The Shelf Life of Michael Moon: Short

Over on Walford Web kindergarten, many of the fanboi drag artists like Will Slater-Mitchell are creaming their y-fronts about the possibility of another man in drag, Kat Moon, re-connecting with the vampire who happens to be (at the moment) her son's biological father.

Michael Moon, the walking cadaver. The vampire who doesn't have the insuociant charm of Robert Pattison.

This is not going to be a great passion match; instead it's a BOGOF on the part of TPTB - a buy-one-get-one-free love triangle. Kat's coupling with the walking dead is meant to make Alfie feel not only guilty but also inadequate, the repercussions of which will be felt by Roxy, no doubt - who, throughout Kat's cheapo circular journey that will re-establish her as a victim in the minds of pea-brained cheerleaders like Will Slater-Mitchell, has been painted pejoratively all of a sudden.

In another world, when EastEnders was guided by a steady hand and balls of steel, Shaggerman would have resulted in Kat doing a walk of shame, her worldy contents contained in a bin bag, out of Walford in the rain, to be seen no more. It would also have resulted in Jessie Wallace getting her P45, because her character had become toxic with the majority of the viewers. (Fanbois, read the polls - polls are a viable way of measuring public opinion). It's not Jessie Wallace's fault; TPTB (i.e., Kirkwood, with Simon PantsAshdown and Lorraine Newman signing off on it) ripped her character to shreds.

Hey, it's a sad price to pay, but that's life in the entertainment industry. Kat proved intensely unlikeable in her newest guise, whilst Roxy offered Alfie new chemistry, a chance to move on and an opportunity to see the eternal, thirtysomething wildchild Roxy settle down in an adult relationship; but for this to happen, as in days of old, Kat would have to leave Walford.

As for the Tommy situation, there has never ever been an instance where one man raised another man's child as his son on the Square with the biological father resident. Situations like that inevitably resulted in the wife in question leaving the legal daddy and shacking up, yet again, with the baby daddy, and the evolution of yet another Queen Bitch character.

It didn't work for Ian Beale (Cindy and Wicksy); it didn't work for Mark Fowler (Lisa and Phil); and if Bradley had lived, it wouldn't have worked with Stacey living on the same Square as Ryan Molloy.

And it isn't going to work now.

And all the amount of retconning that's going to be done and is being done changing what originally was a drunken one night stand between Kat and Michael isn't going to alter that.

Here are the facts about Tommy's conception, if - indeed - Michael is his biological father (and, Luddites - as well as Will Slater-Mitchell - these have been referenced in episodes):-

• Kat returned to Walford in late September 2010, six months pregnant. When Alfie first saw this, his face initially lit up. The insinuation was that he thought the baby was his, especially hearing that she was six months gone. Kat told him it wasn't his baby.
• The story established that Kat and Alfie scammed the people who owned the pub they managed out of £50,000 for additional IVF treatment. They had been told, or at least they thought they had been told, that Alfie was infertile. In turn, the thugs who owned their pub, set fire to the pub, making it look as though Alfie had done this. The night before he was arrested, he gave their money to Kat and sent her to Michael, who happened to have a place in Spain at that time. At that point, Kat and Alfie were still together, still in love and still a couple.
• When Kat arrived at Michael's, he took advantage of her vulnerability at that point to get her drunk and sleep with her. Hold that thought! Michael is a con man. His modus operandi is to gauge the vulnerability of his subject and fleece them in order to get what he wants. That's the way this man has operated, like forever.
• The next morning, Kat wakes before he does, dresses, takes the money and runs to Martina. We know this, because when Michael first arrived in Walford, he remarked to Kat that when he woke morning after the night before, she was gone.
• We also know that she stayed the summer of 2010 with Martina and the infamous Shenice in Spain. That's where she discovered she was pregnant and reckoned that Michael was the father, as she told Martina. She even told her that Alfie was "jaffa." She stayed with Martina until the thugs chasing her for the scam money showed up in town. We know this because when Martina visited her with Shenice in 2011, she told Kat that after Kat had left, the thugs continued to bother her for awhile until they were convinced that she didn't know where Kat had fled.

So that's the background. But by Janine's wedding day, the ONS had blossomed into a sex-based full-blown love affair - still only a one night stand, mind you - with Kat asserting that Michael had felt something, as had she. As drunk as the skank was, the only thing she could have felt was the leakage incumbent upon a full bladder. That's not earth-moving.

Michael felt jack shit.

And the fact that by Christmas 2012, the ONS had evolved into a full-on affair between Michael and Kat conducted in Alfie's home and bedroom in Spain, is such an obvious retcon, it bears calling out as an insult to all but the most insipid of viewers (yes, Will Slater-Mitchell, I'm looking at you.) It simply wasn't thus - because the Shaggerman storyline was pumped as the first time Katshit would actually cheat via an affair rather than her usual knee-trembling one nighter.

