BranningCowardLand: Victims of Lurrrve - Review 28.02.2013

It's Kabuki Theatre time! As the year progresses, we find that EastEnders is offering two kabuki dances for your enjoyment - Kabuki Dance One, featuring Roxy, Alfie and Katshit as the lady and the ladyboy dance around the man of their desire. Kabuki Dance Two features Phil, Sharon and Jack, as two remorseless thugs fight over a man in drag.

Although tonight's episode was good, in that it was done in what I would call the old way for Eastenders - minimal and only necessary characters, tight dialogue, a writer who seems to grasp the character of Sharon a bit better than the numpties who've gone before. No yoof. Minimal Brannings, but the ones who are the most interesting.

Funny, there's a thread going now on Walford Web; you can take a gander at it here. It asks, simply, which characters should return because "they have a place in the show." There's a curious irony in this, however. Because most of the numpties who post on this site ... OK, Luddites (look, I'm being nice, most of them are blatant bullbois) ... are adamant in describing one of the major problems with the soap at the moment is its preponderance of young characters - latent adolescents with no drive, ambition and a grand sense of entitlement. Yet when asked about a character who should return and who hve a "place" in the show, almost to a bullyboi, they demand the return of ... Peter Beale.

Not just Peter Beale. but the ineffectual, wooden and extremely talentless Thomas Law as Peter Beale. Another 19 year-old. Another "yoof." In fact, the poster MuteBanana, who has as big an issue with women as he does with understanding the ethos of EastEnders, said that nineteen year-old Peter should return with a wife and kid.

I fucking ask you.

What can you say about people who recognise a problem, yet seek to remedy that problem with more of the same?

EastEnders has become a show of eternal victimhood.

Losers and Fools: Jack

Some people never come clean
I think you know what I mean
You're walking the wire, pain and desire
Looking for love in between.

Tell me your secrets, I'll tell you mine
This ain't no time to be cool
And tell all your girlfriends
Your "been round the world" friends
That talk is for losers and fools.

Ex-bent copper Jack spends the night in the cells, while Phil spends the night in hospital, and Sharon spends the night tending Lexie.

Early on, we see what ultimate cowards the Brannings are when Max, picking Jack the Peg up from the copshop, reckons that maybe Phil won't press charges against Jack because he'll want to come out for Jack, himself ... and that would be awful for Brand Branning, especially because Derek, the family thug, is dead, and there's no heavyweight to pit against Phil. (Of course, Max would be unaware of the time Phil knocked the shit out of Derek when he showed him a pair of what Derek said were Shirley's knickers - not a pleasant sight, I grant you.) Derek never wins a fight unless the victim doesn't fight back ... like Michael Moon, Prince of Darkness.

Anyhoo, we see something most of us have always known too ... that Jack is a liar. Jack's gone from blaming Sharon for his attack on Phil to telling her that not only did he do what he did because of Sharon, in some warped form of chivalric defence, but that he isn't guilty of attacking Phil at all. What he did, he did in self-defence.

Jack Lying and Max Telling Him Off (and when his nose grows with each lie, his dick shrinks)

Get the picture? Jack is a liar, and he'd lie blatantly to get anything he wants. When Sharon doesn't buy his story - she lived with Grant Mitchell, remember? - he goes to drown himself in self-pity, only to be bothered by a bad smell ...

Ooh that smell,

Cantcha smell that smell?

Ooh that smell,

The smell of death surrounds you ...

It's Shirley, actually, popping up like the Witch of Maldon. Seriously, all that's missing is a cackle and burning brimstone - but this is a witch who's been using her time off to get some collagen fillers to lessen her wrinkles and her smoke-infested skin.

Shirley's her usual bitter-and-twisted Phil-hating self. Content to loiter about Walford and tell everyone how awful Phil Mitchell is, but in reality, she's hating her own ineffectuality. Shirley held the keys of the kingdom in her hand. She knew the part Phil played in covering up the identity of Heather's killer ... and she chose not to tell the police. She let Phil walk, and then he let her walk. More than letting her, he orchestrated her riding out of Walford on a rail, only to return like the proverbial bad penny, steeped in bitterness, stinking of hatred - most of it self-hatred, but projected onto Phil.

There will be no Phil and Shirley reunion. There will be no Phil and Shirley. There never was. She was always only a stopgap, a body to keep Phil's bed warm until such a time that Sharon came back.

Sorry, Mona. That's the truth. Now send your flying monkeys after me.

Shirley wants to buy Jack a drink, but she says he should have finished Phil off, because if Phil's still alive, he's going to have a thousand tricks up his sleeve to get what he wants from Jack. Typical Shirley. She wants someone else to do her dirty work - kill Phil - and someone else to pay for it. I mean, how many viewers can remember Tuesday night and Jack's abject fear of prison?

Up steps Max, who tells Jack that he'd best get around to the hospital with Sharon and make things good with Phil. As if Sharon's so shallow ... well, this Sharon is.

Now we see Crawler Jack,as in worm...

Worm out an apology for Phil, worm out a dinner for Sharon with DamienDen's favourite ice cream cake. I guess the way to Sharon's heart is through her stomach - keep her fine, fat and forty with gall bladder problems and incipient menopause. (Does Jack know what he's in for, when "the change" hits Sharon in the next couple of years? The hot flashes, the mood changes, night sweats, loss of libido and expanding midriff?)

And what does he get for his thanks? The return of the old Sharon, who informs him succinctly that she's going to spend the night at Phil's looking after Phil's granddaughter, which prompts Jack immediately to heed Shirley's words and go on the defensive - he's actually implying that Phil invited Jack's beating in order to trick Sharon back into living in his house and, subsequently, into sleeping in his bed.

