The Branning Show: When Bitchery, Booze and Boredom Collide - Review 30.11.2012

Let's start off with a song for Cora the Bora, Lauren the GurnGirl and her Yummy Mummy Tanya. This song was just made for them and their alcohol addiction:-

Honestly, if this is the exciting autumn and build-up to Christmas promised us by Newman and co, then we should sue for false advertisement.

There were so many lows about this episode that it's difficult to pinpoint the positives. 

We had the Brannings. (We always have the Brannings these days, as well as their satellites, and we had all of those tonight).

We have the writers' poor attempts to recreate a Romeo-and-Juliet-esque young(ish) couple with whom we can sympathise. (Here, they have a contingency plan - if Turdhopper and GurnGirl don't work we have the poor man's Damon Albarn and Baby Huey - three-quarters of these couples are from the same family, I might add - Brannings).

We have the dead man walking - a Branning.

We have the cheating wife and the cuckholded husband - the nefarious Shaggerman is a Branning. 

We have the drunken old man in drag - a Branning relative.

We have the poor, starving, skint, harassed, loud and self-pitying mother of a gaggle of kids who still haven't seemed to find their way to school yet - Branning relatives.

We have the iconic original cast member and daughter of the first and best landlords of the Queen Vic ... yes, you guessed it ... reduced to being a worshipper at the Altar of BranningHood.

They infest any and every storyline. Someone remarked that they hadn't managed to touch on Chryed's leaving line, but Tanya attended his stag night, and later Syed begged  her for a job.

Let's look at the good points, before I start dissecting the bad. The good points won't take long, because there are so few of them.

Patrick. Any time Patrick does the patriarch bit, he's brilliant. Rather than search aimlessly and try to force a matriarchal figure upon us, TPTB should just go with the flow and let Patrick eke out words of wisdom. He's such a strong and compassionate man that people naturally turn to him for guidance. His scene tonight in the Vic, with Jean - normally, a character who keeps me on edge so much that my teeth begin to chatter - was priceless, natural, easy and - although it was supposed to be a subtle catalyst that will put Shaggerman in play again (zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz) - it was warm and cosy and a surprising joy to watch.

Jean works best when she ditches the ditzy mannerisms, the sudden jerks and shrieks she effects, as well as the dippy New Age philosophy. Tonight, they were two parents, whose children and grandchildren were far away and who connected over a parenting matter - getting a small boy to go to sleep. One of the nicest things was Patrick's remembrance of Pat. Has it been almost a year since she died?

I miss Pat, and I suspect a lot of the older actors in the programme do as well. Patrick was attracted to Pat as a woman, but he genuinely loved her as a friend. I hope he comes to realise that Cora is a poor substitute for this remarkable woman. Pat would never wallow in self-pity and selfishness the way Cora did tonight.

Derek with Bianca in the Kitchen. Even a broken clock is right twice a day, and Derek got this moment right. Bianca's having adjustment problems. She's come from prison back to the real world, and she's trying too hard to make up for lost time with her children, one of whom is staying with her father, and the others who are more comfortable around their grandmother than around her. Derek understood that Bianca had been institutionalised and has to take her time to integrate back into life the way it is. That was a nice moment between the two of them. It showed me what - had he been written correctly - the character of Derek could have become.

I'm not the biggest Bianca fan, but I know she's little more than a child, herself. She can only cope when she's got Ricky or Carol doing the heavy work, and when she tries something, herself, she fails. We saw this the last time, with her ascertaining that a television was more important for keeping the kids happy, than food on the table or clothes on their backs. Tonight, when Carol's been buying groceries for dinner, Bianca's scheduled chicken nuggets and chips - her usual fare. Even the takeaway Derek got was from McKlunkey's, and has she even registered Liam and Morgan for school? Since Carol's return, I've always thought of Bianca as the oldest kid amongst a slew of children usually attached to Carol. Whitney functions with the kids better than Bianca ever did, which says a lot for her parenting skills. Still, that was a nice moment shared between her and Derek.

The rest was blather.

Alfie and Kat Shat. Please ... get this tripe off our screens.

OK, this is only my opinion, but I think that this storyline was Bryan Kirkwood's stiff middle finger to EastEnders. I remember when the spoilers for this storyline were released. They were accompanied by almost manic hype, which sought to involve audience participation in a guessing game for the mystery man shagging Kat. 

Aw, c'mon ... this'll be fun ... guess the porker porking Kat, the ultimate goodtime girl.

