How about a little bit of Elton John for those Sorry Girls, AKA Kat and Lauren?
First of all, this was another good episode. I'm not familiar with Matt Evans's work, but this was a genuinely watchable episode, aside from a few minor quirks I'll mention later, and it actually had the feel of a real, traditional EastEnders' episode, the sort with which I'm familiar.
The real question is whether or not the show can sustain this in the coming months and I'm pessimistic. Of course, tonight was Branning-centric. We've known they were going to dominate the Christmas proceedings since March, and they've spread their tentacles about the Square so much that they've pretty much enveloped everything and everyone.
But tonight concentrated on the one Branning viewers have practically unanimously found the most interesting and the most complex: Max. Like Phil, you either love him or hate him, but also like Phil, you find him damned watchable. There was just enough emphasis on Max, Tanya was just bearable enough in the background, with minimal offering from the drunken oldman in drag fag-endhorn to make their vignette watchable. The rest, concerning Alfie's situation with Kat was also tied up with BranningVilled via Derek and his involvement. There was foreshadowing - some subtle and some so obvious it hith you like a wet fish. And to top it off we had watchable light relief.
I know that EastEnders is banking all their chips on the surprise reveals this Christmas, after a mediocre run up to the festive season. They need to sustain this atmosphere in the coming months. There should be repercussions and aftermaths to whatever these reveals encompassed - especially so since the programme is going to be without Steve McFadden, Shane Richie, Adam Woodyatt and Gillian Wright, all on panto duty. Nina Wadia is leaving. Another downer.
Looking ahead at January, it looks as though it's the slow crawl to Zainab's departure, teens, Brannings, teens, Brannings, teens and more teens. TPTB would do well to remember that, although Max Branning is popular, the rest of his family is not, and now that Derek is being dispatched and Tanya is departing, a cull is in order. And I'm talking about, specifically, Jack, Joey, Alice and maybe, just maybe, Lauren. In fact, I would say a workable, bearable and popular Branning unit would consist of Max, Carol and Abi. The rest can go to hell in a handcart.
Diederick Santer used a short-term quick-fix to staunch the flow of viewers away from the soap, using the return of older characters (Ricky, Bianca and Carol worked, Clare didn't) and sensationalist plots to get bums on seats. All well and good, but the show's been trashed since then, and I want it to return to believeable, sustainable and consistent drama enacted by people who are proficient at their trade, not catalogue models, reality television stars and people who believe their own hype and turn the character they play into themselves.
OK, let's roll ...
Tanya and Max Again and Again and Again...
Who's sorry now? I'll tell you. Poor, pitiful Lauren, who shuffles into the Branning living room like a little whiffenpoof, a poor little lamb who has lost her way. If she applied herself to her studies, she could get into Yale. Then she'd be entitled to sing the song ...
As it is, she's just entitled.
Tanya's miffed, because Lauren's drunken behaviour the evening before ruined her six hundredth seventy-fifth wedding. Not just the wedding, but the dress, the cake and everything that goes with it. (Sorry, did Abi just pick a hunk of cake off the floor and jigsaw-puzzle-fix it back into place on its tier? Eeeeeuuuuuuuwwwww. I told you the Brannings were jumped up white trash!)
Yes, Tanya's miffed because Lauren ruined her latest big day, but she's able to mask that selfish disappointment in the face of the rotten, old, whiskey-and-fag-breathing moo who's there casting judgement on her grandaughter, of all people.
(To the little, lost soul on Walford Web, who piously stated that Cora doesn't judge, please pay attention! Cora is a drunk. Tanya is a drunk. Listen, there are seven shades of drunks and these two women represent two types. So, there you have Cora the Bora pontificating about how Tanya really needs to take Lauren in hand, how she's letting her get away with bad behaviour, yet again, when this was the exact way that Cora the Bora raised her daughters).
Don't forget that Cora the Bora was the one who haul-assed a drunken Lauren from the Vic on Lauren's birthday, only to be met at the Brannings' front door by Tanya with an oversized wineglass and then to snort a snoutful of Max's finest whiskey, herself.
Cora doesn't judge? My arse.
But thank goodness, Tanya has an ace up her sleeve. She can piously claim to be worried about her daughter's welfare, regarding the amount she had drunk the night before - one step away from getting her stomach pumped, I believe she said.
