies.

I join in the rising chorus of asking the current question du jour: When did Jacqueline Jossa become such a shitsucking actress? Was the one-week-only adequate performance one year ago as good as she gets? Because since then, she's been phoning in. I think her ineptitude started with her first award nomination and win, followed by her touting herself for further awards (and losing) and believing her own hype.

Just a blessing that her acting abilities were limited to minimal tonight, with the aid of a sprinkling of pale make-up and a particularly amateur-looking gash on her forehead, which - miraculously, will never leave a scar - she still couldn't manage pain convincingly.

The Tanya-Lauren axis continues to flourish. Spot the direct line from Cora to Tanya to Lauren, sodden with drink and rife with secrets and lies. Cora's entire existence was founded, built and extended on drink, keeping secrets and lying. Tanya learned well. She's a closet drunk, who's lived on secrets and deception - sneaking around seeing a married man, harbouring the secret of having tried to bury him alive, keeping the secret of assisting her father's suicide, lying for Lauren when she tried to kill Max, keeping her cancer cold a secret.

Now, when she's asked by Lauren to keep her relationship with Joey a secret from Max, what does Tanya do? She keeps it a secret from Max. She was right when she told Lauren that Max would, effectively, go apeshit if he found out that Joey had fucked her under Max's roof. Whatever anyone thinks or says about relations between first cousins being legal under the law, there's a consaguinity and a close enough familial relationship to make the entire thing creepy.

It has nothing to do with not being brought up together either.

The whole Joey-Lauren shite has come so totally out of the blue that it's unbelieveable - aided and abetted in this unbelief by the fact that neither of the actors have any chemistry or acting ability, especially David Witts. His diction progressively has gone from bad to worse. Tonight, he was almost unintelligible. Also, the fact that Joey has spent the majority of his time on the Square banging Beale bones and only a week ago showed a seminal interest in Lauren is laughable - as laughable as Lauren's line tonight about loving Joey and not being able to live without him.

The whole truth of Lauren's involvement with Joey lies in the fact that he's the first man ever to fuck her when she was sober. This is the first fuck she's remembered. They say you never forget your first love fuck, and here's the proof.

Well, another proof is that Tanya, who smugly bragged to Derek only a couple of weeks ago that she and Max had no secrets, is hiding probably just as many secrets from him as he is from her. The sensationalist aspect of this association is that they are even contemplating getting married again. Co-depenent relationship or what?

What's so totally unbelieveable about the Max-Tanya dynamic is that Max could be so hopelessly attracted and attached to such a one-dimensional, self-obsessed, selfish individual as Tanya. Here's hoping her departure is longer than just the "break" some of her cheerleaders and sucklers are touting, because she's holding back all of Max's development.

Derek's spooking of her tonight was risible, and just as Cora seems to have nurtured a grudge all of her adult life against he daughters whom she kept with her because of the one she decided to give up for adoption, so Tanya goes out of her way to favour Lauren abundantly. If the truth be known, Lauren deserves to go to prison. She was driving a car she and Joey had taken without permission, she was drunk and she collided with a shop. You do the crime and you do the time. The problem I have always had with the Brannings and both their daughters is the way these kids have always been babied and mollycoddled.

Tonight we had the scene in the pub - and who was home with Lauren when Max and Tanya were swanning purposely around the Square? - when Tanya soliloquyed Max about how much of a child Lauren is and how they had to protect her.

Ummm ... as Lauren so quickly tells them, she is an adult - except she doesn't want the responsibilities of an adult, like working, paying bills, paying her way etc. She wants to be subbed and waited on by Mummy and Daddy. Yet Max and Tanya have always babyfied most of the girls. I'm hard put to wonder why Abi's so mature and Lauren isn't, but tonight I realised why - it's because whenever Lauren has a problem, it's a major drama; and Abi is shoved aside. Pushed to school or to clear up or anything. Tonight she wanted to share in her family's care for her sister - offering to make breakfast or to stay home and keep her company, but she was shunted aside.

What abysmal parents, although I would give Max the benefit of the doubt for being the better one.

Derek and his children ... just go. Please, let these two no-marks leave the Square and never return. Hopefully, when Alice promised Derek to stay "just until after Christmas" that was a tidy bit of foreshadowing and when he's knocked off, she will go. Bianca was right - she's a mouse and a joke of a character.

