The Branning Show: Cockroaches Crawl from the Woodwork - Review Part 2: 04.01.2013

The Brannings and their aspirations ...

Actually, poor white trash have a lot more class than the people I saw tonight. At least they know what and who they are. Tonight was more like ...

The Brannings Gather for Derek's Funeral

EastEnders' funerals bore me to tears. Simply because there are so many of them. Pat's funeral was barely shown. She was an iconic character who had been on the programme for more than 20 years, and yet her funeral was only shown briefly, in order to devote the rest of the episode to the Brannings picking a fight with David Wicks and Carol trying to escape with him.

Yet tonight, we get the full waterworks and even a eulogy from some drunken old seahag of a bitch, who was a total and utter embarrassment for a character who had to be, arguably, the most unpopular and disliked character in the history of EastEnders.

People disliked Nick Cotton, but in the beginning, he was at least watchable.

Tonight, people gathered for the funeral of a bombastic, blowfart who was nothing he said he was, a bully who punched down at people, who terrified young girls and wantonly broke up marriages, who managed to father a couple of dolts, one  who is clearly simple-minded and the other who is an inarticulate mouthbreather with a penchant for sexual relations with close relatives. 

Derek took much and gave nothing, and it was fitting that no one in the Walford community, bar Poppy and Fatboy, as friends of Aaa-aasss and Tyler who's lacking in common sense because he's still hanging out with Whitney, attended his funeral other than his skanky, white trash family and their satellites.

Just a few observations, characterwise:-

Kat the Penitent Sinner. Obviously, we know she's Newman's pet project, and she's seeking her redemption. She's really turned on the poor-Kat-the-victim shower last week, with a different writer actually allowing Kat to assume responsibility for her actions in getting involved with Derek this week. Shame, the writer didn't actually have her slink across the Square and square this with Alfie. I'm still waiting for her heartfelt - and I mean, sincere - apology there.

So we have Katshit channeling Alfie's encouragement to her during "Tommy'" funeral, telling her funerals are to be taken one step at a time and using that line to bolster My Aaa-asssss. Aaa-aassss thinks Kat's kind, but then Aaaa-aaasss is stupid.

I still feel no sympathy for Kat. She so systematically psychologically and emotionally abused Alfie for the past two years, that I want to smack her sad clown undermade face for that poor-pitiful-me look she gave Alfie through the car window as she drove past the Vic.

But what was all that tearful look during the old grey lag's eurlogy at the crematorium? All Cora's wittering about respect etc, made Kat assume a look of tearful epiphany? Was she realising the depth of her feeling for Derek? Or was she being made to realise that it was really Alfie who deserved her respect and certainly didn't get it?

People on various fora who can't quite get their heads around the fact that Kirsty is actually the victim here, bleat on and on about wanting her to leave. No. Kat should go. As long as Kat stays in Walford, she and Alfie will reunite.

Newman has intimated this, although she tried to be cute in her latest interview and mask it; Shane Richie has said repeatedly, and he should know, that Kat was made to be with Alfie and if she weren't with Alfie, she'd be with no one. There isn't going to be a Kat-and-Max or a Kat-and-Jack or a Kat-and-Phil.

Kat and Alfie will reunite by the year's end, their tenth anniversary. Oh, and Newman has intimated also that she likes Alfie in the pub, so there he'll stay for as long as he wants. So there'll be no Slater family reunion (of fortysomething gobby women and an old man), no Cora behind the bar of the pub drinking the profits, it's all about Alfie reuniting with Kat.

What's It All About, Alfie?

Alfie talks the talk but doesn't walk the walk. The fact that he's been hurt deeply and badly by Kat's betrayal was written all over him tonight. Alfie doesn't drink, and he was downing whiskey after whiskey tonight. I'm glad, in the midst of all this, the writers had enough brain matter active to remember Ian's and Alfie's friendship, and that Ian was there for Alfie.

Ian's been through this countless numbers of times, and he's got drunk off the misery, himself. He saw through Alfie's false smile and how he was talking up the good thing he's got at the moment with Roxy. And Ian probably knows that - as Mandy was the rebound girl for him - that Roxy is Alfie's rebound. The difference is, however, that Roxy's depth of feeling is more real concerning Alfie than Mandy's was for Ian.

At the end of this charade, like Vanessa, it will be Roxy who's thrown under the bus. The scene of Alfie in the foyer of the Vic, crying his eyes out, was heart-rending. Kat cannot be made to get away without realising the extent of the damage she's done. Oh, and it looks as though Alfie, as usual, has Tommy; because Kat didn't make a mention of him in any of the scenes she had at Slater Hotel. That speaks volumes.

Tanya and Lauren Vie for Attention

Lucy Beale was right on the money again - everything is all about Lauren. No matter what happens, Lauren makes sure she's the centre of activity; and when she's not doing that, Tanya is. Tonight, Derek's funeral became all about whether Lauren was a drunk (she is) or lazy (she is) and whether that wooden-headed mouth-breathing, inarticulate idiot ...

loved her. (Notice Fatboy offered Jah-Wahhh a breath mint in the car. Mouth-breathers invariably suffer from halitosis).

