Let's hear it for the Brannings, their satellites and their new theme song ...
Now multi-racial and about to go global, with their involvement with the Lithuanian mafia.
Shall we get the good bits out of the way, because - for the most part - this was a high school drama performance, with a bit of help from the local amateur dramatic society.
First, Ava.
I like Ava, and as a temporary character, I think she's fine. The part was originally supposed to last five episodes - obviously, to bring Cora the Old Lag into contact with the daughter she gave away, only to have the daughter reject her.
That makes sense. Were I Ava, who's obviously been very well brought up, very well-educated and seems to be well-adjusted and a respected professional, I'd run, screaming, from the likes of Tanya, Cora and their kin. I'd rather be a neglected orphan than a bastard at a Branning family reunion. Who the hell wants to be mixed up with that lot of jumped0up white trash pretending to be middle-class - above all, a family with a racist background.
And let's face it, Tanya was even more interested in Ava because, not only was she an educated professional, she was a deputy head teacher, someone with a title, with authority and influence - just the sort of person to whom Tanya loves to suck up. Remember how she literally licked Mad May? She was friends with a doc-tor, after all. And juxtaposing her assumptions that Ava was, in some way, deprived, for being separated from a family of drunken, promiscuous, drug-addled women, one of whom assisted in a suicide and attempted to kill her husband, moved her brother-in-law into the house to play babydaddy to her kids whilst lying all the time about their father's whereabouts, hooked a gormless rich builder because of the size of his wallet and then proceeded to cheat on him with her ex-husband ... who the hell wants to be associated with trailer trash shit like that?
As for the racial element, that was actually spot on. If the writer didn't seek to achieve this on purpose, the revelation of Tanya's subtle shock and near-revulsion on discovering that her long-lost sister was black, was brilliant in its understatement of a racist streak that the majority of people hold but which the most hypocritical refuse to acknowledge.
Her total misunderstanding of the racial history of this country isn't a positive sign that the country has achieved post-racial status (it hasn't); it's Tanya's total ignorance. But one thing deserves mentioning: And that's Patrick's assertion that race didn't enter into Cora's decision to put Ava up for adoption. It very much did. Had Ava's father been white and had scarpered, leaving Cora pregnant, the result would have been much the same. There was a big element of shame attached to single mothers in the fifties and sixties. But there would be something even moreso attached to having a mixed race baby at this time, and Cora would have been well aware of that. This is just further evidence of the little white bubble in which Tanya and many like her live. They get along with people of colour fine, as long as they're in one place and Tanya's in another. Maybe her reaction in the end was an epiphany of sorts, and she was ashamed of her thoughts; but maybe Patrick's advice was prescient. Best let sleeping dogs lie, because then you won't get bitten. After all, remember what EastEnders' attitude is toward educated, well-spoken professional people in positions of authority and respect - like doctors (May and Yusef) and solicitors (Stella) and even pastors (Lucas). Ava is a well-spoken, well-educated professional in a position of respect and trust. Let this forever be her avatar:-
The fact that the author of the piece played up the fact that, of course, Cora never ceased to think about Ava every day of her life, is true of most women who give children up for adoption; but it doesn't alter the fact that Ava, the character, is a hastily conceived plot device to add depth to Cora and to enable those viewers to be more sympathetic to her. It's an old soap opera trick, and one EastEnders has practiced a lot - well, too much - during the past decade.
A character is introduced. That character is disliked. This isn't the way things are supposed to happen. Quick! Contingency plan! Let's introduce some element that forces (we hope) those recalcitrant viewers to see the subject in question in an new light. The Walford Web Kindergarten commentator, Kate, one of their best, summed this up recently in relation to Lola.
