Death, Dystopia and Christmas in BranningVille: Review Christmas Day 2012

Let me allow myself a moment of self-congratulation. As I had predicted Derek would be Shaggerman, I also predicted, from the moment Tanya originally proposed to Max in the portacabin of the car lot - the time that Max refused her - that Max was married. I even predicted that a child would be involved - and, indirectly, there was a child, who was aborted (but then again, this is EastEnders, so maybe Kirsty Branning is lying).

Still, you heard that from me first. I've never scored a hattrick. Nice feeling.

This was a good enough Christmas episode - mostly because of a secret being revealed (which always gets bums on seats) and also because there was a death of a major character, bringing the total of major character deaths on EastEnders to three within a year - Pat, Heather and Derek. I daresay if Derek had worked out the way Bryan Kirkwood had planned - which was seeing Derek take over as Walford's Alpha male as Phil Mitchell disappeared over the horizon - we wouldn't have been seeing such an episode this Christmas. But Derek turned turned out to be, arguably, the most unpopular character on the programme in recent history - probably in all of the show's history.

Never before have I seen a character more universally disliked by viewers. Derek was introduced as a scary hardman - scarier than Jack Dalton and Jonnie Allen combined, so scary that Pat ran screaming down the street from him. Then, as he occupied more of the screen, people were scratching their heads and wondering what frightened Pat so much about this overblown bantam rooster. The final straw with Derek (and, by extension, with the Branning takeover) came on New Year's Day last year, when Pat died.

An episode which should have shown various people with a tangible history associated with Pat - Dot, Ian, Ricky and Bianca, David, Carol - saying goodbye to an close relative and friend, morphed into an advertisment for the Branning Show, with Derek managing to threaten a dying woman, and with Max and Tanya, who hadn't said anything of note to Pat since December 2008, suddenly invading her space and making her death all about Tanya's cancer cold. The ensuing two weeks and Pat's funeral were more about the Brannings' vendetta against David Wicks than about any sort of rememberance for Pat. That sucked.

Derek was supposed to be a very major rival to Phil Mitchell, yet Phil, in the throes of a heavy cover-up of his son's killing of Heather, still managed to treat Derek with disdain. Derek rarely took on his own pay-grade. He terrorised the gormless Moons and an old man, Patrick. He bullied little girls like Lucy Beale.

The one dynamic which would have made an interesting study was the backstory between him and Michael Moon. Michael took a beating for his brothers' stupidity, and I wasn't alone in thinking that the aftermath of the beating, which took place in The Arches, had the eerie feel of a male rape about it - Derek primping himself as he breathed heavily into the mirror as Michael, bloodied and subdued, moaned in the background. Rape is a crime of control, and this had every inkling of someone exuding control over another human being. 

Still, EastEnders suddenly dropped all reference to a backstory between Michael and Derek, and instead chose to announce - to announce - that they were introducing a new aspect to Derek's character, Derek the family man. To that end, his children would be introduced, and he would be shown in softer scenes interacting with various family members. This "announcement", in and of itself, was a tacit admission of failure on the part of the character and the people who created him.

Most producers who create their signature characters have a contingency plan in the event that the character doesn't wash the first time around, but such plans are of the subtlest kind. People were tiring of being fed an incessant diet of the Slaters, and in particular, Kat, when John Yorke devised and introduced the now-famous "you're-not-mah-muvvah" storyline, which turned the character on the proverbial dime and made her instantly popular and sympathetic. The same with Stacey Slater, who was viewed as a mouthy delinquent until we were introduced to a week with her and her seriously bi-polar mother, Jean.

Nowadays, with this crew, subtleties like that aren't exactly subtle. We're asked to forgive the fact that Lola is an amoral little chav spiv, without an honest bone in her body, who'd steal anything not tied down, simply because she gives birth in public, in a fast-food joint. That's bad enough, but to actually announce a change in direction for a character like Derek smacks of "OK, ya didn't like gangsta Derek, now try Daddy Derek."

