This just about describes Max Branning:-
In case you're in any doubt, he'd be singing about Kirsty, not Tanya. Gee, just think. Max and his male relatives could do a tribute band: The Brannings - Max on lead vocals, Jack on the old harmonica, Joey on guitar, Oscar on drums.
Here's a cover version they could do and dedicate to Cora the Bora, Tanya and Lauren the Lip. It fits their lifestyle so well ...
Or how about this one, which pretty much describes what happens every time the Brannings family sit down to dinner:-
Do you get my drift?
The Brannings are losers.
Always have been, always will be. When they arrived on the Square properly - meaning Max and his tribe, Max and Tanya were touted as the new Den and Ange. Not even close. To begin with, Max Branning is a totally retconned character, as is Jack. In fact, the very essence of that family being "retcon" - making up facts, figures and characters to suit the required storyline just shows what total losers they are.
The age order of the Branning siblings is on its third retcon. Joey and Alice are retconned characters, as is Ray Dixon, connected to them via whatever sort of relationship he had with Bianca which produced the human chicken nugget , MAWgan.
From the sickening co-dependent relationship of Max and Tanya, with Max's propensity and need to cheat constantly and her pathetic desire for a material middle-class lifestyle fueled by drink, to Jack and his babydaddy status with not only the woman he married but also her sister and cousin, to his status as the biggest slut in Walford, and his willful neglect of every child he's fathered, to Joey and Lauren's incest, to Cora the Bora's fag-breathing, drink-sodden old dragon lag grifter, to Bianca's fecklessness and foolishness ... all powered by an overwhelming sense of entitlement and hypocrisy ... the Brannings are not only losers.
They are the very embodiment of poor white trash. I can't say it enough, and tonight they showed it blatantly.
More's the pity, they have managed to drag Sharon Watts, daughter of the real Den and Angie, original Walford character, EastEnders' princess into the mire of poor white trashdom also.
I would include Bryan Kirkwood in the following augury, but he is long gone and these two muppets still remain and were there when the character butchery began.
Congratulations, Simon Ashdown and Lorraine Newman. In the past three years, you've managed to fuck up Kat, Bianca and now Sharon, all of whom were present tonight and passing pejorative judgement. You both should be taken out and smacked around Albert Square, with the video of that feat going viral on YouTube. I begrudge every penny of my licence fee which goes to fund the character assassination of three iconic EastEnders' women.
YOU SUCK.
Mommie Dearest Is the Other Woman.
Tanya was absolutely putrid tonight. I am sorry. I can muster no sympathy for this woman who is patently and obviously now a victim of karma not biting, but chewing on that J-Lo ass. Damn! It's chewing so hard, you'd think she'd feel it and get the message.
Tanya is the other woman. Kirsty is Max's wife, and one bit of dialogue from Kirsty tonight summed up accurately the fact that she knows Max as well as, if not better than Tanya, and she was with him a matter of months as opposed to Tanya's eighteen years.
When Tanya was accusing Kirsty and Max of all sorts, Kirsty denied, quite rightly, that nothing untoward had occurred between them - except for one romantic moment (only a moment, mind) on the day of Derek's funeral. But, of course, Kirsty intimates, Max told Tanya all about that?
When it was clear that he hadn't from the look of astonishment on Tanya's face, Kirsty continued:-
Go on. Go on home and ask him yourself. Ask him about kissing me in the alleyway, and then listen to him lie.
Tanya was well out of order in her overt bullying tactics to Kirsty tonight - she had no right to be in her room, ordering her to sign the divorce papers - how I loved the moment when Tanya's face got that shiny smug smily when she thought Kirsty was signing the papers - only to see that she'd written NEVER across the front in red lippy. Just who do these people think they are? The Brannings cannot even bully a lonely, isolated woman with no one in the world, out of their lives and out of Walford.
Just look at what Phil Mitchell did to Lisa Shaw, how he psychologically wore her down to a pathetic frazzle in Portugal, just to gain custody of their daughter - and the look on his face as he walked away with Louise showed how much he hated doing that, but he did it for a purpose, however bad it was. Hell, even the effete Michael Moon was callous enough and cruel enough to prey on his wife, another woman isolated from her family and alone and in the throes of post-natal depression, fueling her poor self-esteem and paranoia until she fled from the place - leaving him holding their baby and whimpering that he loved Janine.