Er, no, Tanya, she wasn't. Lauren got drunk enough to puke. End of. If she were one step away from a stomach pump - that is, to say, suffering from alcohol poisoning, she'd be out like a light. Like Billie, who was referenced tonight. Kudos to Tanya for mentioning Billie. Maybe she is having an epiphany, although Max assures her that Lauren won't come to Billie's end, simply because she has Max and Tanya for parents. (I'd actually have said that Max and Tanya were the cause of Lauren's drinking problem, like Cora the Bora is the cause of Rainie's).
But Lauren's sorry ... only after she's seen the damage she's wreaked. She's always sorry after the fact, and the fact usually turns out to be something so major that people's lives are changed forever - like Stax. Good continuity of dialogue, having Lauren, in the midst of her one-person pity party remember that she's responsible for all these big upsets, especially at Christmas - Stax, finding out that Stacey killed Archie, and now this.
But Lauren's sorry, and she's reverted to weak, hung-over, little girl mode, so "sorry" looks more pitiful and - hey - instead of being the pejorative protagonist, over-acting because she can't see her cousin-boyfriend and indulge in a little incest, she becomes the poor, pitiful, daughter, who must be loved, cossetted, mollycoddled and protected, which was the reason Max gave to Lauren when she asked him why Tanya had lied about Joey - that Tanya was trying to protect Lauren from Derek (and also to keep her out of jail, where she really should still be already for trying to kill her father).
Lauren the Little Girl sparks Max into paternal mode and into becoming the magic daddy who can right any wrong. Actually, Max became what he should have been all along - someone who puts his wife/partner and their children first, even against the bullying tactics of his brother. One of the highest points of the night was Max, putting Derek in his place by downplaying Derek's assumed role as "head of the family."
Honestly, every time Derek used that phrase this past year, I literally wet myself laughing at it. I know Bryan Kirkwood intended to big the Brannings up with big, bad Delboy at the head of the charade, and I'm called to mind that kitchen table meeting back early in the year when Roxy had gained custody of Amy, and it was embarrassing. I am part-Sicilian, and I have seen kitchen-table meetings, and this one with Derek doing his Sonny Corleone bit, Max playing up as Michael and Jack sobbing away as Guido the simple one was a total hoot.
Max giving Derek 24 hours to revel in the part of Head of the Family before he, Jack and Carol gave him the boot was a joy to behold - mainly because Jake Wood is such a good actor. For the record, this is what heads of crime families do ...
Tomorrow heralds the revelation of Max's secret as well as Derek's death, so the 24 hours' warning was really double-edged sword. No matter which way the pendulum swings, Derek will no longer be self-appointed head of the Branning Trailer Trash. Max called Derek's bluff about his threat to expose Max's secret, saying Tanya had forgiven him before and she'll do so again. Once again, I think Max's secret has something to do with a woman - and possibly a child. I used to think perhaps he'd married an Eastern European sex worker in order to give her the right to stay in the UK, but since the two thugs who smacked Derek about were from South London, I'm beginning to wonder. I still keep thinking about the woman who had travelled to Walford with Derek and Max in Derek's car. Still, less than 24 hours.
The downsides of this vignette? Tanya's incessant selfishness, opting to call the wedding off and then showing her primary concern was to get the "same venue" at the earliest date possible. What venue? The registry office? The other downside was Sharon being morphed, yet again, into a Branning subsidiary, making her entrance in the cheesiest way possible and looking like a fool. Before the camera panned on her, I actually thought it was Kim who'd come to call on the Brannings early that morning. Note, also, that Sharon hadn't really planned to spend Christmas in Branningville. She was going to see Phil.
Of one thing I am most adamant: I do not like Sharon sucked into the Brannings' world.
Alfie and the Old Stray Kat.
Cheesy, yes, I know, and bloody predictable ... so maybe you'd rather I told it like it really was, this situation with Kat, Alfie and Roxy - or rather what it's going to become in 2013 ...
Kabuki Theatre
Act I: Kat's staying at Derek's, which is really the old Slater house. Why? Well, because she's got no place else to go, and because Derek, forceful, charmless person that he is (or, rather, that he's become) really does want Kat. I suppose, between Jackie Bosch (who put him in his place), Rainie (who sobered up) and Kat, she's the best of a bad lot.
