To all those commentators on Digital Spy Soaps forum, who think we are well into Branning overkill. This is for you:-
Day after day, they reappear
On Albert Square it seems
That's all you hear
Brannings appear
But don't fade away ...
If Ms Newman, Mr Ashdown and all their creatures great and small would care to look at the Digital spy forum at the moment, they'd be well aware of what the long-term viewer thinks of the present state of EastEnders, with its Branning domination, as they spread their tentacles far and wide.
It's overkill, and the programme has been dominated by the Brannings for the better part of two years, as - under Ashdown's obsession - we've watched the Brannings, like the proverbial Topsy, just grow and grow; but since Christmas, the show is nothing but Brannings.
Zainab, a major character who's been on the programme for five years, leaves in two weeks' time. Already we see that her leaving line is going to be cack-handed, rushed and bordering on the ridiculous, but all the effort is out in force for the departure of that self-perpetuating virgin of a victim, Saint Tanya, who isn't leaving for months yet. Come on, let's ditch Zainab any old way at all, so we can concentrate on the extending the Brannings. Hey, I know, we can get her ex to cosy up to Ava the Rava, the newest Branning satellite, so the Masoods would actually become the Muslim branch of Brannings Incorporated. Alice is going to get a job as Scarlett Moon's nanny, so the Brannings would then have tainted the Butchers even more than they already have with Bianca the Village Idiot. They are entering into every part of Walford life to the point that they are Walford life.
That might please the shippers (yes, you, xTonix, a-hyuck-a-hyuck) and the obsessives (you, Mormon Girl - for the record, all the Brannings can go to hell in a handcart, so don't ask me which ones I like, the answer is none.) But it doesn't please the rest of us. So if the shippers and the desperados are happy to keep company with the lowest common denominator of (in the words of Digital Spy's forum cohort, tenchgirl) wet-gusseted teens, who collectively share one braincell, then I hope you'll be happy LOLling about those wonderful Brannings and taking polls on which Branning is your favourite on whatever particular day of the week.
This is your EastEnders. It isn't ours.
BranningVille: Where truth can kill you, so it's safer to lie.
A real song for Max and Tanya, an ode, if you will.
Max had some nerve accusing Kirsty of lying tonight, when almost everything that came out of his mouth afterward was a continuous lie.
This was actually a good episode, but then Ashdown always pulls out the stops for anything Branning. Shame he fucked up Kat, Bianca and Sharon.
Still, tonight's episode worked. Participating characters were kept to a minimum, and it basically concentrated on establishing, visually and eventually aurally, that Max loves Kirsty, that he still loves Kirsty. It brought home the truth to Tanya the extent of Max's serial infidelity and what it meant to their marriage, and it hit her like a sledgehammer, that she finally was able to see Max for what he was and their relationship for what it was - she hasn't quite admitted that a great deal of the problems that lay in that relationship were down to her as well as Max. She never will. In kicking him out of the house tonight, she showed her cowardice. She'd rather place the blame,again, for this relationship failure than spend time talking everything out with Max. When he explained to her the extent of his relationship with Kirsty, how it evolved and why it happened - because she had rejected him and he was single - she didn't want to know. Far easier to make Max the villain of the piece and kick him out, making herself the noble martyr yet again.
More Sinned Against Than Sinning: Kirsty
I know all the Tanya shippers and then some will be praising Jo Joyner's performance to the hilt tonight, but for me, the star was Kierston Wareing. In many ways, she's like Janine, someone who's basically brought herself up on her own, probably masking a vulnerability and insecurity with a hard front.
Max obviously saw through that when they met. He was vulnerable and alone, he was used to protecting and looking out for his own and he was lonely. Kirsty was lonely too, and probably hadn't had too great a life. We know from her remark to Lauren tonight that she probably had alcohol issues somewhere in the past. She had the line of the night when she said to Lauren:-
You wouldn't want to end up like me.