But the Brannings can't even do that with Kirsty. Kirsty is Max's wife, and she wants him, and we got to see a pretty good reason why tonight as well.
Tanya's co-dependency on Max was summed up by the B and B key she found in his pocket, assuming - from previous behaviour - that he was cheating withanother woman his wife. Not only did Kirsty hand her her ass, Lauren served it up on a platter.
Tanya got served some brutal home truths tonight about her skills as a mother. Lauren was actually quite right in her accusations. Tanya never listens to her. How many times after her accident did she try to approach Tanya about what was bothering her, about her relationship with Joey, and Tanya was too preoccupied with her wedding, with Ava, with Cora the Bora or gossiping with her instantaneous best friend Bimbo Sharon? And it's true, whenever Lauren does engage with Tanya, it always ends up in Tanya either going on at Lauren or going on about herself. Because everything is ultimately all about Tanya.
She couldn't quite fathom that Lauren, even drunk, could managed to see Kirsty in a detached sort of way and surmise that she really wasn't a bad person at all, that when she saw she was drunk and in a bad way, she took her back to the B and B and looked after her, listening to her, allowing her to talk without prejudice, something Tanya is unable to do, because ever since Abi's decided to study for A-Levels with a view to going to uni, she's always held up as an example to Lauren.
Tanya doesn't realise how much her behaviour contributes to Lauren's drinking just as Cora gets high-arsed when Rainie accuses her of contributing to her alcoholism. Drunks like Cora the Bora and Tanya love company.
And what happens when Lauren tells the truth? Tanya plays the victim, crying like a spoiled little kid, objecting to, yet craving, the "pity" being shown by Lauren, Max and Abi. When she lashed out at Lauren, that reminded me of the Stax reveal, when Tanya's first reaction to Lauren was to call her an evil little bitch. Just as she was offended by Cora telling her some select home truths a few months ago, she's now equally offended that Lauren holds some adult opinions regarding her mother's behaviour.
But Tanya turns on the tears, and everyone fusses over her, trying to play happy families. Max still lied though, Through his teeth, telling Tanya that Kirsty would go.
Tanya is a big, fat spoiled kid, herself. She's stepped on another woman mercilessly, and that woman's child, in her quest to get away from the trailer-trash existence she was living - with the help of a man, of course. Tanya can't do anything without a man in the picture. She thought nothing of hurting Rachel and Bradley, never wondered or felt guilty about how they might be coping or how they would get by. And now she's seeing that middle-class dream of the perfect picket-fence family slide away from her, because Max is attracted to and married to the bit of rough who is probably very much like Tanya was, herself, when Max met her.
Fuck me, she can't even trust Max to leave the house, and she wants to stay with this creature?
She is totally pathetic. And for anyone still thinking of Tanya as a Yummy Mummy, she, once again, confirmed just how far she'd go to rid herself of Kirsty, when Max rhetorically asked if Tanya wanted Max to kill Kirsty and bury her in the garden (nudge nudge wink wink). Tanya's callous reply would be that that would be a start. Bitch.
Max Is the King of Wishful Thinking (and a Coward).
Here's another reason why the Brannings are losers: They're cowards.
Jack thinks he's a good father because he sends a cheque each month to his various babymammas in France, in Portugal and across the Square. He daren't visit any of the children or even spend time with his local child. That would tax his self-important sense of integrity too much. Coward.
Joey would rather dump his cousin girlfriend rather than live with his old man. Coward.
Max has always been cowardly. Chasing skirt until he's caught out and then whining and begging Tanya's forgiveness (which she, mostly, bought). Sneaks are always cowards.
Now, he's caught between a rock and a hard place. He married Kirsty when he was legally single. No one forced him to do so. He fell in love with her. He may have been at a vulnerable point in his life, but it was made plain as the gekko nose on his face that Kirsty, here, was the more vulnerable of the pair. Max, at least, had his brothers. He was living with one of them, and even if Tanya had hoisted the blame for their affair onto his shoulders and banished him from Walford, at least he still had family there who loved him - Carol and ... well as much as a plank of wood can love.
