Interesting thread about the current state of EastEnders on Digital Spy Soaps' forum, posted by a lurker who felt the need to expostulate about his/her opinion regarding the soap.
In a nutshell, it stinks. Nicely put, it's dire. Succinctly, no one can remember it being this bad, and I concur. I thought the 2003-2006 era was suckworthy. Newman's tenure makes that look professional.
The commentator Broken Arrow, who's watched the show as long as I have, echoes my thoughts:-
It's a bit like having Phil Mitchell and Sharon scream that Jack Branning diddled Denny - not that I like Jack Branning or any of the Brannings, for that matter. Still, Jack's no Richard III. Dick was, at least, likeable.
Nope, the characters worth emotional investment who are misunderstood at the moment happen to be the likes of Sharon, Phil, and Ian - oddly enough, the longest-serving characters, bar Dot; and, ironically, one of the few things Newman's got spot on is Dot's character, since her return. Kat and Alfie were ruined by Kirkwood, Newman's predecessor; but Alfie is, at least, salvageable. However, he's got the chance of a new road with Roxy. Instead, we have Newman sacrificing Roxy, who's been afforded new potential, at the altar of Kat's redemption.
Allow me to reiterate Broken Arrow's points - and by doing so, I'll reinforce the original poster's points as well.
The Brannings
Too many of them. OK, EastEnders has always had a focal family before, but nothing as large as this lot of scrubbed-up trailer trash.
They've been allowed to grow unfettered, and Simon Ashdown needs to learn from John Yorke's obvious mistake in forcing the Slaters down our throats. The Slaters, if you recall, were set to be the biggest family since the Fowlers; but within five years, they were kaput.
Derek was killed off. Good call. The character, albeit played by a more than competent actor, was a big failure, and it was right that he was left to stew in his own juices and die of a heart attack instead of a drawn-our whodunnit.
Tanya is leaving. That's great too. But let's stop this shit about "Jo Joyner taking a break". Letitia Dean "took a break" at the beginning of 2006 and only returned 6 years later. Natalie Cassidy is still "on break," and so is Samantha Womack. Joyner is leaving. She chose not to renew her contract and wants to spend more time with her kids. She's even bought a new home, further away from the one she bought within a stone's throw of Elstree, when she returned from pregnancy leave in 2010 and saw an opportunity open up for her to be Queen Diva of the soap. She may say she wants to return in 2014, when her kids start school, but she can say she's Cleopatra, fucking Queen of the Nile, her return will be contingent on the storylines in progress, how Max's character is developed apart from her (it will, believe me) and who the Executive Producer happens to be then.
In point of fact, Tanya impedes the development of Max's character. They have a co-dependent relationship that's ceased to be interesting and can only be described as sick. Max is a player, and even if he pursues the same behaviour pattern with Kirsty that he did with Tanya, the results would be enormously different. There's only so many times we can see a couple break up and reconcile before it becomes a joke - like once.
With Tanya, should also depart Lauren, Abi, Joey, Alice and Bianca and her brood. Why? Simples.
Lauren is a character with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. She is easily the most unlikeable teen ever to grace the the show - possibly even more unlikeable than Zoe Slater. Apart from being "hot" for certain hormonally-challenged teenaged boys or those with the mindset thereof (xTonix, who doesn't understand big words so will think I'm complimenting him), she offers nothing. Besides, she is portrayed by, arguably, the worst actress ever to appear on the show. Axe, please.
Abi is Ruby Allen on human growth hormone. She is the human version of Baby Huey - the cartoon version, that is:-
She is sixteen going on eleven. Her face, her voice and her whining mannerisms haven't changed in the slightest from the time she was an even more immature ten year-old. Even then, she was having her father read bedtime stories to her, and yet next week, we're supposed to believe she loses her virginity to Jay. That's not an interesting storyline, that's child abuse.
The fact that both these girls continuously side withe their putrid whore of a mother and incessantly shun their father - unless, like Mommie Dearest, they need some money for something - is appalling. Go away.