Once it was announced that Jamie Foreman's contract expired at the end of October, people sussed that a Christmas departure was on the cards. Not only that - the Shaggerman mystery made it patently obvious that the culprit would be Derek. A married woman was cheating on her husband with one of five men. Someone would be leaving Walford at the end of this fiasco, and the easy money was on Derek. Another thing that was, at one and the same time, both clever and cheap about Shaggerman was that by making the affair storyline of a "whodunnit" nature, by only filming Kat about to couple with a shadow on the wall, or lying satiated on a bed whilst a naked foot disappears into the bathroom, or showing her caressing a detached hand, effectively made the affair storyline a veritable blank slate - meaning that, after the eventual reveal, the writers could make whatever they wanted of the affair.

It would have been just as easy to have written a hindsight storyline about Kat really loving Shaggerman and leaving with him as it would be to write the thing in the direction it's going now - that the affair was one of obsession, control and manipulation on Derek's part and, yes, Kat is the poor, pitiful, dirty girl victim again. The affair wasn't her fault. Derek made her, which is euphemistic for saying that Derek raped her, that it was a continuous rape, that he made her do it again and again by threatening to tell Alfie, when we, the viewer, know that in every instance - especially the first when Kat literally welcomed Shaggerman into the kitchen of the Vic with opened legs - that Kat was up for this and in a big way.

Yet this has become the ultimate retcon in a long line of retcons (a way of life in EastEnders these days) simply because Jamie Foreman was leaving, his leaving was going to be as unpleasant as possible, and because Lorraine Newman has made it her remit to repair Kat as a character, and reunite her with Alfie as redeemable.

The fact that so many viewers are buying into this con (cf: the "hypocrites" thread on Digital Spy Soaps Forum, where many of the commentators are actually coming up with ways in which Roxy, who's never broken up a marriage nor slept with a married man, is somehow the worst sort of slut in comparison with Saint Kat, who was made to cheat on Alfie by big, bad Derek. Go figure), is proof of the success of lazy writers when confronted with a viewing public who collectively do not possess the ability to think critically.

So, we've had a little more than a year of Derek. Enough of this preamble. How did the episode fare?

Well, as one-off viewing, it fared well enough. As I've said, I'm no fan of Simon Ashdown and his parallel Branning universe, but he's a good writer. The main remit of this episode was (a) to effect Derek's death and (b) to reveal Max's secret, something that was so damned subtle in its presentation throughout the year that if you blinked, you just might miss the fact that Max had a secret he was hiding from Tanya.

Two things ... if you have watched EastEnders as long as I have, or even if you haven't but were the tiniest bit astute, you'd have surmised that Derek wasn't going to be killed. Dying doesn't mean a person is killed. People die in their sleep, like Lou Beale did all those years ago. Derek wasn't going to be killed simply because we've had two deaths in the past three years which were whodunnits in various ways - Archie's 2009 death and Heather's murder, which really was a whodunnit in reverse. Derek was going to die, the only thing we were left wondering was what, exactly, was going to be so terrible about it.

And. secondly, that Max's secret was only, ever and always going to involve a woman. All of Max's secrets have been women-centric - cheating on Rachel with Tanya, cheating on Tanya with Stacey, cheating on Vanessa with Tanya and now, trying to marry Tanya whilst married to Kirsty.

Let's rock'n roll.

I've Got a Secret.

It's Christmas Day, and Max has all kinds of secrets. The Brannnings wouldn't be the Brannings if they weren't keeping secrets from each other.

Just to recap Branning history:-

• Max never told Tanya  he was married to Rachel.
• Max never told Rachel he was seeing Tanya.
• Max never told Tanya he was seeing Stacey.
• Max never told Stacey he was scarpering to Spain with Tanya.
• Max never told anyone, much less the police, that Tanya tried to bury him alive.
• Tanya kept a secret from Max about Lauren trying to kill him.
• Max kept his financial collapse a secret from Tanya.
• Max kept the fact that Stacey Slater had killed Archie Mitchell a secret.
• Tanya kept the fact that she was shagging Max a secret from Greg.
• Max kept the fact that he was shagging Tanya a secret from Vanessa.
• Tanya kept her cancer a secret.
• Max kept his recent marriage a secret.

The Tanya-Max marriage is one based on sex,secrets and lies. The secrets and lies are the foreplay which forms the basis of their sex lives. One keeps a secret from the other; the other finds out, and there's angry sex. They lie to each other, get caught and there's make-up sex. The entire basis of their married life. In fact, their very relationship is based on the classic lie of a married man, playing away from his wife, and it continues thus.

