Branning Town: The Postman Always Brings Tripe - Review 31.01.2013

I blame the storyliners. And some of the writers. Tonight's episode was an  enormous vortex of nothingness, propaganda and poop. But Rob Gittins, one of the longer-serving writers, did the best with what he was given, I suppose. Sitting around and trying to write 30 minutes where nothing happens must be easier and less taxing on the imagination than thinking up relevant storylines and character development in which we can invest.

Oh, woe is EastEnders! When new characters prove eminently unlikeable and old, familiar characters devolve into something downright hateful, something is rotten in the London Borough of Walford. On every fora I read, the long-term viewers - from people who've watched since day one to people who've watched for twenty years right down to people who started watching at the Millennium - are all saying the same thing: that EastEnders is totally unrecogniseable now, that it's losing its brand name, with the undue emphasis on the Branning family with at least one popping up in every episode to the over-inflated influence of the Bratpack of late adolescents who swan about the Square in rude, entitled arrogance with little to offer in talent but who fill in all the blanks and definitions about what a pretty person should be.

At least, Rob Gittins remembers one tenet of EastEnders' storytelling: linking all the vignettes with a theme, however subtle; and tonight's linking theme was the most tenuous link of all - a postman and postal services.

But since Lorraine Newman is pitching this ware to the sub-2006 demographic, that subtlety would have been lost on them, as would these cultural icons ...

Masood is a postman. He delivers letters.He delivers. It's a shame Lorraine Newman doesn't.

Tonight's fare:-

It's Just a Little Crush: The Disintegrating Masoods.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have only little over a week left of Zainab, and my only thought is that TPTB must dislike Nina Wadia very much. Since the announcement just before Christmas that she was leaving - not just leaving, but leaving soon ... not just leaving soon, but finishing her scenes before Christmas - most of the viewers have watched this dismal leaving line with total disinterest mingled with complete dismay.

Zainab has been a part of the programme for the past five years. She's a strong character, and her family have been the most successful Asian residents of the Square since Sanjay and Gee'urgh way back in the 90s - not that anyone whom Lorraine hopes to please would even remember the Kapoors, much less the infamous Ferreiras.

The more we find out about Wadia's leaving, the more TPTB at EastEnders really begin to stink ... like the fact that she let it be known that she didn't want to renew her contract back at the beginning of 2012, begging the question of why TPTB tell us at the last minute that Zainab's leaving within the next few weeks, whilst giving us a year's notice on the departure of Dame Jo Joyner. I know ... Joyner has a large contingent of obsessives (see Digital Spy) and fanbois who wish to suckle her maternal mammaries (see Walford Web Kindergarten), and I suppose Lorraine had to prepare these desperados amply in advance.

Wadia wanted Zainab killed off, which would have made sense for the remaining family's future, but even this request was denied. Newman, it's alleged, might want Zainab to return in the future ... but to what?

Instead of Zainab, we're now presented with Pejorative Zainab, a clone made up of all of Zainab's worst qualities - the biggest, tonight, being extreme obtuseness. Zainab is so full of her own self-importance now, with relation to the boring Ayesha's non-dilemma, that she sees the girl as the embodiment of love in bloom - except she doesn't realise that Ayesha is in love with Masood.

The Masood's predicament is rife with contrived instances - Ayesha wanting milk and Mas averting the possibility of interaction only ends up with his hand touching hers over the milk. Sexual tension? 

No.

This has turned into an unfunny comedy of errors, watching Masood bumble and bustle about, beating a retreat from anything Ayesha, but only managing to stoke her fires even higher. His whole vignette centred around a couple of samosas Ayesha had made for him, as if the offering of the samosas to Masood was emblematic of Eve offering Adam the fated apple.

'E-yah ya go, I ma-yud these fer ya.

Masood is running around the Square like a headless chicken, clad in his Royal Mail jacket (but never seeming to be delivering mail), the samosas firmly entrenched in his pocket.

Of course, Masood isn't used to being pursued by an inappropriate woman ... What am I talking about? Zainab was a very young married woman in Pakistan when she turned her illicit attentions on Masood. He didn't run a mile then, even though he was playing with fire. I guess thirty years of complacency is taking a toll enough for him to seek relationship advice from ...

(Drum roll)

Ajay.

Walford is full of relationship advisors whose advice is just a tad skewed. Remember when Kat convinced Jean that the guy following her about fancied her? He turned out to be a Benefits Inspector alerted to the fact that she appeared to be illegally claiming housing benefit. Lately, we've seen Michael Moon tell Alfie to stick with Kat and let her fuck around, because she's such a major part of his heart. WTF? Pretty soon, we'll see Bianca convince Kat that Alfie wants to take her back.

Seriously, would you trust any of these divs?

Of course not, but then Ajay tells Mas what he wants to hear, and what Ajay believes: Ayesha isn't serious. She's just winding Mas up and getting a giggle out of him being nervous that a seriously fit bird would want to pant after a middle-aged postman with a paunch.

Ajay should be so lucky. He's destined for Bianca and a future of scrounging whilst he listens to his MP3 player to drown out her voice.

Of course, he's wrong, and Mas has gone from thinking Ayesha just has an innocent crush on him ...

... to thinking she's toying with winding him up and treating this as a joke. Confronting her with this, he informs her that he's taking the symbolic samosas to Zainab as a gift, only to be shown the door by his wife-to-be (seriously, I'm getting confused by all these married couples in the Square who aren't - Zainab and Mas, Tanya and Max, Kat and Alfie), who's trying to impress a Regional Manager young enough to be her son.

So he trudges home, and gives into biting into the fates samosa. Sensing he's not alone in the house, he goes upstairs, only to be confronted by a wet and very willing Ayesha, clad only in a towel and offering it to Masood on a plate ... and he nearly takes the offering, only to pull back at the last minute and bolt from the scene of the potential crime.