Kirsty is actually what Tanya would have become had Max not walked into that salon for a haircut eighteen years ago - a thirtysomething, roughewn woman in a micro mini skirt with laddered tights working the local bars. For Tanya, Max's ticket to ride was a trip to the middle class; but that was an eighteen year-old material girl. Kirsty's dream is simply to be loved and looked after. She knows exactly what Max is - a second-rate back-street second-hand car dealer, a liar, a player. Yet she asks nothing more from him than his love. She fought tooth and nail for her marriage, because she felt in her heart of hearts that Max loved her.
Tonight she saw exactly what an abject coward Max was. What she wouldn't allow herself to see was Max's conflict when he suddenly, utterly realised in that B and B room that Kirsty really was giving him what he wanted - a divorce and she was leaving town. That hit Max like a tone of bricks, which prompted him to assume one of his gecko-esque expressions ...
of emotional hurt and sadness. You see, of all the Brannings, Max is the only one with a reasonable facsimile of a conscience. Max is emotionally involved with Kirsty. He married her, and they had a life together. Until he was summoned back to Walford by Jack - and that was originally going to be a flying visit - he was happy with her. When he found out the real score of his family's difficulties - Tanya's illness and the girls' difficulties - he immediately decided to stay for their sakes, out of a sense of duty. He abandoned Kirsty with the curtest of phonecalls, telling her their marriage was over. He probably even called her "babe."
Did he feel guilty or bad about that? You bet, but the longer time passed and he didn't see or hear from Kirsty, except the odd oblique demand by Derek, the go-between, for money, the more Max settled into the safe, old familiar routine with Tanya and the kids - emphasis on the word "safe." So Mas was actually right, and hopeful of the same, when he told Tanya tonight that Kirsty would leave and, in time, his feelings for her would go away.
I'm not so sure this time they would.
Once he'd seen her again on Christmas day, and once he'd heard about her abortion and the circumstances surrounding it, this brought all his suppressed feelings to the forefront.
Tonight, we learned, from her actions as well as her words, that Kirsty is, effectively, all alone in the world. There's no Jean or Sean figure waiting someplace for her in another equivalent of Walford, to whom she can return, like Stacey would have. There's no Cora the Bora to fight her corner. She literally had no one but Max, and a carry-all bag and a paperback book, which held what were probably her wedding photos - two pictures taken in the booth of an instant photo machine.
The fact that she released Max with dignity - letting go of his embrace first - set the tone for the rest of her encounters tonight: the shady, seedy visit from Lauren to assauge her own guilt for her bullying Kirsty into leaving. After all, Lauren made the difference - as Max said, she can be proud of herself. She was her mother's daughter in doing that. So, as Kirsty said, why should Lauren care about where Kirsty goes or what she does. She gives the self-entitled little brat the brush off, yet softens the blow with some good advice for her future and the stated fact that Kirsty cares for her, admonishing Lauren never to let anyone tell her she doesn't matter (as in Tanya).
She even held herself with dignity in her fleeting visit to the pub tonight to give Alfie her notice and ask for her wages, as she was skint. Alfie showed in his action what a genuinely nice person he really is and Kirsty understood that entirely, more than Alfie's skank wife would have ever thought, and probably more than Roxy would care to appreciate either. But then again, Kirsty's probably been emotionally battered as much as Alfie.
I liked the way she brushed past all the hypocrites in the pub.
Observation: Billy and Bianca were sharing a table nattering. Two village idiots together. The mind boggles at the scope of their conversation.
Tanya Is Still Blinded By the Light of Her Own Self-Delusion.
The lies just kept on coming from Max tonight. From the moment he came home and showed Tanya the divorce papers, with the news that Kirsty was leaving, shows everyone not only what a toerag Max is, but what toerags his family are.
Max and Tanya were a relationship forged off ripping apart another relationship - Max's marriage to Rachel, which included a small child, Bradley. Tanya never once gave a rat's ass about that; all she cared about was Max, her kids and moving up the social ladder. She was savvy enough to realise that if Max had cheated on one woman with her, he'd cheat on her with another, and that's exactly what he had done, throughout their eighteen-year association.