Jack, the player, is being played. Good. It couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

The Return of the Native: Sharon.

Wow, this is urban Thomas Hardy ... Google him, bullybois. Lorraine Newman might be onto something. Shazza as a blonde and desperate Eustacia Vye character, wandering around the moors of Walford - oh, ok, the Square and the canal - and yearning for the love of a big, hard man with Phil as her Damon Wildeve, only to shack up and destroy the effete Clym-like Jack.

Seriously, read the book, instead of watching interminable soap operas. What the hell did you think people did in the days before television? Do you think the soap genre is something new? Check it out: The Return of the Native. Thomas Hardy. Awesome.

So the prodigal daughter has returned at last ... This was more like the Sharon I recognised - hair away from the face and pulled into a ponytail, no moueing, no cooing, no sexy pout or bitchy remarks. Sharon away from the Brannings and amongst the people she knows and with whom she identifies best is Sharon at her best.

She was determined, she was feisty and she was the sensible Sharon of old, and even in her anger at Jack (and she's seeing him for what he really is now), she was compassionate enough to wish Phil not to press charges, and guess what? He didn't.

But then, Jack's still suspicious ... As the song says:-

What kind of love have you got?
You should be home but you're not
A roomful of noise and dangerous boys
Still makes you thirsty and hot.
I heard about you and that man
There's just one thing I don't understand
You say he's a liar and he put out your fire
How come you still got his gun in your hand?

The Eagles could have been writing about Jack, Sharon and Phil in that verse, because face it: Sharon likes her men hard and bad. She's got no truck with cowards and bullybois. Maybe that's why she's unpopular on Walford Web, spiritual home to the bullyboi contingent who follow EastEnders.

Tambo and Lucy Sitting in a Tree.

Here's a song for them:-

Goodness, doesn't a young David Bowie remind you of Jay?

Anyway, I like the quiet dynamic that's developing between Tamwar and Lucy. OK, the breast lump non-storyline was a non-starter, and maybe its purpose was to get Lucy, who's pretty much isolated in being the gooseberry amongst a trio of faux friends, two of whom are sublimely entitled and one a perpetual victim (that word again), and Tamwar, who is totally isolated in his depression, together, as firm friends if nothing else, and that's good.

In the past, I've disliked Lucy and found Tamwar hard going in his relentless melancholy. But he's depressed. The past two years have seen his world come crashing down around him. His father-in-law was a monster, he was badly burned, his wife left him, his brother destroyed his business and bankrupted his parents, whose marriage imploded. He's working in a job he hates and he's watching his father make a fool of himself with a girl young enough to be his daughter.

Lucy is working all hours to keep three businesses afloat and mind her younger brother, as well as being concerned about her father's mental health. Her two friends move on with boyfriends and pithy problems and whines, yet Lucy's concerns are real.

I like that Tamwar was concerned about Lucy's biopsy and that she remembered to buy him a croissant, the latter event occuring after he'd found the courage to have it out with slimey Ayesha. Lines of the night:-

Ayesha: Yer knoah ef yer thought Ah were coomin' between yer and yer dad, Ah'd goah.

Tamwar: Well, I guess this is goodbye then.

That's the old, cynical Tamwar. Straight in and to the point, and not shy about telling her that Masood doesn't know what he wants or what he's doing in his association with her, because his own world has just come crashing down on him. Good for him, too, that he reminded that sneaky bitch of just what she did - using Zainab's hospitality to horn in on her husband, because that's exactly what she did do.

Masood is deluded by his own male ego in thinking that Tamwar will accept this relationship, and the smile on his face when that bitch suggested they leave Walford (where they would never be accepted) and go someplace where they were unknown to start again, just proved what a big douchebag he's become.

The Wrath of Dot in a Spot of Bother.

I did get the feel that the council fraud squad came down hard on Dot tonight, although Dot's lived in council property mostly all her adult life. Surely, she would know its prohibitions on lodgers and sub-lettings. I was surprised that only Cora was expected to pay rent in the house. There was a time, if you recall, when Cora, Patrick, Rose, Andrew and Fatboy lived in the house; and I thought all were contributing to the rent.

Dot is right that she should never have trusted Cora. Shit, Tanya can't even trust Cora - the house was full of booze and reeked of cigarettes, while Abi and Lauren romped the beds with their boyfriend and cousin, under Cora's tutelage - and the housekeeping money Tanya left her was gone in days.

I also thought that Poppy was paying rent to Cora, and that Joey, who lived there for awhile, also paid rent. At least he handed a fistful of cash to the old lout when he moved in.

Dot was confused that her good intentions were against the law, and it's a serious charge. Once again, this is relevant stuff, with the Tory government's bedroom tax law about to come into effect - basically, Dot's living in what is, effectively, a four-bedroom accommodation. She's using one bedroom for herself and is allowed to have one legal lodger. Every empty bedroom after that means a reduction by a certain amount in housing benefit. Quite succinctly, councils say one person isn't entitled to an entire council house, and in the real world, Dot would have to be re-housed in a flat.

However, it's true what the fraud officer said tonight - she could be guilty of benefits fraud, because she claimed housing benefit during the months she wasn't living in the property. Dot really should have known better, and she's not that stupid.

Patrick.

This storyline is also churning along nicely, although not without its racial tokenism (Kim's imitation of Flip Wilson dancing to Marvin Gaye's Sexual Healing and yet another carer being a Polish person).

However, it's showing how Patrick's injury means a loss of dignity to a certain degree when he finds he can't go to the toilet or eat unaided, and it's doing well in showing how his demands are impeding Denise and Kim from getting on with their lives. It's not easy caring for an elderly relative, when both sides can be more than a little thin-skinned. 

