The Branning Show: Derek Shaggerman Branning - Review 20.12.2012

A little mood music for that old romantic, Derek Branning:-

I'm not one to brag or blow my own trumpet but ... I got this right from the getgo!

All the signs were there when this abysmal storyline began. Shaggerman has been, without a doubt, the worst storyline in the history of the show. Far worse than Kidneygate. It was a storyline meant to do all sorts of things - celebrate the European Championships, foment a community feeling, and set up the great whodunnit. 

That's right, we all were supposed to get excited about a married woman shagging about on her husband, who only happened to worship the bones of her. Of course, we were thrown several red herrings. And some of them stank like rotten fish too.

For example, heretofore, the Brannings were just punters in the pub. Alfie and Kat served them, but you never saw Kat blatantly and overtly flirting with any of the customers - certainly not the Brannings. Or Michael. Or Ray. Yet all of a sudden with the football, Alfie was turned into a blithering idiot, with Kat suddenly calling all the shots.

TPTB were pulling out all the stops to get us to justify Kat's impending infidelity - Alfie getting drunk after a game - something he's never done before and hasn't done since. Alfie spending time with the kids, being a dad. That sort of stuff, but Kat was totally rancid. What I still find hard to believe is that some women actually thought she was justified in cheating simply because she could. Bullshit.

The clues that Shaggerman was Derek were always there.

• Derek kept himself apart from the usual football crowd.
• He never overtly flirted with Kat.
• Derek liked a bit of rough. Max turned down Roxy's invitation for a fling, calling Roxy hamburger to Tanya's steak. If Roxy's hamburger, then Kat's skag-end. Don't forget that before Kat, Derek had Rainie Cross (a rough guide to rough) and before her, Jackie Bosch.
• The bedbug bedsit was another red herring. Max had form there, but Derek had the money.
• Now you know where Derek's got the money to pay for that lease as well - Scamming Max.
• Kat was never Jack's type. Everyone whining about Tommy being the bond was wrong. Jack likes blondes.
• Max, as well, wouldn't give up Tanya for Kat, not having to live afterwards in Walford, but Derek - Derek wouldn't give a rat's ass.

The totally incongruous element of the story was that Kat was supposed to have developed feelings for Shaggerman. The viewers were only allowed to see the sexual element. Even the very beginning with the kitchen encounter on the kitchen counter, with Kat pulling down her skirt showed that on both parts, it was all about getting a leg-over.

Mentioning that first encounter just now proves what a liar Kat is, when she maintained to Alfie that Derek came onto her and wouldn't relent (that sounded in character). In that first instance, Kat was as ready for a pork as he was. The slut.

Anyway, I feel justified. Others may have said it was Derek, but I said it was Derek first.

I'm not the biggest fan of Simon Ashdown's, but credit where credit is due, he's a damned good writer, even if he is more than a bit Branning-centric.

This was a corker of an episode tonight - contrivances apart - and Shane Richie showed that he can step up to the plate with the best of them. Also, the cinematography was great tonight - how the camera was kept close on Richie's face as he followed Kat to the bedsit, the diversion of running into Tanya's hen party off to the Stag do, and having an altercation with Bianca and Kim.

(Brief aside: Worst bit of the episode - Jacqueline Jossa. Look, I know EastEnders' PR department are pushing her as the It girl of the moment, so she's contrived to be in at least one scene per episode. Tonight showed her at her worst - whining and demanding Tanya tell her what she said to Joey - because now Turdhopper's hopping away from Walford and Lauren's gurning crying. Then later, she's doing her infamous drunk scene, which is about as convincing as a chocolate teapot. I doubt Jossa's ever been drunk in her life. In fact, I doubt she's ever convincingly acted in her life, but still, she got the ubiquitous Lauren scene tonight, so all the fanbois can sit in the corners and gag about how "hot" she's not).

The two-header portion, which encompassed most of the episode was well-paced, tense, and well acted. This was the dark side of Alfie that we never saw, and what he said to Kat was the raw truth. Line of the night ...

Me? I tell white lies, sweetheart, but you ... you take it to another level.