He's sickened with himself, but maybe the penny has just dropped that what he has with Zainab isn't exactly what he imagines it is.

This, dear reader, is the beginning of the end of the Masoods ...

But don't be too sad, because in a couple of weeks, he'll be eyeing up the only other woman in the Square within his own age demographic.

Can you guess who it is? Well, here's a clue ...

Max: An Innocent Man.

Hey, give Max a piano and a microphone, and here's what you get ...

Boy, with those words, Max could sing that song to Tanya and Kirsty and have them ripping each other's hair extensions out to get to Max.

After all, in this circumstance, he is an innocent man. And it's not rocket science. If the resident village idiot of the triumvirate of the Butcher, Beale and Branning families (Bianca) can figure this out, then what the hell is wrong with Tanya and the girls?

To Bianca, goes the absolute line of the night:-

What is wrong wiv vis fairmly? Max tells the truth, and Tanya runs away ...

Yep, that's pretty much it in a nutshell.

Max is out of his comfort zone, and he's being blanked by his children - chiefly, Abi who's acting like a bigger numptie than she usually is. OK, kids love their parents, and especially, maybe their mothers. Mums nurture, after all. But both Abi and Lauren seem all too willing to see and list Max's sins, but somehow cannot seem to divest Tanya of the many she's committed.

For all we know, they still believe that Max seduced Tanya and broke up her marriage to Greg, when we all know that this was six of one and half a dozen of another. Both girls know Tanya is selfish, and both of them certainly know that she's fobbed them off when they had problems, concentrating only on herself. They're quick to call out Max's foibles and even offer to have him leave, but now - like zombies - they fall prey to the machinations of the awful old drunken bitch who's taken up residence in Max's house, which is owned by Max's brother - not out of any concern for her grandchildren, but because she was booted out of her other abode, where she lodged (by the children's other grandmother) for abusing Dot's hospitality. She's homeless. Send dumbass Tanya away and she has to look after the kids.

That speech she gave Max was a corker. Max brings Tanya down?

Pull the other one, sunshine, it's a brandy.

The truth, as most of us all know and acknowledge it, is that Tanya pursued a married man. Tanya broke up a marriage. Before she'd even hit twenty. Did Cora take umbrage with Tanya doing this? Or did she issue her usual sage piece of advice (not) to fight for Max? Max brings Tanya to her knees? Well, only if she wants to give him head. 

That line would have been ample opportunity for him to grab the old crone by her skanky wrinkly throat shove her up against the wall and tell her the tale about Tanya trying to bury Max alive, how she slept with the local psycho, brought a psychologically damaged much younger man into the household amongst his children and slept with him, in order to get him to help her murder Max. Or how she slept with Jack for a year, and was attempting to leave the country, again illegally, with Max's children.

Tanya was Max's bit on the side. He was already a cheater, and he continued to cheat after he married her. Because he could. Because she let him. Their marriage is one based on secrets and lies, because that's how it originated - him keeping secrets from her about his marital status and lying to sustain both women until Tanya found out about the true nature of his situation and doubled-down her efforts to wrest Max from his family.

Now things have come full circle, and once again, Tanya is the other woman, trying to wrest a man from his wife. Max wants back with Tanya, not because he loves her - oh, he's fond of her and has a bond with her because of the children; but because she's the easy option. She's the familiar presence who eventually welcomes him back - because she can't do without his member. Sex. And once that happens, the secrets and lies will follow. From both. Because Tanya's as dishonest and as amoral as Max, except Max owns his shortcomings, and his hypocritical partner never will.

Max should have kicked Cora's rancid old wrinkly ass down those steps. And who does Abi think she is, sitting in judgement of her father?

Kirsty sent her wedding ring back to him. That's rejection. Something Tanya never did. She collects wedding rings, you see. And white wedding dresses.

Alfie: Leave Him Alone, He's a Family Man.

Well, that's essentially what Alfie told Roxy when she declared her love for him last spring. 

And now ... now ... does anyone have a curious sense of deja vu here? Alfie skirting between Roxy and Kat - as Jean observed, trying to please one and then trying to please the other ... Think back to 2005, when Alfie was seeing Little Mo, after he and Kat had split (again, due to her infideltiy).

This is a woeful reprise of that situation.

A commentator on Walford Web, Nebraska, lobbies for a Kat and Alfie split and wonders why this can't be effected with both staying on the Square. After all, she reasons, people divorce every day. Well, yes, they do. But divorced people may live within a stone's throw of one another, but they don't live on the same street, or across the street or flaming next door. When people split in Walford and both parties remain on the Square, it's a recipe for yo-yo-ism - Max and Tanya (they wrote the book),Stacey and Bradley, Mas and Zainab and now Alfie and Kat.

If Kat left the Square, then probably Alfie could move on in a more healthy manner.

Wake-Up-Creepy-Jean is back in oracle mood tonight. I'm one who's not a fan of Jean, especially when she's being the creepy oracle - and a disapproving one as well. But she has a point tonight, when she raises the point of Alfie moving too fast with Roxy.

Yes, he has done; and this is down to many factors, but it's chiefly down to the writers doing a snow job on the public trying to drum up sympathy for Kat. Kat's behaviour tore up her marriage. She has yet to acknowledge that she was the catalyst in this, she has yet to apologise to Alfie for breaking his heart.

Months ago, when Roxy first confessed that she loved Alfie, he reminded her that he was married to Kat, but also that if this just concerned Alfie choosing between Kat and Roxy, he'd choose Roxy. But the situation entailed Kat, Jean, Mo, and the kids (Shenice was there too then), and the business; so Alfie had priorities he had to meet.

And Roxy backed down from that situation.

In the wake of Kat's betrayal, I can easily understand what Alfie must be feeling: rejected, worthless and lonely. Even embittered. Who wouldn't welcome someone's loving arms of comfort on such an occasion? It's just that TPTB are making Roxy out to be the opportunist and the desperate schemer in this frame of things, and poor Kat is yet again the blameless victim.

