The Branning Show: Poor White Trash Justifying Their Amorality

Here's a song for little Lorraine Newman, whose every wish is coming true ...

Yes, as evidenced by tonight's episode, lovingly put together by her designated minion in the writers' room (Perrie Balthazar), little Lorraine Newman's every wish about EastEnders has come to fruition.

Tonight we had warmth in abundance, we had interaction in the community and we had a beautiful couple upon which we might gaze.

Tonight, actually, we had a crock of shit piece of cancer dominated by the single most arrogant family ever to set foot in Walford. Lumps of wood, amoral hypocrites, dimwits, gurners and mouthbreathers all ... this is what happens when white trash move into the neighbourhood.

When the contrived situation comedy vignette, which tried to be funny but wasn't, turns out to be more watchable than what was supposed to be the main portion of the episode, this shower is in trouble.

If Newman is basking in the 11 million plus viewers who plopped their satiated arses on sofas in front of the telly on Christmas Day as justification for the shit she's tossing out on a regular basis, then she's as shallow as any of the characters she asks us to love. The rest of the year needs to be consistent, and I see almost nothing that is going to entice me to be sitting around watching this stuff within a year's time. 

Ne'mind dan2008 slobbering and gibbering about everything that's a-huh-a-huh-a-huh so exciting and good about the show. Ne'mind your xTonix's sexual fantasies and gavin shipman (great plant name) spinning. 

Shippers gonna ship.

But a word to the wise, which Newman obviously thinks she is ... if you're thinking about turning viewers' opinions on a dime, the way EastEnders used to be able to do with multi-faceted characters like Bianca (her first time around) or Grant or Michelle or even Peggy Mitchell years ago, don't make it obvious. Balthazar was begging the viewers' to feel affection for the likes of pejorative skanks and hypocrites like Kat, Lauren and Tanya tonight.

It isn't working.

And this is the first episode where I came off wanting to smack the living shit out of Sharon.

Let's look at the good bits:-

Denise. Simply Denise.

Tonight I also realised something else: Ray is a seriously good-looking man.

I always thought that Ray had more of connection, however tenuous, with Denise than Kim. Ray is a father with children, and Kim had no interest whatsoever in kids. She made that quite obvious early on, to Ray's disappointment. Then she made a half-hearted effort to relate to Sasha and Morgan.

Kim is also very possessive and has made it quite obvious that she wants nothing less than marriage with Ray.

Of course, this vignette was the comedic interlude in the high quality (read: pukeworthy) tragic drama (read: sensationalism) surrounding the Brannings. It involved Tameka Empson, and anything involving her is supposed to be funny. It's not. Add the interfering Zainab to the equation, throw in the obvious fact that Ian Beale, who appears to have received a lobotomy as a result of his unseen counselling he's received, is noticeably sweet on her - but sweet in the way a fourteen year-old boy is toward a girl he fancies, but is too shy to approach. So he teases her remorselessly. Oh well, I always did say Ian had the emotional maturity of an adolescent and that Jane treated him like a recalcitrant teenager. Then garnish the mixture with dozy Ajay, yet another comic contrivance who appeared to have a brief connection with Denise when he first arrived.

This all leads us to the dinner party from hell, the purpose of which was to connect Denise romantically, either with Kim's candidate, Ian, or Zainab's candidate, Ajay. Of course it all ends in chaos, when it becomes obvious to Denise what's going on.

And of course, this leads to an emotional heart-to-heart with Ray, in a room apart from the dinner party - although why Kim wasn't up-front-and-in-their-faces with Ray alone with her sister, I don't know. And this lead to Ray's confession that he found Denise sexy and attractive, and he sealed that with a passionate kiss, which Denise returned.

I didn't know how I was going to take this scene, but Diane Parrish, again, proved why she's amongst the strongest actresses on the show. She made the scene, emphasizing the poignancy of her social situation. Denise is lonely. And afraid. She's been married three times, twice to the same man, who was a drug addict during their first coupling. Her second husband was a violent alcoholic who beat her. Her third husband, arguably the best and the one she really loved, died tragically. Husband Number One turned up, re-married her and tried to kill her (and did kill other people, including his ex and one of hers). She's afraid to embark on another relationship, and her only encounter since Lucas's arrest, has been casual sex with Fatboy. She's so lonely and down, that she's even considering visiting Lucas in prison, simply because he once loved her.

The real tragedy of tonight's episode is to see such a strong actress - who actually portrays a genuinely strong woman - being reduced to playing the bad straight man to her totally unfunny sister. That this actress has been reduced to the 21st Century equivalent of a bad cardigan sitcom in favour of the trash we had thrown at us tonight is criminal.