This entire situation is a farce, and it's insulting to the viewer, really. There is no perceiveable way Kat would have fallen entirely for Derek to the point that she harboured feelings for him and even believed that she loved him. Maybe if this rancide storyline hadn't been introduced as a whodunnit, but rather some sort of affair and we were allowed to see feelings develop, it may have been more interesting - just as unlikeable, mind you, but interesting.
Now, after the fact, we saw her caught in the act of infidelity, lying for months about Shaggerman's identity, almost as if she wanted to protect him. For God's sake, she really seriously didn't think Derek was capable of doing Alfie in?
With Kat, it's the same old same old. She thinks that if she tells Alfie she's finished the affair and that she loves him, he'll forgive her for as many times as Tanya's had weddings. Or maybe she did harbour feelings for Derek, based on the size of his member or his feats of strength in bed or whatever; but now in the cold, light of day, she's faced with a controlling, deliberate and mean man, who wouldn't hesitate to knock the living crap out of her if she as much as looks the wrong way.
Dereks' terse little remark about him, Kat, Tommy and - oh yes - Alice being one nice little family hit home to Kat. Good. She needed that.
I'm glad she's being ritually shunned in the way that Sharon was shunned in the aftermath of Sharongate and the way Pat was shunned when it was discovered she'd cheated on Roy with Frank (who was married to Peggy at the time).
I was also glad that not only Jean, but also Big Mo, were firmly Team Alfie on this occasion. For the benefit of Jark, on Walford Web, who remarked that he'd be seriously pissed off if Kat's family turned against her, it works like this: Kat's behaviour has brought shame on her family. Big Mo expressed this best. If Jark and anyone else knows the history of Big Mo, Pat and Jimmy Harris (who was Mo's husband and Pat's brother), you'd know that Big Mo takes marital fidelity very seriously. Viv Slater, herself, was on the brink of being unfaithful to Charlie and remembered the man she married. Good continuity again for Mo bringing Viv and what her reaction would be into the equation. Big Mo may be a thief, a fence and a benefits' fraud, but she's not into marital infidelity. The Slaters were even careful of Little Mo's association with Billy Mitchell at the height of her misfortunes with Trevor, lest it work against her.
For years, Big Mo always looked down her nose at Pat and her behaviour on that accord. That was the only piece of moral high ground Mo held over Pat. Kat's behaviour in this instance brought the Harris-Slaters right down to the level Pat had reached when her brother disowned her. That would hurt Mo.
As for Jean, yes, she loves Kat, who's become a surrogate Stacey; and yes, she virtually condoned Stacey breaking up Janine's marriage to Ryan (somehow reckoning that it was all Janine's fault); but Jean also knows that Alfie's kindness is the key to her staying at the Vic. He allows her to stay and not pay rent or contribute to the household finances. He allows her to care for his son, when a lot of people would be wary of Jean dealing with young children and being bi-polar. Both Jean and Mo lived with Alfie and Kat, and both knew and were aware of the off-hand way in which Kat often treated Alfie, even if they weren't aware of what was going on with Derek. In fact, Mo has called Kat out on her blatand disrespect of Alfie.
An interesting scene to come from all of this was the scene outside the Vic between Shirley and Kat. This was Shirley at her best and the Shirley who could have become the natural successor to Pat, had someone not rinsed and repeated her as the Mitchell doormat. When Kat lamented about having broken Alfie's heart, I thought Shirley would speak about the time she broke Kevin's heart, but she actually moved on from that, although I doubt she ever stopped loving Kevin. But maybe, indirectly, she was referring to that, when she reminded Kat that broken hearts heal. That Kat has to give Alfie space and time, and then, if she really wanted him back, she had to fight for him - something that she's done before seven years ago and from which she'd learned nothing. Maybe Shirley was lamenting that she didn't return to fight for Kevin, until it was too late and he'd moved on, raised the kids and married Denise.
Shirley ended up crying at his death that she loved Kevin first and loved him best. This is Kat's refrain about Alfie, and the eventual thing we know is that TPTB are making it their priority to repair Kat and to reunite her, eventually, with Alfie - eventually, meaning, most likely Christmas 2013, their tenth wedding anniversary. Surprised, in fact, that Alfie, at his lowest, didn't mention the fact that the next day was his ninth wedding anniversary.