And Alfie is seen as doing everything wrong. As usual.

Alfie is a welter of confusion. I don't think he loves Roxy, but he's grateful for her being his emotional saviour. Yes, he still has feelings for Kat, but he doesn't think he can trust her and wants to move on. He has to move on, for his own emotional well-being; however, Alfie is a kind man and a caring person. he's spent almost a decade with Kat - and once again, TPTB abscond Kat from any responsibility by having Alfie liken her situation with Derek to that of her abhorrent situation with Harry Slater. As much as Kat's hurt him, he doesn't want to see her suffer.

And he likes a peaceful life. So if he keeps Kat happy and Roxy equally happy, then he'll be fine.

Putting Roxy's name on the licence bar is an open symbol of Alfie moving on from Kat, and this public inaugural of re-dedicating the pub was contrived to make poor Kat feel even more like a victim. 

That wicked, evil Alfie being so mean to Kat. All she did was fuck around on him repeatedly and treat him like a piece of shit. He should be thankful for that.

Seriously, it amazes me that Kat thinks she's so entitled to Alfie; and it amazes me even more that Alfie would go to bat with Ian like that for Bianca and also for Kat, after what she put him through. Too right for Ian to say he'd speak up for Bianca - she's his niece, after all; but I don't think Ian would lift a hand to help any of his ex-wives. In fact, he wouldn't piss on them if they were on fire by the side of the road.

So just remember that ... we're all supposed to feel sorry for Kat. Roxy will be sacrificed at the altar of Holy Mother Kat. And so will Janine. You watch.

Alice: It's My Party and I'll Cry If I Want To.

Please, what is the point of Alice? A non-story that featured a totally weird interaction with Michael Moon - a sop to the fangirls who think the sun shines out of his cadaverous arse.

Of course, Alice had to get a job on the Square. That was a given. The obvious choice was something more genteel, in keeping with her sweetness and innocence: being a nanny to Michael Moon's daughter, which coincides with a phantom postman delivering a welter of post, only for Alice to pull out a piece of correspondence addressed to the father she's still mourning.

I can't figure out why, since the death of her father whom she really didn't know that well at all, she hasn't once either mentioned or gone back to visit her absent mother. Not that I want her to make an appearance, mind you; I'm well full of the Brannings. It's just that there is no reason, really, for either Alice or Joey to hang around.

The one-sided confession of Alice to Michael about how much she misses her father, which results in Alice reckoning that the rest of her family are trying to hide their grief about Derek (when they've really moved on and are more concerned with shit going on in their own lifes - really, Alice, you should realise that the Brannings are the most selfish of people). So she plans a tribute drink in the pub for he relatives.

Of course, no one comes, so once again, Michael interacts with her, in that weird stilted Kraftwerk way. Alice doesn't reckon Michael Moon is a bad man.

Alice is a fool.

Shitney. Again. And Again. Again.

Just when you though that dog wouldn't bark anymore, it howls. Digital Spy reports that Shona McGarty "knows" a lot of gypsy wedding dressmakers and wants a big white gypsy wedding for Whitney.

I'd long suspected McGarty of being part of the travelling community, and she's proven it with that remark.

Maybe Shitney can trip down the aisle to this trendy little number, which should become Whitney's theme song:-

Whitney looking sad, Tyler looking gormless, Whitney whining about having told the truth and suffering for it (hey, that's life); and Bianca bullying Tyler into seeing sense, only to have Whitney tell him off for doubting her. Shut up, you silly bitch. You told your friends before you told Tyler that you were attracted to Joey.

This couple ran out of steam before they started. They were an epic fail last year, and I want to know why they are being pushed at us again this year and by whom.

Poor episode. Again.

Branningapolis: Smell-the-Fart Acting - Review 29.01.2013

Ladies and gentlemen, the Smell-the-Fart School of Acting, as exemplified by this scene from Friends:-

Or how about these tricks of the trade for Messrs Witts and Discipline from their spiritual mentor:-

And do you think they go through this ritual of "Acting Exercises" before they go in front of the camera?

Tonight, we, the viewers, were afforded a rare treat - two future scions of the British acting industry indulging in their art in one episode. I know it was a hard thing to fathom, but they actually shared a scene, each one gutterally mumbling unintelligible dialogue at each other before engaging in the most butt-clinchingly embarrassing travesty of a fight, it was pathetic.

Maybe Lorraine Newman (or rather, Simon Ashdown, the man who actually does run the show) is conducting an experiment to see which of the two so-called actors is the worst and should be up for the chop.

The answer, unfortunately, is that neither one is going anywhere.

First, Joey is a Branning, so he's safe. Second, Lorraine Newman thinks he's fit (fit for what, I don't know). Then there's Tyler. He's safe too, and not because of Whitney. Tony Discipline dates Jacqueline Jossa, whose alter ego is Lauren Branning, the ingenue Lorraine Newman is also trying to flog to the viewing public as the hottest ticket in town. As long as Jossa is the go-to girl for this bunch of jerks fucking up what used to be the BBC's flagship programme, Discipline's non-job is safe ... all at the expense of the licence fee-payer.

Are you getting your money's worth?

No, I didn't think so ... still, all isn't lost. In the view of one of Digital Spy's foremost EastEnders' shippers ... 

LOL ... LOL ... Lauren is hot ... LOL ... LOL ... hyuck hyuck hyuck,

Really, this wasn't a very good episode; however, it did have its one high point. 

The Wrath of Dot.

There is a thread on Digital Spy at the moment, started by the village idiot who's a regular Cora-shipper - you know, the one who pushed the meme of Sharon being Cora's daughter?

