Take away Shitney, Alice, Joey and the horror that is known as Tiffany, and this was not a bad episode. Unfortunately, that would only leave us with about fifteen minutes of screentime, but maybe EastEnders should think about going the route of the Archers - a mini-episode each day of fifteen minutes in length, using only the quality cast members, might make a difference; but then, there are some days when the quality output can be measured in seconds, rather than minutes.
This show elevates the trivial to the arena of the outstanding and becomes a joke. It elevates the mundane to the world of the subliime, and it sucks.
Here's a reminder of what the show could become:-
This is a maypole dance. Can you imagine a gaggle of Brannings dancing around a maypole, all dressed as Morris dancers? I think I've just given Lorraine Newman an idea for a May Day episode. Oooh, I can anticipate xTonix's reaction to that episode right away:-
Loved that episode ... LOL ...LOL ... (smiley face)
Loved the maypole ... LOL ...
Lauren danced hot around the maypole ... LOL (smiley face)
Dot was funny dancing around the maypole ... LOL
Loved the bit when the maypole fell on Tanya and put her in a coma ...(startled face)
Can't get enough of that maypole ... LOL Hyuck hyuck hyuck.
First, the good bits.
The Man of Constant Sorrow (That Would Be Max).
Whoops, sorry! That was 1993, when the show was still good. When Sharon was actually married to a man she really loved, when her best friend was a girl she'd grown up with who was anything but shallow, and when no one had a mobile phone.
Whenever a Branning is the best part of the show, it's a safe bet to reckon that Branning will either be Max or Carol. Tonight it was Max, and that's reason enough to say that the Brannings could be pared right back to Max, Carol and Kirsty and still be a force.
Max had an epiphany of sorts tonight, which was the unifying theme of the episode. (Thank you, Rob Gittins, who remembered when the show used to know how to put together 30 minutes of entertainment and link the vignettes.
Max's epiphany, finally, is that he really doesn't love Tanya at all. Apologies to the Tanay-obsessed Mormon Girl and all the Oedipal suck-centric fanbois found at Walford Web Kindergarten, but he doesn't; and I think he realised this tonight.
Another thing: If Lorraine Newman ever found her missing backbone and told Simon Ashdown to do one, she'd be well advised to use Jack as a character foil to his siblings, because Scott Maslen (nice man, mediocre actor) raises his game when sharing a scene with Jake Wood or Lindsey Coulsen. As much as Diederick Santer, the infamous Birkwood and Newman (read Ashdown) would like us to believe Maslen is romantic leading man material ... he isn't.
A pile of sawdust has more appeal.
Max was upset and obsessed about finding where Tanya had gone. He wanted a chance to talk to her. Again. However, Max's more recent concern arrived when he received Kirsty's wedding ring in the post.
Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you got til it's gone.
OK, she didn't leave in a big yellow taxi, but she left in a cab and didn't look back. Now, the ring has hit him like a tonne of lead. She really wants out, and all of a sudden, finding Tanya takes a back seat (hopefully a big one in order to accommodate Tanya's arse).
Max does a fair bit of self-justification about Kirsty, first thing, tonight. He's upset because Tanya's gone, and she wouldn't be gone if Kirsty hadn't shown up and messed up things for him and poor pitiful Tanya.
Real meaning, Max: Your wife showed up just as you were getting ready to illegally marry your mistress. You abandoned her with no explanation a year ago, and she has a right to know why.
The catalytic words which spur Max to action come from Jack, when he tells Max to get a grip, Kirsty's moved on. Max realises then, that he has to find her, has to see her again.
So this takes us to the ubiqutous council estate, to the ubiquitous run-down flat/house, with the ubiquitous blaring music. Max knew instinctively that Kirsty would return here, because she had no other place to go, and he finds her - before the bloke living there (the brother of Kirsty's violent ex) finds Max. Before Max weighs in, he notices Kirsty's been roughed up as well, and after he packs a believeable punch to the punter, punter's mate appears, and there ensues the most embarrassingly trite and trumped-up beating of the Century. I guess the BBC are worried about people complaining about a man getting beaten up on a Council estate, so they panned away to another scene, and we just saw Max, bloodied and beaten, being thrown out of the flat.
This leads to a car scene with him and Kirsty, which, inevitably leads to a kiss, meaning Kirsty is coming back to Walford. With Max. For better or for worse and all that.