His hurt at missing Tommy was tangible, and it's noticeable how much easier the kid who plays Tommy is with Shane Richie than he is with Jessie Wallace. A kiss on demand for Richie, but the kid is stiff as hardwood and always pointing out his off-screen mother when handled by Wallace.
Two pieces of symbolism, one subtle and one stating-the-bleeding-obvious: The fact that Alfie and Fatboy's stall beat Derek's and Tyler's in takings, thanks to Tyler keeping back just enough money to ensure Derek would lose - this after Kim, in a writers' nod to the fora people, wondered why Tyler could even work with that toad. Tyler came up trumps in the family stakes, and this means, obliquely, that Alfie will somehow best Derek and his bunch. The other symbolism was the ever-present moon, where Kat was concerned - the last scene of her gazing at the Vic, during the lock-up, whilst the full moon beamed down upon the scene, only to see Alfie come to the upstairs window and gaze down at her, ensconced in Derek's front room.
The countdown starts here ... Poor Roxy. Reduced to Vanessadom already.
Surprise of the vignette: Kim. She was genuinely funny on the market and sang really well. OK, the Christmas tree bit at the end was a bit OTT.
Added Attraction: Fatboy Meets Girl.
OK, Fatboy and Poppy are now officially a couple. She eschewed spending Christmas with her family - wait, Poppy's Jewish. Darren and Jodie went to her brother's bar mitzvah. Oh well, what's a small detail like that when there's a story to tell? And why doesn't Arthur spend Christmas with his father at his Uncle Darius's house or with his mum in the leafy suburbs? And who's the Polish man in Number 4?
Look, the purpose of all of this episode is to set Derek up as even more despicable, controlling, manipulating and generally hateful than he has been already - mindful of the fact that for most viewers, he came across as a sad wannabe Delboy on steroids. All that was missing was the Batman suit. We also know he's going to clash with Carol because we saw him pocketing David's letter.
In reality, this demonisation of a man who was already arguably the most unpopular character EastEnders has ever introduced - so unpopular that he had to be killed off - has also only served to heighten the self-victimisation of two characters who thrive on being self-perpetuating victims: Kat and Lauren, both of whom need to take some serious responsibility about their lives.
Finally, Nice Surprise of the Night: The Mother and Child Reunion at Christmas.
First of all, this was another good episode. I'm not familiar with Matt Evans's work, but this was a genuinely watchable episode, aside from a few minor quirks I'll mention later, and it actually had the feel of a real, traditional EastEnders' episode, the sort with which I'm familiar.
The real question is whether or not the show can sustain this in the coming months and I'm pessimistic. Of course, tonight was Branning-centric. We've known they were going to dominate the Christmas proceedings since March, and they've spread their tentacles about the Square so much that they've pretty much enveloped everything and everyone.
But tonight concentrated on the one Branning viewers have practically unanimously found the most interesting and the most complex: Max. Like Phil, you either love him or hate him, but also like Phil, you find him damned watchable. There was just enough emphasis on Max, Tanya was just bearable enough in the background, with minimal offering from the drunken old
I know that EastEnders is banking all their chips on the surprise reveals this Christmas, after a mediocre run up to the festive season. They need to sustain this atmosphere in the coming months. There should be repercussions and aftermaths to whatever these reveals encompassed - especially so since the programme is going to be without Steve McFadden, Shane Richie, Adam Woodyatt and Gillian Wright, all on panto duty. Nina Wadia is leaving. Another downer.
Looking ahead at January, it looks as though it's the slow crawl to Zainab's departure, teens, Brannings, teens, Brannings, teens and more teens. TPTB would do well to remember that, although Max Branning is popular, the rest of his family is not, and now that Derek is being dispatched and Tanya is departing, a cull is in order. And I'm talking about, specifically, Jack, Joey, Alice and maybe, just maybe, Lauren. In fact, I would say a workable, bearable and popular Branning unit would consist of Max, Carol and Abi. The rest can go to hell in a handcart.
Diederick Santer used a short-term quick-fix to staunch the flow of viewers away from the soap, using the return of older characters (Ricky, Bianca and Carol worked, Clare didn't) and sensationalist plots to get bums on seats. All well and good, but the show's been trashed since then, and I want it to return to believeable, sustainable and consistent drama enacted by people who are proficient at their trade, not catalogue models, reality television stars and people who believe their own hype and turn the character they play into themselves.
OK, let's roll ...
Tanya and Max Again and Again and Again...
