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.
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.
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.
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.
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