Theirs was a co-dependent relationship based on sex, comfort and kids. As much as Tanya might, in the recent years, turf out Max after every marital faux pas or after he'd lost his money (which was so important to Tanya), as much as she spent those Maxless intervals fucking Sean Slater (when they weren't buying coffins, digging holes and burying Max), fucking Jack (who attests to Max's and Tanya's relationship was the real thing) and fucking Greg (for his money), she always came back, with pleasure, to Max. Truth is, the best lay Tanya ever had in her life was Max.
But maybe that wasn't so with Max. He liked variety, and when the variety became too hot, he liked knowing that he could return to Tanya, dangle an expensive present in front of her, fuck her and she'd do anything for him. That was the comfort bit. The rest was down to the children. It hurt Max having to abandon Bradley, which made Bradley's death all the more acute to Max. He's determined he's not going to lose his other kids,which is why the news of Kirsty's abortion stung so much.
One thing Tanya and Max have never ever been able to do is talk,and that's mostly down to her. Max has secrets, and Tanya keeps secrets too. Whenever the shit hits the fan, she wants the other party to do the explaining and then she reacts adversely, as is what happened tonight.
How totally appropos that the implosion of Max and Tanya came in their bedroom. Kudos to Simon Ashdown, because this was one of the most relevant scenes he has ever written about the couple. If anything and if anyone still doubted, it established that Tanya was a woman whose head is planted so firmly up her ass, she refuses to see anything without having it feature herself at the centre of the commotion and herself as the hard done-by victim.
After the revelation that Kirsty was leaving, poor Tanya, with her "splitting headache" (the common excuse for a woman wanting to withold sexual favours), simply wanted a cuddle from Max, begged for in her typical little girl voice with her most "feel-sorry-for-me-I've-been-hurt-in-all-this" face. But when she suddenly decided to have a subtle victory fuck and Max turned her down, she suddenly realised something was amiss. He couldn't stay away from the window, and every time a car passed by, he visibly tensed.
This force Tanya to do something she's never done in her married life, talk truthfully with Max - or rather, get Max to talk truthfully to her. I think she regretted that.
With great difficulty, and in what - I think - was Jake Wood's finest performance, Max admitted that he was sorry Kirsty was leaving, he felt sorry for her. She had no one and nothing. Tanya forced him to leave Walford, making him believe that they were finished. He was single. He married her. Under constant badgering from Tanya, Max eventually admitted that he fell in love with Kirsty and married her (as you do). The significant factor here was simply this: Max married Rachel because he had to do so; she was pregant with Bradley. Max married Tanya because he had to do so; she had given birth to Lauren, his daughter. With Kirsty, there was no child to force a marriage. He fell in love with her and married her - a single man married a single woman, and they loved each other. In fact, as he explained, they were having a pretty happy life, until he was called back to Walford.
By then, Max had realised he'd gone a step too far in the marital confessional, and the old cowardice kicked in, under intense interrogation by Tanya, who wanted to know every sordid detail of the Max-Kirsty relationship, like ... did he still harbour feelings for her? Did he still want her?
I loved Max's instinctive rebuttal to Tanya. Whether he had feelings for her or not, it didn't matter, because Tanya had won. Kirsty had left Walford. As soon as it was obvious that Tanya was having none of the bully blame accorded to her, Max snivellingly changed his tune. They had won, the Brannings had won. The combined efforts of Tanya- with her bribes, her jibes and her tossing Kirsty's belongings wantonly out the window), Max - with his stringent denials and verbal taunts, and Lauren, with her passive-aggressive demands - as well as Jack's marital lecture and a snide remark directed at Kirsty by the Brannings' latest Satellite of Love, all combined to produce the prodigious Branning victory of bullying one lone and lonely woman out of Walford.