This thread tries to liken Cora to Pat, Pauline or Peggy, in matriarchal status. The truth is that Cora is like none of those women, all of whom were flawed, but all of whom were institutions in Walford - none moreso than Pat. The reason why Cora will never even be good enough to wipe dogshit from the shoe of any one of them is simply because they all had heart, compassion and spleen. Heart and grit. They cared about their own and/or the entire Square or any underdog who sought (and some who didn't seek) their help, wisdom or understanding. The advice they gave was always well thought and dependable.

Cora, like her daughter and granddaughter, looks out for number one. As such, her advice is often skewed and relates to incidents in her own life about which she's learned nothing. Because she put her daughter up for adoption ages ago - and no one held a gun to her head forcing her to do so - she tells Lola to go bang the doors down at Social Services until they return Lexi to her. Lola follows her advice, and Lexi remained in care. She tells Tanya not to talk to Max, when Max wanted to reason with her about his current situation; instead, she tells Tanya to take Oscar and run away, not to even answer any of Max's calls. That wasn't done for any concern about Tanya's welfare; it was done because the drunken old bitch had lost her home and job, again, and needed a place to stay. Tanya was adamant about Cora the Bora not staying with her, so she had to get Tanya out of the way, with her assertion of staying there to look after Abi and Lauren the Lip.

I'm not and never have been Dot's biggest fan, but since she's returned and since everyone else in this programme has been changed beyond recognition by Ashdown, the millennial wunderkind Emer-if-it-happened-before-I-was-born-it-ain't-relevant-Kenny and Numptie the Newman or else they've just been bloody unlikeable since the beginning, I'm warming to Dot as the voice of courage and reason on the show.

She's been the real (albeit reluctant) matriarch since her return, although I daresay the idiots who control the storylines are working overtime at our expense to make sure that her tenure isn't permanent.

I wanted to stand up and cheer for what Dot did tonight - which was to hand the Branning Satellite of Luurrrve her blowsy, fat, permatanned arse.

To begin with, Sharon had absolutely no right to order Max to leave Jack's flat. The flat belongs to Jack, and Max is Jack's brother. Surely, Sharon hasn't forgotten the concept of family as enforced in the East End, nor the other tenet of siblings sticking together - although, the Max-Jack devotion is a bit hard to swallow considering everything that went down in 2008.

Like this ...

Or this ...

You see, TPTB depend on the viewers not having braincell capacity to remember back to 2008 or even further; but - hey - that's all right, because EastEnders is always good ... hyuck hyuck hyuck.

(Aside: hasn't Scott Maslen aged? He's almost got a turkey neck).

Still, Sharon is living in Jack's flat on Jack's good nature. She isn't his wife, yet, and even if she were, there's a line you don't dare cross in interfering in your partner's family, especially if you know jack shit (pun intended) about what's really going on.

Let me get this right ... Sharon, who - post-Sharongate - has always maintained a high sense of morality in her views, made fast friends some six months ago, with a woman to whom the word "moral" means nothing. This woman broke up Max's marriage eighteen years ago. She cheated on her husband with Max one year ago. She was divorced from Max and married to another at the time. In good faith, Max got married, and Sharon is taking up for her "friend," the other woman, as opposed to a man who really did nothing wrong other than trust his dodgy older brother.

Jack was well in order to take his brother in off the street into his home and Sharon should have kept her judgemental mouth shut. I don't know who thought about the idea of using Sharon to validate the Brannings and to slot her into a friendship with a dipshit piece of trailer trash like Tanya, but whoever did that does not know or understand Sharon.

Who was this woman, ordering Max to move on? Not Sharon. And why didn't Jack tell her to shove it up her fat arse, because I tell you what, a Mitchell bruv would have done just that, and she would have loved it. Bitch.

Two good things came from this:

Max approached Dot with his problems. I liked this scene, because we seldom see Dot and Max together, unless Dot is disapproving of something Max has done. Don't get me wrong; Dot can be very judgemental and has been, of Max. In fact, she's blatantly favoured Jack over Max, based entirely on the fact that Jack was Jim's favourite son, and Mas wasn't. So it was good to hear Max lay out his situation to his step-mother tonight and to see her take on board what his troubles were and tell him what he should do.

It was classic when she asked Max who was staying in his house, looking after Abi and Lauren, in Tanya's absence (because, you know, being sixteen and eighteen, they're still little kids). When Max told her Cora was there, Dot's face was a picture.

Cora! Why, Cora can't even look after herself! When I think o'the state she left me in! I ain't sleepin' at nights and I can feel me migraines comin' back.

Too true. Cora abused Dot's hospitality, brought strangers into the house and used the rent money they paid her to indulge in booze and cigarettes, all the while allowing utility and phone bills and council rent to backlog. As a result of that, Dot might be facing court proceedings, and all Cora does is smirk. Someone should smack her flabby, dried-up old face.

Dot offers him a place with her, but she really feels that if he can't be with his daughters, he should at least be with his brother for support, and I'm glad Max, in so many words, implied that his eviction from Jack's was down to the Branning Satellite of Luurrve, who's an old friend of Dot's.

The absolute best scene of the night was that where Dot, in the nicest sort of way, called Sharon a brazen hypocrite and reminded her of the time she was shunned by all and sundry in Walford for her affair with Phil Mitchell whilst married to Grant.

There was a time all them years ago when you was needin' sanctuary ... with Michelle about that business with Grant. All's I'm sayin' is that Max needs 'is brother.

Great one, Dot. Remind the newly-incarnated Queen Bitch that she's not so lilywhite, and how lame did Sharon's protest about her doing it for Tanya sound? A year ago, she'd never heard of Tanya. Even Jane Beale, at her most bovine Tanya-shipping, would see two sides to this argument.

Too bad Ian has been backburnered as Sharon's friend and is now too busy making Denise comfortable that he isn't able to tell Sharon a few more home truths about herself. And Phil needs to tell her about Richard.

Vital Observation: Dot mentioned Michelle tonight. Sharon still hasn't uttered her name. Or Vicky's.

The Return of Shitney.

Just when you had almost forgotten about Valentine's Day 2012 and those awful balloons.