Denise was portrayed tonight as the stereotypical care-giving relative, who forgets herself and talks about the person receiving care in the third person in his presence, as if Patrick isn't there; and Patrick proved how demanding and petulant he could be also, when he found the carer was there to help him and he hadn't been told.

This is a learning curve, which I hope EastEnders explores adequately. So far, so good.

Not a bad episode.

LoserVille: Jack Attack - Review: 26.02.2013

Didn't I always say the Brannings were losers? Well, here's a song which could have been written for Jack:-

 You could almost have a Branning band, there ... Jack on lead vocals, Max and Joey on rythym and bass guitars, the Cock of Stereotypical Black Urban Youth on the drums. The Brannings ... something for everyone a comedy tonight.

Yep, I feel vindicated, having always said the Brannings were losers. Not only losers, but cowards, common and jumped up white trash. All that showed tonight. You know what else showed (and this is really sad)? How common, how loserly and how like jumped-up white trash Sharon's become since associating with that lot.

The Spanish have a proverb:-

Dime con quien andas y te dire; quien eres.

Roughly translated, that means that you're judged by the company you keep.

Sharon Watts. Walford Princess. Iconic original character. Poor white trash.

Jack.

I'm a loser.
I'm a loser ...
And I'm not what I appear to be ...

What have I done to deserve such a fate?
I realise I have left it too late,
And so it's true, pride comes before a fall,
I'm telling you so that you won't lose all ...

The loser lost it with Phil, and when Phil doesn't get up, after being punched silly enough to fall into a pit and hit his head on concrete, when the loser sees blood streaming from Phil's ear, he shits himself. Being an ex-bent copper, Jack would know the ramifications of what bleeding from the ear might signify - anything from  mild concussion to a fractured skull to an outright brain haemorrhage. Phil's not moving, and he looks seriously injured enough for Jack, never the brightest lightbulb in the pack, to think he's dead.

Now we get to see Jack the Coward ... he's killed Phil, so all he can think to do is slope off and scarper. Wait a moment, isn't this the guy whom Derek said was handy in knowing how to get rid of a body? Oh, and all of a sudden, Jack's the baby bruvver again, frantically calling Big Brother Max to get him out of a jam. This would be the same Jack who beat the living shit out of Max, himself, back in 2008 - otherwise known as The Year of Max Branning's Shame and Humiliation - and even threatened to kill him.

We got to see, tonight, just how stupid, how recalcitrant and how much of a real bully Jack is, his true colours even coming out in his pithy dismissal of Dot in the pub.

All he could think of was saving his own hide. It was quite enough for him to mumble the ubiquitous "I love you" to the man in drag impersonating Miss Piggy whom he's only known a few months. And what the hell was that "family photo" he's taking of Piggy, DamienDen and Silent Amy, snatched from the side of her mother? No picture of Penny? No mention of Penny? Jack has other children. His criminal activities put his oldest child in a wheelchair.

Yet later in the Vic, when Jack's cowardice gets the better of him, when the ghost of jailbird Derek looms too close - I still cannot believe we are talking about, dealing with and remembering almost daily someone who was arguably the most unpopular character ever in the soap's history going into three fucking months after he died! PAT didn't get such respect  - and he starts babbling incoherently about a murder he thinks he's committed, he blames Sharon for his actions. Get that? He blames Sharon. He. Blames. Sharon.

Yep, Jack's snapping, Jack's "slappin' dahn" of Phil Mitchell, is nuffink ter do wiv Jack and everything to do with Sharon. It's all down to Sharon wanting to sign a contract with Phil that will give her 19% stake in the R and R. It's all about Sharon doing what Sharon wanted for Sharon and her silly, little effeminate son, and nothing about Jack.

But, really, the puketard moments of that, besides Jack shitting himself for 30 minutes and showing what a coward he was, were the following:- the awful "family" portrait and Jack's expostulating about Amy hating him in the future because he would be in jail. Just Amy. Not Richard, whom he hasn't seen since he was a few weeks old, not Penny, whom he put in a wheelchair. Just Amy. Am I to understand that the erstwhile Millennial dumbashit storyliner Emer Kenny has blithely signed off on completely obliterating the fact that Jack, one of the biggest sluts the show has ever seen and the resident Sperminator, has fathered three children on two sisters and their cousin, as well as having a teenaged daughter to begin with.

Retconning is nothing when it comes to the Branning family - like Derek's birthday, for example. This time last year, Derek, who was hale and hearty at that point, made no mention of a birthday, and you'd have thought Derek, who had Carol, Bianca and her brood and the rest of the Branning brigade around him then, would have made mincemeat of his birthday, including the pickled herrings and the naff poem. But noooooooooo, as the late John Belushi (Google him, Luddites) would say, the first we hear of this is when MyAlice goes moping around the Square clutching a jar or pickled herrings to her chest.

Jack has confirmed what most long-term (as in "watched since at least the 1990s") viewer has always known about the Brannings - they are cowards who abscond any responsibility for their actions. This is why the Mitchells will always win, and the Brannings will always be losers. How anyone can want this lot of tossers to be the dominant family on an iconic British soap is beyond me.

Here's another song which aptly describes Jack:

Crawling from the Wreckage: Phil

Crawling from the wreckage, crawling from the wreckage
You'd think by now at least 
My half a brain would get the message
Crawling from the wreckage, crawling from the wreckage
Bits of me are scattered in the trees and in the hedges
Crawling from the wreckage, crawling from the wreckage
Into a brand new car ...