Who's sorry now? I'll tell you. Poor, pitiful Lauren, who shuffles into the Branning living room like a little whiffenpoof, a poor little lamb who has lost her way. If she applied herself to her studies, she could get into Yale. Then she'd be entitled to sing the song ...
As it is, she's just entitled.
Tanya's miffed, because Lauren's drunken behaviour the evening before ruined her six hundredth seventy-fifth wedding. Not just the wedding, but the dress, the cake and everything that goes with it. (Sorry, did Abi just pick a hunk of cake off the floor and jigsaw-puzzle-fix it back into place on its tier? Eeeeeuuuuuuuwwwww. I told you the Brannings were jumped up white trash!)
Yes, Tanya's miffed because Lauren ruined her latest big day, but she's able to mask that selfish disappointment in the face of the rotten, old, whiskey-and-fag-breathing moo who's there casting judgement on her grandaughter, of all people.
(To the little, lost soul on Walford Web, who piously stated that Cora doesn't judge, please pay attention! Cora is a drunk. Tanya is a drunk. Listen, there are seven shades of drunks and these two women represent two types. So, there you have Cora the Bora pontificating about how Tanya really needs to take Lauren in hand, how she's letting her get away with bad behaviour, yet again, when this was the exact way that Cora the Bora raised her daughters).
Don't forget that Cora the Bora was the one who haul-assed a drunken Lauren from the Vic on Lauren's birthday, only to be met at the Brannings' front door by Tanya with an oversized wineglass and then to snort a snoutful of Max's finest whiskey, herself.
Cora doesn't judge? My arse.
But thank goodness, Tanya has an ace up her sleeve. She can piously claim to be worried about her daughter's welfare, regarding the amount she had drunk the night before - one step away from getting her stomach pumped, I believe she said.
Er, no, Tanya, she wasn't. Lauren got drunk enough to puke. End of. If she were one step away from a stomach pump - that is, to say, suffering from alcohol poisoning, she'd be out like a light. Like Billie, who was referenced tonight. Kudos to Tanya for mentioning Billie. Maybe she is having an epiphany, although Max assures her that Lauren won't come to Billie's end, simply because she has Max and Tanya for parents. (I'd actually have said that Max and Tanya were the cause of Lauren's drinking problem, like Cora the Bora is the cause of Rainie's).
But Lauren's sorry ... only after she's seen the damage she's wreaked. She's always sorry after the fact, and the fact usually turns out to be something so major that people's lives are changed forever - like Stax. Good continuity of dialogue, having Lauren, in the midst of her one-person pity party remember that she's responsible for all these big upsets, especially at Christmas - Stax, finding out that Stacey killed Archie, and now this.
But Lauren's sorry, and she's reverted to weak, hung-over, little girl mode, so "sorry" looks more pitiful and - hey - instead of being the pejorative protagonist, over-acting because she can't see her cousin-boyfriend and indulge in a little incest, she becomes the poor, pitiful, daughter, who must be loved, cossetted, mollycoddled and protected, which was the reason Max gave to Lauren when she asked him why Tanya had lied about Joey - that Tanya was trying to protect Lauren from Derek (and also to keep her out of jail, where she really should still be already for trying to kill her father).
Lauren the Little Girl sparks Max into paternal mode and into becoming the magic daddy who can right any wrong. Actually, Max became what he should have been all along - someone who puts his wife/partner and their children first, even against the bullying tactics of his brother. One of the highest points of the night was Max, putting Derek in his place by downplaying Derek's assumed role as "head of the family."
Honestly, every time Derek used that phrase this past year, I literally wet myself laughing at it. I know Bryan Kirkwood intended to big the Brannings up with big, bad Delboy at the head of the charade, and I'm called to mind that kitchen table meeting back early in the year when Roxy had gained custody of Amy, and it was embarrassing. I am part-Sicilian, and I have seen kitchen-table meetings, and this one with Derek doing his Sonny Corleone bit, Max playing up as Michael and Jack sobbing away as Guido the simple one was a total hoot.
Max giving Derek 24 hours to revel in the part of Head of the Family before he, Jack and Carol gave him the boot was a joy to behold - mainly because Jake Wood is such a good actor. For the record, this is what heads of crime families do ...