Alice's and Joey's relevance ceased the moment Derek dropped to the pavement on Christmas Day. We know now that David Witts was only hired for his looks and not any acting experience he had (he had none), and really, no one, apart from Newman herself and the teenaged army of deficenti to whom she panders, gives a rat's arse about the "forbidden love" which supposedly exists between Joey and Lauren. In fact, the self-pitying rant Lauren levelled at Max earlier last week about love only proved that she knows as much about loving someone as she does about a chocolate teapot, Lauren and Joey just like to fuck. So send them elsewhere to do it.
As for Alice, hasn't this show had its share of overaged innocent women bordering on mental deficiency? Little Mo and Honey were bad enough, Heather was likeable; but now we have Poppy and MyAlice, last of the Red Hot Virgins. Get thee to a nunnery, woman, and take all those who harbour thoughts like your with you! It's such a shame that, of all the "yoof of today" inhabiting Albert Square at the moment, Jasmyn Banks, with the biggest professional portfolio, gets to portray the biggest drip.
The Branning Satellites
As if the Brannings aren't enough in and of themselves, there are the various and sundry characters connected in some way with the family.
First and most obvious is Cora, the drunken old reprobate whom Bryan Kirkwood reckoned would be a worthy successor to Pat in the matriarch department. He obviously didn't realise that matriarchs evolve over time, they aren't made in the storyline department and then foisted on the viewing public.
Cora is a reprobate who gives bad advice. She doesn't give a rat's arse about the two daughters she raised, and in a sudden burst of retconned fiction, she's now shown to be totally devoted to the memory of a biracial daughter she gave away at birth forty-eight years ago. That said, when she overstayed her welcome at Dot's by refusing to pay rent and utilities in Dot's absence and filling the house with strangers, she proved herself the height of entitlement in suggesting to the prodigal daughter Ava, a deputy head teacher who suddenly can't string a sentence together without a glaring grammatical error and whose purpose in EastEnders is to embody the myth of the angry black woman, provide her with a home.
She interfered in Tanya's marriage solely for the purpose, again, of finding a free roof over her head, and to do that, she enticed Tanya to run away from her relationship problems when Max actually was ready to talk to her yet again about their dilemma.
On a positive note, Newman seems to have removed Cora from the Kirkwood-designated role of appointed matriarch and, instead, depicts her as what she actually is: a drunken, old lag who really isn't fit to be in charge of or live around impressionable young girls. Remember, she wantonly got a very underaged Abi drunk for a laugh and spent the evening necking whiskey with Lauren who has a recogniseable drinking problem.
Now we're presented with the unknown elements of Ava the Rava and her son Dexter, also known as The Little Cock of Walford. Ava and her sprog make the Brannings a racially-mixed bunch now, elevating them from poor white trash to just common and garden trailer trash.
Ava is supposed to be a Deputy Head teacher, but if that's the calibre of deputy head, then I'm a flaming Dutchman. She cannot put a sentence together without a grammatical error - "ain't" being her favourite word. She neither speaks nor acts like an educated professional brought up in the leafy suburbs of Surbiton. The character is supposed to be bi-racial. She is not, and that is glaringly obvious. Even more glaringly obvious is that both Ava and The Little Cock are, like other ethnic minorities on the programme, depicted as racial stereotypes. Ava is the Angry Black Woman, and The Little Cock is that awfully obnoxious little snipe rejected from Musical Youth, stunted in eternal adolescence and the writers' room idea of what an edgy black urban youth should be like:-
I really do expect him to burst into song any moment. Maybe we'd at least be able to understand him, as he's yet another young male character to whom diction means absolutely nothing. He's twenty, hangs out with kids four years younger than he and looks twelve.
The Yoof of Today
It has to be said that this demographic overlaps the Brannings, because there are so damned many of them.