Simply this: Steve McFadden showed tonight why he stands head and shoulder above the rest in acting ability, and he barely uttered a word. I dare anyone, even the inveterate Phil-haters, which includes most of the Millennium and one brain-celled viewers, the bullybois and those who purport to be female but reek of testosterone (yes, you, Bex), to blame Phil's plight on him and exonerate Jack. At the end of the day, Jack is supposed to be an adult and in control of his actions.

He lost it. Loser.

The Bitches' Coven and Carol.

Why is Sharon still licking Tanya's arse and being snide about Kirsty? Kirsty has done nothing to Sharon, and Tanya is just someone TPTB have made this iconic female character latch onto in a pathetic attempt to validate the Brannings as the reigning First Family of Walford. They sucked Dot into their vortex, but her worth was made self-evident tonight when Jack dismissed her as irrelevant in the pub.

In another day and time, Sharon would recognise Tanya's selfishness, shallowness and hypocrisy, but since Lorraine Newman's head is so far up the collective arse of Alfie and Kat, she doesn't give a rat's arse how Sharon is written and signed off on her being portrayed as TanyaLite. That scene at the table in the Branning kitchen when Sharon was making light of the family getogether as a contrivance to validate Kirsty, well ... Kirsty has more class in her little finger than either of these self-serving glorified prostitutes have in their entire wobbly bodies. I just had the innate desire to reach through the screen and rip their hair extensions out.

Tanya's seen that Max is actually moving on now, and she's acting the exact same way she began to act when she saw Max and the girls were moving on from her when he got together with Vanessa. Just to jolt your memories, watch the green-eyed monster that is jealousy take Tanya over here:-

Tanya still hasn't fathomed, until today, that she is the other woman. Now Bimbo Sharon has to learn this lesson. Max is a married man. He was single when he met Kirsty, and he married her. Tanya, on the other hand, was with Greg within weeks of ditching Max after she'd spent all his money, and didn't get around to divorcing him until months later. Sorry, Luddites, but until you have the decree absolute, you are fucking married. Separation is just a word.

One of the highlights of the episode was watching Tanya and the man-in-drag playing Miss Piggy Sharon swell up like bullfrogs at Max's overt affection to Kirsty. So steeped in hating on this woman were these two bitches that they actually failed to see that this get-together was, in fact, all for MyAlice, who (even though she has a mother) would rather mourn a man she didn't know, and who's alone and rather isolated in the Square, besides working for a psychopath whose turn of heart and whose "guilt" he felt today were purely for manipulative purposes. Watch this space re Alice.

Here's an outtake of Tanya and Sharon hanging out at the local watering hole gossiping about Kirsty:-

Sharon's even developing the bulging eyes.

And how much is Tanya, yet again, playing the victim, using her children as shields - poor, pitiful  Yummy Mummy, her delicate nature must be protected from that slut Kirsty, especially judging by Abi's looks-could-kill face when Max and Kirsty left the Vic and Max let Tanya know subtly that she wasn't part of the family. Considering the fact, too, that Tanya sought from the first moment she met Alice to trash talk Derek to her, I'm surprised she even wanted to tag along. I'm even more surprised her drunken lout of a mother didn't show her face.

Ugh! She can't leave quick enough.

Kudos to Carol, who responded to Kirsty's concern about Alice and the fact that it was Derek's birthday, and who was human enough to observe that Kirsty probably wasn't that bad, after all. As for Tanya (a final word), Kirsty was right. Yet again, Tanya doesn't know how to lose graciously or admit that Max has moved on, and at the end of it all, she looked stupid, leaving because her two spoiled brats were seemingly getting along with Kirsty.

The Token (and Stereotypical) Blacks.

Aunt Esther Ava the Rava and her son the little Cock.

That's 

Ava the Rava the Angry Black Woman

and

The Little Cock and a Gang You Will NEVER See on EastEnders

The Little Cock could stand right over the pit where his boss lay injured and not even think to look at it, and there's Ava the Rava popping up again. I guess Lorraine, who made Clare Perkins a permanent cast member on a whim, is going to have her pop up here and there and make sarky observations whilst her Little Cock son tries to do a bad impersonation of a cross between Chris Rock and Will Smith and unintelligibly so, until either a new EP comes along and axes two pointless characters or Clare Perkins quits in frustration.

Still, they had the one good scene in tonight's borefest, and that was when Ava the Rava and the Little Cock were sat in the pub and Ava the Rava was pointing out the deficienti amongst  the Little Cock's family. So they are considered Branning satellites, and I suppose if Carol gets her claws into Masood, the Brannings will have an Asian branch too. Gotta beef up the numbers now Jack the Coward and Tanya the Ignorant Slut are leaving.

But Ava the Rava ... pointless character, who barely acknowledged her "sister."

Why Some Children Need To Be Smacked, Beaten, Kicked and Abandoned ...

Lauren and Abi Branning.

That's reason enough. Their behaviour was despicable. Lauren, especially, didn't have one word of comfort or condolence for Alice when Derek died. She even had the audacity to suggest to Joey one day after his father's death that in a couple of weeks everything would be back to normal, and when Max suggests that they remember Derek on his birthday for Alice's sake, Lauren's the first one out with a remark about the object of Derek dying being that they could forget all about him. What a snide little bitch! And of course, the only reason she'd attend something like that wasn't out of concern for her cousin, but because the drink was free.

I hope she dies of liver failure. I have never known a more overtly unlikeable, pointless, pejorative, selfish and entitled young person on the show. It's obvious, too, that Newman is keeping her hanging around because she's passingly pretty, because her character is despicable and she is simply the. worst. actress. ever. on that show.