One thing I found unusual ... Kat entered that flat less than five minutes before Alfie kicked the door in. She never lit all those candles, and it would have been dangerous for Derek to have lit all of them and left them burning like that.

Ashdown left it deliberately ambiguous about whether or not Kat had been unfaithful since returning from holiday with Alfie. That's done, of course, for a purpose, and we saw the beginning of that again tonight - the return of Kat-the-Victim.

It wasn't her fault, of course.

Derek made her do it. He just pressured her and pressured her so until she didn't know what to do ... so she just lay back and thought of England. (Sorry, but when you're pressured into having sex when you don't want to have it, isn't that rape?) Kat was never pressured into this arrangement - the secret phone, the rendezvouz, holding Derek's injured hand tenderly after the joke fight in the pub. No, none of this was Kat's fault.

And again, throughout that entire confrontation, she never once admitted why she was unfaithful with this man, and when she apologised, her apology rang hollow. She was awfully sorry she got caught and has to bear Alfie's wrath, but she isn't sorry for hurting him of rubbing his face in it. That's what hurt the most, as Alfie said - the fact that Kat took her dirty work and flung it in his face, down the road from where they lived with their son, shagging someone who wasn't only a customer, but considered himself a friend.

I loved that Alfie referred to Kat as "the local bike." She's behaved like just that and she deserved that line. And even if she were ending this charade that night, why does she think she's entitled to Alfie endlessly not giving up on her? This is the fifth time in nine years she's been unfaithful to Alfie, and he's not been unfaithful once. The worst of the worst was sleeping with and getting pregnant by his cousin.

Alfie's put up with some serious shit from Kat for the past two years - he's been physically assaulted, publically humiliated with his manhood called into question, she's cheated on him and spoken to him like he was cack. I'm glad he's finally realising what she's done to him and calling an end to it from his end.

I'd be happier if I knew this wasn't the beginning of an elaborate kabuki theatre piece offering Roxy up as the sacrificial lamb at the altar of St Kat.

Another brilliant camera angle was the way the camera followed Shane Richie from the front all the way from the bedsit back to the Vic - reminiscent of the way it treated Lindsey Coulsen in the episode about Billie's death. It made for extra tension.

And the piece de resistance - the confrontation with the Branning brothers. The script for Alfie was bloody brilliant. Alfie's right - he's no one's friend. He's just the mug who serves you beer and banters with you. He was dead on the amorality of the Brannings too, with some relevant home truths:- Jack, using the dead baby sympathy card to get into Sharpn's knickers and (Alfie thought) Kat's too. (Jack will do just that in the next couple of weeks with Sharon). Calling Derek a sleazeball (well, he is). Reminding Max of his form in infidelity - Tanya's face was a picture. You could tell she was suspicious of Max being Shaggerman the entire time.

And Jake Wood playing an absolute blinder. His downturned manner giving rise for speculation (and for a moment there, even I thought Max might be the Shaggerman); however, I couldn't help but notice how Max in modest mode so closely resembles the creature he voices in US commercials - The GEICO Gekko;-

Max Branning

The Geico Gekko

Another contrivance I'll not understand and that was Kat's ringing Max's mobile. Why? She wittered something about warning. Does that mean Max knows about the affair? Well, Derek knows some of Max's secrets. Still, it always amazes me that everyone in Walford knows everyone else's mobile numbers.

This was a great public reveal, and it happened in the Vic. Alfie's line of revelation (Which one of you three has been shagging my wife?) has the makings of a classic and revealed the Brannings for the amoral losers they are.

Brilliant episode, but it still doesn't belie the fact that, in treating this entire storyline as a contest of a whodunnit, the audience has been cheated out of an opportunity to watch an illicit relationship develop and understand the dynamics behind this. Instead, all we got was back-alley sex.

Kat is just as amoral as Derek, except that Derek owns that he doesn't give a damn, and she's afraid to admit that she's just as bad as he is. Somewhere, along the line, we're sure to hear the dirty girl meme and a remark about how much Derek is like Uncle'Arry.

Derek is being killed off. In another age and time (Sharongate, Patgate), Kat would be on her bike's bike too.

One yo-yo couple down, another rises.

Good episode. Shame about the storyline.