Kirsty had no one. Like Tanya before her, she probably thought Max's attention and affection were a lottery win. Look, in the world of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
As much as Max might publically deny it and even say so to Kirsty, he still loves her. That's why he married her. Bullshit to all those who say that Tanya and Max are soulmates because they spent 18 years together and have 3 kids. They have a bond, sure; but they aren't soulmates. Max abandoned Kirsty because Tanya was very ill and wasn't coping; his children needed him. After awhile and with Kirsty out of sight and out of mind, Max slotted into his old, comfortable and familiar way of life. Better the devil you know, than the devil you don't. And just like Jack forgets his children because they're conveniently far away, so Max was able to forget Kirsty, as long as she didn't show up on his doorstep.
Now she's back, and he still has feelings for her. He told her so on Christmas Day; and - as I said - one thing is obvious. Besides the obvious, Max and Kirsty did a lot of talking during their short marriage as well. She knows and understands Max. It could very well be that they are soulmates; but Max is willing to sacrifice all of that at the altar of Saint Tanya. Not for love, but for a peaceful life. For contact with his children and a cooked meal at night. It's not for love that he's staying with Tanya, it's the lesser guilt.
For all he ignored her in public, he never badgered her for the divorce papers until tonight,when he came face to face with Tanya's behaviour and that was only to save his own face. Speaking of faces, his was a picture when she handed him the signed papers.
Max loves Kirsty. Not Tanya.
Kirsty: It Must Have Been Love ...
Kierston Wareing played a blinder tonight and showed why she's a BAFTA nominee and the rest of the actresses in she show (bar Lindsey Coulson and Denise Parish) are just plebs.
You know, Kirsty is a character who's only been on our screens since Christmas, yet we learned more about her backstory tonight than we have ever learned about why Kat fucked Derek.
Kirsty is a strong woman, who desperately loves a loser like Max Branning, probably because he's the only person who's treated her as if she were worth something. She has no family, and she's probably brought herself up on her own. She's a more refined - meaning mature - version of Mandy Salter.
You only need to look at Kirsty to know she's had it rough. Really, as sad as it might seem, Max is the only person she has in her life; and it hurt her desperately when he walked away from her tonight.
I haven't seen a woman bullied worse tonight since Janine left the Square, and none of the women bitchily badgering her had any cause or right to do so.
Bianca thinks she's better than Kirsty? This is the same woman who broke up her own marriage by sleeping with her mother's fiance. She palmed her young son off on her ex-husband so she could "find herself" and didn't even think to tell him he'd fathered a daughter on her, allowing another man to think the awful Tiffany was his child. Whatever story you believe - she either slept with so many men, she was unable to fathom who MAWgan's father might be, or else she slept with Ray long enough to steal five hundred quid from his wallet and scarpered, again, never bothering to tell him about his child. Either way, both versions stink. She let a paedophile into the bosom of the family and was willing to deny Liam's father his parental rights, reckoning Tony King was the better man. This is also the woman who couldn't feed, clothe or keep a roof over her children's heads, because she's that feckless and stupid. Even with her own mother, her husband and Pat doing the heavy-lifting, she manages to get herself imprisoned, first for common assault and then for theft. She is in no position to judge Kirsty, not after all the tricks she's pulled.
Lauren's sudden change-of-heart and fleeting visit was done out of the guilt, Tanya passive-aggressively foisted upon her. She'd hurt Mummy Dearest, now she was going to achieve the impossible by, yet again, passive-aggressively bullying Kirsty into leaving Walford. Even when Kirstly pointed out Lauren's obvious advantages - the only reason Kirsty has for staying in Walford is fighting for her marriage; oddly enough, the same reason Max wouldn't let go of Lauren even when she tried to kill him, but Lauren is not only too stupid and immature to see that, she's hell-bent on using this as a means of currying favour with a mother who thinks only of herself. Once again, just like Tanya and the majority of the Brannings and their satellites, they think nothing of hurting vulnerable people. Karma should be due a big bit of her soon too.