It reeked of something, at once, sinister and puerile, almost as if TPTB were condoning a woman having an affair behind her husband's back for no reason other than she could. Kat wasn't a wife who was mistreated. Au contraire, her husband loved the bones of her. He'd taken her back when she got pregnant by his cousin and raised that child as his own. In the almost nine years they've been married - has anyone remembered that Christmas Day is their wedding anniversary? - Kat's been unfaithful to Alfie five times, four of them for no reason, really ... and TPTB wanted us to root for her?

The original PR also said the identity of the Shaggerman would be revealed "in the autumn," and it would be massive. I actually think - and again, I stress that this is my opinion and not fact - that Kirkwood meant the storyline to be no more than a few months long and to end, possibly in late September-early October ... and that it would be Jessie Wallace's leaving line.

Please try to remember and cogitate this: usually, when a major couple break up in a soap, someone leaves. Sharongate was the portal for Letitia Dean's original departure. Patgate saw Mike Reid leave the show for the last time. Chris Gasgoyne left Corrie when his Peter Barlow parted with Jane Danson's Leanne - as she did the first time she left the show. Katherine Kelly eked her revenge on Simon Gregson earlier this year and scarpered from Wetherfield.

This happens.

Split a couple, keep them in the same vicinity and you have the beginnings of kabuki theatre commonly known as "will-they-won't-they." Think the dysfunctional unit that is Max and Tanya (there you go - the Brannings again), think Zainab and Masood.

Kat did what Sharon and Frank did before her - cheated on the landlord/landlady of the Queen Vic. Her punishment should be humiliating, public and should end with her sloping off the Square in a black cab or a speeding car in the dead of a cold, windy and rainy night.

But if there were any storylines of Kirkwood's that were tweaked by Sweet Lorraine ...

this was the storyline. Why? In order to salvage Kat, a creature in whose creation she participated. Ne'mind, the public now hate this once-iconic character, ne'mind people have almost unanimously called for her to leave ... Lorraine wants Kat to stay and stay she will.

Newman says that Kat and Alfie have miles to go; Shane Richie says that Kat was meant to be with Alfie or with no one. Let's hope that Newman doesn't have it in mind to make Kat grow into the Square's new matriarch in coming years. (Make no mistake: Jessie Wallace is going nowhere, especially not after being given a second chance when she was sacked at the end of her first stint). That would be disastrous.

Kat is caught between the rock and the hard place. Using another old saying, what she basically wants is to have her cake and eat it too. As I said, not many people have invested in what is arguably the worst storyline since Kidneygate, simply because from the angle we've seen, this has all been about surreptitious sex. Not just surreptitious, but dirty and sordid - the bedsit, the bedbugs, the alleyway (again). If people think back to the beginning of the year, they would remember how repulsed they were at Whitney whoring around behind Fatboy's back with Tyler, or Max's and Roxy's dirty, little flirtation.

This is the same genre. Now Kat literally wants to be joined at the hip with Alfie, because he's safe - or so she thinks. As long as Alfie is close at hand, she's frightened enough to behave herself for the moment and repel Derek (let's be honest; this is who Shaggerman is), because she remembers the encounter she had when she semi-confessed her affair to Alfie.

Alfie doesn't buy the It's-not-my-fault-I'm-a-dirty-girl-victim anymore. She also knows that when he finds out, the game is up for her and she'll have to go back on the game.

But, you know, I can't take this seriously; because Newman has as good as said that these two will be back together. Keep them in the Square, and they'll slither back into each other's life. Their reunion is 2013's Christmas storyline, mark me. They will re-bond again, probably over Tommy, who'll probably end up being Alfie's. Until that time, we got treated to endless shots, from all angles, of Kat's miserable face and her jiggly booby bits being thrust in our faces.

One wonders if a woman of her age realises how much she looks like mutton dressed as lamb ...

(with apologies to the mutton and the lamb) or why her husband doesn't quietly suggest something a bit different for her? I mean, who wants their wife parading around looking like a cheap whore (which is what Kat has become)?

I also don't like the way TPTB have cheapened Alfie, making him - along with Masood - a candidate for Wimp of Walford. There's a three-way contest for this prize this year, with Alfie, Masood and Ian Beale in contention. The fact that Alfie and Mas are probably the two most genuinely nice male characters on the Square tells you the contempt in which the writers - or the people pretending to be - hold nice men. Zainab walks all over Mas; Kat literally tells Alfie she's ashamed of him because people laugh at him. Ian gets his comeuppance from his shitty, skinny-arsed daughter, demanding he sign his livelihood and his house over to her, give up his bedroom so she can be shafted, literally and figuratively by a Branning piece of shit (the Branning connection again). Men are weak in this Walford man-hating universe, but nice men are reviled.

Go figure.