Suffice it to say that they get maximum airtime (because they're cheap and cost the programme less money than someone as expensively paid as Steve McFadden. Then TPTB offset the cheapness of employing talentless, inexperienced, pretty young people by involving them in elaborate stunts which cost a cool million to produce.
It doesn't make sense.
Something else that doesn't make sense is the purpose of these young people. EastEnders has always had young people as an active part of their cast, although not in the vast proportion that they have now. Those previous youngsters were presented as young people with goals and ambitions, people who were strong enough in their resolve to achieve what they wanted.
Ian laboured against his father's wishes to go into catering and became a successful businessman. Michelle Fowler and Sonia Jackson were single mothers who fought against all odds to obtain academic and professional qualifications. Libby Fox put her parents' marital woes behind her and gained a place at Oxford.
This lot of youngsters is entitled, lazy, brutish, selfish, rude and belittling - none moreso than Lauren Branning. Joey is a mouth-breathing, inarticulate manipulator with no redeeming quality. He sleeps with his cousin. Whitney might be moving forward with her recent engagement to Tyler, but she's played the victim card so many times when he's dumped a dependable bloke for a bad boy, people are beyond caring about her. Her fiance', Tyler Moon, is another talentless piece of gormed beefcake hired because the then-producer fancied him, just as Newman fancied David Witts for Joey. Like Joey and the Cock, Tyler's speech is unintelligible. Still, as long as Tony Discipline maintains his concocted, allegedly "real-life" romantic association with Jacqueline (Worst. Actress.Ever) Jossa, his job is safe.
The only exception to that BratPack now seems to be Lucy Beale, who actually is struggling to care for her father and keep his businesses going, but as Lucy moves away from the "fit" bunch, most of whom don't work but always manage to garner money from someplace, she's seen less and less. Her latest confidante, Tamwar Masood, is neither dynamic nor positive.
The Queen Bee of the younger teen dynamic is Lola, yet another person hired from the realms of reality television with no dramatic training whatsoever. Lola is fifteen-going on-forty. She's another epitome of entitlement. She's a thief, she's a liar, she's disrespectful of authority and she has the morals of an alley cat. She went to bed with Ben as if that act would prove or disprove his homosexuality, and she ended up pregnant by him. She elected to have the baby, not out of any love for the child or anti-abortion feeling; but entirely because of the social services benefits having a child would afford her. She is a taker.
She committed petty crimes throughout her pregnancy and when caught, she shrieked her mantra that she was only fifteen and pregnant - wah-wah-wah. TPTB sought to have her deliver a Mitchell baby in a fast food joint, in public, delivered by ASBO granny Cora the Bora, and literally decreed that all of this, coupled with the suffering she would endure as Phil Mitchell stakes a claim on his grandchild, would make all viewers abandon any thought they had previously of her bad behaviour and feel instant sympathy with a bitchy, mouthy little bint whose attitude hasn't changed in the least.
Moon Goonery and Two Sacrificial Lambs
Lorraine Newman is officially full of shit.
OK, we get it that she has a vested interest in Kat as a character, because she was part of the creative process who made Kat the character, but investing that much time and effort into the rehabilitation of a character who's become toxic for the majority of viewers, just to salvage the Executive Producer's ego, is not worth the risk.
So many other things on the programme are certainly worthy of the EP's time and attention (introduction and development of viable new characters, especially between the ages of 25 and 40; improvement of research and continuity; the abandonment of retconning; and a clear-out of the writing room) - but salvaging Kat isn't one of them.
EastEnders made Kat Slater Moon into the iconic character she once was, only to bring her back, five years after her initial departure and systematically tear her to shreds, to the point where she is now actually hated and reviled by most viewers.
EastEnders had a classic opportunity to do female-on-male domestic abuse, with Kat, the abused child, becoming the abuser. They treated her physical abuse of her husband as comedy. She is the eternal victim, cheating repeatedly on a husband who loves the bones of her whenever she perceives he isn't giving her 100 per cent of his attention. When caught, she pulls the dirty girl excuse.