But it still didn't belie the fact that Max had to admit that he still had feelings for Kirsty - more than that, that he actually wanted her. Still. This was as honest as he had ever been with anyone in his life, and it frightened him so much, especially with the look of growing disbelief and shock on Tanya's face, he scurried back into co-dependency mode, desperately seeking the same old same old comforts. Yeah, he felt strongly for Kirsty now, but, you know, that would pass. Kirsty would be gone, out of sight and out of mind, and pretty soon those feelings would go too.
And then the sucker punch, the tale of Kirsty's abortion - how she'd found out she was pregnant, but aborted the child when he deserted her. Tanya, who has no real conscience as such, is appalled that Max could actually have wanted that child.
And that's when the penny droppeth for Tanya. The karma shark is opening his jaws wide with a view to a broad ass ... but not quite yet.
Tanya admits as much as she's never really had the old Max, her familiar Max - certainly not since Stacey (and she would remember Max's desperate dash to leave with Stacey Christmas 2010), or maybe the one before Stacey. Sunshine, you've never had Max. Rachel was the first girl he duffed up, and you were the second. If Stacey had fallen pregnant, Max would have been out that door in an New York minute. The truth is, Kirsty is the first real adult relationship Max has had with a woman - there was no wife at home, no sneaking around, he was a free agent, so was she, and they fell in love. They married. Had they remained together, the child would have been an added bonus.
This is the moment when Tanya realises that in all the eighteen years and three kids they've had together, Max hasn't really loved her at all. She was his comfort stick until he'd found the real thing. He thought he'd found that with Stacey, but that seems to have passed. The irony of this situation is that he did find the real thing - when he was footloose and fancy-free and not particularly looking for it. And this is what bites Tanya. She realises tonight that she really is the other woman, and she does something she should have done when she found out about Rachel's existence eighteen years previously - send him packing.
Yet again, another Branning is left standing desolately in the street as the object of their affections leaves, having been bullied out by the "fairmly."
Kirsty never even glanced at Max. She so deserves better.
By the way, let's remind ourselves of what Jake Wood really was doing during those three months in 2011 when he was absent from our screens:-
This is how America knows Jake Wood, and as his other contract happens to be with GEICO, a major American insurer, I'd say he's on a nice little earner.
Day after day, they reappear
On Albert Square it seems
That's all you hear
Brannings appear
But don't fade away ...
If Ms Newman, Mr Ashdown and all their creatures great and small would care to look at the Digital spy forum at the moment, they'd be well aware of what the long-term viewer thinks of the present state of EastEnders, with its Branning domination, as they spread their tentacles far and wide.
It's overkill, and the programme has been dominated by the Brannings for the better part of two years, as - under Ashdown's obsession - we've watched the Brannings, like the proverbial Topsy, just grow and grow; but since Christmas, the show is nothing but Brannings.
Zainab, a major character who's been on the programme for five years, leaves in two weeks' time. Already we see that her leaving line is going to be cack-handed, rushed and bordering on the ridiculous, but all the effort is out in force for the departure of that self-perpetuating virgin of a victim, Saint Tanya, who isn't leaving for months yet. Come on, let's ditch Zainab any old way at all, so we can concentrate on the extending the Brannings. Hey, I know, we can get her ex to cosy up to Ava the Rava, the newest Branning satellite, so the Masoods would actually become the Muslim branch of Brannings Incorporated. Alice is going to get a job as Scarlett Moon's nanny, so the Brannings would then have tainted the Butchers even more than they already have with Bianca the Village Idiot. They are entering into every part of Walford life to the point that they are Walford life.
That might please the shippers (yes, you, xTonix, a-hyuck-a-hyuck) and the obsessives (you, Mormon Girl - for the record, all the Brannings can go to hell in a handcart, so don't ask me which ones I like, the answer is none.) But it doesn't please the rest of us. So if the shippers and the desperados are happy to keep company with the lowest common denominator of (in the words of Digital Spy's forum cohort, tenchgirl) wet-gusseted teens, who collectively share one braincell, then I hope you'll be happy LOLling about those wonderful Brannings and taking polls on which Branning is your favourite on whatever particular day of the week.