TPTB are making her an innocent prey of Phil's plan to gain custody of Lexie. Lola hasn't gelled with everyone. Too many people remember her as an entitled, rude, dishonest, lazy, disrespectful chav; but once Phil's snookering her, she becomes poor pitiful Lola, single mother (ne'mind she's a thief, a liar, a neglectful parent, with violent anger management problems and blatantly disrespectful), she'll be our object of sympathy. As Kate points out, TPTB did this with Stacey, who was immensely unpopular at first, until Jean and Jean's problems were introduced. Kat was a loud-mouthed and vulgar slut, until the contingency plan kicked in about her having been a victim of child abuse and really being Zoe's mother. They even SORA'd her age by four years, saying she lied about being 28 when she was really 32 in order to accommodate her having been Zoe's teenaged mum.
So Ava is the recently thought-of plot device to make us see Cora in a better light. Newman admitted that Ava was only written for five episodes, but after interviewing the actress, she made the executive decision to make her permanent.
Uh-oh ...
That means another character just plopped into the general scheme of things with no character arc or structure. Notice, tonight, when Tanya asked about children, Ava never admitted to having a son? That wasn't some deep dark secret; that was probably the fact that, at that point, Dexter hadn't even been conceived as a character in the minds of the storyliners. Because, ya know, you can never have enough adolescents on EastEnders.
We'll see. In the meantime, my advice to Ava would be ...
Run, Ava, run!
The only other shining light in tonight's shitstorm was Jake Wood. His acting is so totally natural, it's easy to imagine him being just what he is. I found his parenting advice to Derek, however, both ironic and futile. Max has always been an undermined parent, especially where that snide, dirty little bitch Lauren is concerned. He asks her to help envelope and distribute flyers tonight and she swans off, after he inadvertantly talks about how falling in love (again, with Tanya) makes people lose all common sense. Result? He ends up doing the flyers, himself, and giving Derek advice about not pushing his daughter away.
Max is not Shaggerman, He's too busy building up himself to believe that he really does, indeed, love Tanya, when neither one of them really love the other. Theirs is the ultimate co-dependent relationship. Max will never be faithful. Tanya wasn't his first fling while he was married to Rachel; she was the first to get up the duff, and that was cleverly planned. That didn't stop his infidelities. But Max likes his comforts too, and Tanya - as long as she tolerated his behaviour and accepted his countless apologies - was the domestic creature comfort and stability to which he could return. On Tanya's part, Max is probably good in the bedroom - probably better than any man she's had - including Jack and certainly Greg - and that's why she keeps taking him back, as well as the veneer of middle class respectability she thinks she acquires through her association with him. (Look, in the world of the blind, the one-eyed man is king).
As the love of Phil Mitchell's life is Sharon, the love of Max Branning's life is Stacey. He was ready to get up from his Christmas dinner 2 years ago, leave his new lady and his kids, as well as his ex-wife and go away with Stacey, who ultimately refused to allow him to do this. Tanya's the squeeze of the moment, and Max is getting to an age where he probably thinks he'd like to settle down. After all, he turned down Roxy's offer of a no-strings affair; but all Stacey has to do is show up, which she will do within the next couple of years (when all the Stacey-by-any-other-name roles begin to dry up), and we'll see who Max really loves ... that is, if Tanya's returned from her break.
The rest of the episode was shit.
Oh-my-godfathers, David Witts and Jacqueline Jossa are rank. Rank amateurs. That scene where she retreats to the kitchen and is posing, distractedly, by the sink positively screamed high school stage direction:-
Lauren rushes into kitchen. Joey follows. Lauren stands downstage by sink, looking distractedly in the distance.
The couple have no chemistry and no acting talent. One year ago, Jossa hit her height in Branning week, but then, everyone ups their game when they are doing scenes with the likes of Jake Wood, Steve McFadden or Lindsey Coulson. Since then, she's believed so much in her own publicity and hype, she's been phoning in her work. Witts is simply awful. The actor isn't even handsome, and I'm convinced he has adenoidal problems, which result in his mouth gaping open. To be fair, he didn't gawp tonight, but the rigidity with which he held his mouth shut tonight made him look uncomfortable and unnatural. His diction is terrible, and I don't know if this has anything to do with his adenoids or the fact that he just hasn't been taught any sort of professional elocution.