Anyway, this storyline sucked. It has always sucked and it continues to suck. It is an embarrassment to the show, to its heritage and to the actors who are forced to enact this shambles.

Good luck to Ms Newman in her mission to save Kat or be damned. The show who created her, slated her - and Ms Newman signed off on that. Now, follow suit. Put your hand up, admit responsiblity and kill the monster you've created. Otherwise, you're really life becoming art and eschewing any sort of responsibility for your actions, just like the character you've created.

Love's Young Dream (Not). Lorna Fitzgerald is a victim of the Chesney (pronounced "Ches-neh") Syndrome. Like Sam Aston on Corrie, Fitzgerald started on 'Enders as a child. Neither she nor Aston were stage school kids; rather, they were natural performers who recreated a comfort zone with the older actors playing their parents by bonding with them. This worked as long as they were kids. They could essentially be themselves with their pretend parents around, but they didn't really appear full-time because of their age and scholastic commitments. Thus, every time we saw them, they seemed fresh.

Now, they're old enough to have proper contracts, which means they have to work - and in their profession, that means act, creating reality from an illusion. So, they're out of their comfort zone. Their characters might have a boyfriend or a girlfriend, and they might not like the actor playing that person. Are they professional enough to pull it off? Can they deal with having lost the "cute factor?"

Because that's a major problem with Ches-neh and Abi. They were cute kids. They're anything but cute adolescents. 

Since her return from her GCSE break, Fitzgerald's been phoning in her part. She looks totally uncomfortable and ill-at-ease, and part of this, I think, has been her so-called new look - the bleached hair, the false eyelashes and overt make-up. At best, she looks like a little girl dressing up in her mother's clothes; at worst, she looks like a paedophile's dream. (This isn't the first time EastEnders has fed this fetish: think Ruby Allen, in bustier and fishnets reclining on a bed and waiting for Juley).

Apart from being three dress sizes bigger, Abi, for the most part, looks, acts and sounds much the same way she did when she was ten or eleven. It's a credit that a street-suss guttersnipe like Jay would be so sensitive to her insecurities that he recognises she's not ready for a sexual relationship yet and is wanting to initiate something for the wrong reasons, but we know that in the real world, he'd probably slope off and boff Lola - or that in EastEnders' world, this will probably happen. Jay will soon get tired of waiting for Abi to "put out" (as both he and Lola referred to the sex act in reference to her on separate occasions) and end up bonking with Lola, which means Abi will probably drown her sorrows in drink. (It's in her genes).

Ladies Who (Liquid) Lunch. EastEnders did an adequate enough job addressing the fact that Phil Mitchell is an alcoholic - even though it goes against their grain to show him regularly attending AA meetings and going through the Twelve Steps (and that's not a dance).

What EastEnders fails to address is that there are actually more women alcoholics on the Square than men. Kim has a binge-drinking problem - yet, we were meant to laugh at her antics when she raided the Minute Mart at night and ended up asleep in a skip. Or when she crawled the length of the bar in the Vic just to plant a drunken kiss on the lips of a startled Fatboy.

Of course, the emphasis here should be on the three generations of alcoholics the Cross-Brannings have managed to shit out, starting with Cora the Bora - the self-pitying old lag filled with hatred and bitterness, going onto Tanya, who's never without a drink or a reason to have one; finishing up with Lauren the GurnGirl, who apes the behaviour of her elders. Some believe that alcoholism is a trait that can be passed through generations.

I find it truly horrific that Cora "allowed" Joey to lodge in Dot's house. I truly can't remember who owns her house - whether it's owned by the council or whether Jonnie Allen actually bought it and rented it to the Brannings. If the latter be the case, then Ruby Allen is her landlord. If the former, isn't there some sort of procedure one goes through when a council tenant vacates the property for a period of time? Are sub-tenancies legal? For example, would Dot even have been allowed to let Patrick and Cora lodge with her as she did previously? We know Mo is subletting the Slater council house (whose tenancy should be in Charlie's name, surely) illegally to Derek.

I keep marvelling at the fact that Dot is going to return home shortly to a drunken old biddy, a grandson she's never met, a ditzy young girl she doesn't know and a mountain of red reminder bills. Turdhopper was a louche entitler tonight, expecting food on tap when most lodgers provide their own fare.

Still, Cora's mired herself so deep in her self-pity she's become a parody of herself, all the while looking more and more like a man in drag. I keep expecting her to launch into a blowsy rendition of "I Am What I Am" ...

Now that would cause Joey's ever-gaping hole of a mouth to widen unto the floor until he'd disappeared within himself (which might not be such a bad way for this awful character played by an even more awful actor to go). Picture the scene:-

Lauren: I want Joey, where's Joey ... waaaah-waaah-waaah!