Well, Tanya's coming back too, in three weeks. Can't this ever end?
Max's song ...
The Avenging Angel (The Masoods).
Oh, sorry again ... I just got carried away with an episode from 1999, when Mal Young was in charge of Continuing Drama and Matt Robinson was Executive Producer. (Oh, and you can see Bianca was playing the poor victim even then.)
But back to the Masoods.
It's obvious what the plot device known as Ayesha now is. Yes, she is a temptation to Masood, and if he'd bitten the apple (or the cherry) that she offered, then Masood would have become just like any of the other men on the Square at the moment - Max, Ian, Jack ... even Patrick.
As things stand, Masood and Alfie stand apart from that part of the hoi-polloi with the dangly bit between their legs. Alfie was Kat's faithful husband. He never once thought of having another woman in his bed until she'd broken his heart into bits and he'd flung her back to the gutter where she belongs. For all of those people jumping up and down and screaming, "Jane" after Masood. Masood was divorced when he and Jane slept together. Just like Max, he was a single man. Just like he still is today.
But this isn't about temptation. Ayesha is the catalyst who forces Masood to admit that he's been living a lie in his devotion to Zainab, convincing himself that he loved her no matter what, and taking all her shallowness, hypocrisy and unbridled social ambition on board as his projects too.
Yes, I know TPTB are making Zainab into Monster Zainab to facilitate a rushed ending they've had all year to plan. The state of the Masood's marriage was made obvious during the Chryed leaving line, when Masood confronted her with the painful home truths about her preference for her oldest son over her husband and her other two sons. It was at that time which Masood made it abundantly clear he wasn't prepared to put up with that sort of behaviour and treatment anymore and ordered her from the house. She left, but returned, unsolicited, two weeks later.
She should have left with Syed or when Masood told her to leave. Or we should have had more of the friction showing in the run up to Christmas and beyond. Instead, tonight, we had to hear a temporary character, and a bad one at that, state the bleeding obvious ... that Masood was beyond convincing her or anyone else of his devotion to Zainab, who cared more for material standing than she did for him; Masood was articulating all those defences in an effort to convince himself that he still loved Zainab.
Like Max, Mas is undoubtedly fond of Zainab. Why wouldn't he be? They've had four children together and will always have that link. But unlike Max, Mas is becoming tired of living a lie with a woman who's really in love with herself and her own image socially.
This is the beginning of the end of the Masoods as we know them. Next week is Masood Week.
A song for Mas:-
Children Should Be Seen Rarely and Heard Even Less: The Blight That Is Tiffany.
Sorry, wrong soap!
But there's a point to that mistake, and it's Chesney.
Chesney used to be the cute, little red-haired urchin that everyone loved on Corrie. He was the first child actor who could handle lines realistically and didn't sound like some kid in a Nativity play.
But the problem is that kids grow up, and the cutest of kids could easily grow into a not-so-cute adolescent whose acting isn't so fresh and natural anymore. That's what happened to Chesney.
Chesney's still there, having grown up on the Street, but he's an adult now and the cutesy lines dried up long ago, around the time he was about eleven or so.
EastEnders has another red-haired sprite making the rounds. Tiffany.
Tiffany may have started out as an 8 year-old playing a 6 year-old with worldly wisdomed lines, and she may have been as cute as a button; but she's nearing pre-adolescence now, her precociousness isn't precociousness anymore, it's unfettered rudeness in every way. More importantly, she's unchecked in her cheeky remarks, either by her mother, who's the recognised village idiot of three family dynamics and who's hardly more than a child, herself, emotionally; or by her grandmother, who certainly should know better.
Tonight, her party trick was to find a resident who was deemed by reputation to be a horrible person in order to have them listen to her latest pipe dream - singing, in hopes of attaining some place on a television talent show and shoot to superstardom. Acknowledging that her late Uncle Derek was not a good person, this enabled her to unload the general perceived opinion of various Walford residents like Michael Moon (who is her uncle), Zainab and Ian (who is her great-uncle).
The awful truth for Tiffany fans (if there are any) is that she's getting older and the cuteness factor is fading, both physically and in the acting sphere. She's a twelve year-old playing a ten year-old and that's obvious. On the one hand, she's handing out zingery little lines worthy of any adult on the show; the next minute, she's dishing out these puerile numbers with a hidden agenda, like tonight.