When he stuck his head around the door of the Jackson/Butcher kitchen for Alice, I heard this:-
A-ass! Ygumacafferminorwa-atoke.
Seriously.
Lauren's fucked her cousin. And even though it's legal, it's still a close blood tie and totally yuck. Of course, Turdhopper's going to say it's special - any forbidden sex is special. It's when it comes on a plate that the flavour goes flat - cousins or not. And that dialogue in the kitchen ... honestly, someone must have seen too many stock post-coital encounters in bad romcoms.
"You ok?"
"Yeah. You ok?"
"It was ... er ...different."
"Well, I think you'd better go now."
Honestly, all that was missing was the ubiquitous question, "Did the earth move for you?"
And all this frantic running about Walford, gurning and emoting in a way that only high school drama students can, only to find Joey is still hanging around.
Panic, panic ... because OMIGOD he's not answering his cellphone. OMIGOD he's not taking my calls. OMIGOD Lauren feels so frightened because she thought she'd lost him.
Look, love, you feel frightened when your boyfriend you've known for years is fighting in Helmand province in Afghanistan and goes missing for weeks and then is found. You think you lose him then. You don't lose a horny cousin who fucked you because he's a manipulative, horny little toad and then snows you with the words "I Love You" after only superficially knowing you five minutes and after he's fucked one best friend and snogged another. No wonder Lauren couldn't tell Whitney what the problem was and no wonder she couldn't look at Lucy. She's morally worse than either of them, and they're pretty low on the Richter scale of morality.
And while we're at it, Hetti Bywater could use some diction lessons too. I totally did not understand that she'd initially suggested a "girls' holiday."
These are the most pejorative bunch of young people the show has ever had in its history. Entitled, lazy, spoiled - what happened to Whitney's unpaid training at the nursery? And does she really go there made up like a streetwalker? What is it with beehive hairstyles at the moment? And the way Lucy tore into the woman working the counter. I was hoping the woman would take the fried egg and ram it down Lucy's anorexic throat.
And Alice was another piece of wankspittle tonight. Now Jasmyn Banks is gurning too. There was one point in one of the kitchen scenes with Derek where she looked positively feral. All this to-do about MyAliceMyAngel taking self-defence courses and possibly having a crush on a black man. So there's another side of racism coming out to bookend Tanya's subtle sort.
As for Jamie Foreman, after reading his thoughts on the calibre and quality of the writing for the show and its storylines, I'm beginning to think that, knowing he was for the chop, he just winged his performance. People will say his remarks reek of sour grapes, but Foreman has been around awhile, and he does have a point about Derek's character going round and round in circles, especially with his children. This is the problem with the character. He was bigged up as the ying to Phil Mitchell's yang, and when the audience's reaction was adverse and he wasn't scary, then TPTB dropped that development arc and left him dangling. They tried the softer approach by introducing children into the equation (again, add-ons, tacked onto the character with no thought of their own development). That didn't work either.
The character development, continuity and writing at the moment and for the past year, especially, has been totally dismal. That writing room should be cleared, and someone like Tony McHale put in charge. Get rid of Branning Man, who - from Jake Wood's tweets today - is, yes, writing the WHOLE of the Christmas Branningapalooza.
This is not the fucking Branning show.
You know, one way Derek may have worked, and that is if he'd been introduced as a DelBoy type, with an association with Billy or Big Mo. But TPTB would never have even entertained that, because for some reason Simon Ashdown was hot under the collar to promote the Brannings as the one family on the Square who could match and best the Mitchells. They simply can't. They are losers.
And finally, Poppy and Fatboy, with Poppy doing her best Mari Wilson impersonation ...
Fatboy gets shot down by Sylvia. Who didn't see that coming? And who doesn't know that Poppy and Fatboy are about to become an item? Or that Dot's house, upon her return, with Cora, Poppy, Fatboy and Joey living there, will have gone from being a geriatric home to the Branning Home for Waifs and Strays.