High point of the episode: Denise referring to Ian and Ajay as the two local desperados. More Denise, please - and less of this shit, Newman, about Denise "going on a journey." You've contrived another sitcom situation where she's going to get together with Ian Beale.

Oh Denise - ooby-doo - we're in love with you ... Shame Lorraine Newman's not.

The bad bits ...

Sharon the Bimbo Pity-Fucker Gets Sucked In by the Brannings and Has Lost Her Personality.

I want Zombie Den back. Hell, I want Angie to rise with a vengeance from the grave, along with Den, and grab Sharon by the neck as she lies in bed beside the wooden penis that is Jack the Peg. Then I want them to lift her bodily from the bed, all the time slapping her silly, with Den screaming about where the hell she seemed to lose her backbone and her dignity.

Because this isn't Sharon. Certainly not the one most long-term viewers know.

How old is this Perrie Balthazar? Ah, OK ... I've just googled her and - guess what? - she's a Bryan Kirkwood leftover and a former Hollyoaks writer. That explains it. And that vibes with Newman's continued Hollyoaksisation of EastEnders.

However, this being the BBC, I think Newman should go for something a bit more cultural and classy, when it comes to Sharon. Why not, EastEnders, the Opera? Give the thing a little Mozart, like ... imagine this scene where Zombie Angie returns from the dead to find Sharon morphed into a bimbo who's shacked up with an ex-bent copper whose idea of romance is an ultimatum and who drops kids by different women all over the face of Europe. Imagine how frightening that scene would be ... Dead Angie ripping Bimbo Sharon a new arsehole:-

Now that would really make Sharon's fabled lips quiver ...

I just want to know why Sharon's with Jack? I know these writers are young, but some of them should put their arrogance on the shelf long enough to watch old episodes from the 80s and 90s featuring Sharon to get the feel of her character. Because at the moment, she's coming across as someone who's prostituted herself to Jack out of necessity (when she really needn't have done so) and who's patently agreed to marry him out of pity. If she hadn't, she wouldn't have been so reluctant to let Phil know tonight. And when she did tell him, I got the feeling she was distinctly disappointed that he didn't lose his temper and march around to deck Jack one. It was as if she were expecting him to fight Jack for her, and how not like Sharon is that?

It's as much not like her as that phony little sexy voice she puts on every time she's with Jack - and speaking of her Branningisation, throw in the cutesy-cutesy little Hollyoaks direction tonight, splicing together scenes in rapid-fire speed, with ambiguous dialogue, implying cross-scene conversation. Sometimes simplicity works better than cute drawing room drama tricks.

Ironic though, that Sharon referenced her history with Phil - something that makes her feel comfortable, obviously - and sought, unconvincingly, to move on in the company of a man whom she's known all of five minutes - a dishonest asshole of a man, someone who focuses on jealousy toward another man and who reaches out and takes what that man has like a kid in a pram, an abysmal father, who ignores all of his children, including the one whose mother is Sam Mitchell, and Sharon doesn't know that.

Sharon was always, always a tentative and reflective person when it comes to relationships. She was eighteen before she lost her virginity to Simon Wicks, and that was after months of courtship. It was the same with Grant Mitchell. The passion that grew between her and Phil was slow-burning, as her marriage to a disturbed man disintegrated around her. She is like that in love and friendship, cleaving to that which is familiar. So this Sharon, instead of seeking solace in Ian, as a long-term friend, uses him remorselessly as an unpaid babysitter whilst she pays court to Queen Tanya. The truth is, she knows jackshit about Jack-shit. And if someone as perspicacious as Sharon cannot see how dirt-common and white trashy the Brannings are as a whole, then she really has had some sort of personality lobotomy.

Sharon the fucking bimbo.

Back tot he irony ... Sharon gave that brief soliloquy to Phil about not clinging to the past, but moving onto the future, yet in that stupid conversation she had with Tanya, she implied that Max had chosen to stay with Tanya instead of pursuing Kirsty because of Max's and Tanya's shared past, which was more important than a future with Kirsty. Sharon's been Branningised to such an extent, that she cannot see that Kirsty, actually, is the person here more sinned against than sinning. Old Sharon would have seen that, and if she didn't, then trusty Michelle would have been there to ensure that she did.

This woman is an imposter, but why am I not surprised? In reverse order, in the past two years, EastEnders has successfully managed to fuck up an iconic female character from the noughties (Kat), an iconic female character from the Nineties (Bianca), and now the most iconic female character of all, an original character and the daughter of Den and Angie, Sharon. 