Max's good secret is that he's planning a surprise wedding for Tanya, after Lauren spoiled the original one by ripping up a wedding dress which, frankly, wasn't cheap. Instead of being punished for the spoiled, entitled brat that she is, she's treated to mollycoddling, excuses and apologies on the part of her parents, and she's handed her boyfriend bedpartner cousin wrapped up in Christmas paper with Max's blessing today.Max has arranged for the registrar to wed him and Tanya today, even bought - at the last minute and off-the-rack - a wedding dress for Tanya, considering that she collects white weddings ... and if you can't have a white Christmas, you can always have a white wedding ...

Of course, all this is against the backdrop of a huge Branning family Christmas, with all the trimmings and all the relatives abound, including Carol and the Butcher-Jacksons, Jack (originally minus Sharon, the Branning appendage), Abi, Lauren, Alice - and for some reason, Jay and Tyler. I understand Jay is Abi's boyfriend and that Tyler and Whitney are a couple; but Jay has just reconciled with Phil - went out of his way to reconcile with Phil, so you'd think Jay would want to be sat around the Mitchell table, relishing the fact that Lexie was home. If Sharon did a split shift, he could well have done one also. 

I can understand Tyler is with Whitney, but he is also Alfie's cousin,and his brother was breaking bread with Alfie. Whitney could easily have spent the day with the Moons, but there you go. Cora the Bora is there, and later Joey shows up. The more the merrier, with Derek making his last (literally) appearance as Head of the Family, with his new squeeze, Kat.

First things first. I feel no sympathy for Kat, and scant patience for any viewer who's come around to the view being propagated by Ms Newman of "poor, pitiful Kat the victim." Kat was willingly and wantonly unfaithful to her husband, and it wasn't the first time. Now what's being sold the viewers is that she was coerced into a relationship with Derek, which is one of the biggest  piles of steaming bullshit about these days.

Still, Derek is where he should be, and Kat's there to witness the Branning meltdown.

Yuck. Tiff is back and scurvier than ever. She's the only person at the table who even shows friendly to Derek, but there's enough time for her to get in one of her classic the-writers-think-it's-cute-and-precocious lines about Derek being a mug, when the line, itself, is openly rude. If any other child at any other table openly referred to an older relative as being a "mug," then she'd be sent from the table; but we are asked to indulge this singularly unpleasant child. I didn't miss her, and I'd willingly sacrifice Bianca forever to rid the show of thisTitian-haird Chuckie.

It's also evident that the Brannings are less-than-pleased to see Kat amongst them - something which is both hypocritical and at the same time serves as a measure of guilt they feel. It's probably a modicum of selfishness as well - Max and Jack bore Alfie no ill will, and Jack is Michael Moon's business partner; still, they'll want a place to lift a pint, and the fact that they seem to be associated with a sibling who was responsible for the break-up of the Moon's marriage might grate a bit. Kat sat at their table on Christmas Day might give out the message that they condoned this sort of thing.

Still, respect for Kat is scant at that table, and she's throwing herself a self-pity party, especially after having been not allowed into the pub to deposit Tommy with Alfie, by gatekeeper Jean. Respect for Derek is even scanter, with Max being deliberately off-hand with him.

Alice was just miserable.

The kitchen scene where Max and Jack ganged up on Derek gave a clue that Max must have clued Jack in on the cards Derek held against Max. Actually, the episode, itself, gave off a good air of tension throughout - possibly because people were waiting for the secret to be revealed and waiting to see how Derek died. In this respect, TPTB did a good job of sending out some subtle red herrings - Derek in touch with the mystery person, who texted that (s)he was on his/her way, followed by the Moons' snow scene with a large car driving onto the Square - only to find that this is the registrar. In point of fact, there were continual callings around the Brannings - the registrar, Derek and Kat, Joey turning up - before the shit hit the fan and we were all introduced to Kirsty.

The moment TPTB let slide back in the spring that whatever Max got up to in Manchester would be revealed at Christmas, I knew it would involve a woman. The moment Tanya proposed to Max in the car lot and demanded he set a date, as soon as Max demurred, I knew his secret was that he was married, which made sense - and this struck a strangely congruent note between Max and Derek in two separate incidences in tonight's episode.