As soon as Michael arrived in Walford, he embarked upon a campaign of manipulation, targeting both Ronnie and Roxy. He honed in on the fact that Roxy was lonely and up for a lark, so he began sleeping with her, whilst subtly insinuating himself into Ronnie's psyche.

The odd thing about his character is, Janine apart, the only woman with whom he's shown the slightest soupcon of chemistry, has been Ronnie. They were both as daft and damaged as each other. Once again, he honed in on her daddy issues and when she rejected him and when the truth about Tommy came out, he tried setting her up for a nutter. In the meantime, so attracted to her was he that he went about trying to turn Roxy into Ronnie - buying her Ronnie's scent, wanting her to dress like Ronnie etc.

In fact, when Michael had seen Tommy's scan and - on the basis of that - convinced Kat to leave for Spain with him, the reason Alfie reminded him that if he mistreated either Kat or the baby, he'd come for him. Alfie knows exactly the sort of person Michael is.

Now we come to Janine. 

If you cast your minds back to 2011, when Michael returned to Walford, and Janine was literally on her uppers, hanging around the Vic, trying to cadge free drinks off willing men, you'll recall that Janine tried to chat Michael up. He blew her away, didn't want to know her. Got the measure of the floozie he thought she was and wasn't interested.

However, when Janine came into her inheritance and bought into a share of the R and R, she again made a play for Michael. What a difference several million pounds makes in how attractive a woman is. He responded and never looked back..

During their time together, he ascertained that they had several points of reference in common:-

• They both had massive daddy issues.
• They both perceived themselves to be peripheral and unwanted children - Michael, the older child of a first, loveless marriage; Janine, the youngest afterthough.
• They both felt they had been let down massively by people closest to them.
• They both had experieced outright rejection from their parents and siblings.
• They were both grifters.

Because of this, rather than uniting and sharing their insecurities in order to gain strength as a couple, Michael convinced Janine to keep their baby and they would go it as a couple; but Janine was forewarned and forearmed. Not for nothing did she remark to Pat on her deathbed that she was pregnant by a man she didn't trust. Pat's lasting advice was for Janine to have the baby. She said nothing about the man.

Inadvertantly, Janine played Michael against his own insecurities, by insisting on a prenuptual agreement. Hormonal from her advanced pregnancy, still mistrusting Michael and being bullied by Jean and Kat, and subsequently being coerced by Michael, Janine marries him.

Another thing to recall is that on the day he wed, Michael told Kat that he neither loved Janine, nor did he love their child - a fact Kat smugly, accidentally on purpose told Janine, immediately after Scarlett had been brought home from her long stay in hospital. Considering the fact that Janine was alone most of the time when the child was in neonatal intensive care, often without sleep, considering the fact she was suffering from a post-pregnancy hormonal surge and, quite possibly, post-natal depression, with her paranoia rampant and her self-esteem already low, Michael knew just which buttons to push to achieve what he wanted.

Having got her to ditch the pre-nup, he thought to insinuate to her how almost insane and paranoid she was, unfit to run a business much less to deal with a tetchy baby who was crying all the time. With Pat dead, Diane back in France, Bianca in prison and Carol living with the kids in Ipswich, Janine was well and truly isolated. Even when Tanya tried to help, she - in a genuine accident - fed Janine's suspicions about Michael's incessant lies in which she kept catching him, comparing him to Max, having an affair during the time Abi was a small baby.

Juxtaposed to his callous treatment of her psychological health on the one hand, he sought to exert his control over her finances by buying her expensive presents, in hope of distracting her. Financial independence seemed linked with Michael's expression of masculinity. When his bank balance was up, so was his testosterone.

Janine was suffering mentally, but she still was suss enough to know that if she offered Michael a pay-off, he may bite and go, but he played her psychologically, and she was too ill and tired to fight. His ultimate manoeuvre was to insinuate that she was an unfit mother, and she left.

That's Michael's game: he manipulates to get what he wants. He controls. He is the ultimate con man, as are all the Moons - Alfie being about the most decent one of the lot.

But another thing: Steve John Shepherd has said, pointedly, that Michael Moon is a psychopath. People like that have no feeling for anyone but themselves, and they will use people remorselessly without compunction.

The last psychopath on the show was Archie Mitchell. Moon will have a shelf-life as short, although he may not leave in a box. 

At the moment, the character's coldness, his quirky facial expressions and his insouciant observations are edgy and clever; but too much of a character eventually erupts in the character becoming more of a cartoon caricature than any interesting study.

At the moment, he is being used as a plot device in the eventual reunion of Alfie and Kat; his storyline with Kat is also doubling as a force behind Janine's return storyline.

At the end of all this malarkey, someone will leave. Suffice it to say, it won't be Janine.

Prediction: SJS gone with the wind by the end of the year.