Contrast her with the brief appearance of Lucy Beale tonight, leaving her job and seeing Joey upset. She stops and asks if he's OK, and she's concerned about his reaction to his father's birthday and death. It's not all about Lucy; she does have the capacity for compassion,and she's worth ten of shitty Lauren.

As for Abi, if she smiled tonight, her face would crack. Both these girls are always harping on about how they are adults, yet they can't go to a get-together for their cousin without their mother's "blessing." In other words, Mummy has to give them the ok to see Daddy. It's time someone spelled it out to them - their putrid mother isn't lillywhite. Do they know that Daddy Dearest was married to Bradley's mother when Mummy Dearest got herself up the duff and broke up Daddy's marriage, before she was even twenty? Do they know about the attempted burial?

Tanya's doing to them exactly what she did to Lauren when she had her cancer-cold, using them as protection from big bad Dad.

Abi acts more and more like a spoiled brat, as well as Lauren. Funny, she was mature enough to enter into a "mature relationship" (read: fuckfest) with Jay, let's see to whom she goes running when she misses a period next month.

If these two left tomorrow, it wouldn't be too soon. As for Lorna Fitzgerald, TPTB are trying to hide the fact that she's a very young sixteen and in doing so, they're creating a paedophile's dream; besides, she's been phoning in her lines since August.

Max

Love has a nasty habit of disappearing overnight ...

You're thinking of me, the same old way

You were above me, but not today

The only difference is you're down there,

I'm looking through you, and you're nowhere.

Perfectly describes Max, the last nuanced character ever created on this sadly diminishing soap. Max carried his tribe of low-lifed white trash tonight - providing sensible advice for Jack (go back and check on Phil), comforting MyAlice, not taking any shit off his ungrateful kids, and showing Tanya that the world does not revolve around her fat arse. I just hope he does well by Kirsty.

Final Observation: Michael Moon.

Please shut up about how Michael's retribution and sense of guilt toward Alice redeems his character. It simply doesn't. Moon is a manipulator, and he knew damned well that Alice would refuse the offer of the expensive Rolex Janine had given him. Besides, if he's so strapped for cash, he could always sell the watch. He also knew his honesty in confessing to Alice his financial predicament and his attempt to palm the dodgy notes off on her would matter greatly to Alice in her naivete.

Don't be fooled. He's grooming her for manipulative purposes. Remember, he did the same with Jean, and look what happened there.

Still, last night Phil mentioned Janine; tonight Michael mentioned her.

The Queen of the Night is coming back, bitches!

BranningCentral: Stupid White (and Asian) Men - Review: 25.02.2013

You know, lately, it's been open season on Alfie in some quarters. (The Alfie-hatred is especially strong at Walford Web kindergarten, but there is also a contingent of Alfie-haters on Digital Spy).

The hatred is different, however, although the basis of is is found in the idea that for some reason, the fanboi bullybois, the Katshippers and one old trout 

... that these people seem to relish the misbegotten idea that any woman who shouts the odds, gobs off and puts her fanny out to all and sundry males is a strong woman or a strong person, in general.

Believe me, self-perpetuating victims are never strong, and I would venture to say that Alfie Moon might be one of the stronger characters in the continuting drama - ne'mind, he never raises his voice and has a reputation for being kind. He also has principles, something which precious few of the Walford contingent have these days.

Besides, let's be honest, Walford's finest male specimens were on display tonight - Mr Peter Pan Co-Dependency, his brother the bully, the little Cock, the resident 'Ard Man, the geeky teenager, the fortysomething adolescent and the middle-aged douchebag. Oh, yes ... there was also a brief appearance by the Mouth-Breather

as well as the cadaverous Prince of Darkness.

All admirable and estimable men. Not.

The Puketard Family: The Bimbo, Her Changeling and the Joker.

I really find Tiffany Butcher hard watching. I can't abide five minutes of her totally un-cute cheek before I want to reach through the screen and smack her little freckled face silly. I'm beginning to feel the same way about cheeky, chirpy, professional urchin DamienDen, child of incest, whose maternal and paternal grandfather are the same person.

The bovine bimbo TPTB ask us to believe is Sharon must be damned expensive for Jack the Peg (with the extra leg - nudge nudge wink wink) to keep, judging by the expensive haul in grub DamienDen pulled from the refrigerator - Canadian bacon, imported French cheese.

Jack's looking a bit worried and can't believe the snorking Miss Piggy replica asleep on his sofabed would even want that much for breakfast. (Are you kidding? Have you looked at Sharon? She could pack enough of that grub away to satiate a linebacker ...

... and still be cooing for dessert.

Watching Jack play happy families with someone else's son when he won't even look at his two-year old boy in Portugal, when we haven't seen him speak to Amy since God was a boy, and since he's totally forgotten his oldest child, Penny, the one whom Jack disabled, is pretty pukeworthy, as is the way Sharon acts when she's in Branning mode - moued lips, faux sexy voice and fluttering eyelashes.

Sharon and Jack ... Shack ... the couple with no chemistry, easily the most uncharismatic couple in the history of EastEnders. To think that Sharon was brought back in order to validate the Brannings, a family who have done more to rip up the ethos of EastEnders than any other character.

Worse than her behaviour with Jack, is the way she mollycoddles and talks to DamienDen as though he were a deficient three year-old instead of a budding effeminate six year-old. I'm waiting for Uncle Phil to offer him Ben's old tap-dancing shoes.

Jack is jealous of Phil monopolising Sharon's time, but when Jack's sweet niece, My Aa-aasss, calls, that's a different kettle of fish ... as in herring.

Here's an appropriately titled song for this reincarnation of Sharon:-

The Man of Constant Sorrow: Max the Prick.