This is your EastEnders. It isn't ours.
BranningVille: Where truth can kill you, so it's safer to lie.
A real song for Max and Tanya, an ode, if you will.
Max had some nerve accusing Kirsty of lying tonight, when almost everything that came out of his mouth afterward was a continuous lie.
This was actually a good episode, but then Ashdown always pulls out the stops for anything Branning. Shame he fucked up Kat, Bianca and Sharon.
Still, tonight's episode worked. Participating characters were kept to a minimum, and it basically concentrated on establishing, visually and eventually aurally, that Max loves Kirsty, that he still loves Kirsty. It brought home the truth to Tanya the extent of Max's serial infidelity and what it meant to their marriage, and it hit her like a sledgehammer, that she finally was able to see Max for what he was and their relationship for what it was - she hasn't quite admitted that a great deal of the problems that lay in that relationship were down to her as well as Max. She never will. In kicking him out of the house tonight, she showed her cowardice. She'd rather place the blame,again, for this relationship failure than spend time talking everything out with Max. When he explained to her the extent of his relationship with Kirsty, how it evolved and why it happened - because she had rejected him and he was single - she didn't want to know. Far easier to make Max the villain of the piece and kick him out, making herself the noble martyr yet again.
More Sinned Against Than Sinning: Kirsty
I know all the Tanya shippers and then some will be praising Jo Joyner's performance to the hilt tonight, but for me, the star was Kierston Wareing. In many ways, she's like Janine, someone who's basically brought herself up on her own, probably masking a vulnerability and insecurity with a hard front.
Max obviously saw through that when they met. He was vulnerable and alone, he was used to protecting and looking out for his own and he was lonely. Kirsty was lonely too, and probably hadn't had too great a life. We know from her remark to Lauren tonight that she probably had alcohol issues somewhere in the past. She had the line of the night when she said to Lauren:-
You wouldn't want to end up like me.
Kirsty is actually what Tanya would have become had Max not walked into that salon for a haircut eighteen years ago - a thirtysomething, roughewn woman in a micro mini skirt with laddered tights working the local bars. For Tanya, Max's ticket to ride was a trip to the middle class; but that was an eighteen year-old material girl. Kirsty's dream is simply to be loved and looked after. She knows exactly what Max is - a second-rate back-street second-hand car dealer, a liar, a player. Yet she asks nothing more from him than his love. She fought tooth and nail for her marriage, because she felt in her heart of hearts that Max loved her.
Tonight she saw exactly what an abject coward Max was. What she wouldn't allow herself to see was Max's conflict when he suddenly, utterly realised in that B and B room that Kirsty really was giving him what he wanted - a divorce and she was leaving town. That hit Max like a tone of bricks, which prompted him to assume one of his gecko-esque expressions ...
Did he feel guilty or bad about that? You bet, but the longer time passed and he didn't see or hear from Kirsty, except the odd oblique demand by Derek, the go-between, for money, the more Max settled into the safe, old familiar routine with Tanya and the kids - emphasis on the word "safe." So Mas was actually right, and hopeful of the same, when he told Tanya tonight that Kirsty would leave and, in time, his feelings for her would go away.
I'm not so sure this time they would.
Once he'd seen her again on Christmas day, and once he'd heard about her abortion and the circumstances surrounding it, this brought all his suppressed feelings to the forefront.
Tonight, we learned, from her actions as well as her words, that Kirsty is, effectively, all alone in the world. There's no Jean or Sean figure waiting someplace for her in another equivalent of Walford, to whom she can return, like Stacey would have. There's no Cora the Bora to fight her corner. She literally had no one but Max, and a carry-all bag and a paperback book, which held what were probably her wedding photos - two pictures taken in the booth of an instant photo machine.