At first, I thought Kat was showing some compassion for Kirsty's plight when she saw her weeping on the pavement amongst the smalls Tanya had so kindly thrown from the window of the B and B; but later, the only thing she could offer her was cynical and sarcastic defeatism, based only on her own experiences - experiences which were of her own making. Now the blame for Kat's plight has shifted, as everyone knew it would, from Derek to Roxy, inevitably, to Alfie. Because he's "moved on." Because, as she told Kirsty, that's what men do. The difference in Kirsty and Kat is that Kirsty married Max in good faith; it was Max who abandoned her for no reason. Kat had a husband who loved her and was faithful, but she took that love and threw it in his face, cheating repeatedly and lying. And she's callous enough to think now, after all this, that it's Alfie's fault - and in Simon Ashdown's and Lorraine Newman's hands, believe you me, it will be.
I admit, I don't understand why Roxy was off with Kirsty tonight. She was late, and it was clear she was upset - Alfie clued in on this immediately; after all, Kirsty was sympathetic to Roxy's plight being with a man who's ex was nearby and always in your face. But Roxy's not the most patient of people, especially with her own gender; otherwise, her reaction and interaction with Kirsty were totally skewed tonight.
But the absolute worst reaction of all was Sharon's, complete with bitchy, judgemental remark. If Ashdown and Co choose not to remember that Sharon slept with her husband's brother and that she acted like a total Queen Bitch, even assaulting Zoe Slater when Zoe was with Saint Dennis, her husband-brother-son, then there are many long-term viewers who would remember. Those selfsame long-term viewers would also remember that Sharon used to be one of the least judgemental and most open-minded characters on the show. That's why we loved her. I don't know who this blowsy, barfly bimbo is tonight who's prostituted herself to Jack Branning, but I wanted to smack her fat cheeks - yep, I said it, her fat cheeks - for that attitude. That isn't Sharon, but then Simon Ashdown wrote the episode tonight, and he's had a mighty hand in fucking up first Kat, then Bianca and now Sharon.
The Gangster of Lurrve - That Would Be Joker Jack Now, Wouldn't It?
I don't want to waste any words on the biggest slut in Walford, sat amongst a roomful of other moral reprobates - Kat, Bianca and Michael Moon, who had the audacity to be sitting at his cousin's bar when he'd porked Alfie's slut wife and got her pregnant - but Jack's philosophy of why Kirsty should just give it up for Max and Tanya almost choked me - that they've been together 18 years and have three kids.
Jack: That's REAL fairmly.
Yeah, Jack, considering you played house with Tanya for one year and used that occasion publically to bait and humiliate Max, even to the point that you were willing to ferret his children illegally out of the country to France because Tanya fancied a country house. Or that you managed to have children by not only your wife, but her sister (standing behind the bar) and their cousin?
Or how about this for real "fairmly", Jack? Your father married your mother because he got her up the duff with Derek. That's enough to put any man off sex for a lifetime; but he stayed married to her until the day she died and had five more kids with her. However, after she died, when he was about to marry Dot, he confessed to Robbie and Sonia that he never ever loved Reenie, he just stayed with her for the children's sake. Probably why all of you lot are so fucked up. Yeah, Jack. Real fairmly.
The Pantomime Dames - Oooh, I Say!
That would be Dot and Cora the Bora.
Dot was in real pantomime mode tonight, complete with medicinal sherry, and goodness only knows why she was sat talking to Michael Moon. Does she even know him? They'd never exchanged words before this. Hers was a comic interlude told in Dot-speak about Cora the Bora's treachery in landing her in a welter of unpaid rent debt with the council.
Her later visit to Max's house was a plot contrivance to get Max out of the house to see Kirsty.
Cora the Bora was just drunk. As usual. Nothing new there.
Simon Ashdown is a good writer, but he's fucked up three iconic female characters and he needs to lay off the obsession with the biggest loser chav poor white trash family in the history of EastEnders.
In case you're in any doubt, he'd be singing about Kirsty, not Tanya. Gee, just think. Max and his male relatives could do a tribute band: The Brannings - Max on lead vocals, Jack on the old harmonica, Joey on guitar, Oscar on drums.