And Lorraine Newman signed off on every character assassination.

One final word about Sharon: she doesn't love Jack. She's so unsure about this relationship that, at one point, I actually thought she'd become engaged to both men.

I'm also unsure about the writers having Phil march right up to Jack and announce that he's going to take Sharon away, that she'll come back to him because she always does. Phil wouldn't do that. Instead, Phil would work behind the scenes, surreptitiously, so that Sharon sees Jack's glaring personality defects for herself and now with any help from him.

Here's a headbanger for Jack ... or maybe Phil ... depending on the writer:-

The Brannings Prove Once Again That They Are Butt-Clinchingly Pukeworthy Inbred Arrogant Mofos.

Hypocrisy, Thy Name Is Tanya. Who does she think she is? That woman's head is stuck so far up her arrogant arse, it's debatable whether or not she really sees the sunshine. The spliced conversations between Tanya and her new lady-in-waiting Sharon and AlphaMax and AlphaJack were reminiscent of a Dali painting come to life, the were so surreal. 

We had a similar situation before when Cora sought to tell Tanya a few prevalent home truths. Tonight we had Tanya voicing her version of the situation with Max, Kirsty and herself and actually acknowledging - well, practically - that she was as guilty as he. 

Oh, she admits he was single when he married Kirsty, whom he'd only known a couple of months - oh, but Tanya moved lock, stock and barrels of wine in with Greg whom she'd only known a few months (yes, she moved in with him after two months, but they didn't marry until they'd been together for more than a year - has Perrie Balthazar forgotten that?). Still, it was established that Max was as single when he married Kirsty as Tanya was when she married Greg. And although Tanya realised that Max had lied to her about Kirsty - he really hadn't, he simply didn't tell her that he was married and placed his trust in Derek to sort the situation out - but Tanya's white enough to admit that she lied to Max also, about her cancer cold - excuse me, her canSAH, to use Sharon's pronunciation. But before the end of the conversation, Tanya's obliterated any fact that she was capable of lying to Max, and has focused her anger on him for lying to her.

Another glaring hypocrisy was Sharon's feeding Tanya's Max addiction by telling her Max loved Tanya, loved the history and the family he had with her, which was why he would always return to her, forsaking Kisty. Has Sharon taken leave of her senses and her innate sense of morality? Kirsty is Max's wife. Kirsty, not Tanya, is the victim here. She married Max in good faith, and he deserted her without reason - worse, he couldn't even face her to tell her his feelings had changed and he was leaving her. Instead, he shoved money through the door along with divorce papers. As if she could be bought.

And Max and Tanya are still sneaking around on each other - Tanya calling Sharon on the sly from Spain to ascertain whether or not Kirsty had gone, and Sharon being dumb enough to think that just because Kirsty wasn't at the B and B anymore, that she'd left Walford. Or Max telephoning Kirsty surreptitiously from Spain and thinking that just because she didn't answer her mobile, she wasn't around. Are these people seriously stupid or just inbred? (This is actually what imbreeding does). No, wait ... the writer of the piece is seriously stupid, and the Executive Producer is even more stupid for signing off on something so puerile.

There were several incidences in the Branning domination that creeped me out tonight - the way it was laboured home to the audiences that Max, Tanya and their kids are a normal family. That normality was driven home with the subtlety of a sledgehammer tonight, from the cheesy group hug with Tanya and her kids, to gurning Oscar actually saying a few words, to Abi actually admitting that the Brannings were as normal as the Kardashians ... actually, no. The Kardashians have more class, and the Kardashians are, without a doubt, the most ass-common jumped up trailer trash in the world at the moment, so that speaks volumes for the Brannings.

The other creepy incident was the ease with which Jack and Tanya move around each other, mindless of the fact that Tanya moved Jack in as babydaddy for the kids when Max had left in order to let her have some space (instead of marching her ass down to the nearest copshop with evidence that she'd tried to kill him). She also spent a year with Jack, who took the crew on a lujo holiday to the Carribbean, publically taunted and humiliated Max and conspired to move his children abroad illegally - all the while ignoring his own child (he only had one then). I still recall the scene from early 2011, when Gormless Greg found himself in a room at a gathering which included Max and Jack and found that Tanya had slept with all three of them. She was blithely dismissive about it, but he was totally unnerved. The Brannings are poor white trash.

I love the fact that Kirsty is still around, and the fact that she obviously knows Max better in the brief time she spent with him than Tanya knows in 18 years. What's biting Tanya's ass is the fact that Kirsty is Max's wife, whether she likes it or not; and Kirsty isn't giving Max up without a fight. Know why? Because Kirsty knows that Max still has feelings for her. Otherwise, if this relationship were truly done and dusted, she'd hand him the papers and be on her way. A woman like that doesn't stick around when there's nothing for which to fight.