The fact that she released Max with dignity - letting go of his embrace first - set the tone for the rest of her encounters tonight: the shady, seedy visit from Lauren to assauge her own guilt for her bullying Kirsty into leaving. After all, Lauren made the difference - as Max said, she can be proud of herself. She was her mother's daughter in doing that. So, as Kirsty said, why should Lauren care about where Kirsty goes or what she does. She gives the self-entitled little brat the brush off, yet softens the blow with some good advice for her future and the stated fact that Kirsty cares for her, admonishing Lauren never to let anyone tell her she doesn't matter (as in Tanya).
She even held herself with dignity in her fleeting visit to the pub tonight to give Alfie her notice and ask for her wages, as she was skint. Alfie showed in his action what a genuinely nice person he really is and Kirsty understood that entirely, more than Alfie's skank wife would have ever thought, and probably more than Roxy would care to appreciate either. But then again, Kirsty's probably been emotionally battered as much as Alfie.
I liked the way she brushed past all the hypocrites in the pub.
Observation: Billy and Bianca were sharing a table nattering. Two village idiots together. The mind boggles at the scope of their conversation.
Tanya Is Still Blinded By the Light of Her Own Self-Delusion.
The lies just kept on coming from Max tonight. From the moment he came home and showed Tanya the divorce papers, with the news that Kirsty was leaving, shows everyone not only what a toerag Max is, but what toerags his family are.
Max and Tanya were a relationship forged off ripping apart another relationship - Max's marriage to Rachel, which included a small child, Bradley. Tanya never once gave a rat's ass about that; all she cared about was Max, her kids and moving up the social ladder. She was savvy enough to realise that if Max had cheated on one woman with her, he'd cheat on her with another, and that's exactly what he had done, throughout their eighteen-year association.
Theirs was a co-dependent relationship based on sex, comfort and kids. As much as Tanya might, in the recent years, turf out Max after every marital faux pas or after he'd lost his money (which was so important to Tanya), as much as she spent those Maxless intervals fucking Sean Slater (when they weren't buying coffins, digging holes and burying Max), fucking Jack (who attests to Max's and Tanya's relationship was the real thing) and fucking Greg (for his money), she always came back, with pleasure, to Max. Truth is, the best lay Tanya ever had in her life was Max.
But maybe that wasn't so with Max. He liked variety, and when the variety became too hot, he liked knowing that he could return to Tanya, dangle an expensive present in front of her, fuck her and she'd do anything for him. That was the comfort bit. The rest was down to the children. It hurt Max having to abandon Bradley, which made Bradley's death all the more acute to Max. He's determined he's not going to lose his other kids,which is why the news of Kirsty's abortion stung so much.
One thing Tanya and Max have never ever been able to do is talk,and that's mostly down to her. Max has secrets, and Tanya keeps secrets too. Whenever the shit hits the fan, she wants the other party to do the explaining and then she reacts adversely, as is what happened tonight.
How totally appropos that the implosion of Max and Tanya came in their bedroom. Kudos to Simon Ashdown, because this was one of the most relevant scenes he has ever written about the couple. If anything and if anyone still doubted, it established that Tanya was a woman whose head is planted so firmly up her ass, she refuses to see anything without having it feature herself at the centre of the commotion and herself as the hard done-by victim.
After the revelation that Kirsty was leaving, poor Tanya, with her "splitting headache" (the common excuse for a woman wanting to withold sexual favours), simply wanted a cuddle from Max, begged for in her typical little girl voice with her most "feel-sorry-for-me-I've-been-hurt-in-all-this" face. But when she suddenly decided to have a subtle victory fuck and Max turned her down, she suddenly realised something was amiss. He couldn't stay away from the window, and every time a car passed by, he visibly tensed.
This force Tanya to do something she's never done in her married life, talk truthfully with Max - or rather, get Max to talk truthfully to her. I think she regretted that.