Tomorrow heralds the revelation of Max's secret as well as Derek's death, so the 24 hours' warning was really double-edged sword. No matter which way the pendulum swings, Derek will no longer be self-appointed head of the Branning Trailer Trash. Max called Derek's bluff about his threat to expose Max's secret, saying Tanya had forgiven him before and she'll do so again. Once again, I think Max's secret has something to do with a woman - and possibly a child. I used to think perhaps he'd married an Eastern European sex worker in order to give her the right to stay in the UK, but since the two thugs who smacked Derek about were from South London, I'm beginning to wonder. I still keep thinking about the woman who had travelled to Walford with Derek and Max in Derek's car. Still, less than 24 hours.
The downsides of this vignette? Tanya's incessant selfishness, opting to call the wedding off and then showing her primary concern was to get the "same venue" at the earliest date possible. What venue? The registry office? The other downside was Sharon being morphed, yet again, into a Branning subsidiary, making her entrance in the cheesiest way possible and looking like a fool. Before the camera panned on her, I actually thought it was Kim who'd come to call on the Brannings early that morning. Note, also, that Sharon hadn't really planned to spend Christmas in Branningville. She was going to see Phil.
Of one thing I am most adamant: I do not like Sharon sucked into the Brannings' world.
Alfie and the Old Stray Kat.
Cheesy, yes, I know, and bloody predictable ... so maybe you'd rather I told it like it really was, this situation with Kat, Alfie and Roxy - or rather what it's going to become in 2013 ...
Kabuki Theatre
Act I: Kat's staying at Derek's, which is really the old Slater house. Why? Well, because she's got no place else to go, and because Derek, forceful, charmless person that he is (or, rather, that he's become) really does want Kat. I suppose, between Jackie Bosch (who put him in his place), Rainie (who sobered up) and Kat, she's the best of a bad lot.
This entire situation is a farce, and it's insulting to the viewer, really. There is no perceiveable way Kat would have fallen entirely for Derek to the point that she harboured feelings for him and even believed that she loved him. Maybe if this rancide storyline hadn't been introduced as a whodunnit, but rather some sort of affair and we were allowed to see feelings develop, it may have been more interesting - just as unlikeable, mind you, but interesting.
Now, after the fact, we saw her caught in the act of infidelity, lying for months about Shaggerman's identity, almost as if she wanted to protect him. For God's sake, she really seriously didn't think Derek was capable of doing Alfie in?
With Kat, it's the same old same old. She thinks that if she tells Alfie she's finished the affair and that she loves him, he'll forgive her for as many times as Tanya's had weddings. Or maybe she did harbour feelings for Derek, based on the size of his member or his feats of strength in bed or whatever; but now in the cold, light of day, she's faced with a controlling, deliberate and mean man, who wouldn't hesitate to knock the living crap out of her if she as much as looks the wrong way.
Dereks' terse little remark about him, Kat, Tommy and - oh yes - Alice being one nice little family hit home to Kat. Good. She needed that.
I'm glad she's being ritually shunned in the way that Sharon was shunned in the aftermath of Sharongate and the way Pat was shunned when it was discovered she'd cheated on Roy with Frank (who was married to Peggy at the time).
I was also glad that not only Jean, but also Big Mo, were firmly Team Alfie on this occasion. For the benefit of Jark, on Walford Web, who remarked that he'd be seriously pissed off if Kat's family turned against her, it works like this: Kat's behaviour has brought shame on her family. Big Mo expressed this best. If Jark and anyone else knows the history of Big Mo, Pat and Jimmy Harris (who was Mo's husband and Pat's brother), you'd know that Big Mo takes marital fidelity very seriously. Viv Slater, herself, was on the brink of being unfaithful to Charlie and remembered the man she married. Good continuity again for Mo bringing Viv and what her reaction would be into the equation. Big Mo may be a thief, a fence and a benefits' fraud, but she's not into marital infidelity. The Slaters were even careful of Little Mo's association with Billy Mitchell at the height of her misfortunes with Trevor, lest it work against her.
For years, Big Mo always looked down her nose at Pat and her behaviour on that accord. That was the only piece of moral high ground Mo held over Pat. Kat's behaviour in this instance brought the Harris-Slaters right down to the level Pat had reached when her brother disowned her. That would hurt Mo.