For six long years, I've been in trouble
No pleasure here on earth I've found.
For in the world I'm bound to ramble
I have no friends to help me now.

Sounds like Max, alright. Max is loving the one he's with, but wanting to be with the one he knows best - you know, the one who'll tolerate his cheating because she's just as amoral as he is, except she's adept at playing the victim.

Max is homesick, and misses his family. I guess that makes Kirstie chopped liver, and any real woman (that is, any female who doesn't live in the alternative universe of Albert Square) would have stuffed that wedding band down his ginger throat, for implying that Kirsty is anything but family. He's married the woman, and he's pining for Tannie-poos. Why? Because Kirsty is an unknown quantity when it comes to putting up with Max's extra-marital shenanigans. Even though Max fell in love with and has feelings for Kirsty, he's yearning for the safe and the familiar, the comfortable aura that Tanya offers.

So Kirsty goes in search of members of Max family with whom she can bond.

Step forward, My Aa-asss. My Aa-aasss is depressed and despondent. Why? It's Derek's birthday and no one remembers. For fuck's sake, it's almost March and we're still wittering on about a character who popped in, stayed a year and popped his clogs at Christmas. Not just a character, but arguably the most unpopular character ever foisted upon the unsuspecting audience. Pat didn't get this much post-mortem mourning.

My Aa-asss spends most of the episode wandering forlornly around the Square clutching a jar of pickled herring, which she bought with dodgy money given her by Michael Moon, and mourning the father whose birthday she never celebrated. It's small comfort to her, however, when brother Jah-WAAAHH professes to love pickked herring, which look to be quite foul.

I never thought I'd ever see the day that most of the main action in EastEnders would centre around a jar of pickled herring. Ne'mind, Kirsty's solution to the problem for Aa-aasss is - wait a moment! - to organise another fairmly get-together in order to celebrate Derek's birthday. That's only about the sixteenth family get-together at the Brannings or with the Brannings we've had since Christmas. Just remember, I remind you wearily, that Tanya's back, and she's sure to put in an appearance at this do. (Yawn).

Mr Potato-Head and Jack the Peg (with the Extra Leg) Lock Horns.

This version of Sharon is an insult to the character, but tonight at least she acknowledged the fact that both Jack and Phil were more than treating her like chattel - however, that didn't stop her either taking Jack's advice in asking Phil for a rise and then angling up an interview at Canary Wharf or ripping Phil's arm off for a free share in the club. So that now means that the R and R's management consists of Sharon, Phil and our returning heroine, the Queen of the Night.

Picture that ... the Queen of the Night working with Miss Piggy.

The phrase "roasted on a spit" comes to mind.

One of the lines of the night - Sharon to Jack:-

Phil's a part of my life. Deal with it.

Ooh-er, not the thing to say to someone like Mr Control, Jack the Peg, remember? So what does Jack do? Well, he confronts Phil, who winds him up with the truth. And gets knocked in the pit for his efforts. Phil lying motionless in the Arches' pit stirred memories for me, memories of a time when EastEnders was a classic show and not one to be missed. For those of you too young or too lazy to remember, cop this classic scene when Phil ends up in the pit.

Masood the Douche.

Ajay and Lauren should open a counseling service. His advice to Masood was basically the same sort of empowerment advice Lauren gave Kat and which Kat blatantly misunderstood. Masood didn't, however; all he needed was Ajay's approbation to succumb to Ayesha's stalking. She's brazen in her pursuit, and it's no wonder Tamwar's giving him the silent treatment.

There was a classic mini-scene between Carol and Denise (two of the show's strongest actresses) where Carol's gossiping with Denise about Ayesha, doing a cracking imitation of her accent. Thank goodness for small miracles - it's just unfortunate that this is all TPTB can think to do for these actresses, including a gloating ageist-implied chance encounter between Ayesha-Bitch and Carol.

Ayesha: Do youse remember me? I'm Ayesha.

Carol: I'm not demented yet.

I guess Masood is marginally no better than Max or any of the other men who move onto newer, fresher and younger pastures as soon as the older model knocks off. I decided tonight that I actually detest Ayesha, and I detested Masood's OTT kiss just to spite Denise and her opinon.

Michael Moon the Loser.

The best thing about tonight's episode was Kat, feeling entitled enough to ask Michael to take Tommy to nursery. Michael's one-word answer: No.

Actually, I'm glad he said that, and people shouldn't wonder at his detachment from his son. He doesn't give a shit about anyone but himself, and if Kat had left with the Walking Dead back in 2010, the novelty would soon have worn off. He's only with Scarlett because he was literally left holding her, and he'll use her as a means of trying to get what he wants from Janine.

He's skint again, so skint that he can't even pay Aa-aasss for the babysitting she does. So skint, that he's forced to use My Aa-aasss's daddy's counterfeit money with which to pay her, which gets her in all kinds of trouble. It also alerts Jack and Max to Michael's shenanigans, and Michael is left up shit creek when Phil wants nothing to do with him.

He and Kat deserve each other. I don't like him. I don't find him at all intriguing or mysterious, just creepy and bizarre, and his death-grin makes me want to puke.

I want Janine back in top form to take Scarlett, bitchslap Kat and kick the cadaver to the kerb and out of Walford. The longer Moon stays, the more he risks becoming a cartoon, like The Mask.

Michael's Theme (or it should be):-

Yet another episode of nothingness, until the end.

OneBranningLess EastEnders: The Awful Truth - Review 22.02.2013

True to its recent form, EastEnders finished the week with yet another lame, circular episode, accomplishing nothing.

I mean, it's Friday night. Traditionally - i.e., when the show used to be good - the last episode of the week was a nail-biting cliffhanger ... someone revealed a secret, what would the response be? Someone's about to get caught at something, how would it play out?