I would have asked my Uncle Derek. He was a pretty horrible person, but he's dead. So I figured you'd do.
I've never wanted to smack a kid as much as I have Tiffany, and she's one of the reasons I'm hoping Patsy Palmer gets herself up the duff this year and leaves ... and takes her mangy kids with her - or at least, Tiffany.
Smell-the-Fart Acting: Shitney
God, it was in abundance tonight.
No, not that ... That was the couple who wasn't and the beginning of Janine III. You know, when EastEnders was still good.
This time last year, we got Tyler, Whitney and balloons. This time, we get Tyler, Whitney and cuddly kids holding up letters which spelled words correctly, asking Whitney to marry Tyler.
Yuck.
It's obvious now what TPTB are trying to do. Joey and Lauren are the edgy "it" couple - cousins fucking. So Whitney, the secret gypsy girl, and Tyler the gormless git whose idea of serious acting is to "smell-the-fart," become the "cute" couple for whom everyone wants to root.
Sorry, we're not buying. And the other thing they're bigging up is the "rivalry" between Lorraine's beefcake and the lardy beefcake chosen by Bryan Kirkwood. Tyler gets back at Joey's jibe at Whitney, but Tyler, in true Joey Tribbiani fashion, takes a jibe at Joey's sister, but could have landed his brother in a spot of bother too.
For me, it's a toss-up between which couple is the most unpopular - Shitney or the Clusterfuck Cousins. Ach, they both suck.
Gypsies, Tramps, Thieves ... and Tyler.
Away With the Fairies.
Alice. What is the point?
And the superfluous scene where toughguy Joey inarticulately intimidates Michael Moon about not taking advantage of his sister, to which Michael replies with a weird gurn is just ... weird.
I must admit, his chemistry with Janine apart, I'm not a shipper for Michael. There's far too much gurning going on on EastEnders at the moment, and maybe Lorraine Newman should do a storyline about it.
Major Observation: Ian Beale is going to America on vacation, to visit his cousin, Michelle ... that would be Michelle, who - until Emer, Lorraine, Katie, Simon and Uncle Tom Cobbley saw fit to wipe Michelle from Bimbo Sharon's memory. Yes, Michelle is/was Sharon's best friend, and Michelle's daughter Vicky is Sharon's sister. Have we heard her mention either?
Let's hope Ian returns with some clues to whatever it is that's keeping Bimbo Sharon's blubberlips shut on that subject.
This show elevates the trivial to the arena of the outstanding and becomes a joke. It elevates the mundane to the world of the subliime, and it sucks.
Here's a reminder of what the show could become:-
Loved that episode ... LOL ...LOL ... (smiley face)
Loved the maypole ... LOL ...
Lauren danced hot around the maypole ... LOL (smiley face)
Dot was funny dancing around the maypole ... LOL
Loved the bit when the maypole fell on Tanya and put her in a coma ...(startled face)
Can't get enough of that maypole ... LOL Hyuck hyuck hyuck.
First, the good bits.
The Man of Constant Sorrow (That Would Be Max).
Whoops, sorry! That was 1993, when the show was still good. When Sharon was actually married to a man she really loved, when her best friend was a girl she'd grown up with who was anything but shallow, and when no one had a mobile phone.
Whenever a Branning is the best part of the show, it's a safe bet to reckon that Branning will either be Max or Carol. Tonight it was Max, and that's reason enough to say that the Brannings could be pared right back to Max, Carol and Kirsty and still be a force.
Max had an epiphany of sorts tonight, which was the unifying theme of the episode. (Thank you, Rob Gittins, who remembered when the show used to know how to put together 30 minutes of entertainment and link the vignettes.
Max's epiphany, finally, is that he really doesn't love Tanya at all. Apologies to the Tanay-obsessed Mormon Girl and all the Oedipal suck-centric fanbois found at Walford Web Kindergarten, but he doesn't; and I think he realised this tonight.
Another thing: If Lorraine Newman ever found her missing backbone and told Simon Ashdown to do one, she'd be well advised to use Jack as a character foil to his siblings, because Scott Maslen (nice man, mediocre actor) raises his game when sharing a scene with Jake Wood or Lindsey Coulsen. As much as Diederick Santer, the infamous Birkwood and Newman (read Ashdown) would like us to believe Maslen is romantic leading man material ... he isn't.