Give it a couple of months and Ava and Dexter will be living a tardis existence there as well.
Oh, and Poppy's got a sister. Tansy. And she's coming to visit. More adolescents. Joy. Not.
Now multi-racial and about to go global, with their involvement with the Lithuanian mafia.
Shall we get the good bits out of the way, because - for the most part - this was a high school drama performance, with a bit of help from the local amateur dramatic society.
First, Ava.
I like Ava, and as a temporary character, I think she's fine. The part was originally supposed to last five episodes - obviously, to bring Cora the Old Lag into contact with the daughter she gave away, only to have the daughter reject her.
That makes sense. Were I Ava, who's obviously been very well brought up, very well-educated and seems to be well-adjusted and a respected professional, I'd run, screaming, from the likes of Tanya, Cora and their kin. I'd rather be a neglected orphan than a bastard at a Branning family reunion. Who the hell wants to be mixed up with that lot of jumped0up white trash pretending to be middle-class - above all, a family with a racist background.
And let's face it, Tanya was even more interested in Ava because, not only was she an educated professional, she was a deputy head teacher, someone with a title, with authority and influence - just the sort of person to whom Tanya loves to suck up. Remember how she literally licked Mad May? She was friends with a doc-tor, after all. And juxtaposing her assumptions that Ava was, in some way, deprived, for being separated from a family of drunken, promiscuous, drug-addled women, one of whom assisted in a suicide and attempted to kill her husband, moved her brother-in-law into the house to play babydaddy to her kids whilst lying all the time about their father's whereabouts, hooked a gormless rich builder because of the size of his wallet and then proceeded to cheat on him with her ex-husband ... who the hell wants to be associated with trailer trash shit like that?
As for the racial element, that was actually spot on. If the writer didn't seek to achieve this on purpose, the revelation of Tanya's subtle shock and near-revulsion on discovering that her long-lost sister was black, was brilliant in its understatement of a racist streak that the majority of people hold but which the most hypocritical refuse to acknowledge.
Her total misunderstanding of the racial history of this country isn't a positive sign that the country has achieved post-racial status (it hasn't); it's Tanya's total ignorance. But one thing deserves mentioning: And that's Patrick's assertion that race didn't enter into Cora's decision to put Ava up for adoption. It very much did. Had Ava's father been white and had scarpered, leaving Cora pregnant, the result would have been much the same. There was a big element of shame attached to single mothers in the fifties and sixties. But there would be something even moreso attached to having a mixed race baby at this time, and Cora would have been well aware of that. This is just further evidence of the little white bubble in which Tanya and many like her live. They get along with people of colour fine, as long as they're in one place and Tanya's in another. Maybe her reaction in the end was an epiphany of sorts, and she was ashamed of her thoughts; but maybe Patrick's advice was prescient. Best let sleeping dogs lie, because then you won't get bitten. After all, remember what EastEnders' attitude is toward educated, well-spoken professional people in positions of authority and respect - like doctors (May and Yusef) and solicitors (Stella) and even pastors (Lucas). Ava is a well-spoken, well-educated professional in a position of respect and trust. Let this forever be her avatar:-
The fact that the author of the piece played up the fact that, of course, Cora never ceased to think about Ava every day of her life, is true of most women who give children up for adoption; but it doesn't alter the fact that Ava, the character, is a hastily conceived plot device to add depth to Cora and to enable those viewers to be more sympathetic to her. It's an old soap opera trick, and one EastEnders has practiced a lot - well, too much - during the past decade.
A character is introduced. That character is disliked. This isn't the way things are supposed to happen. Quick! Contingency plan! Let's introduce some element that forces (we hope) those recalcitrant viewers to see the subject in question in an new light. The Walford Web Kindergarten commentator, Kate, one of their best, summed this up recently in relation to Lola.