For all of you who've reached your comfort zones of forgetfulness, here's what Bryan Kirkwood (and Lorraine Newman, who signed off on this shit) was trying to ship us last year ...

Within a matter of a couple of months, the couple vanished, literally, from our screens. Oh, they were still in Walford; but Tyler seemed to be relegated to the status of background actor with an occasional line here and there (which we couldn't understand); and Whitney was seen even less.

When she did emerge, she emerged in likeable mode, which means she was used in scenes where she interacted with Bianca or - more importantly - Janine, older young women who mentored her in some way. She was a great support to Janine during the early days of Scarlett's hospitalisation and stood godmother to Scarlett. 

And, lately, in the silly triumvirate of entitled non-maidens which Lucy, Lauren and Whitney encompass, she's taken the lead as the most sensible one of the lot.

However, Whitney comes with form, and she did respond to the spontaneously-planned-on-purpose-kiss-that-was-probably-part-of-a-storyline-that-was-dropped moment a few months ago with Joey.

Now they've resurrected Shitney again, probably because the likes of Steve McFadden, Adam Woodyatt and Shane Ritchie were either on panto breaks or getting ready to go on panto breaks when this was filmed, so they had to have someone to make up screen time. After all, according to TPTB, who've told us gems of truth (not) about the public loving Kat and Alfie fighting, Shitney run a close second to the omnipresent Branning charade in popularity. And if you believe that, I've got a bridge in Brooklyn I need to sell you.

Actually, and I'm surprised to be saying this, I did glean a couple of positives from Shitney tonight, although I'm certain TPTB and the numptie who wrote this episode didn't intend that these details should be positives in any way. Nope, the positives were the sheer joy of seeing Shitney together again, but there were a couple of unintentional surprises.

The first was that I'm not surprised that Shitney need more space. Not having seen Shona McGarty for sometime, I was surprised at the amount of weight she'd put on. Besides your backside, one place a woman always stores extra weight is in her face, and if you look at Shona's face tonight and compare it with that last year's clip, you'll see she's heftier around the jowls. 

Then if you recall that embarrassing scene of Tyler flogging goods on his stall at Christmas with his shirt off and a sizeable gut, you'll see that he's packing some extra pounds too.

And then there's Morgan Le Fat, who thundered down the hall tonight like a baby water buffalo.

So it seems that, during all the time Shitney have been off our screens, they've been sitting around the Jackson-Butcher house, babysitting MOWgan and stuffing their faces with chicken nuggets, amongst other things.

I would imagine, as well, that they need a break from Bianca's awful mouth and Tiffany's developing one.

The other positive I noticed tonight was Whitney's face when Lauren the Lip and the clusterfuck cousin decided to indulge in a little vice-is-nice-but-incest-is-best in public in the cafe. Whitney was clearly uncomfortable with cousins in such a consaguinous relationship.

(Pssst ... did you realise that you have the same consaguinity relationship with a cousin that you do with a half-sibling? Michael Moon has a half-sister, Frankie, with the same consaguinity that Joey and Lauren share. It's not about sharing a parent, it's that your parent and your parent's sibling - your uncle or aunt - share the same DNA. Let's take that one step further and into more familiar territory - Lauren and Bradley share the same consaguinity as Lauren and Joey.)

But I digress. Lauren isn't comfortable being a third wheel to the sort of relationship that's interfamilial, and Joey takes offense? Not only does he take offense with her reaction, to which she's entitled, he threatens her with telling her boyfriend about a kiss they shared.

The apple doesn't fall far from the tree ... the King is dead, long live the King and all that.

Joey is Derek's son. In other words, an even bigger prick than we imagined. The tadpole has become a frog.

Like I said, Whitney's got form - for dumping any dependable bloke who genuinely likes her for a bad boy. She dumped Todd for Billie, and Billie dumped her. She dumped Peter Beale for Connor and got dumped. She dumped Fatboy for Tyler when Tyler seemed to be the edgier bad boy type, but Tyler's become the dependable bloke, who wants to settle down with her, and Joey kissed her.

She even admitted to a secretly jealous Lauren that she may have had feelings for Joey then; and tonight, after she again confronted Joey and he taunter her in a way of which Derek would have been sublimely proud (and with an open mouth as well), when she confided in Bianca, I nearly  fell off my seat at Bianca's advice ... don't say anything to Tyler.

Errr ... unless I'm mistaken, this was the same piece of advice Pat gave Ricky when he was conflicted last year about his one night stand with Mandy. Say nothing.

But Bianca's advice led to the third and most astounding thing about the Shitney ordeal tonight ... Whitney told Tyler. She chose to tell him about the incident, herself.

She took responsibility for her action and told him what happened.

Wow, that's something you'd never see the likes of Kat, Bianca, Tanya or Zainab do in a million years. That's character progression. At last.

She didn't even pull any punches. Joey made the first move (true) and she responded (also true). It was nothing, and she actually was, at this point, telling the truth. Whether she was telling the truth because Tyler was offering her a plan about a future together or whether she was just scared shitless, I don't know. But she took what happened onto her own shoulders and told Tyler before any other word came out about it.

And we then got to see Joey, unintelligibly morph even further into Derek. He totally lied about the event, putting all the blame on Whitney for initiating the situation.

The shame about all that was that the scene between Discipline and Witts was almost unintellible and embarrassingly badly acted. It was smell-the-fart acting of the worst degree.

The punch and the ensuing "fight" was pitiful.

This is what they both deserve ...

Ah well, just when you thought it was safe to go into the water ...

We get Shitney.

Don't It Always Seem to Go That You Don't Know What It's Like Til It's Gone ... Katshit, Bianca and My Aaa-aaass.

For these three:-

It's a shame that Jasmyn Banks is the one young actor on the show with a sizeable portfolio and reasonable talent, and all she's got to show for it is being presented as a gormless drip who utters lines like, "I need a wee wee," and who is the last of the red hot virgins.