When Derek and Kat were having a conflab, and Kat told Derek she still wanted to be with her family - Alfie and Tommy. Derek told her, point blank, that the decision she made to continue the affair with him was down to her. She had blown her chances with Alfie, and that was down to no one but her. Of course, tied up with this was Derek's lie that Alfie had laughed in his face at what Kat thought was the last voicemail telling Derek that she was through with hiim (whether or not that would have made any difference to Alfie is debatable).

Further on, Max was actually right in telling Tanya that she, indirectly, sent him into the arms of Kirsty. Tanya did, indeed, send Max away from Walford. When she found out she had cancer, she not only told him she didn't love him, she allowed Abi and Lauren to believe that it was Max who had seduced her into cheating on Greg. This lie resulted in the girls both demanding that Max leave the area. Well, he did; and we heard the state into which he got himself, when he met Kirsty, who - apparently, was in a bit of a state, herself - and they connected.

So there you go: If Tanya had been honest with Max about her cancer from the getgo, there'd have been no lush-haired stripper with beestung lips on Max's doorstep, introducing herself as his wife on Christmas Day.

What a deliciously brilliant actor Jake Wood is. You just know that, as much as Max purports to love Tanya, that is one co-dependent relationship. He loves her security and feels a bond to her because they have three children together; but one can't help but remember that Max was prepared, two years ago, to leave his children on Christmas Day, walk out on Vanessa, his then-partner, to run away with Stacey Slater. 

Now, he's torn between Tanya and Kirsty. It would be so easy for him to brush Kirsty off, but you knew from those months ago, when he pushed the envelope full of money (and divorce papers, we now know) through her door, that he really wanted to see her as well; now, knowing that she was pregnant and aborted his child, brings another type of bond.He really felt for her and still has some sort of feelings for her. Max is a man who hates hurting people.

I don't think he inteded wilfully marrying Tanya whilst remaining married to Kirsty. He was being scammed by Derek. He genuinely thought he was free of his latest wife. Jake Wood put out the standard PR line that we'd all be shocked by Max's secret. I wasn't. Max mudering someone, that would be shocking; but I knew that Max's secret would involve a woman and that it would probably mean that within the three months Tanya had exiled him from Walford, when he was still divorced from her and a single man, he fell in love and married.

I actually liked Kirsty, and I'm hoping she becomes more of a fixture on the scene after Tanya leaves for whatever reason. We know she works in a bar (doesn't everyone?), which means she could be on hand for shifts at the Vic or in the R and R. She's also a thirtysomething - a demographic that's sadly lacking, and she'll probably end up sleeping with Jack the Peg ... you know ... Jack, with his extra leg?

We know all about Jack's extra leg.

Other observances: Cora the Bora was subdued and sober. Someone remembered that Christmas Day was Liam's birthday. And whilst I'm not a fan of Tanya's in anyway, red is certainly Jo Joyner's colour, and she should wear her hair the way she had it for her forty-third weddig.

Downside: (Sigh) ... Joey and Lauren. You cannot tell me that Max is OK with this relationship, but there you go - Max will do anything to ensure his daughters' are happy, and that entails condoning sexual relations with a very close relative. This couple, easily the most unlikeable ingenue couple in the show's history have no chemistry, no connection and no talent.

They bantered about in the street, shared the same roof for a week and screwed around on the sofa, and they're in love? Do me a favour. And as a New Year's resolution, please, EastEnders, please do something about David Witts's constantly slack-jawed, hanging-open mouth. It's unattractive and it looks awful; and since he's started the habit, we've had to suffer Jacqueline Jossa catching flies too.

Last year it was Twitney; this year, they're overdosing us on Not-Sweet-but-Awful-Loey. Wield the damned axe.

Man in the Moon Magic

Contrast the 18-person feast at the Brannings with the ragtag Moon affair, with Alfie at the height of heartache, making things good and proper for Tommy and his assorted friends and relatives. Jean cooked the feast, Mo was in attendance - both signaling their disapproval of Kat. Michael and Scarlett were there, Roxy and Amy.