After the worst mystery in the world, Shaggerman (and who didn't guess that Derek was the culprit?), we were promised by Newman that Kat would go on a redemptive journey, that we would see Kat, alone, trying to resolve her problems and fighting to win Alfie back - that Alfie and Kat would reunite is beyond doubt: Newman likes Kat, she likes Kat with Alfie, she wants Alfie to be happy and she wants them in the pub. 'Nuff said. She who will be obeyed has spoken.
We were also promised by Newman that, within weeks after the reveal, we would learn exactly why Kat had sought an affair with Derek.
What we got and are about to get is bullshit.
First, we got Kat blaming Derek for the entirety of the affair. He forced her (as in "rape"? because that's forced sexual activity). He blackmailed her into continuing. We know all this is a lie. We watched the programme. We saw Kat invited the Shaggerman shadow into the Vic's kitchen and spread her legs, saw her licking her lips and hiking her skirt down afterward. We saw her leave Alfie alone in their bed to shag Derek in the alleyway in back of the Vic. We heard the phonecall via voicemail she made to Derek at 4AM one morning horny for him.
Then, we got a week of her whining about everything being Roxy's fault - Roxy stole her job, her pub and her husband. Well, we know that the pub isn't hers; it's Phil Mitchell. After Kat fucked things up by whisking Alfie off on an impromptu holiday to prevent him finding out that Derek had been fucking her, Phil appointed Roxy manager, so Kat lost her own job, and Kat's behaviour is behind the reason Alfie's trying to move on with Roxy now.
Only, he won't.
Pretty soon, we'll see Kat back to blaming Alfie again, after he asks her for a divorce. And so much for her being on her own. Right after that, she fucks Michael Moon and moves into Janine's house with him.
That's right: Janine's house. Because as much as this storyline has been told from poor Kat's point of view, and as much as we have watched Roxy, who's done nothing but love Alfie unconditionally since declaring that she loved him last spring and backing off when he reminded her of his marital status, morph into the insecure, jealous "other woman" femme fatale, this involvement of Michael Moon only stokes the fires for Janine, recovered from her PND and from the cruel manipulation Michael effected in order to gain control over her fortune after her traumatic birth, to return to find yet another Slutter taking what is rightfully Janine's.
One of the few things Bryan Kirkwood got right was developing Janine's character; this has all the recipes of the reincarnation of one-dimensional evil Janine.
For people bleating on about Janine abandoning her baby, she - like Roxy back in early 2011, was a victim of Michael Moon's sinister manipulation. He knew enough about her character to gauge her insecurities and hoped to make her paranoid enough, at the same time stoking her ego enough (with exensive presents like sports cars) to keep her out of her businesses' way so he would have ultimate control over her fortune. He destroyed her emotionally, but when she returns, Newman will want us all to root for poor Kat, be angry at gormless Alfie for shacking up with Roxy the slut who's never really had many lovers and have some hate on evil Janine.
Because that's so much easier for the poor, overpaid writers, isn't it? And that's the core problem EastEnders has - a passionless, lazy, entitled bunch of writers with a singular lack of imagination.
In a nutshell, it stinks. Nicely put, it's dire. Succinctly, no one can remember it being this bad, and I concur. I thought the 2003-2006 era was suckworthy. Newman's tenure makes that look professional.
The commentator Broken Arrow, who's watched the show as long as I have, echoes my thoughts:-
I don't like the Brannings, the majority of the teenagers/young adults or the comedy characters. With the focus on these aspects the characters I do like are being neglected. But even if they were being focused on it's likely their storylines would be boring anyway because it's all so dull.I would add that the characters this commentator does like (and I'll bet they're the same as the ones in which I've invested) aren't as much being neglected as they're misunderstood. A bit like the current Richard III situation. I'm a Ricardian, and I think Richard gets a bad rap, particularly because he's the victim of a post-mortem Tudor political spin; but the devil is in the detail with Dickie. The ultimate whodunnit arose during the time he controlled England - his nephews, the Princes in the Tower, disappeared; and no one has ever produced any evidence that Richard wasn't responsible for their deaths. No one has ever produced any evidence that he was; it's just that the myth arose after he died, when he couldn't defend himself; the person shouting the lie the loudest was Henry VII (who happened to be King at the time) and he was backed up by his wife, a very attractive blonde with big knockers, who happened to be Richard's niece and who was spurned romantically by Richard.)