People used to spend all weekend counting the hours until EastEnders would resume on Monday evening, wondering what the first weekly episode, an aftermath of Friday's cliffhanger, would entail.

No more.

Instead, we have unlikeable characters, treading the same path, being told the same euphemisms, seeing the same people, doing the same things they've done the day before (and most of those are things which make no sense, considering the characters involved).

Does anyone except the most inveterate of shippers (and, yes, I'm looking at wee Willie Wanker-Mitchell, who's rightly getting his Celtic arse smacked by sandbox colleagues on Walford Web for being a rude prick) really like or care about what happens to such poor, self-centred, hypocritical and narcissistic representatives of their gender as Tanya or the appalling Kat? Most viewers want to smack them silly.

And lazy, entitled Lauren, moving her clusterfucking cousin Joey into the family abode whilst Mommie Dearest is off indulging her selfishness and Cora the Bora lies drunk and stinking? Or Abi, who uses Valentine's day and a cuddly toy as an excuse to pop her cherry with Jay, ne'mind their sex was unprotected. Abi is sixteen-going on-eight and wants her mommy and daddy to start playing happy families - that way, there'll be someone around to raise the little chav grandson that's taken seed inside of Abi's blubbery belly.

And does anyone like Ayesha? I keep waiting for her to say "wey-hey mon". What kind of brazen bitch hauls arse on the next train when she's been stalking a man for months and hears his wife has left him, after condescending to disdain that wife in the original instance?

EastEnders used to do gritty, original kitchen-sink drama, but today it panders to an audience of romantic children and bitchy fanbois who don't share a braincell between them. Maybe they need to listen to some songs by some real songwriters about what goes down in a city of note, because they don't even have a clue about characterisation, except to deal in insulting stereotypes and generalisations.

Here's a song with vivid lyrics to jolt their imagination:-

Nahhh ... it's far too easier for them to write love triangles. And that's the awful truth.

The Awful Truth: Her Dreams Are Gone With the Wind (Yummy Mummy's Back):

Like the song says, Tanya is manless once again. Her dreams are gone with the wind.

Yes, Tanya's back, with gurning Oscar, and she's finding her two spoiled, entitled, totally unlikeable daughters scoffing fish and chips brought for them by the father they shun,who also gives them money on demand, pays the rent on the roof over their heads and pays their bills. He keeps the electric turned on and the heating pumping along.

His crime? To get married as a divorced man, after Yummy Mummy convinced the dimwit daughter brigade that Max seduced her into having an affair with him. It's OK for Tanya to divorce Max and marry Greg, but Max has to keep himself single and celibate at all times in order to attend to Tanya's needs.

After an appalling attempt to impose herself on the little group, stabbing fish and chips, which was really meant to isolate Kirsty into the position of interloper, she gets down to some hard negotiation with Max.

Let's remember one thing here: Kirsty is Max's wife. Max has been unfaithful to Kirsty for over one year, with Tanya. Tanya is the other woman, and I can't say this enough, but there are certain people like the fruit flower troll inhabiting Digital Spy 

or Walford Web Kindergarten's bullyboi brigade of Peege and Penn, the wannabe men, and their ringleader Wanker-Mitchell, who will forever cover their ears when presented with facts and go, "LALALALALALALALALALALA."

Remember when Tanya scarpered (and we found in this episode that she'd been enjoying a bit of bovine bonding in the wilds of Wales with Jane), she had agreed for Max to come over to the house so they could talk. Max arrived, only to find Tanya had vamoosed, leaving her drunken, putrid mother, Cora the Bora, to have someplace to stay rent-free, since she'd been kicked to the kerb by Dot, for abusing Dot's hospitality.

Well, Tanya's come back, it seems, because she loves Max.

Now, isn't that stating the bleeding obvious. Recently, the show's been looking at the two other dysfunctional co-dependent relationships extant on the Square - Kat and Alfie Moon and Zainab and Masood. But there's no avoiding the daddy of them all: Max and Tanya.

Tanya loves Max, and Max loves Tanya. He says. No, wait ... He loves Kirsty. After all, he married her. He even rescued her. What does he want?

This (and this is what defines Tanya and Max):-

Tanya loves sex with Max. She's never met a man before or after Max who could satisfy her in bed the way he does. Not Sean. Not Jack. And definitely not Greg Jessop. All roads led eventually to Max. I'm not certain that Tanya confuses sex with love, it's just that, for her, sex with Max is as close to love as she can get, and she wants to hold onto that. 

Also, like Alfie to Kat, Max is Tanya's security blanket. He's the means by which she can set her up as a middle-class wife with middle class values and mores, none of which she has. Another awful truth is that Tanya is so addicted to Max being in her life, Max sorting things out, setting her up in business etc, that when he's not around, she totally decompensates. 

She decompensates because Tanya is all about Tanya. The kids are an added bonus when she's in a good mood, and an obstacle when she isn't. She's never achieved anything in her life without the help of a man, and when she's manless, she falls to pieces. The very fact that she threw Max to the kerb when he told her the truth about how he felt about Kirsty is indicative of the fact that when she hears something she doesn't want to hear, this is how she reacts. It's also how both her pithy daughters react.

Max, on the other hand, is fond of Tanya. He loves her because she's the mother of his children, and he wants to stay with her because she's familiar territory. He's cheated on her before, and he'll cheat again. Because he can. Because Tanya will always have him back. He knows that. Kirsty, on the other hand, is an unknown quantity for Max. In actual fact, she's his first adult relationship. Max has been married three times. The first two times, he married Rachel and then Tanya, because he'd got each one up the duff. He did the done thing. But Kirsty is Max's first relationship which didn't entail getting married because the bride was breeding. They connected, they fell in love and they married.