With great difficulty, and in what - I think - was Jake Wood's finest performance, Max admitted that he was sorry Kirsty was leaving, he felt sorry for her. She had no one and nothing. Tanya forced him to leave Walford, making him believe that they were finished. He was single. He married her. Under constant badgering from Tanya, Max eventually admitted that he fell in love with Kirsty and married her (as you do). The significant factor here was simply this: Max married Rachel because he had to do so; she was pregant with Bradley. Max married Tanya because he had to do so; she had given birth to Lauren, his daughter. With Kirsty, there was no child to force a marriage. He fell in love with her and married her - a single man married a single woman, and they loved each other. In fact, as he explained, they were having a pretty happy life, until he was called back to Walford.
By then, Max had realised he'd gone a step too far in the marital confessional, and the old cowardice kicked in, under intense interrogation by Tanya, who wanted to know every sordid detail of the Max-Kirsty relationship, like ... did he still harbour feelings for her? Did he still want her?
I loved Max's instinctive rebuttal to Tanya. Whether he had feelings for her or not, it didn't matter, because Tanya had won. Kirsty had left Walford. As soon as it was obvious that Tanya was having none of the bully blame accorded to her, Max snivellingly changed his tune. They had won, the Brannings had won. The combined efforts of Tanya- with her bribes, her jibes and her tossing Kirsty's belongings wantonly out the window), Max - with his stringent denials and verbal taunts, and Lauren, with her passive-aggressive demands - as well as Jack's marital lecture and a snide remark directed at Kirsty by the Brannings' latest Satellite of Love, all combined to produce the prodigious Branning victory of bullying one lone and lonely woman out of Walford.
But it still didn't belie the fact that Max had to admit that he still had feelings for Kirsty - more than that, that he actually wanted her. Still. This was as honest as he had ever been with anyone in his life, and it frightened him so much, especially with the look of growing disbelief and shock on Tanya's face, he scurried back into co-dependency mode, desperately seeking the same old same old comforts. Yeah, he felt strongly for Kirsty now, but, you know, that would pass. Kirsty would be gone, out of sight and out of mind, and pretty soon those feelings would go too.
And then the sucker punch, the tale of Kirsty's abortion - how she'd found out she was pregnant, but aborted the child when he deserted her. Tanya, who has no real conscience as such, is appalled that Max could actually have wanted that child.
And that's when the penny droppeth for Tanya. The karma shark is opening his jaws wide with a view to a broad ass ... but not quite yet.
Tanya admits as much as she's never really had the old Max, her familiar Max - certainly not since Stacey (and she would remember Max's desperate dash to leave with Stacey Christmas 2010), or maybe the one before Stacey. Sunshine, you've never had Max. Rachel was the first girl he duffed up, and you were the second. If Stacey had fallen pregnant, Max would have been out that door in an New York minute. The truth is, Kirsty is the first real adult relationship Max has had with a woman - there was no wife at home, no sneaking around, he was a free agent, so was she, and they fell in love. They married. Had they remained together, the child would have been an added bonus.
This is the moment when Tanya realises that in all the eighteen years and three kids they've had together, Max hasn't really loved her at all. She was his comfort stick until he'd found the real thing. He thought he'd found that with Stacey, but that seems to have passed. The irony of this situation is that he did find the real thing - when he was footloose and fancy-free and not particularly looking for it. And this is what bites Tanya. She realises tonight that she really is the other woman, and she does something she should have done when she found out about Rachel's existence eighteen years previously - send him packing.
Yet again, another Branning is left standing desolately in the street as the object of their affections leaves, having been bullied out by the "fairmly."
Kirsty never even glanced at Max. She so deserves better.
By the way, let's remind ourselves of what Jake Wood really was doing during those three months in 2011 when he was absent from our screens:-
This is how America knows Jake Wood, and as his other contract happens to be with GEICO, a major American insurer, I'd say he's on a nice little earner.