As many days as Alice has had off - and her "it's-my-day-off-I've-got-time-coming-to-me" became a standard joke amongst the viewers even if TPTB didn't think it intentionally funny. There wasn't a week which went by that Alice either didn't have a day off or pulled a sickie. What was funny was that she was so "thickie" enough to think she was coming on leaps and bounds enough to be promoted - I mean, why else would her boss call her in on - yes - another day off?

She got the sack. Who couldn't see that coming a mile off? But it was necessary and contrived. Alice had to lose her job in order for one on the Square to be found for her, and what else but being a nanny (unqualified) to Janine Butcher's daughter, thus bringing Scarlett Moon into the realm of blackness known as BranningVille, a dark vortex of hopelessness.

I don't know why, but Alice looked weird tonight. Maybe it was that silly hat or the way she held her head, but her smile was all wonky. One thing's clear though, the only woman about whom Joey genuinely cares is Alice. Keeping it close to home ... just like Dear Old Dad and Auntie Carol.

Bianca and Kat are jobless again, but ne'mind ...  they've got a cunning plan ... they'll open a market stall and sell clothes, because no one's got the nous to sell clothes with any taste except some petty criminal chav in a puffa jacket and a fortysomething slapper who dresses like a whore. They can call the stall "Classy Clothes" ... not. 

And ne'mind they got no money to back this - I mean, Kat's assertion that they could get stock on credit ... really? Bianca is a convicted thief, who is going to give you credit, sunshine?

Really, this is straight from a Mickey Rooney-Judy Garland 1930s kids' film, like, "Let's put on a show ... " only it's "Let's open a stall..."

(I always did say Ricky Butcher reminded me of an English Mickey Rooney without the talent.)

So the poor, honest, hard-done by victims do the best they can to raise money for their endeavour. After all, Bianca is still poor ...

Bianca tries selling tat in the pub, and ends up getting chatted up by Ajay, whom she later snookers, but poor pitiful Kat, the serial marital cheat, who blames everyone else for her predicament except herself, is caught by Alfie trying to pawn her wedding ring.

When Alfie finds out from the resident Walford Mouth (Bianca) that they're starting a stall, Alfie fronts her the money. She tries to be the noble martyr and refuse, but Alfie presses the dough into her hand, and ... well, you can imagine the rest.

So they're in business, and they celebrate it with a bottle of wine hocked off Ajay.

Observation: Knowing what I know is about to happen with Kat, and how Roxy and maybe even Janine will be sacrificed at the altar of Lorraine Newman's creation, I really do wish this spent character would just go. As for Bianca, I can't think of a more fitting relationship than with Ajay Ahmed. Bianca is a triple village idiot - the Beales can claim her, the Butchers can claim her and so can the Brannings. Ajay is the Masoods' liability. The two deserve each other. At least he can drone out her awful voice with his earphones and Led Zeppelin.

The Slow Death of the Masoods.

This is so painful to watch. Zainab didn't get the regional manager's job, but the kid who did has her mopping floors at the Minute Mart. When he finds out the truth, Masood is, as he says, there for her with the best kind of emotional support.

Since Nina Wadia leaves next week, and we get an entire Masood Week to hurriedly end a marriage which, this week, still looks as though the husband is nuts about the demanding woman he married, we know she isn't going to be promoted out of the show.

TPTB have managed to make Zainab even more unlikeable than they made Pauline Fowler at the end of Wendy Richard's tenure, and rumour said that was payback for Richard's attitude. Well, all I can say is they sure must have disliked Nina Wadia.

That Zainab would dis her own son, Tamwar, as inadequate as some sort of intellectual role model for the insipid Ayesha, is cruel beyond belief. What's even more unrealistic is that the subtle little shitstirrer Ayesha is going to be the catalyst who convinces the Masoods that their thirty-year marriage is dead. There isn't going to be an affair, although Masood was sorely tempted to kiss her tonight, so if he is tempted, it's on a physical level. But rather, she's going to plant some unpleasant home truths in their minds, which have been boiling on a backburner since Yusef came into play and certainly since Syed effected his last treachery - tonight Ayesha said it: that Zainab doesn't love Masood anymore. It's simply going to be a classic tale of two people who invested themselves heavily into their children, suddenly finding they have nothing in common once the children have grown. Empty nest syndrome.

A character like Zainab deserves better than the rushed ending she will receive next week.

And we still have Tanya yet to return ... for several more months.

Verdict.

The Rocky Horror Branning Show: Same Shit Different Day - Review 28.01.2013

This just about sums it up ...

Teenybopper is the newborn king, uh-huh ... or so Lorraine Newman would have us believe, because she's pandering with all her feverish might to this demographic. The stories are simplistic crap and the dialogue is puerile.

Once again, we are subjected to Branning-centric-mania, as if there be no other family worth considering on the Square.

Only two Brannings are worth their mettle - Carol and Max. Pare the lot right back to these two,  and the show might have some life injected into it once again.

Yo-yo couples, co-dependency couples, characters you thought you knew, whom you watched grow up and psychologically develop on the show return with no semblance of recognition.

And the beat goes on ... drums keep pounding rhythm to the brain ... but the brain doesn't feel it, because it's sharing one collective braincell - with the shippers of the world, who'd watch this muck even if it were the BBC test signal ...

... and still find a means to heap misspelled, ungrammatical praise on it. Like this:-

I loved tonite's show ... hyuck hyuck hyuck ... espeshally that new girl with the doll. LOL ... she was hot. Not as hot as Lauren ... hyuck hyuck hyuck ... lovin Cora too. LOL. EE can't get any better cos its the best. Hyuck hyuck hyuck LOL.

Remind you of anyone on Digital Spy Soaps' forum? Because that's the bloody demographic to whom this show is being pitched - the braindead youth of today who don't give a rat's arse about anything that happened either before they were born or before they acquired memory (around 2010 because Stacey Slater was still in the show and she was "hot hyuck hyuck hyuck") because anything that happened before then just doesn't fucking matter.