A pile of sawdust has more appeal.
Max was upset and obsessed about finding where Tanya had gone. He wanted a chance to talk to her. Again. However, Max's more recent concern arrived when he received Kirsty's wedding ring in the post.
Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you got til it's gone.
OK, she didn't leave in a big yellow taxi, but she left in a cab and didn't look back. Now, the ring has hit him like a tonne of lead. She really wants out, and all of a sudden, finding Tanya takes a back seat (hopefully a big one in order to accommodate Tanya's arse).
Max does a fair bit of self-justification about Kirsty, first thing, tonight. He's upset because Tanya's gone, and she wouldn't be gone if Kirsty hadn't shown up and messed up things for him and poor pitiful Tanya.
Real meaning, Max: Your wife showed up just as you were getting ready to illegally marry your mistress. You abandoned her with no explanation a year ago, and she has a right to know why.
The catalytic words which spur Max to action come from Jack, when he tells Max to get a grip, Kirsty's moved on. Max realises then, that he has to find her, has to see her again.
So this takes us to the ubiqutous council estate, to the ubiquitous run-down flat/house, with the ubiquitous blaring music. Max knew instinctively that Kirsty would return here, because she had no other place to go, and he finds her - before the bloke living there (the brother of Kirsty's violent ex) finds Max. Before Max weighs in, he notices Kirsty's been roughed up as well, and after he packs a believeable punch to the punter, punter's mate appears, and there ensues the most embarrassingly trite and trumped-up beating of the Century. I guess the BBC are worried about people complaining about a man getting beaten up on a Council estate, so they panned away to another scene, and we just saw Max, bloodied and beaten, being thrown out of the flat.
This leads to a car scene with him and Kirsty, which, inevitably leads to a kiss, meaning Kirsty is coming back to Walford. With Max. For better or for worse and all that.
Well, Tanya's coming back too, in three weeks. Can't this ever end?
Max's song ...
The Avenging Angel (The Masoods).
Oh, sorry again ... I just got carried away with an episode from 1999, when Mal Young was in charge of Continuing Drama and Matt Robinson was Executive Producer. (Oh, and you can see Bianca was playing the poor victim even then.)
But back to the Masoods.
It's obvious what the plot device known as Ayesha now is. Yes, she is a temptation to Masood, and if he'd bitten the apple (or the cherry) that she offered, then Masood would have become just like any of the other men on the Square at the moment - Max, Ian, Jack ... even Patrick.
As things stand, Masood and Alfie stand apart from that part of the hoi-polloi with the dangly bit between their legs. Alfie was Kat's faithful husband. He never once thought of having another woman in his bed until she'd broken his heart into bits and he'd flung her back to the gutter where she belongs. For all of those people jumping up and down and screaming, "Jane" after Masood. Masood was divorced when he and Jane slept together. Just like Max, he was a single man. Just like he still is today.
But this isn't about temptation. Ayesha is the catalyst who forces Masood to admit that he's been living a lie in his devotion to Zainab, convincing himself that he loved her no matter what, and taking all her shallowness, hypocrisy and unbridled social ambition on board as his projects too.
Yes, I know TPTB are making Zainab into Monster Zainab to facilitate a rushed ending they've had all year to plan. The state of the Masood's marriage was made obvious during the Chryed leaving line, when Masood confronted her with the painful home truths about her preference for her oldest son over her husband and her other two sons. It was at that time which Masood made it abundantly clear he wasn't prepared to put up with that sort of behaviour and treatment anymore and ordered her from the house. She left, but returned, unsolicited, two weeks later.
She should have left with Syed or when Masood told her to leave. Or we should have had more of the friction showing in the run up to Christmas and beyond. Instead, tonight, we had to hear a temporary character, and a bad one at that, state the bleeding obvious ... that Masood was beyond convincing her or anyone else of his devotion to Zainab, who cared more for material standing than she did for him; Masood was articulating all those defences in an effort to convince himself that he still loved Zainab.
Like Max, Mas is undoubtedly fond of Zainab. Why wouldn't he be? They've had four children together and will always have that link. But unlike Max, Mas is becoming tired of living a lie with a woman who's really in love with herself and her own image socially.
This is the beginning of the end of the Masoods as we know them. Next week is Masood Week.