I think, with 28 years of viewership under my belt, I'm in a position to be informed enough to declare this the absolute worst era of EastEnders since it began. The warning signs have been there for the better part of a decade that EastEnders was going to hit rock bottom and it has. Can it get worse? What could be worse than the dross this once mighty show has become?
It's a bit like having Phil Mitchell and Sharon scream that Jack Branning diddled Denny - not that I like Jack Branning or any of the Brannings, for that matter. Still, Jack's no Richard III. Dick was, at least, likeable.
Nope, the characters worth emotional investment who are misunderstood at the moment happen to be the likes of Sharon, Phil, and Ian - oddly enough, the longest-serving characters, bar Dot; and, ironically, one of the few things Newman's got spot on is Dot's character, since her return. Kat and Alfie were ruined by Kirkwood, Newman's predecessor; but Alfie is, at least, salvageable. However, he's got the chance of a new road with Roxy. Instead, we have Newman sacrificing Roxy, who's been afforded new potential, at the altar of Kat's redemption.
Allow me to reiterate Broken Arrow's points - and by doing so, I'll reinforce the original poster's points as well.
The Brannings
Too many of them. OK, EastEnders has always had a focal family before, but nothing as large as this lot of scrubbed-up trailer trash.
They've been allowed to grow unfettered, and Simon Ashdown needs to learn from John Yorke's obvious mistake in forcing the Slaters down our throats. The Slaters, if you recall, were set to be the biggest family since the Fowlers; but within five years, they were kaput.
Derek was killed off. Good call. The character, albeit played by a more than competent actor, was a big failure, and it was right that he was left to stew in his own juices and die of a heart attack instead of a drawn-our whodunnit.
Tanya is leaving. That's great too. But let's stop this shit about "Jo Joyner taking a break". Letitia Dean "took a break" at the beginning of 2006 and only returned 6 years later. Natalie Cassidy is still "on break," and so is Samantha Womack. Joyner is leaving. She chose not to renew her contract and wants to spend more time with her kids. She's even bought a new home, further away from the one she bought within a stone's throw of Elstree, when she returned from pregnancy leave in 2010 and saw an opportunity open up for her to be Queen Diva of the soap. She may say she wants to return in 2014, when her kids start school, but she can say she's Cleopatra, fucking Queen of the Nile, her return will be contingent on the storylines in progress, how Max's character is developed apart from her (it will, believe me) and who the Executive Producer happens to be then.
In point of fact, Tanya impedes the development of Max's character. They have a co-dependent relationship that's ceased to be interesting and can only be described as sick. Max is a player, and even if he pursues the same behaviour pattern with Kirsty that he did with Tanya, the results would be enormously different. There's only so many times we can see a couple break up and reconcile before it becomes a joke - like once.
With Tanya, should also depart Lauren, Abi, Joey, Alice and Bianca and her brood. Why? Simples.
Lauren is a character with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. She is easily the most unlikeable teen ever to grace the the show - possibly even more unlikeable than Zoe Slater. Apart from being "hot" for certain hormonally-challenged teenaged boys or those with the mindset thereof (xTonix, who doesn't understand big words so will think I'm complimenting him), she offers nothing. Besides, she is portrayed by, arguably, the worst actress ever to appear on the show. Axe, please.