Here's a cover version they could do and dedicate to Cora the Bora, Tanya and Lauren the Lip. It fits their lifestyle so well ...
Or how about this one, which pretty much describes what happens every time the Brannings family sit down to dinner:-
Do you get my drift?
The Brannings are losers.
Always have been, always will be. When they arrived on the Square properly - meaning Max and his tribe, Max and Tanya were touted as the new Den and Ange. Not even close. To begin with, Max Branning is a totally retconned character, as is Jack. In fact, the very essence of that family being "retcon" - making up facts, figures and characters to suit the required storyline just shows what total losers they are.
The age order of the Branning siblings is on its third retcon. Joey and Alice are retconned characters, as is Ray Dixon, connected to them via whatever sort of relationship he had with Bianca which produced the human chicken nugget , MAWgan.
From the sickening co-dependent relationship of Max and Tanya, with Max's propensity and need to cheat constantly and her pathetic desire for a material middle-class lifestyle fueled by drink, to Jack and his babydaddy status with not only the woman he married but also her sister and cousin, to his status as the biggest slut in Walford, and his willful neglect of every child he's fathered, to Joey and Lauren's incest, to Cora the Bora's fag-breathing, drink-sodden old dragon lag grifter, to Bianca's fecklessness and foolishness ... all powered by an overwhelming sense of entitlement and hypocrisy ... the Brannings are not only losers.
They are the very embodiment of poor white trash. I can't say it enough, and tonight they showed it blatantly.
More's the pity, they have managed to drag Sharon Watts, daughter of the real Den and Angie, original Walford character, EastEnders' princess into the mire of poor white trashdom also.
I would include Bryan Kirkwood in the following augury, but he is long gone and these two muppets still remain and were there when the character butchery began.
Congratulations, Simon Ashdown and Lorraine Newman. In the past three years, you've managed to fuck up Kat, Bianca and now Sharon, all of whom were present tonight and passing pejorative judgement. You both should be taken out and smacked around Albert Square, with the video of that feat going viral on YouTube. I begrudge every penny of my licence fee which goes to fund the character assassination of three iconic EastEnders' women.
YOU SUCK.
Mommie Dearest Is the Other Woman.
Tanya was absolutely putrid tonight. I am sorry. I can muster no sympathy for this woman who is patently and obviously now a victim of karma not biting, but chewing on that J-Lo ass. Damn! It's chewing so hard, you'd think she'd feel it and get the message.
Tanya is the other woman. Kirsty is Max's wife, and one bit of dialogue from Kirsty tonight summed up accurately the fact that she knows Max as well as, if not better than Tanya, and she was with him a matter of months as opposed to Tanya's eighteen years.
When Tanya was accusing Kirsty and Max of all sorts, Kirsty denied, quite rightly, that nothing untoward had occurred between them - except for one romantic moment (only a moment, mind) on the day of Derek's funeral. But, of course, Kirsty intimates, Max told Tanya all about that?
When it was clear that he hadn't from the look of astonishment on Tanya's face, Kirsty continued:-
Go on. Go on home and ask him yourself. Ask him about kissing me in the alleyway, and then listen to him lie.
Tanya was well out of order in her overt bullying tactics to Kirsty tonight - she had no right to be in her room, ordering her to sign the divorce papers - how I loved the moment when Tanya's face got that shiny smug smily when she thought Kirsty was signing the papers - only to see that she'd written NEVER across the front in red lippy. Just who do these people think they are? The Brannings cannot even bully a lonely, isolated woman with no one in the world, out of their lives and out of Walford.
Just look at what Phil Mitchell did to Lisa Shaw, how he psychologically wore her down to a pathetic frazzle in Portugal, just to gain custody of their daughter - and the look on his face as he walked away with Louise showed how much he hated doing that, but he did it for a purpose, however bad it was. Hell, even the effete Michael Moon was callous enough and cruel enough to prey on his wife, another woman isolated from her family and alone and in the throes of post-natal depression, fueling her poor self-esteem and paranoia until she fled from the place - leaving him holding their baby and whimpering that he loved Janine.
