That song goes out for all the dirty girls featured in tonight's episode, as well as the Executive Producer, herself. The entire episode, right up to the duff-duffs tonight was an absolute feast of Lorraine Newman's amplified ego, masking her innate inability to see exactly what it is that is crippling and killing this once-great soap.
Circular storylines, bad sitcom vignettes, unlikeable characters in which most long-term viewers find it hard to invest emotionally, ethnic stereotypes which are, frankly, insulting, and tonight - the makeover of one of the show's iconic characters into something totally off-whack in her brand, just completes EastEnders; ca Kirkwood and Newman, and its effing over of a hattrick of iconic female characters.
Tonight, in a brief introductory scene that's become all too familiar and all too trite over the years, make that a hattrick plus one of iconic female characters on the road to ruin.
If this were football, Lionel Messi would be celebrating.
The Brannings Have
It always begins with the Brannings these days and ends with them as well. As Matt Lapinskas said recently (and I'm no fan of his, to be sure), there isn't a single episode that doesn't feature at least one Branning. Masoods aside tonight, they appeared in every scene, even if it were only to chip in a line or two here or there.
What does it take for Newman the Numptie to understand that most of the long-term viewers do not like the Brannings. As someone said recently on Digital Spy, it's perfectly reasonable for people who've watched and invested time in watching the programme for over a decade - or since its beginnings or the Nineties at least - to criticise the current state of the programme, because it's not good at all, and it isn't getting better.
Not all of us are shippers like the various permutations of dan cropping up on Digital Spy or corporation cheerleading plants like blue angel or even just shippers like xTonix, who'd praise the quality of EastEnders to the hilt if it consisted of thirty minutes of showing the BBC test signal ...
And those of us who are honest are prepared to call out crap when we see it being spewed by something that is supposed to be the BBC's flagship programme, especially when our licence fee funds what is becoming a monstrosity.
If Newman thinks that by pandering to the lowest common denominator of functionally illiterate youth inhabiting EastEnders' Facebook, Twitter or Tumblr pages, she can quite cheerfully go to hell in a handcart, because this is the most fickle demographic extant, and it's a demographic which thrives on dumbed-down television, which is what EastEnders has become.
Yes, the Brannings now officially have three - count'em - three dirty girls: There's Saint Tanya of the Dirty Knickers, Saint Lauren the Lip of Inbreeding and Saint Kirsty of the Dirty Attitude.
Three saints from hell. No wonder Abi has a headache. I'd have one too if I woke up to find myself in that dystopian, dysfunctional family.
The Brannings play normal. They pretend Kirsty doesn't exist, and that she isn't Max's wife. Even when they're normal, they're ugly. Tanya gives Max the fish eye when he cries off taking Oscar to the dentist - because he's got to attend an auction. (Question: Ever notice that there are never more than four cars on Max Branning's forecourt?)
Here's another question: If Tanya is so damned suspicious of Max's every move, especially since Kirsty's hanging about Walford like the bad smell Tanya wants her to be, why is she even clinging onto Max? This is a man who has cheated on her repeatedly. Hell, he cheated on his first wife when he was with her. Common sense will tell you a cheater doesn't stop cheating.
But wait ... Max didn't cheat on Tanya this time. She kicked him to the kerb, got the girls to muster up a solid defence based on a lie she told them, and he left Walford a single man. Nope. Max is cheating on his wife, all right ... Kirsty. So Tanya, the other woman, who is so fucking co-dependent on Max that she'll live with his cheating ways for the rest of her pathetic life just for the ability to pull on gloves and a twinset and pretend she's really Mrs Brenda Compton-Champion, dahling, of Carshalton Beeches.
So Tanya's worried about Max, Abi's worried about her exam and Lauren's pissed off that everyone is worried about Abi's exam. She gets particularly annoyed when Abi worries aloud that if she doesn't pass these exams, she won't have a shot at uni ... because, you know, uni was too good for Saint Lauren the Lip, who'd rather sit on her skanky arse, watching television, cadging money off the parents she vilifies, fuck her cousin and inbreed. And drink.
She's full of self-pity, but in a fit of magnanimity, offers to work for Mummy Dearest a day in the Salon. (It seems Lola is ill, which annoys Tanya, because one of her slaves won't be on hand to skivvy for her today).
Jah-WAAAH is in full throttle today, if you know what I mean. Count the scenes where you saw this ...
And this ...
And this ...
Well, the first time was when Ja-WAAH found Lauren working in Booty's. (How did he know she was there?) This scene produced the lines of the night:-
Ja-WAAH: La-raaaagh thomwes'sdaaaarhlarrrcarrrh.