TPTB are making her an innocent prey of Phil's plan to gain custody of Lexie. Lola hasn't gelled with everyone. Too many people remember her as an entitled, rude, dishonest, lazy, disrespectful chav; but once Phil's snookering her, she becomes poor pitiful Lola, single mother (ne'mind she's a thief, a liar, a neglectful parent, with violent anger management problems and blatantly disrespectful), she'll be our object of sympathy. As Kate points out, TPTB did this with Stacey, who was immensely unpopular at first, until Jean and Jean's problems were introduced. Kat was a loud-mouthed and vulgar slut, until the contingency plan kicked in about her having been a victim of child abuse and really being Zoe's mother. They even SORA'd her age by four years, saying she lied about being 28 when she was really 32 in order to accommodate her having been Zoe's teenaged mum.
So Ava is the recently thought-of plot device to make us see Cora in a better light. Newman admitted that Ava was only written for five episodes, but after interviewing the actress, she made the executive decision to make her permanent.
Uh-oh ...
That means another character just plopped into the general scheme of things with no character arc or structure. Notice, tonight, when Tanya asked about children, Ava never admitted to having a son? That wasn't some deep dark secret; that was probably the fact that, at that point, Dexter hadn't even been conceived as a character in the minds of the storyliners. Because, ya know, you can never have enough adolescents on EastEnders.
We'll see. In the meantime, my advice to Ava would be ...
Run, Ava, run!
The only other shining light in tonight's shitstorm was Jake Wood. His acting is so totally natural, it's easy to imagine him being just what he is. I found his parenting advice to Derek, however, both ironic and futile. Max has always been an undermined parent, especially where that snide, dirty little bitch Lauren is concerned. He asks her to help envelope and distribute flyers tonight and she swans off, after he inadvertantly talks about how falling in love (again, with Tanya) makes people lose all common sense. Result? He ends up doing the flyers, himself, and giving Derek advice about not pushing his daughter away.
Max is not Shaggerman, He's too busy building up himself to believe that he really does, indeed, love Tanya, when neither one of them really love the other. Theirs is the ultimate co-dependent relationship. Max will never be faithful. Tanya wasn't his first fling while he was married to Rachel; she was the first to get up the duff, and that was cleverly planned. That didn't stop his infidelities. But Max likes his comforts too, and Tanya - as long as she tolerated his behaviour and accepted his countless apologies - was the domestic creature comfort and stability to which he could return. On Tanya's part, Max is probably good in the bedroom - probably better than any man she's had - including Jack and certainly Greg - and that's why she keeps taking him back, as well as the veneer of middle class respectability she thinks she acquires through her association with him. (Look, in the world of the blind, the one-eyed man is king).
As the love of Phil Mitchell's life is Sharon, the love of Max Branning's life is Stacey. He was ready to get up from his Christmas dinner 2 years ago, leave his new lady and his kids, as well as his ex-wife and go away with Stacey, who ultimately refused to allow him to do this. Tanya's the squeeze of the moment, and Max is getting to an age where he probably thinks he'd like to settle down. After all, he turned down Roxy's offer of a no-strings affair; but all Stacey has to do is show up, which she will do within the next couple of years (when all the Stacey-by-any-other-name roles begin to dry up), and we'll see who Max really loves ... that is, if Tanya's returned from her break.
The rest of the episode was shit.
Oh-my-godfathers, David Witts and Jacqueline Jossa are rank. Rank amateurs. That scene where she retreats to the kitchen and is posing, distractedly, by the sink positively screamed high school stage direction:-
Lauren rushes into kitchen. Joey follows. Lauren stands downstage by sink, looking distractedly in the distance.
The couple have no chemistry and no acting talent. One year ago, Jossa hit her height in Branning week, but then, everyone ups their game when they are doing scenes with the likes of Jake Wood, Steve McFadden or Lindsey Coulson. Since then, she's believed so much in her own publicity and hype, she's been phoning in her work. Witts is simply awful. The actor isn't even handsome, and I'm convinced he has adenoidal problems, which result in his mouth gaping open. To be fair, he didn't gawp tonight, but the rigidity with which he held his mouth shut tonight made him look uncomfortable and unnatural. His diction is terrible, and I don't know if this has anything to do with his adenoids or the fact that he just hasn't been taught any sort of professional elocution.