Once again, this makes Tanya the other woman, and the veneer of respectability she's cultivated all these years is revealed to be nothing more than a sham. One wonders if Sharon is aware of the fact that Tanya was a teenaged homewrecker who caused Max to abandon another wife and child. So why shouldn't Kirstie stick around and fight for something she thinks is worth it? Max told her on Christmas Day he didn't want to face her because he still had feelings for her, and now he's had even more guilt laid on him after discovering she'd aborted his baby. Yet the Brannings and Sharon, their new creature, treat this woman as if she were the slut of the century.

Lauren Needs a Slap, Kick and a Punch, The Snide Little Bitch. We got a full-on from Lorraine Newman's beautiful couple she's touting so ferociously, and boy, do they both stink. 

There's never been a worse and more pejorative and totally dislikeable ingenue than Lauren Branning. She is so shallow, selfish and self-obsessed that it's unbelieveable. 

Joey Branning ...

 came a bit of a way in redeeming himself tonight before he relented totally in his last scene with the little bitch and gave her a tonsillectomy with his tongue, assuring her she could be happy. How the hell anyone could stomach a girl after the sort of behaviour she exhibited tonight either means he's stupid or desperate.

He returns to Walford to support his sister, which is right. Once Lauren finds he's with Alice, she barges in on a quiet personal moment between the siblings. Joey's acknowledged to Alice that although he hated Derek, he is grieving him too and wants to help her in her grief. Lauren was a  complete asshole, invading their space and still in a state of disbelief that Joey could actually grieve someone he hated, his own father. His answer - one of two intelligible lines he uttered tonight was telling - the fact that he hated Derek made it worse. He was actually trying to atone, but that's an action that totally alien to a jumped-up little tart like Lauren. 

I was hoping that Alice - who actually revealed that she has more acting experience and talent tonight in a couple of lines than any of her contemporaries on the show - would have jumped up and smacked the living shit out of Lauren.

Then there was the scene in the pub, which - again - Joey called it: every time Lauren doesn't get her way, she starts sucking on a bottle. Her screeching demands for a drink were a total new low in the arrogance of that puketard family, and her stupid reaction, again, to Kirsty's appearance, demanding to know why Kirsty was still there was enough to have her ejected from the pub. I wanted Alfie or someone to hoist her into the gutter, her natural habitat. I also think that, since she's the age her sainted mother was when she broke up Max's first marriage, that someone tell her the tale of how Max and Tanya met and married. It's too bad Rachel's not around to give the story a true perspective.

How interesting that Bag O'Bones Beale, who gets skinnier with every appearance, caught the kissing cousins in an act of incest. Lauren just needs to bugger off, preferably with Tanya, but since Lorraine Newman is so obsessed with the "beauty" of the couple and the story they have to tell, we're stuck this piss poor couple until the cows come home - unintelligible gibberish, gurning, over-exaggerated mannerisms and this ...

This ...

And this ...

Goodness knows, there was more than enough of that from Witts tonight. He couldn't keep it shut. Can we have a storyline where Joey accidentally swallows a fly and dies in abject agony in the middle of the Square?

The Rehabilitation of Kat Starts Here.

Actually, I was wrong. Joey had three lines tonight which could be understood, and he scored a hattrick when he slammed a home truth back at Kat, who emerged from her cocoon of self-pity to ask if Alice wanted any dinner.

And would you care to remind us, Kat, why you're still here?

I could almost like him on that line. So now we've got Saint Kat the Grief Counsellor, who bonds with Aaa-aaass over a complicated meal of salad and a story of how bad Kat felt when Viv died and she thought she'd never eat again.

And thus begins the redemption of Kat ... caring about poor, pitiful Aaaa-aass, even though poor, pitiful Kat was - as Newman would have us believe - horribly manipulated into an affair with Derek. 

The best part of that malarkey was Carol's appearance and her less-than-approving silence that Kat seemed to be putting herself into Aaa-aassss's private space. Aaa-aassss asked Kat to stay and talk about the funeral arrangements with Auntie Carol, who disapproved. Sorry, but Kat should have excused herself and left the room. After all, the bitch swore on her dead mother's life that Derek meant nothing to her. No sympathy there. Kat is just another unlikeable character who should bugger off on the express train out of Walford carrying Tanya and Lauren.

One last GOOD bit: KIRSTY.

She's staying around. Good. I hope she's the flaming beginning of the end for the Brannings as we know them. Kirsty is the victim.