Abi is Ruby Allen on human growth hormone. She is the human version of Baby Huey - the cartoon version, that is:-
She is sixteen going on eleven. Her face, her voice and her whining mannerisms haven't changed in the slightest from the time she was an even more immature ten year-old. Even then, she was having her father read bedtime stories to her, and yet next week, we're supposed to believe she loses her virginity to Jay. That's not an interesting storyline, that's child abuse.
The fact that both these girls continuously side withe their putrid whore of a mother and incessantly shun their father - unless, like Mommie Dearest, they need some money for something - is appalling. Go away.
Alice's and Joey's relevance ceased the moment Derek dropped to the pavement on Christmas Day. We know now that David Witts was only hired for his looks and not any acting experience he had (he had none), and really, no one, apart from Newman herself and the teenaged army of deficenti to whom she panders, gives a rat's arse about the "forbidden love" which supposedly exists between Joey and Lauren. In fact, the self-pitying rant Lauren levelled at Max earlier last week about love only proved that she knows as much about loving someone as she does about a chocolate teapot, Lauren and Joey just like to fuck. So send them elsewhere to do it.
As for Alice, hasn't this show had its share of overaged innocent women bordering on mental deficiency? Little Mo and Honey were bad enough, Heather was likeable; but now we have Poppy and MyAlice, last of the Red Hot Virgins. Get thee to a nunnery, woman, and take all those who harbour thoughts like your with you! It's such a shame that, of all the "yoof of today" inhabiting Albert Square at the moment, Jasmyn Banks, with the biggest professional portfolio, gets to portray the biggest drip.
The Branning Satellites
As if the Brannings aren't enough in and of themselves, there are the various and sundry characters connected in some way with the family.
First and most obvious is Cora, the drunken old reprobate whom Bryan Kirkwood reckoned would be a worthy successor to Pat in the matriarch department. He obviously didn't realise that matriarchs evolve over time, they aren't made in the storyline department and then foisted on the viewing public.
Cora is a reprobate who gives bad advice. She doesn't give a rat's arse about the two daughters she raised, and in a sudden burst of retconned fiction, she's now shown to be totally devoted to the memory of a biracial daughter she gave away at birth forty-eight years ago. That said, when she overstayed her welcome at Dot's by refusing to pay rent and utilities in Dot's absence and filling the house with strangers, she proved herself the height of entitlement in suggesting to the prodigal daughter Ava, a deputy head teacher who suddenly can't string a sentence together without a glaring grammatical error and whose purpose in EastEnders is to embody the myth of the angry black woman, provide her with a home.
She interfered in Tanya's marriage solely for the purpose, again, of finding a free roof over her head, and to do that, she enticed Tanya to run away from her relationship problems when Max actually was ready to talk to her yet again about their dilemma.
On a positive note, Newman seems to have removed Cora from the Kirkwood-designated role of appointed matriarch and, instead, depicts her as what she actually is: a drunken, old lag who really isn't fit to be in charge of or live around impressionable young girls. Remember, she wantonly got a very underaged Abi drunk for a laugh and spent the evening necking whiskey with Lauren who has a recogniseable drinking problem.
Now we're presented with the unknown elements of Ava the Rava and her son Dexter, also known as The Little Cock of Walford. Ava and her sprog make the Brannings a racially-mixed bunch now, elevating them from poor white trash to just common and garden trailer trash.
Ava is supposed to be a Deputy Head teacher, but if that's the calibre of deputy head, then I'm a flaming Dutchman. She cannot put a sentence together without a grammatical error - "ain't" being her favourite word. She neither speaks nor acts like an educated professional brought up in the leafy suburbs of Surbiton. The character is supposed to be bi-racial. She is not, and that is glaringly obvious. Even more glaringly obvious is that both Ava and The Little Cock are, like other ethnic minorities on the programme, depicted as racial stereotypes. Ava is the Angry Black Woman, and The Little Cock is that awfully obnoxious little snipe rejected from Musical Youth, stunted in eternal adolescence and the writers' room idea of what an edgy black urban youth should be like:-
I really do expect him to burst into song any moment. Maybe we'd at least be able to understand him, as he's yet another young male character to whom diction means absolutely nothing. He's twenty, hangs out with kids four years younger than he and looks twelve.