But the Brannings can't even do that with Kirsty. Kirsty is Max's wife, and she wants him, and we got to see a pretty good reason why tonight as well.
Tanya's co-dependency on Max was summed up by the B and B key she found in his pocket, assuming - from previous behaviour - that he was cheating with
Tanya got served some brutal home truths tonight about her skills as a mother. Lauren was actually quite right in her accusations. Tanya never listens to her. How many times after her accident did she try to approach Tanya about what was bothering her, about her relationship with Joey, and Tanya was too preoccupied with her wedding, with Ava, with Cora the Bora or gossiping with her instantaneous best friend Bimbo Sharon? And it's true, whenever Lauren does engage with Tanya, it always ends up in Tanya either going on at Lauren or going on about herself. Because everything is ultimately all about Tanya.
She couldn't quite fathom that Lauren, even drunk, could managed to see Kirsty in a detached sort of way and surmise that she really wasn't a bad person at all, that when she saw she was drunk and in a bad way, she took her back to the B and B and looked after her, listening to her, allowing her to talk without prejudice, something Tanya is unable to do, because ever since Abi's decided to study for A-Levels with a view to going to uni, she's always held up as an example to Lauren.
Tanya doesn't realise how much her behaviour contributes to Lauren's drinking just as Cora gets high-arsed when Rainie accuses her of contributing to her alcoholism. Drunks like Cora the Bora and Tanya love company.
And what happens when Lauren tells the truth? Tanya plays the victim, crying like a spoiled little kid, objecting to, yet craving, the "pity" being shown by Lauren, Max and Abi. When she lashed out at Lauren, that reminded me of the Stax reveal, when Tanya's first reaction to Lauren was to call her an evil little bitch. Just as she was offended by Cora telling her some select home truths a few months ago, she's now equally offended that Lauren holds some adult opinions regarding her mother's behaviour.
But Tanya turns on the tears, and everyone fusses over her, trying to play happy families. Max still lied though, Through his teeth, telling Tanya that Kirsty would go.
Tanya is a big, fat spoiled kid, herself. She's stepped on another woman mercilessly, and that woman's child, in her quest to get away from the trailer-trash existence she was living - with the help of a man, of course. Tanya can't do anything without a man in the picture. She thought nothing of hurting Rachel and Bradley, never wondered or felt guilty about how they might be coping or how they would get by. And now she's seeing that middle-class dream of the perfect picket-fence family slide away from her, because Max is attracted to and married to the bit of rough who is probably very much like Tanya was, herself, when Max met her.
Fuck me, she can't even trust Max to leave the house, and she wants to stay with this creature?
She is totally pathetic. And for anyone still thinking of Tanya as a Yummy Mummy, she, once again, confirmed just how far she'd go to rid herself of Kirsty, when Max rhetorically asked if Tanya wanted Max to kill Kirsty and bury her in the garden (nudge nudge wink wink). Tanya's callous reply would be that that would be a start. Bitch.
Max Is the King of Wishful Thinking (and a Coward).
Here's another reason why the Brannings are losers: They're cowards.
Jack thinks he's a good father because he sends a cheque each month to his various babymammas in France, in Portugal and across the Square. He daren't visit any of the children or even spend time with his local child. That would tax his self-important sense of integrity too much. Coward.
Joey would rather dump his cousin girlfriend rather than live with his old man. Coward.
Max has always been cowardly. Chasing skirt until he's caught out and then whining and begging Tanya's forgiveness (which she, mostly, bought). Sneaks are always cowards.
Now, he's caught between a rock and a hard place. He married Kirsty when he was legally single. No one forced him to do so. He fell in love with her. He may have been at a vulnerable point in his life, but it was made plain as the gekko nose on his face that Kirsty, here, was the more vulnerable of the pair. Max, at least, had his brothers. He was living with one of them, and even if Tanya had hoisted the blame for their affair onto his shoulders and banished him from Walford, at least he still had family there who loved him - Carol and ... well as much as a plank of wood can love.