It amazes me that both these kids were, allegedly, so close to the mother who raised them, yet neither of them have bothered to return for even a visit. Alice has been trudging around Walford for the past two days with all her belongings in suitcases like some sort of bag-lady-in-training, and it just emphasizes how much she is moving aimlessly in circles. Proof positive that EastEnders are using a sledgehammer to crack a nut came in the number of references tonight to the fact that Neanderthal Turd and GurnGirl are cousins: Alice mentioned it. Derek mentioned it. Tanya mentioned it. If this is the way EastEnders does "edgy and provocative"now, it's fucking amateurish.

The constant repetition is evidence of their dumbing down to the lowest common denominator.

And now Derek's found a place of his own in the old Slater house, courtesy of Mo. When Laila Morse stands out as one of the few good things about this episode, you know it has to be some kind of bad. Her banter with Fatboy and later with Derek was absolutely natural.

The only other high point was Jake Wood, who never disappoints. His confrontation with Neanderthal in the cafe was sheer brilliance, including the demeaning clip around the head. Steroidically enhanced or not, we know that Joey is a pussy, and when Max finds out what he's been doing with GurnGirl, he'll knock the punk six ways until Sunday. Here's hoping.

The whole Branningapalooza tonight, including Jamie Foreman's OTT greasy smiles and "fuck-it-I'm-outa-here" manner just capped and proved the fact that the Brannings, as a whole, are losers. As Sey on Walford Web says, give the Mitchells the material Kirkwood and Co (and, yes, that includes Sweet Lorraine) have been witholding and watch out - especially now Ms Dean is part of that fold. Compared to the Mitchells, the Brannings are a bunch of whining, sniveling, dysfunctional pieces of chicken shit.

Speaking of which ...

Bianca is back. Have you missed her? No, neither have I. She's back and determined to find a job - not in the cafe or on the market (because Mr Lister has taken a court order out against her, xTonix, you dumbass. This means she is not allowed to work in the cafe or on Bridge Street.)

So she goes looking for work in Booty's. As you do. Because, you see, Bianca's not got "stificates" - that's certificates to you and me. Since March, she thinks she's become a qualified beautician, but I thought that actually meant at least a year in some sort of technical college.

Ne'mind. With her "stificates," she's going to find a job and start her own business, so she can fill up Pat's house with all varieties of flat-screened high-def state of the art tellies, and her kids can have seven different flavours of chicken nuggets every day of the week. Morgan certainly looks as though he's been packing them away.

So let's have a round of sad music for Bianca ...

(Actually, as this is the death dance, we can reprise this in a couple of weeks for Derek too).

Here's another circular tale of poor, pitiful and poor Bianca, scraping ends together to cobble out an existence for her poor, Dickenesque urchins. At least Ricky got a mention and at least the hirsute Liam still has his job at McClunkey's, which will keep everyone in chicken nuggets.

Bianca's overwhelmed and cries alone on her return. Maybe she's reflecting on the fact that if she hadn't acted like such an asshole, she might not have gone to prison. Still, she's got her "stificates," which means - in EastEndersland (now known as BranningVille), she'll take over the salon from Tanya and be a wizard businesswoman.

And I'm the fucking Queen of Sheba.

As for Tanya, Businesswoman of the Year (not), she's got a virtually empty salon - no wonder, with Poppy offering tips on picking up girls during hours - and she's only employed Bianca. So there's the unseen Gaynor, Tanya (who's never there), Poppy (who's most always in the pub), Bianca and soon, Lola. She has more staff than she has clients.

And finally, the filler for the filler: Fatboy's faux pas with Poppy. Things have hit an all-time low when Fatboy's taking relationship advice from Tamwar. 

Lest I forget, the Shaggerman saga continued tonight. Do we care? We know it's Derek and we know Kat's a slut. Such a pity, however, that the Executive Producer puts her own personal arrogance before the viewers, who - almost unanimously (except for a few shippers like xTonix and the can-I-be-a-storyliner-can-I-huh-huh-huh pathetic plant dan2008) - think that Kat is spent as a character and she should just slope off degradingly after being publically humiliated for her infidelity by her husband in order to moan the Toad squashed flat in the road.

Kat and Derek ... puts a whole new meaning on the phrase Toad in the Hole.