Lauren: Not now, Joey, I'm busy.
Diction lessons, anyone? Especially since David Witts has said he's going to be stickng around and Lorraine is going to lighten him up this year because, you know (sigh) he's just so beautiful.
Anyhoo, after Ja-WAAH leaves, Lauren the Lip accidentally on purpose finds a letter from the NHS scolding Tanya for missing an appointment with her cancer nurse. See, Luddites, Tanya is not cured and does not have the all-important all-clear. She won't get that until she's five years cancer free. In the meantime, she not only has to have the occasional scan, but she has to meet regularly for examinations and check-ups with her cancer nurse.
Of course, when Lauren challenges Tanya, what does Tanya do but lie again? Kudos at least for Lauren in reminding her that she was starting to do exactly what she did last year regarding this illness and how much of an unnecessary and unfair pressure was put on the family, especially Lauren. Well, at least this writer managed to remember that much continuity.
The second time we saw this ...
And we got this again ...
I tell you, if the Brannings were American, they'd be just like this -
Scrubbed up, they are, and after Lauren's performance, they have the audacity to sneer at Kirsty?
Drummed out of the loos, the cousins repair to
It's Dot. Yes, this lot of writers have glamourised Dot. Pierced ears, trousers, ankle boots, and driving a Smart car, which isn't inexpensive, considering Dot is on a state pension and living in a council house. Since Max and Tanya are so lackadaisical about inbreeding, let's see what Grandma Dot's reaction is when she realises Ja-WAAAH is her verbally-challenged grandson.
Yes, Kirsty's about tonight as well, and notice TPTB aren't pushing her in our faces, just letting her pop up in the odd scene or so, long enough for her presence to cause Max to get jumpy and to walk away from her decidely bent forward in order to disguise something within his loins which has just awoken.
That Kirsty is rough goes without saying. Oddly enough, she reminds me of the rougher edges of a Roxy crossed with a Stacey Slater. Maybe Max likes rough women, or maybe Max likes women who don't try to be something that they aren't and take him for what he is and all - a two-bit failed and duplitious backstreet car salesman on the wrong side of forty.
What bothers Tanya about Kirsty is that Kirsty is from whence Tanya came.If Tanya's the aspiring middle-class wannabe with the nice clothes and dirty underwear, you can bet Kirsty's clothes might have seen better days, but her push-up and her thong are laundered daily. And what bothers the Branning brothers about Kirsty is she is exactly what they are beneath the suits and the boots.
Clock the look Jack gave her on two occasions - when Oscar fell off his bike and later in the pub. Jack would ... in a New York minute, the dog.
Poor Kat the Victim Is a Dirty Girl and Bianca Is Still Poor.
And so continues the tale of poor Kat Moon, who regularly cheated on her husband, although it wasn't her fault. She's a dirty girl, you know; and even though it's been some weeks now since her faithful husband found out she'd been lying to him and that she'd been having an affair with Derek Branning, we still haven't heard why Kat began and continued the affair.
Oh, wait ... maybe we have. All we've heard so far is that Derek forced her to have the affair - that's rape, right? Or that he forced her to continue by threatening to tell Alfie - that's blackmail, right? Yet there she is, living in the old Slater house, sublet by Mo to Derek, with Derek's children.
And here go TPTB, turning Roxy into an evil vixen - because wasn't it last week that poor Kat was whining about Roxy taking her pub, her job and her husband?
So now she has to toil hard as a real scrubber:-
Today, poor Kat is cleaning the kitchen of the pub where she used to be landlady, the same kitchen in which she first fucked Derek Branning, inviting him in with opened legs. One wonders if she thinks of this as she takes off her wedding and engagement rings to clean. Then, wonder of wonders, Alfie appears and gives her a birthday card. Then evil Roxy appears and gives her short working orders. Then Kat spies Amy the Mute with one of Tommy's toys. It appears that Tommy's with Alfie today and has been, because Kat references visiting him upstairs and he wouldn't let go of Jean to come to her. I'm not surprised. She was an abysmal mother.
When she tries to take the toy from Amy, she and Roxy get into an altercation, and Kat quits, which loses Bianca the job.
Bianca is another dirty girl, because she's got all mouth and no brain, and wanted Kat's permission to smack Roxy if Roxy got shirty - an action which would only lead to Roxy calling the police and Bianca being arrested and imprisone. Again. But maybe that might not be such a bad idea.