Kirsty had no one. Like Tanya before her, she probably thought Max's attention and affection were a lottery win. Look, in the world of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
As much as Max might publically deny it and even say so to Kirsty, he still loves her. That's why he married her. Bullshit to all those who say that Tanya and Max are soulmates because they spent 18 years together and have 3 kids. They have a bond, sure; but they aren't soulmates. Max abandoned Kirsty because Tanya was very ill and wasn't coping; his children needed him. After awhile and with Kirsty out of sight and out of mind, Max slotted into his old, comfortable and familiar way of life. Better the devil you know, than the devil you don't. And just like Jack forgets his children because they're conveniently far away, so Max was able to forget Kirsty, as long as she didn't show up on his doorstep.
Now she's back, and he still has feelings for her. He told her so on Christmas Day; and - as I said - one thing is obvious. Besides the obvious, Max and Kirsty did a lot of talking during their short marriage as well. She knows and understands Max. It could very well be that they are soulmates; but Max is willing to sacrifice all of that at the altar of Saint Tanya. Not for love, but for a peaceful life. For contact with his children and a cooked meal at night. It's not for love that he's staying with Tanya, it's the lesser guilt.
For all he ignored her in public, he never badgered her for the divorce papers until tonight,when he came face to face with Tanya's behaviour and that was only to save his own face. Speaking of faces, his was a picture when she handed him the signed papers.
Max loves Kirsty. Not Tanya.
Kirsty: It Must Have Been Love ...
You know, Kirsty is a character who's only been on our screens since Christmas, yet we learned more about her backstory tonight than we have ever learned about why Kat fucked Derek.
Kirsty is a strong woman, who desperately loves a loser like Max Branning, probably because he's the only person who's treated her as if she were worth something. She has no family, and she's probably brought herself up on her own. She's a more refined - meaning mature - version of Mandy Salter.
You only need to look at Kirsty to know she's had it rough. Really, as sad as it might seem, Max is the only person she has in her life; and it hurt her desperately when he walked away from her tonight.
I haven't seen a woman bullied worse tonight since Janine left the Square, and none of the women bitchily badgering her had any cause or right to do so.
Bianca thinks she's better than Kirsty? This is the same woman who broke up her own marriage by sleeping with her mother's fiance. She palmed her young son off on her ex-husband so she could "find herself" and didn't even think to tell him he'd fathered a daughter on her, allowing another man to think the awful Tiffany was his child. Whatever story you believe - she either slept with so many men, she was unable to fathom who MAWgan's father might be, or else she slept with Ray long enough to steal five hundred quid from his wallet and scarpered, again, never bothering to tell him about his child. Either way, both versions stink. She let a paedophile into the bosom of the family and was willing to deny Liam's father his parental rights, reckoning Tony King was the better man. This is also the woman who couldn't feed, clothe or keep a roof over her children's heads, because she's that feckless and stupid. Even with her own mother, her husband and Pat doing the heavy-lifting, she manages to get herself imprisoned, first for common assault and then for theft. She is in no position to judge Kirsty, not after all the tricks she's pulled.
Lauren's sudden change-of-heart and fleeting visit was done out of the guilt, Tanya passive-aggressively foisted upon her. She'd hurt Mummy Dearest, now she was going to achieve the impossible by, yet again, passive-aggressively bullying Kirsty into leaving Walford. Even when Kirstly pointed out Lauren's obvious advantages - the only reason Kirsty has for staying in Walford is fighting for her marriage; oddly enough, the same reason Max wouldn't let go of Lauren even when she tried to kill him, but Lauren is not only too stupid and immature to see that, she's hell-bent on using this as a means of currying favour with a mother who thinks only of herself. Once again, just like Tanya and the majority of the Brannings and their satellites, they think nothing of hurting vulnerable people. Karma should be due a big bit of her soon too.
At first, I thought Kat was showing some compassion for Kirsty's plight when she saw her weeping on the pavement amongst the smalls Tanya had so kindly thrown from the window of the B and B; but later, the only thing she could offer her was cynical and sarcastic defeatism, based only on her own experiences - experiences which were of her own making. Now the blame for Kat's plight has shifted, as everyone knew it would, from Derek to Roxy, inevitably, to Alfie. Because he's "moved on." Because, as she told Kirsty, that's what men do. The difference in Kirsty and Kat is that Kirsty married Max in good faith; it was Max who abandoned her for no reason. Kat had a husband who loved her and was faithful, but she took that love and threw it in his face, cheating repeatedly and lying. And she's callous enough to think now, after all this, that it's Alfie's fault - and in Simon Ashdown's and Lorraine Newman's hands, believe you me, it will be.