Tanya was surprisingly right tonight when - even though Max brought Kirsty back to Walford, even though he told her he loved her, he would still throw her under a bus to get back with Tanya - she told him he was weak for that, and that she was weak also, because Tanya would have him back ... and so it would go until the next time. The person who wrote this had the Brannings down pat - they carry on going round and round in circles and just hurt the people around them.

I'm actually glad she told Max that she loved him, but they had to move on; they couldn't reconcile again. And Max is not only weak, but he's a coward, the way he brazenly lied to Kirsty about his conversation with Tanya.

Observation: Ever notice how closely Max resembles the character he voices in the States, the GEICO Gecko?

The GEICO Gecko

Max Branning

I think it's the soulful expression.

The Awful Truth: Marriage Is a Beautiful Thing (Kat and Alfie. Again. Again).

So on and on and on we drone, navel-gazing at the Moons' predicament. Kat knows she's acted like Queen Bitch with the only remnant of a brain remaining between her legs, when she tells Michael she's told Alfie that she slept with his cousin.

This makes Michael shit himself, and it makes Kat scurry back to the house she shares with My Aa-aaasss and Joey, with Jean trotting along in tow.

I'll be honest. I don't like Jean. I find her creepy, judgemental and annoying. However, I'm surprised she hasn't blindly supported Kat in a catastrophe of her own making. Of course, all Kat, Life's Eternal Victim, wants is some outward sympathy to support her own self-pity. She wants to cry so she makes sure she announces to Jean that she doesn't want to cry. Like a big girl ...

Jean's home truth to Kat is that she's upset because the man she loves is divorcing her, and her response to that was to go off and shag another man whom she didn't love, and then rub Alfie's nose in it.

I'm so pissed off with the blatant attempt of Newman and her merry men to force Kat's redemption upon us. I gagged a maggot when I heard Jessie Wallace wonder aloud why she always hurts Alfie. Tosh, this "something dark" in Kat that Jean started to qualify.

Kat hurts Alfie because she can. She's the abuse victim turned abuser. Michael says they're addicted to each other. I don't agree. I think Alfie genuinely and sincerely loves Kat and will always love her. You can't help whom you love. Ian will always love Cindy, and if she were to rise from the dead today and appear before him, everyone he's ever loved since would mean toast. Pat will always love Frank, even though he betrayed her time and again. And the first name off Sharon's lips when she landed back in Walford wasn't Saint Dennis, but Grant.

Alfie loves Kat unconditionally, but he knows now he has to move on with his life, because he can't trust her. And without trust, that relationship is nothing. So he has to give her up, move on with his life with someone who genuinely loves him.

As for Kat, Alfie is her security blanket. He's made her the respectable Mrs Moon, he's taken on her child and he cleans up the shit she leaves stinking behind. If Alfie cuts her loose, she has nothing - no job, no skill, no friends. She's at the mercy of whatever old coot she can fanagle into buying her booze in exchange for a quick fumble. The last time Alfie cut her loose, she descended into a morass of alcoholism and prostitution. Perhaps it's time she visited those venues again. She belongs in the gutter.

Kat doesn't want help. She wants pity and petting and mollycoddling and exoneration from any kind of responsibility she should shoulder in determining her own fate.

As for Michael the Amoral, he got handed his arse by Alfie tonight, when he slithered into the bar to try to make amends for taking advantage of Kat's situation. As if he cared. He genuinely thought Alfie would be all "hail-fellow-well-met" and benign. I, personally, loved the fact that Alfie told Michael he felt sorry for him.

But enough of this Moon malarkey. It's old, it's trite and it's bound to happen again.

The Awful Truth: A Middle-Aged Man's Ego is Stroked (As Well as Something Else): Masood

So Masood's date with Carol is totally strewn awry with the arrival of creepy Ayesha. Let's see ... Ayesha's returned for Masood. So she says, and she's probably telling the truth. No need to beat around the bush. She heard he'd split with Zainab - as if she didn't know that was coming - so she returned to Walford forthwith to stake her claim.

Throughout this episode, there were numerous references made to the fact that Zainab's been out of Masood's life for only two weeks, and already he was entertaining Carol Jackson and getting picked up by a stunning (but boring and creepy) woman half his age. Tamwar pointed the speed of his movements out to him on two occasions - his date with Carol and the appearance of Ayesha. Tamwar also wanted to know if Masood's feelings for Ayesha in any way affected what happened between him and Zainab, but he didn't get a straight answer.

I don't know how long Ayesha is here for this stint. I hope she isn't permanent, because if Masood gave up Zainab for a warm, lush young body, then this storyline sucks.

Patrick's Predicament.

This is a social issue which EastEnders is doing decently - the plight of the elderly when they're either recovering from an illness or simply ageing rapidly. Patrick's left on his own for a couple of hours so Denise and Kim can go to the pub, and he finds even opening a flask impossible, a fact which results in him falling from the chair and having to lie on the floor until Denise returns.

It was well-done, but I have one question: Why didn't Denise and Kim take Patrick with them to the pub? He'd have enjoyed the company and they could have easily wheeled him across the Square.

The Witches of Walford.

Bianca is still poor, but she can drink in the pub or eat in the cafe. Cora is a drunk, and all the women sat around that table this evening were moaning the fact that they were manless. Including the mysterious Ava the Rava, whose child's father ran out on her after the little Cock was born. Well, wouldn't you? Ava, you'll find your man out in the Vic's kitchen, and don't worry about snatching an intimate moment with Ray. They're not fussy about sex in their kitchens.