Well, Jah-Waahh loves his cousin. As bloody if. And as bloody if Fatboy loves Poppy. I also see that skanky Whitney never returned the car Fatboy bought for her when she was shagging him and snogging Tyler. But all this dross Fatboy was droning on and on about his father and Poppy being the one - another relationship going full throttle after five minutes). The pacing in this show is all over the place. Storylines are either drawn out interminably and people meet, fuck, and marry within a matter of days. I suppose someone will be shortening the gestation period of nine months before long ... well, Bryan Kirkwood did insinuate that Ronnie raped Jack whilst he was in a coma.

And all Tanya was worried about was being pride of place as Max's intended at the funeral. Crass remark of the night goes to Tanya, as she and Max strode smugly through the market:-

Why don't you divorce your wife so we can do more than sleep together in that bed at night?

Somehow, I don't think this is the first time Tanya's had occasion to say this to Max. Remember another walk through the market last year, when Tanya and Max were remembering their first date - Tanya remarked about the drinks being cheap, and Max replied, laughing, that it was because he had a wife and son at home. Har-dee-har-har. Not.

I was glad at the end that Tanya had her smug ass handed to her on a plate by Kirsty, who, as Max's wife, decided not to stay away from her brother-in-law's funeral. And Carol got put in her place too.

Oh Carol ... You Are Such a Fool ...

Please, all of you, who aren't old enough to remember the circumstances, but Carol and David were never love's young dream. They were two fourteen year-olds having a bunk-up in back of the bikesheds.

They were not, as someone surmised, this generation's Pat and Frank.

So, Carol, the chief mourner and shipper of Derek the Good, suddenly sees how her brother was able to manipulate her even when she wasn't physically around, and now she pushes a different perspective on Derek.

Cast your minds back last year to Ricky's confession of adultery with Mandy and Bianca's confusion. When Carol was all loved up and being porked by David, she told Bianca to forgive and forget, that Ricky loved her and was a good man. But after David deserted her, Carol bullied Bianca into kicking Ricky out, and forbidding him ever coming or living in Walford again.

As long as Derek patted her cheek and she did his behests, she could sit and cry into her tea and remember him as a scared little boy; but once she saw his manipulative ways, he suddenly became a bully and a lout. Same old same old with Carol.

Sharon REALLY Had the Epiphany

The most classically comic and unintendedly funny scene of the night was Sharon getting horned into driving Cora the Bora to the funeral. I said all along that Cora was a drunk, and she proved it tonight. She was lit when she arrived at the funeral cortege and she drank all the way there.

She's a classless old drunken ASBO granny, and Sharon was less than impressed. Sharon's weathered Peggy Mitchell as a mother-in-law, and I daresay, she was wishing beyond all belief that Peggy were sat beside her in the car that day, instead of that stinking old fag-ridden, whiskey-sodden drunk.

Sharon never spoke a word to her. Her face full of distaste said it all. Get used to it, Shazza, you marry Jack the Peg, and she'll be blowing her fag-and-whiskey breath in your face forever. 

I see Jack's bought Sharon a car ... a Skoda. All the more reason to nip that pity party in the bud.

On the Other Hand, Phil ...

Wonderful to see him smiling and offering Jay his old job back. And notice that Jay wouldn't touch that funeral malarkey with a barge pole.

Don't it always seem to go, Sharon, that you don't know what you got til it's gone ... Don't descend into the hell that's poor white trashery ... Phil's the man, just listen to the words ...

The Drunken Eulogy from Hell

WTF? Cora the Bora spoke a lot of bullshit. Derek was not a man to be respected. He was not a man of principle. He was a jumped-up bataam rooster with delusions of grandeur, thinking himself the head of a powerful criminal family or something, the Walford Corleones. He always punched down - hitting women, baiting and bullying little girls. 

To hear that old fart-arsed drunken lag, three sheets to the wind so much that I'm sure the lady vicar smelled her drunkenness, eulogising a woman-beater, a blatant bully, a racist and a charlatan, who manipulated and scammed his own family, was pathetic.

Cora the Bora is pathetic. How anyone could have envisaged this old trout as a matriarch on the Square in the mould of Pat, or even Pauline or Peggy, is beyond my ken.

I'm glad the Wrath of Dot kicks her cheesy old ass out onto the street where she belongs.

Kirsty.

You go, girl.

Please, can the Brannings be stripped down to nothing this year?

Joey's Crying

No doubt about it. Witts is THE worst actor ever to appear in the programme. His signing is not down to Kirkwood. Kirkwood may have created the character of Joey Branning, but Lorraine Newman cast the clown, and to hear her drone on and on in her interview about how beautiful Lauren and Joey were, it's clear she's living vicariously a fantasy through these two assholes.

He was hired for looks, and he's an embarrassment; if she can't see that, she shouldn't be in the job.

Jesus H Christ, what a joke this show has become. Again, one word: Brookside.