I admit, I don't understand why Roxy was off with Kirsty tonight. She was late, and it was clear she was upset - Alfie clued in on this immediately; after all, Kirsty was sympathetic to Roxy's plight being with a man who's ex was nearby and always in your face. But Roxy's not the most patient of people, especially with her own gender; otherwise, her reaction and interaction with Kirsty were totally skewed tonight.
But the absolute worst reaction of all was Sharon's, complete with bitchy, judgemental remark. If Ashdown and Co choose not to remember that Sharon slept with her husband's brother and that she acted like a total Queen Bitch, even assaulting Zoe Slater when Zoe was with Saint Dennis, her husband-brother-son, then there are many long-term viewers who would remember. Those selfsame long-term viewers would also remember that Sharon used to be one of the least judgemental and most open-minded characters on the show. That's why we loved her. I don't know who this blowsy, barfly bimbo is tonight who's prostituted herself to Jack Branning, but I wanted to smack her fat cheeks - yep, I said it, her fat cheeks - for that attitude. That isn't Sharon, but then Simon Ashdown wrote the episode tonight, and he's had a mighty hand in fucking up first Kat, then Bianca and now Sharon.
The Gangster of Lurrve - That Would Be Joker Jack Now, Wouldn't It?
I don't want to waste any words on the biggest slut in Walford, sat amongst a roomful of other moral reprobates - Kat, Bianca and Michael Moon, who had the audacity to be sitting at his cousin's bar when he'd porked Alfie's slut wife and got her pregnant - but Jack's philosophy of why Kirsty should just give it up for Max and Tanya almost choked me - that they've been together 18 years and have three kids.
Jack: That's REAL fairmly.
Yeah, Jack, considering you played house with Tanya for one year and used that occasion publically to bait and humiliate Max, even to the point that you were willing to ferret his children illegally out of the country to France because Tanya fancied a country house. Or that you managed to have children by not only your wife, but her sister (standing behind the bar) and their cousin?
Or how about this for real "fairmly", Jack? Your father married your mother because he got her up the duff with Derek. That's enough to put any man off sex for a lifetime; but he stayed married to her until the day she died and had five more kids with her. However, after she died, when he was about to marry Dot, he confessed to Robbie and Sonia that he never ever loved Reenie, he just stayed with her for the children's sake. Probably why all of you lot are so fucked up. Yeah, Jack. Real fairmly.
The Pantomime Dames - Oooh, I Say!
That would be Dot and Cora the Bora.
Dot was in real pantomime mode tonight, complete with medicinal sherry, and goodness only knows why she was sat talking to Michael Moon. Does she even know him? They'd never exchanged words before this. Hers was a comic interlude told in Dot-speak about Cora the Bora's treachery in landing her in a welter of unpaid rent debt with the council.
Her later visit to Max's house was a plot contrivance to get Max out of the house to see Kirsty.
Cora the Bora was just drunk. As usual. Nothing new there.
Simon Ashdown is a good writer, but he's fucked up three iconic female characters and he needs to lay off the obsession with the biggest loser chav poor white trash family in the history of EastEnders.
"Kierston Wareing played a blinder tonight and showed why she's a BAFTA nominee and the rest of the actresses in she show (bar Lindsey Coulson and Denise Parish) are just plebs."
ReplyDeleteJessie Wallace is a BAFTA nominee as well, so surely that means the same, no?
Not really. Wallace won her nomination on the back of being flavour of the month when EastEnders was flying high. Wareing carved a name for herself in indie films and quality drama television beforehand. She had a life before EastEnders professionally, and she'll have one afterwards - Wallace had neither and has nothing more than a collection of ex-fiances and engagements which always end publically in drug-or booze-fueled tears. And botox.
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