As for Jean, yes, she loves Kat, who's become a surrogate Stacey; and yes, she virtually condoned Stacey breaking up Janine's marriage to Ryan (somehow reckoning that it was all Janine's fault); but Jean also knows that Alfie's kindness is the key to her staying at the Vic. He allows her to stay and not pay rent or contribute to the household finances. He allows her to care for his son, when a lot of people would be wary of Jean dealing with young children and being bi-polar. Both Jean and Mo lived with Alfie and Kat, and both knew and were aware of the off-hand way in which Kat often treated Alfie, even if they weren't aware of what was going on with Derek. In fact, Mo has called Kat out on her blatand disrespect of Alfie.
An interesting scene to come from all of this was the scene outside the Vic between Shirley and Kat. This was Shirley at her best and the Shirley who could have become the natural successor to Pat, had someone not rinsed and repeated her as the Mitchell doormat. When Kat lamented about having broken Alfie's heart, I thought Shirley would speak about the time she broke Kevin's heart, but she actually moved on from that, although I doubt she ever stopped loving Kevin. But maybe, indirectly, she was referring to that, when she reminded Kat that broken hearts heal. That Kat has to give Alfie space and time, and then, if she really wanted him back, she had to fight for him - something that she's done before seven years ago and from which she'd learned nothing. Maybe Shirley was lamenting that she didn't return to fight for Kevin, until it was too late and he'd moved on, raised the kids and married Denise.
Shirley ended up crying at his death that she loved Kevin first and loved him best. This is Kat's refrain about Alfie, and the eventual thing we know is that TPTB are making it their priority to repair Kat and to reunite her, eventually, with Alfie - eventually, meaning, most likely Christmas 2013, their tenth wedding anniversary. Surprised, in fact, that Alfie, at his lowest, didn't mention the fact that the next day was his ninth wedding anniversary.
His hurt at missing Tommy was tangible, and it's noticeable how much easier the kid who plays Tommy is with Shane Richie than he is with Jessie Wallace. A kiss on demand for Richie, but the kid is stiff as hardwood and always pointing out his off-screen mother when handled by Wallace.
Two pieces of symbolism, one subtle and one stating-the-bleeding-obvious: The fact that Alfie and Fatboy's stall beat Derek's and Tyler's in takings, thanks to Tyler keeping back just enough money to ensure Derek would lose - this after Kim, in a writers' nod to the fora people, wondered why Tyler could even work with that toad. Tyler came up trumps in the family stakes, and this means, obliquely, that Alfie will somehow best Derek and his bunch. The other symbolism was the ever-present moon, where Kat was concerned - the last scene of her gazing at the Vic, during the lock-up, whilst the full moon beamed down upon the scene, only to see Alfie come to the upstairs window and gaze down at her, ensconced in Derek's front room.
The countdown starts here ... Poor Roxy. Reduced to Vanessadom already.
Surprise of the vignette: Kim. She was genuinely funny on the market and sang really well. OK, the Christmas tree bit at the end was a bit OTT.
Added Attraction: Fatboy Meets Girl.
OK, Fatboy and Poppy are now officially a couple. She eschewed spending Christmas with her family - wait, Poppy's Jewish. Darren and Jodie went to her brother's bar mitzvah. Oh well, what's a small detail like that when there's a story to tell? And why doesn't Arthur spend Christmas with his father at his Uncle Darius's house or with his mum in the leafy suburbs? And who's the Polish man in Number 4?
Look, the purpose of all of this episode is to set Derek up as even more despicable, controlling, manipulating and generally hateful than he has been already - mindful of the fact that for most viewers, he came across as a sad wannabe Delboy on steroids. All that was missing was the Batman suit. We also know he's going to clash with Carol because we saw him pocketing David's letter.
In reality, this demonisation of a man who was already arguably the most unpopular character EastEnders has ever introduced - so unpopular that he had to be killed off - has also only served to heighten the self-victimisation of two characters who thrive on being self-perpetuating victims: Kat and Lauren, both of whom need to take some serious responsibility about their lives.
Finally, Nice Surprise of the Night: The Mother and Child Reunion at Christmas.
Yes, Phil pulled it off ... but that was obvious from the first scene in the cafe, between him, Billy and Lola. And, yes, we saw the nice side of Phil; but Phil never does anything without intent, and the intent is for Phil's benefit. Lull Lola into a false sense of security and watch what happens. Still, it's Christmas and he does have a good side. Anyone who's watched since before 2000 would know that.
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