The Yoof of Today
It has to be said that this demographic overlaps the Brannings, because there are so damned many of them.
Suffice it to say that they get maximum airtime (because they're cheap and cost the programme less money than someone as expensively paid as Steve McFadden. Then TPTB offset the cheapness of employing talentless, inexperienced, pretty young people by involving them in elaborate stunts which cost a cool million to produce.
It doesn't make sense.
Something else that doesn't make sense is the purpose of these young people. EastEnders has always had young people as an active part of their cast, although not in the vast proportion that they have now. Those previous youngsters were presented as young people with goals and ambitions, people who were strong enough in their resolve to achieve what they wanted.
Ian laboured against his father's wishes to go into catering and became a successful businessman. Michelle Fowler and Sonia Jackson were single mothers who fought against all odds to obtain academic and professional qualifications. Libby Fox put her parents' marital woes behind her and gained a place at Oxford.
This lot of youngsters is entitled, lazy, brutish, selfish, rude and belittling - none moreso than Lauren Branning. Joey is a mouth-breathing, inarticulate manipulator with no redeeming quality. He sleeps with his cousin. Whitney might be moving forward with her recent engagement to Tyler, but she's played the victim card so many times when he's dumped a dependable bloke for a bad boy, people are beyond caring about her. Her fiance', Tyler Moon, is another talentless piece of gormed beefcake hired because the then-producer fancied him, just as Newman fancied David Witts for Joey. Like Joey and the Cock, Tyler's speech is unintelligible. Still, as long as Tony Discipline maintains his concocted, allegedly "real-life" romantic association with Jacqueline (Worst. Actress.Ever) Jossa, his job is safe.
The only exception to that BratPack now seems to be Lucy Beale, who actually is struggling to care for her father and keep his businesses going, but as Lucy moves away from the "fit" bunch, most of whom don't work but always manage to garner money from someplace, she's seen less and less. Her latest confidante, Tamwar Masood, is neither dynamic nor positive.
The Queen Bee of the younger teen dynamic is Lola, yet another person hired from the realms of reality television with no dramatic training whatsoever. Lola is fifteen-going on-forty. She's another epitome of entitlement. She's a thief, she's a liar, she's disrespectful of authority and she has the morals of an alley cat. She went to bed with Ben as if that act would prove or disprove his homosexuality, and she ended up pregnant by him. She elected to have the baby, not out of any love for the child or anti-abortion feeling; but entirely because of the social services benefits having a child would afford her. She is a taker.
She committed petty crimes throughout her pregnancy and when caught, she shrieked her mantra that she was only fifteen and pregnant - wah-wah-wah. TPTB sought to have her deliver a Mitchell baby in a fast food joint, in public, delivered by ASBO granny Cora the Bora, and literally decreed that all of this, coupled with the suffering she would endure as Phil Mitchell stakes a claim on his grandchild, would make all viewers abandon any thought they had previously of her bad behaviour and feel instant sympathy with a bitchy, mouthy little bint whose attitude hasn't changed in the least.
Moon Goonery and Two Sacrificial Lambs
Lorraine Newman is officially full of shit.
OK, we get it that she has a vested interest in Kat as a character, because she was part of the creative process who made Kat the character, but investing that much time and effort into the rehabilitation of a character who's become toxic for the majority of viewers, just to salvage the Executive Producer's ego, is not worth the risk.
So many other things on the programme are certainly worthy of the EP's time and attention (introduction and development of viable new characters, especially between the ages of 25 and 40; improvement of research and continuity; the abandonment of retconning; and a clear-out of the writing room) - but salvaging Kat isn't one of them.
EastEnders made Kat Slater Moon into the iconic character she once was, only to bring her back, five years after her initial departure and systematically tear her to shreds, to the point where she is now actually hated and reviled by most viewers.