Tanya: Sorry, dahlin'. 'E's disappeared inside 'is mouf an' now we can't find 'im or 'is mouf.

Instead, Cora the Bora is existing on a diet of black coffee and cigarettes in the morning (minus Sarah Vaughan, who should be singing in the background) ...

We know of what her evening diet consists. We also know that it's from Cora that Tanya and Lauren have inherited their selfish attitude. The irony of this situation is that Cora berates Tanya for making every situation about herself, when Cora is doing exactly the same thing - and no one points this out to Lauren, maybe because the people who should haven't recognised this flaw in themselves.

What impressed itself upon me tonight was the realisation that Cora really does hate Tanya. I mean that. Truly. She meant it in every vicious, vindictive, accusatory word she leveled at her - accusing her of lies, sneaking behaviour, undermining - when all of the selfsame things could have easily been levelled at herself. Even more evil and sinister was relaying her version of events to Lauren, who was in no condition to hear what Cora had to say, whilst plying her with drink and less-than-subtly undermining Tanya's authority as her mother. In fact, Cora was pretty openly encouraging Lauren in the wrong way to defy what parental authority Tanya has as Lauren's mother. The drink bit was the last straw. Cora knows damned well that Lauren has drink issues - her birthday would have reminded her of that - and she knows that Lauren's parents are worried. She did this deliberately, but it has more repercussions than plying a fifteen year-old Abi with enough booze to make her sick and then laughing that it was all a part of growing up.

Lauren may be eighteen and an adult, but she has no job and is totally dependent financially and otherwise on her parents, which means that Tanya and Max call the shots. She is in no position to challenge that unless she gets a job and makes herself financially independent of their help.

For anyone who still thinks Cora is matriarch material, I hope tonight was a real eye-opener as to what sort of person she really was.

Cora is projecting. She got pregnant when she was eighteen, back in the days when single motherhood was something shameful, and gave her baby up for adoption. Try as she might, she can't bring herself to say why she really gave the child up - because she was mixed race; and she didn't tell Lauren that tonight either. Her parents made her do it, according to what she told Ava - and that may very well have been true; but there were women in that time, and many who were Cora's age, who kept their illegitimate children, no matter what their colour. Cora didn't, and now that she's been forced to face down her child, that guilt has been brought back to her. For that, with some justification, she blames Tanya; but she also told Tanya in very cold and certain terms that her entire attitude toward Tanya and Rainie had been founded on the fact that she'd given her first child away - so the other children suffered.

The double blow comes from the fact that one of these children, Rainie, has, effectively, rejected her now - realising through Alcoholics Anonymous, that Cora actively encouraged Rainie's addiction instead of helping her overcome it. Chickens come home to roost.

Someone on one of the fora reckoned that Cora was more battle-axe than matriarch. She isn't even that. She's just a bitter, twisted, vindictive old drunken lag and bigot awash in her booze, her fags and her own self-pity. Whoever thought to foist her upon the viewers as the natural successor to Pat should be taken out and slapped. Whichever viewers think she's better than Pat ever was should slope off, grow up and gargle with arsenic.

And finally ...

The Branning Satellite. 

In re-introducing her as a hange-on of the Branning clan, especially in her forced and phony relationship with jack and her friendship with Tanya, TPTB are on the road the road to perdition with the ruination of yet another iconic female character. A hattrick - first Kat, then Bianca and now Sharon. Who can be any more iconic than those three?

Watching Sharon sidle desperately up to Tanya, craving her friendship, ferrying unsolicited cups of tea to her in the craven hope of receiving some sort of crumbs from the royal Branning table and then virtually going orgasmic when Tanya offers her prize position of Maid of Honour at her (third) white wedding. White means "virginal" or "the first time." Tanya gave up all rights to those accolades when she was about fourteen, and Sharon hasn't been a "maid" since 1990. Sharon brings Tanya tea, and Tanya wants a real drink. (Alcoholism, see - seven shades, just like the book). So Sharon suggests they repair to the Vic later ... and confidently asserts (without asking) that Ian can look after Damien Den. I fucking ask you.

I would have loved a scene where Sharon rushes up breathless to the Beale back door, dragging Denny.

Sharon: Ian... I know it's last-minute, but can yer babysit Denny fo'me? Only I promised Tan we'd have drink at the Vic, an' then I have ter go shag Jack ter keep him sweet about my phony engagement ter Phiw.

Ian: No. Piss off. And what the fuck are you doing hanging around with those loser poor whites? If Den Watts were alive, he'd beat your arse with Jack Branning and think he was holding a piece of wood.

This show is hitting rock bottom fast.