I know you rate Jake Wood's acting, but to me he's almost as unintelligible as David Witts! I don't know if the script adds all the "Wha' d'ya mean", "A-wright?", "Wha' you talkin' abah'?", "I don' know wha' you mean" type dialogue, or whether Jake ad-libs it as part of making Max 'his own', but it's very (very!) samey and repetitive, and you can speak 'EE speak' much better than that with more letters of the alphabet still included! Jake drops more 't's than almost anyone else on the show! I know to many it's 'just the way Max talks', but almost everyone he shares a scene with (bar Joey, obviously!) speaks more clearly than he does!
ReplyDeleteTo me (although clearly it's only my opinion) it makes him almost unbearable to watch and listen to. Kierston Wareing ran rings around him in her delivery and diction, was still talking totally in 'EE-speak', but was far more 'tight' in her delivery. Jake has a very 'lazy' way of delivering his lines - words run into one another (especially when they end in 't'!) and it's almost as if he can't bear to let his tongue, teeth and lips work together all at the same time!
The 'acting' is good - I could believe he was crying and you could feel the distance between him and Tanya as they sat on the bed last night, as well as see it physically - but the verbal delivery is lacking depth and is far too two-dimensional. It's a shame. I'm not sure why he does it if he really is as good as others say he is (I've not seen him in anything else bar one thing - and he was just 'Max' in that too!).
I know it's a little bit off-topic, and I can only relate this to the person I've seen most recently in another role, but to my mind Laurie Brett is head and shoulders above Jake Wood in terms of 'good acting' - she is totally different to Jane Beale in Waterloo Road, totally believable as Christine the alcoholic with serious issues from the past, and she acts and speaks completely differently to the say she played Jane Beale. Laurie will never win any oscars, but in 'continuing drama' terms she's more than deserving of praise.
Anyway, I'm sure Max will continue to be praised for his 'nuanced' acting, but nuanced has to include verbal delivery, not just physical delivery, surely?
JC
I like Jake Wood as an actor in a different way than I like Daniel Day-Lewis as an actor. Wood is good at what he does and seems to know his limitations, which are forever to play a Max-Branning-type person. Really, if you've ever seen him in anything pre-Max, it's exactly the sort of character Max is, by any other name. A lot of the current EastEnders' cast are like that - one-trick ponies, the most famous one being Lacey Turner, who'll return to the fold once the "Stacey-Slater-by-Any-Other-Name" roles dry up.
DeleteThese sort of actors are good playing the character (who looks snd sounds a lot like they do), but in any other role, they don't change their looks, their voices or their mannerisms.
So I like Jake Wood because he makes Max believeable. Could he do Hamlet? Probably not, but he's lucked into a role which suits him, pays the kids school fees and the mortgage etc, along with probably a bigger paycheck as the voice for GEICO insurance in the US. Wood is minted on being and sounding like Max.
It's not his acting that's nuanced, it's the character he plays. Max Branning, like Phil Mitchell and Janine Butcher, is one of the most multi-layered characters in the soap. He can be damned unlikeable, like the other two, but he's a joy to watch. Max is amoral and he owns his flaws, unlike someone like Kat Moon, who's always the victim and who never ever accepts responsibility for what she's done and for whom she's hurt. If you remember back when Tanya started all this mess by sending him away and rejecting him, she pushed the blame for their affair on Max, and Max sucked it up, took the blame for her wrongs. He's capable of compassion and selfishness, arrogance and tenderness. He's at one time an abysmal father, but he loves the bones of his children.
I actually think Kirsty is the first genuinely adult relationship Max has had in his life, and I'll be blogging about that later.
Max needs freedom from Tanya, because she is a one-dimensional character who holds his further development back.
You cracked me up with the Billy and Bianca observation. Brilliant!
ReplyDeleteHow do you feel about Princess Perfect on Digital Spy constantly shitting out your opinions, thoughts and feelings as her own? It doesn't go unnoticed. Princess Plagiarist indeed.
ReplyDeleteOh I do love reading this :)
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