A song for Mas:-
Children Should Be Seen Rarely and Heard Even Less: The Blight That Is Tiffany.
Sorry, wrong soap!
But there's a point to that mistake, and it's Chesney.
Chesney used to be the cute, little red-haired urchin that everyone loved on Corrie. He was the first child actor who could handle lines realistically and didn't sound like some kid in a Nativity play.
But the problem is that kids grow up, and the cutest of kids could easily grow into a not-so-cute adolescent whose acting isn't so fresh and natural anymore. That's what happened to Chesney.
Chesney's still there, having grown up on the Street, but he's an adult now and the cutesy lines dried up long ago, around the time he was about eleven or so.
EastEnders has another red-haired sprite making the rounds. Tiffany.
Tiffany may have started out as an 8 year-old playing a 6 year-old with worldly wisdomed lines, and she may have been as cute as a button; but she's nearing pre-adolescence now, her precociousness isn't precociousness anymore, it's unfettered rudeness in every way. More importantly, she's unchecked in her cheeky remarks, either by her mother, who's the recognised village idiot of three family dynamics and who's hardly more than a child, herself, emotionally; or by her grandmother, who certainly should know better.
Tonight, her party trick was to find a resident who was deemed by reputation to be a horrible person in order to have them listen to her latest pipe dream - singing, in hopes of attaining some place on a television talent show and shoot to superstardom. Acknowledging that her late Uncle Derek was not a good person, this enabled her to unload the general perceived opinion of various Walford residents like Michael Moon (who is her uncle), Zainab and Ian (who is her great-uncle).
The awful truth for Tiffany fans (if there are any) is that she's getting older and the cuteness factor is fading, both physically and in the acting sphere. She's a twelve year-old playing a ten year-old and that's obvious. On the one hand, she's handing out zingery little lines worthy of any adult on the show; the next minute, she's dishing out these puerile numbers with a hidden agenda, like tonight.
I would have asked my Uncle Derek. He was a pretty horrible person, but he's dead. So I figured you'd do.
I've never wanted to smack a kid as much as I have Tiffany, and she's one of the reasons I'm hoping Patsy Palmer gets herself up the duff this year and leaves ... and takes her mangy kids with her - or at least, Tiffany.
Smell-the-Fart Acting: Shitney
God, it was in abundance tonight.
No, not that ... That was the couple who wasn't and the beginning of Janine III. You know, when EastEnders was still good.
This time last year, we got Tyler, Whitney and balloons. This time, we get Tyler, Whitney and cuddly kids holding up letters which spelled words correctly, asking Whitney to marry Tyler.
Yuck.
It's obvious now what TPTB are trying to do. Joey and Lauren are the edgy "it" couple - cousins fucking. So Whitney, the secret gypsy girl, and Tyler the gormless git whose idea of serious acting is to "smell-the-fart," become the "cute" couple for whom everyone wants to root.
Sorry, we're not buying. And the other thing they're bigging up is the "rivalry" between Lorraine's beefcake and the lardy beefcake chosen by Bryan Kirkwood. Tyler gets back at Joey's jibe at Whitney, but Tyler, in true Joey Tribbiani fashion, takes a jibe at Joey's sister, but could have landed his brother in a spot of bother too.
For me, it's a toss-up between which couple is the most unpopular - Shitney or the Clusterfuck Cousins. Ach, they both suck.
Gypsies, Tramps, Thieves ... and Tyler.
Away With the Fairies.
Alice. What is the point?
And the superfluous scene where toughguy Joey inarticulately intimidates Michael Moon about not taking advantage of his sister, to which Michael replies with a weird gurn is just ... weird.
I must admit, his chemistry with Janine apart, I'm not a shipper for Michael. There's far too much gurning going on on EastEnders at the moment, and maybe Lorraine Newman should do a storyline about it.
Major Observation: Ian Beale is going to America on vacation, to visit his cousin, Michelle ... that would be Michelle, who - until Emer, Lorraine, Katie, Simon and Uncle Tom Cobbley saw fit to wipe Michelle from Bimbo Sharon's memory. Yes, Michelle is/was Sharon's best friend, and Michelle's daughter Vicky is Sharon's sister. Have we heard her mention either?
Let's hope Ian returns with some clues to whatever it is that's keeping Bimbo Sharon's blubberlips shut on that subject.
No comments:
Post a Comment