When he stuck his head around the door of the Jackson/Butcher kitchen for Alice, I heard this:-
A-ass! Ygumacafferminorwa-atoke.
Seriously.
Lauren's fucked her cousin. And even though it's legal, it's still a close blood tie and totally yuck. Of course, Turdhopper's going to say it's special - any forbidden sex is special. It's when it comes on a plate that the flavour goes flat - cousins or not. And that dialogue in the kitchen ... honestly, someone must have seen too many stock post-coital encounters in bad romcoms.
"You ok?"
"Yeah. You ok?"
"It was ... er ...different."
"Well, I think you'd better go now."
Honestly, all that was missing was the ubiquitous question, "Did the earth move for you?"
And all this frantic running about Walford, gurning and emoting in a way that only high school drama students can, only to find Joey is still hanging around.
Panic, panic ... because OMIGOD he's not answering his cellphone. OMIGOD he's not taking my calls. OMIGOD Lauren feels so frightened because she thought she'd lost him.
Look, love, you feel frightened when your boyfriend you've known for years is fighting in Helmand province in Afghanistan and goes missing for weeks and then is found. You think you lose him then. You don't lose a horny cousin who fucked you because he's a manipulative, horny little toad and then snows you with the words "I Love You" after only superficially knowing you five minutes and after he's fucked one best friend and snogged another. No wonder Lauren couldn't tell Whitney what the problem was and no wonder she couldn't look at Lucy. She's morally worse than either of them, and they're pretty low on the Richter scale of morality.
And while we're at it, Hetti Bywater could use some diction lessons too. I totally did not understand that she'd initially suggested a "girls' holiday."
These are the most pejorative bunch of young people the show has ever had in its history. Entitled, lazy, spoiled - what happened to Whitney's unpaid training at the nursery? And does she really go there made up like a streetwalker? What is it with beehive hairstyles at the moment? And the way Lucy tore into the woman working the counter. I was hoping the woman would take the fried egg and ram it down Lucy's anorexic throat.
And Alice was another piece of wankspittle tonight. Now Jasmyn Banks is gurning too. There was one point in one of the kitchen scenes with Derek where she looked positively feral. All this to-do about MyAliceMyAngel taking self-defence courses and possibly having a crush on a black man. So there's another side of racism coming out to bookend Tanya's subtle sort.
As for Jamie Foreman, after reading his thoughts on the calibre and quality of the writing for the show and its storylines, I'm beginning to think that, knowing he was for the chop, he just winged his performance. People will say his remarks reek of sour grapes, but Foreman has been around awhile, and he does have a point about Derek's character going round and round in circles, especially with his children. This is the problem with the character. He was bigged up as the ying to Phil Mitchell's yang, and when the audience's reaction was adverse and he wasn't scary, then TPTB dropped that development arc and left him dangling. They tried the softer approach by introducing children into the equation (again, add-ons, tacked onto the character with no thought of their own development). That didn't work either.
The character development, continuity and writing at the moment and for the past year, especially, has been totally dismal. That writing room should be cleared, and someone like Tony McHale put in charge. Get rid of Branning Man, who - from Jake Wood's tweets today - is, yes, writing the WHOLE of the Christmas Branningapalooza.
This is not the fucking Branning show.
You know, one way Derek may have worked, and that is if he'd been introduced as a DelBoy type, with an association with Billy or Big Mo. But TPTB would never have even entertained that, because for some reason Simon Ashdown was hot under the collar to promote the Brannings as the one family on the Square who could match and best the Mitchells. They simply can't. They are losers.
And finally, Poppy and Fatboy, with Poppy doing her best Mari Wilson impersonation ...
Give it a couple of months and Ava and Dexter will be living a tardis existence there as well.
Oh, and Poppy's got a sister. Tansy. And she's coming to visit. More adolescents. Joy. Not.
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