EastEnders had a classic opportunity to do female-on-male domestic abuse, with Kat, the abused child, becoming the abuser. They treated her physical abuse of her husband as comedy. She is the eternal victim, cheating repeatedly on a husband who loves the bones of her whenever she perceives he isn't giving her 100 per cent of his attention. When caught, she pulls the dirty girl excuse.
After the worst mystery in the world, Shaggerman (and who didn't guess that Derek was the culprit?), we were promised by Newman that Kat would go on a redemptive journey, that we would see Kat, alone, trying to resolve her problems and fighting to win Alfie back - that Alfie and Kat would reunite is beyond doubt: Newman likes Kat, she likes Kat with Alfie, she wants Alfie to be happy and she wants them in the pub. 'Nuff said. She who will be obeyed has spoken.
We were also promised by Newman that, within weeks after the reveal, we would learn exactly why Kat had sought an affair with Derek.
What we got and are about to get is bullshit.
First, we got Kat blaming Derek for the entirety of the affair. He forced her (as in "rape"? because that's forced sexual activity). He blackmailed her into continuing. We know all this is a lie. We watched the programme. We saw Kat invited the Shaggerman shadow into the Vic's kitchen and spread her legs, saw her licking her lips and hiking her skirt down afterward. We saw her leave Alfie alone in their bed to shag Derek in the alleyway in back of the Vic. We heard the phonecall via voicemail she made to Derek at 4AM one morning horny for him.
Then, we got a week of her whining about everything being Roxy's fault - Roxy stole her job, her pub and her husband. Well, we know that the pub isn't hers; it's Phil Mitchell. After Kat fucked things up by whisking Alfie off on an impromptu holiday to prevent him finding out that Derek had been fucking her, Phil appointed Roxy manager, so Kat lost her own job, and Kat's behaviour is behind the reason Alfie's trying to move on with Roxy now.
Only, he won't.
Pretty soon, we'll see Kat back to blaming Alfie again, after he asks her for a divorce. And so much for her being on her own. Right after that, she fucks Michael Moon and moves into Janine's house with him.
That's right: Janine's house. Because as much as this storyline has been told from poor Kat's point of view, and as much as we have watched Roxy, who's done nothing but love Alfie unconditionally since declaring that she loved him last spring and backing off when he reminded her of his marital status, morph into the insecure, jealous "other woman" femme fatale, this involvement of Michael Moon only stokes the fires for Janine, recovered from her PND and from the cruel manipulation Michael effected in order to gain control over her fortune after her traumatic birth, to return to find yet another Slutter taking what is rightfully Janine's.
One of the few things Bryan Kirkwood got right was developing Janine's character; this has all the recipes of the reincarnation of one-dimensional evil Janine.
For people bleating on about Janine abandoning her baby, she - like Roxy back in early 2011, was a victim of Michael Moon's sinister manipulation. He knew enough about her character to gauge her insecurities and hoped to make her paranoid enough, at the same time stoking her ego enough (with exensive presents like sports cars) to keep her out of her businesses' way so he would have ultimate control over her fortune. He destroyed her emotionally, but when she returns, Newman will want us all to root for poor Kat, be angry at gormless Alfie for shacking up with Roxy the slut who's never really had many lovers and have some hate on evil Janine.
Because that's so much easier for the poor, overpaid writers, isn't it? And that's the core problem EastEnders has - a passionless, lazy, entitled bunch of writers with a singular lack of imagination.
Can I just say, I love you. I had all but given up on finding a place other than the pitiful youtube comments section to discuss my fury over current eastenders stories and character developments but looking for spoilers about the Roxy Kat fight next tuesday I found this blog, and I am so relieved I am not the only one feeling these things. I know its fiction but like when you fall in love with a book the characters have a life inside of you so I am very glad to have a place now to share these feelings and maybe feel a little less like a nutter.
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