So Kat ends the evening with Bianca, the runt of the Branning litter and the Branning loser, who's nicked a bottle of wine from the Vic for them to enjoy. She also has her wedding and engagement ring and a card "with love" from Alfie and Tommy. Well, at least Roxy wasn't included.
How many damned hints do we need that these two will reconcile this year? I tell you, Christmas 2013 is their tenth wedding anniversary ... what does that say?
Yes, Ayesha Is a VERY Dirty Girl and Zainab Is a Hypocrite.
And so, the demonisation of Zainab continues - possibly because TPTB knew what Nina Wadia was going to say in her interview on This Morning. Zainab may still be with us, but Nina Wadia is history to EastEnders as she finished filming last month.
Wadia left because she had been feeling that "something wasn't right" for sometime. That could be show business euphemism for any one of a number of things - poor scripts, bad characterisations, circular plots, bad continuity ... you name it.
But let's review the congruity of Zainab being asked to be a chaperone for a young, sheltered Muslim girl about to embark on an arranged marriage.
Zainab is living with a man who isn't her husband. Her oldest son is gay and is married to his partner, and the Masoods now embrace that relationship, something that would make them pariahs in their own community. Her youngest son lives apart from his wife, who will soon be eligible to divorce him. Also living in the house is Masood's brother, a secular Muslim, who drinks and fornicates freely. This would not be the sort of environment to which Ayesha's mother would entrust her daughter.
Add to that, Zainab is a domestic tyrant. She rules the roost. She blatantly favoured one child above all the rest, and got called out on that by both her husband and Tamwar. She speaks to Ayesha, at best, as though she were a poor relation. Tonight she got caught out in the fact that she'd read Ayesha's letter.
But is Ayesha any better than Zainab? I'm beginning to believe Ayesha isn't as sheltered as she seems. Last week I thought her stupid. I don't even think she's socially gauche. I think she's a spoiled girl who's used to getting what she wanted - clock the way she lazily mooched around the Minute Mart under Zainab's frenzied work guidance.
But I think she knows exactly what she wants and she aims to get it. She wants Masood. She even suggested telling Zainab how she felt tonight, but what in the hell she hoped to accomplish by that, I don't know. Masood tells her, time and again, that he isn't interested, that he thinks of her avuncularly, but she insists on reading the signs all wrong.
That''s the curious difference in Max's situation and Masood's. Max keeps protesting Kirsty's presence and her efforts, but secretly, he'd have her in a minute. Masood genuinely isn't attracted to a woman young enough to be his daughter and one who would pursue a married man. I don't know if Ayesha is long-term or not, but with such an entitled attitude, she'd fit right in with the Brat Pack of Walford.
Ajay annoys me. The dozy, too-cool-for-school act doesn't sit right on the shoulders of a man who's supposed to be forty. Grow up, for God's sake.
The Little Cock Amongst the Dirty Girls.
If ever there were a stereotypical ethnic character, it's Dexter.
If Kim is a rehash of Flip Wilson's drag queen character from the 70s, Geraldine Jones, then Dexter must be the evil son of J J Evans, the gormless character played by Jimmie Walker in another 70s sitcom. I keep expecting Dexter to come out with something like this ...
Maybe this could be his theme song when he's properly settled in with his trailer trash relatives and his drunken ASBO granny ... Walford's very own Fresh Prince ...
So that's Cock Robin's theme song. And he's a liar. Oh, and a mechanic, whom Phil Mitchell hires on the offshoot. Just like that. As you do.
I don't like Dexter. Not only is he another unlikeable, mouthy member of a demographic which far outweighs any other on the show at the moment, he's also another who could do with some diction lessons, and I don't like stereotypes, especially racial stereotypes.
As for Ava the Rava, I'm more than convinced that she's not about to be the positive character everyone thinks she is. That refined teacher from leafy Surbiton is just another screeching fishwife of a woman, no doubt with a secret and, if she's a professional in a position of trust, I think we can surmise just how Tanya might depart from EastEnders ... at the hand (or the axe) of her sister ...
Update: Just realised, Emer Kenney is in charge of storylining now. Great. A kid with little experience of life and a propensity to avoid research (part of the role of any writer) who thinks she can just make things up as they come along. She was shite on her comments re Lauren's so-called "binge drinking" and produced some of the worst episodes of that week. I presume she's being brought on board to make the storylines more appealing to the demographic who seem to be giving Newman all her kudos at the moment - the lower echelon of the teen market. Like as not, she is behind Dot's image make-over. Why do I see several important characters bowing out of the show as it increasingly becomes more and more HollyOaks: London 2.0?
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