Because the writers can just kiss it better with some retcon.

Wouldn't it be nice if life were like that.

Tonight, we visited BranningVille again, where the people run the gamut from being obnoxious to unlikeable. 

For example:-

The Blowsy Bimbo Bitch. Who is this ageing woman with the hair of a third-rate country singer, the quivering lips of Suellen Ewing and the fashon sense of Mr Peanut?

This judgemental bitch of a woman who isn't above sleeping with a stranger she's only known a couple of hours rather than slum it in a B and B, ne'mind her young son being present? This woman who throws her lot in with a lot of scrubbed-up white trash and judges people and situations before knowing both sides of the equation?

Sharon. Or so TPTB would have us believe. 

I thought Kat was a monumental fail, and I still do, but Simon Ashdown and the figurehead Executive Producer Lorraine Newman, both veterans of the 1990s era on the show, definitely have got Sharon's character wrong wrong wrong.

I think a lot of the problem, with her and with Phil, is that Ashdown is putting all his material in one basket and concentrating on his Branning "babes" (used only once tonight), maybe with a smidgeon left over for Katshit (because Madam wants to repair her own creation at the expense of the programme), and instead, allowing the junior staff to write for the likes of Sharon and Phil.

Who are they, anyway? To the demographic they are hoping to attract, Sharon is just some woman who looks like Miss Piggy, and Phil's a thug. Ne'mind who they were before, that's before this generation had been weaned off Tanya's tit, so it blatantly doesn't matter.

Now, they're playing up the fact that the Blowsy Bimbo Bitch has been paying far, far too much attention to Lexi, and not enough to DamienDen ... well, she hasn't bothered getting him a haircut lately, and he's much in need of that. How do we know she's been paying so much attention to Lexi, especially since Phil's avoided her like the plague (to the point of blanking her) since New Year's Day?

Well, because Jack the Peg says so, and since he's a Branning and a male and rules the roost in his household, we know it's true. (It appears Sharon's pique at Jack teaching DamienDen boxing moves has either been forgiven or forgotten - by the writer - because she's back under Jack's roof.) The other reason is because DamienDen is drawing pictures of his "family" for a school project, and his pictures seem to include babydaddy Jack (who conveniently forgets his oldest child, whom his criminal activities crippled, and his youngest child, whose mother happens to be Sharon's ex-sister-in-law and who also happens to be Phil Mitchell's nephew) and - for some extremely strange reason - a tiny blonde figure in pink, who, presumably, is Amy. Well, maybe Jack's pointed Amy out to DamienDen from afar, or maybe he's talked about her a little bit, when he can remember her name; but I haven't seen Amy spend anytime with Jack or him with her. He's too interested in getting into the Blowsy Bimbo Bitch's dirty knickers to think of Amy at all, and DamienDen is now his priority.

Tonight, the Blowsy Bimbo runs to Phil at his beck and call, because Lexi is teething. So off she runs, and in a brief exchange with Phil Mitchell, just the briefest of exchanges, for a fleeting moment, she just might be Sharon again. Ach ... that moment is gone. But before it does, the briefly resurrected Sharon manages to work her magic and get Phil to let Billy and poor pitiful Lola spend a brief hour with Lexi. Yet when Phil wants her to stop by and say good-bye to Lexi (for a trip that's going to last three weeks), "Sharon" reminds him that she has a club to manage, his club, as a matter of fact.

Funny, she didn't seem bothered about showing up for a day's work at said club last week, when she was boozing it up all day with her BFF Tanya and company.

Later on, she proves she's learning the art of BranningDom when she looks down her nose and issues pithy criticism of poor pitiful Bianca, who's not only still poor ...

 ... but also is now a scrubber. The Blowsy Bimbo Barfly isn't too good to remind poor pitiful Bianca that she failed to clean under the basins in the toilet and makes her do it again. Twice. Which prompts an eruption of the walking ginger mouth with pointed criticism of Sharon's parenting ability. Pot and kettle come to mind here, but it's enough to make the Blowsy Bimbo remind Bianca of her power and sack her.

Yes, according to Jack the Peg, that veritable expert on children and parenting, widdle DamienDen is jealous of all the time Sharon's been spending with Lexi. WTF? I know screentime for Sharon is severely limited. After all, she's merely the Branning Satellite of Lurrve, and not a fully fledged Branning as yet; but have we seen Bimbo Sharon spending all this time with Phil and Lexi? Since New Year's Day ... no. And really, if we're talking about Sharon ignoring her son to the point that he leaves her out of "family" drawings, that's as much down to the time she spends drinking and partying with her new friend Tanya and dumping him on Uncle Ian for a night out with Jack as it's down to any time spent with Phil, Lola or Lexi.

One of the worst scenes I've yet to see on the show was the awful pub scene at the end of their vignette as they helped Denny with his drawings. Jack as a stick man with a big head. Pretty apt.

I'm rapidly going from indifferent disappointment in the failure that is Sharon to actively wanting her to leave.

The Drunken Old Bitch and the Dumbass Attempted Murderer Bitch, Her Daughter.

Tanya is so damned stupid. She cannot walk down the street and chew gum at the same time without a man, specifically Max, in her life. Ne'mind, she's got the old grey drunken bitch to give her moral support. Now, normally, a mother would naturally support her daughter if she felt she'd been hard done by a partner she trusted; but Cora doesn't give a rat's arse. Max out of Tanya's life simply means the old bitch grifter now has a roof over her head, instead of being homeless.

I hated her smirky smiles tonight, thinking she's keeping Max at bay from the vestal self-perpetuating virgin that her daughter likes to think she is. In case she hasn't realised, Jack owns the house in which they live. And it might behoove Dot to have had a quiet word in someone's shell-like about leaving Cora in charge of any rented accommodation whilst going away.