I'm always amazed at Shane Richie's easiness with the little boy who plays Tommy.The kisses on demand and the way he responds to Richie, shows the viewer that, like Steve McFadden and Jake Wood, Richie is a person who's easy around children. Alfie is true to his character in this incident, putting the happiness of others before his own heartache. He promised Tommy snow at Christmas, and in a scene which harkened back to his wedding to Kat, he delivered, with Kat surreptitiously eyeing the events from behind a BranningVille curtain.

I am totally in the Roxy-Alfie camp. Roxy is a woman with a big heart, effectively isolated from her family and with few friends in the Square. She genuinely loves Alfie, although I'm not sure he loves her. She was honest with her feelings, but he needs time on his own to adjust to his new status and to find himself and his footing again.

I thought the dialogue in his scene with Kat tonight was honest and raw. Credit to Ashdown for having Alfie not only confess how much he'd loved Kat, but how much he felt now he couldn't help her - not after (and he said it) Derek and Harry. Harry!

I knew that was coming, only I didn't know when. So now the link between Derek and Harry has been established. It's been verbalised and not by Kat, but by Alfie. Kat linking Derek to Harry would be another sleight of hand trick to reinforce the "dirty girl" image. Alfie, on the other hand, by referencing Derek and linking him indirectly to Harry and what happened between Harry and Kat, by remonstrating with himself for not being able to "help" Kat in whatever turned Harry into the Derek situation, effectively exonerates Kat from any responsibility of ever acknowledging her inappropriate behaviour, whilst at the same time, it doesn't shift the blame to Alfie. It just has him acknowledge that Kat's personal history is perhaps more than she can deal with and more than he can cope with. He's ready to move on, he say; but he says that more to convince himself, than to convince her.

And thus begins the redemption of Kat and the eventual reunion of Kat and Alfie... You heard it  here first, this time next year, their tenth wedding anniversary ... and if you don't believe me, remember I called Derek Shaggerman first and I said Max was married.

It's what Newman wants. I feel sorry for Roxy being left the third wheel in all of this.

Other observations: Amy didn't speak, but she threw a sprout.

The End of Derek

We were introduced to Derek as a scary gangsta-type to rival Phil Mitchell. We've seen Derek as the petty down-puncher, bullying little kids who offended his Alice; we've seen him as the over-protective father, the manipulator.

In the past few weeks, we've come to see him as a sad, pathetic man, intent on getting the respect he deserves from his siblings who would kowtow and bow to his authority as head of the family. Now all the machinations he undertook to achieve that status imploded.

The final confrontation between Derek and Max was visceral and good. Max has, curiously, always been the Branning who not only owns his own amorality, but also stands apart from the sheer meanness and moral lassitude of his brothers and his father. Jim was a virulent racist; Max was locked in a coffin overnight as punishment for having a black friend. Tonight we found out that Derek was behind that trick. 

It was never any secret that Max was always cited as the runt of the litter. Jim and Derek were racists and dishonest, Jack was a bent copper and probably involved with some of Derek's shady deals; but Max distanced himself from this lot. Max was the one brother who stood up to the old man and he stood up to Derek. Jack, in this instance, was just making up the numbers. At the end, the only thing of which Derek could accuse Jack was of having a pill-popping girlfriend. What happened to the insinuation that Jack knew how to hide a body?

There's one more post-death revelation to come, which will kill off the last remaining support Derek has in the family - when Carol finds the letter from David he hid from her.

So, DelBoy got unceremoniously chucked from Max's house, with Kat as a witness, only to have a heart attack across the street. When Joey managed to utter his only intelligible word upon seeing Derek's distress (well, "dad" is only one syllable), Kat calls him back, and the three men and this woman watch Derek die, although I doubt anything could have been done for him.

Curiously, Jamie Foreman's arm-gripping death scene amused me, and reminded me of something out of the old I Love Lucy show from many years ago ...

I felt that Foreman hammed it up at the end, but based on what he'd said since leaving, about the scripts and the circular nature of his storylines, like his character, I felt that Foreman just didn't give a damn.

Don't get me wrong. The episode was good, but neither Max's secret nor Derek's death were any great shocks.

Let's just see now how Max deals with the mess named Kirsty, the newest Mrs Branning.