I'm not the biggest Dot fan, and I hate the fact that they had to entangle her with the cancer known as Branningitis in order to achieve her full potential as a matriarchal EastEnders' character, but I find myself longing more and more for her return to the Square.
Before Dot got mixed up with the Brannings, she was more or less a pathetic comedy figure - a Bible-spouting hypocrite who hid behind her Christianity, a bad mother and a very judgemental person. She was famous for her hard-as-nails sausage rolls.
The transformation from Dot Cotton to Dot Branning was amazing in that suddenly Dot had grandchildren who actually respected her. She had a clingy, surrogate son in Jack who sometimes listened to her.
But as the years wore on, Dot reverted, sadly, to caricature mode again. Although I liked her with Jim initially, I didn't like the way she reacted to his stroke and his eventual disability. John Bardon's last episode, which saw Dot, throw him back in the care home, was a testimony to June Brown's often hammy acting quality - the "head-bobbing" and prancing about maniacally like Olive Oyl on speed.
Since Jim's been in the home, she's rarely visited or referenced him. Instead, her attentions were turned from the Brannings to her own extended family - her ditzy sister Rose (Polly Perkins hired only on the sayso of June Brown) and the heretofore unmentioned nephew Andrew, about as interesting as watching paint dry. She was more interested in Heather than her own family.
The fact that Bryan Youth-and-Beauty-before-Talent Kirkwood chose, effectively, to isolate all residents of the Square over the age of sixty - Dot, Rose, Patrick and Cora the Bora - into the Branning abode, thus forming the Walford Home for the Elderly, was another insult to the character.
Now, that home houses only Cora the Bora, the resident drunken old lag of Walford, along with the insignificant Poppy and Joey the mouth-breathing tadpole boy. Cora's managed to stink up the place with fag-ash (she smokes more than Dot) and alcohol residue, ignore all the outstanding bills, and nick Dot's job at the launderette. Dot will return to find chaos and also her lazy, entitled, gurning-faced granddaughter Lauren the Lip, in bed with her heretofore unknown steroidically-enhanced, mouth-breathing, speech-impedimented grandson, Joey the Tadpole, committing incest.
That's when the Wrath of Dot becomes unbound.
I am waiting with baited breath for her to cast the old gray drunken hag into the streets and the gutter where she belongs.
Chart the progress:-
Lola ... Kat ... Shirley ... Cora ...
Before Dot got mixed up with the Brannings, she was more or less a pathetic comedy figure - a Bible-spouting hypocrite who hid behind her Christianity, a bad mother and a very judgemental person. She was famous for her hard-as-nails sausage rolls.
The transformation from Dot Cotton to Dot Branning was amazing in that suddenly Dot had grandchildren who actually respected her. She had a clingy, surrogate son in Jack who sometimes listened to her.
But as the years wore on, Dot reverted, sadly, to caricature mode again. Although I liked her with Jim initially, I didn't like the way she reacted to his stroke and his eventual disability. John Bardon's last episode, which saw Dot, throw him back in the care home, was a testimony to June Brown's often hammy acting quality - the "head-bobbing" and prancing about maniacally like Olive Oyl on speed.
Since Jim's been in the home, she's rarely visited or referenced him. Instead, her attentions were turned from the Brannings to her own extended family - her ditzy sister Rose (Polly Perkins hired only on the sayso of June Brown) and the heretofore unmentioned nephew Andrew, about as interesting as watching paint dry. She was more interested in Heather than her own family.
The fact that Bryan Youth-and-Beauty-before-Talent Kirkwood chose, effectively, to isolate all residents of the Square over the age of sixty - Dot, Rose, Patrick and Cora the Bora - into the Branning abode, thus forming the Walford Home for the Elderly, was another insult to the character.
Now, that home houses only Cora the Bora, the resident drunken old lag of Walford, along with the insignificant Poppy and Joey the mouth-breathing tadpole boy. Cora's managed to stink up the place with fag-ash (she smokes more than Dot) and alcohol residue, ignore all the outstanding bills, and nick Dot's job at the launderette. Dot will return to find chaos and also her lazy, entitled, gurning-faced granddaughter Lauren the Lip, in bed with her heretofore unknown steroidically-enhanced, mouth-breathing, speech-impedimented grandson, Joey the Tadpole, committing incest.
That's when the Wrath of Dot becomes unbound.
I am waiting with baited breath for her to cast the old gray drunken hag into the streets and the gutter where she belongs.
Chart the progress:-
Lola ... Kat ... Shirley ... Cora ...
No comments:
Post a Comment