I would think, considering Tanya's obviously absconded (leaving only Poppy to run the salon) and considering the amount of time she didn't spend working there, it would seem that probably Max was responsible for paying the rent and most of the bills. It would be nice to think that, whilst Tanya is away from the scene (and running away from a situation is really a coward's way out), if Cora the Bora doesn't pay the bills, that Jack cheerfully has her evicted and Max moved in with his children.

Such a matriarch, giving such good advice, and obviously bullying Abi and Lauren, who appear to share one braincell, into supporting her. It never ceases to amaze me how these two idiots always, always, always never fail to support Tanya when she's been as bad a parent, if not worse, than Max.

As for Tanya, she's still acting like a spoiled child, especially in her initial scene, where she tears up correspondence which has come for Max. That's such a puerile action. Does she not realise that that correspondence could have something to do with the gas or the electric, which might be cut off it isn't paid? Does she think about maybe having the utilities put into her name, if they aren't already? Nope. She's just simply reacting the way a slighted child would react, with the old gray man in drag standing in the background smiling. Obviously, she's acting on Cora's advice, because, you know, as a matriarch, she gives  such good advice.

It's also obvious that Tanya still loves Max - well, she loves what she thinks is love, which is sex, mostly. Has anyone ever noticed how, when Tanya was on her high horse and out with her friends, all she ever wanted to know about was their sex lives? Because she honestly believes that if you have a good sex life, that's all that matters. You don't have to talk, and the night Max actually wants to spend an evening just talking about the events that have happened and talking calmly about them, as opposed to the fraught circumstances surrounding the last conversation they had - the one where she asked for the truth and couldn't take it - Tanya scarpers, again, probably on the advice of the old grifting man in drag ...

This guy looks more lik eTanya's mother than Cora.

Why? Well, because Max has the gift of the gab. After all, he's an ex-insurance salesman-cum-used car salesman. In the calm of the evening, with the lights low, Max could probably come up with a thousand reasons why he should return to his comfort zone, and Silly Knickers would listen. Kirsty's gone. Out of sight, out of mind. She won't be back, and Max is ever ever so sorry. (He knows better than to bring up the one about him being divorced at the time and Tanya leading him to believe she was finished with him forever; she doesn't really like to hear the truth.)

So the solution to everything is just to leave your business to an airhead junior stylist and a some-time apprentice, leave your house in the care of a drunken old lag who managed to get your husband's stepmother into thousands of pounds worth of debt with the local authority and the utilities, and just ... go away for a bit.

Pity Tanya hasn't left already. I'm sick as pigshit of the sight of her. And she can take both of her daughters with her when she goes. And her putrid mother.

But nooooo ... as the late John Belushi would say ... we've got to suffer her fate for another six months. I hope when she leaves, she's got the leeches of karma sticking to her arse.

The Totally Regressive Really Departing Bitch.

That would be Zainab, and this is getting really stupid - Ajay and the post-it apologies - something very thirteen year oldish; but then, Ajay is forty going on fourteen, so it doesn't surprise me. Ajay Innit, from the days of Goodness Gracious Me. Thank heaven, that Regional Manager shit got nipped in the bud tonight. The only remotely enjoyable parts of this painful interlude were the interaction between Denise and Ian (albeit slightly romcomish) and Denise's brief conversation with Kim. And when I find Kim more entertaining than Zainab, then something is very wrong.

Nina Wadia is a true professional, however, because she must realise, in her heart of hearts, that these scripts stink. The low point was the ridiculous scramble for the telephone in the Minute Mart between Zainab and Denise. That wasn't even funny.

One wonders if TPTB are annoyed that Nina Wadia chose to leave, because they certainly are doing one helluva character assassination on her at the moment, and - by extension - her family. Mas being stalked by the Geordie idiot, who makes doe-eyes at him until he lies to the man who's trying to court her, looking suddenly uncomfortable over Zainab's shoulder at Ayesha jealously watching him hug her. This was like a scene from a bad 1930s movie - curses, foiled again and such tripe!

You know, the rest of the Masoods should just go with Zainab. They're being slowly killed already. We no longer see Kamil, because the only thing Tamwar seems to do these days is babysit him.

Observation: Although I normally like Carol, how rich was it to see her moaning about Janine as a landlord tonight, reckoning the council would have looked after that property better. Carol is fucking lucky Janine bought Pat's house and allowed them to live there for a peppercorn rent. Otherwise, as Carol, herself, pointed out, they'd be rotting on some sink estate in a high rise. Oh, this all is beginning to set the stage for the return of Evil Janine. Why not? In the past two years, they've managed to fuck up Kat, Bianca and Sharon. One of the few things Bryan Kirkwood got right was moving Janine's character from a welter of chasing sugar daddies, grifting, sleeping with Ian Beale and blackmailing him onto an new and better level. That was, finally, character development; but, hey, let's let Lorraine, Emer, Simon and co regress her to the evil bitch the numptie teens enjoy hating and slating.

Tonight was the beginning of that.

The Poor Pitiful Pity-Me Little Chav Single Mother Bitch.

Boo-hoo, Lola ... this is for you.

Boo-hoo ... seems like ever since Lola's had Lexi, she's always saying good-bye to her. Boo-hoo ... this is just another exercise by the less-than-profficient writers in convincing the viewers to expunge all blame on poor pitiful Lola previously - her propensity to steal, her overt rudeness to people, he attitude of entitlement and her anger issues and the fact that she actually is just a gobby little chav, and we've had one too many of those on this show - and love her to bits because she's had a byyyy-beee.

Because, ya know ... Phil's a thug. Phil's philth. Always a bad'un that one. Well, Luddites, cop this ... a scene from the 90s which shows Phil as pretty normal ...

Phil, now, only reflects the sorry shadow of itself EastEnders has become - none moreso than when it is subjugated to the cancer that is BranningVille.