Just as well, this episode was filmed in late January/early February, when the Southeast had a sufficient dropping of snow, because we had a drubbing of snow yesterday, coincidentally, and sometime in April or early May, it will be snowing heavily in Walford - where fantasies become reality.
I was caught up in the Snowmageddon yesterday, hence the late review. It takes a lot out of one when one spends over four hours making a journey of five miles, which usually takes ten minutes on any other day.
However, it's nice to know I didn't miss anything of any consequence. This was one of those fidgety episodes, where you never seem to get comfortable and keep looking at the clock; then when the thirty minutes or so are up, you realise the reason you couldn't settle down was really because the episode was just so piss poor.
And that was what was wrong with this one. EastEnders has been reduced to the occasional good episode, which gets everyone's hopes up, only to be followed by a plethora of episodes which can only be described as pure, unadulterated shit.
This was such an episode.
It was one of those episodes where nothing was perceived to have happened - even when it did.
The Missing Link, or Gangabanga DeLuxe.
If there were any sort of tangible link in tonight's episode, it's the awful, awful, simply awful Liam's Amazing Gangabanga Adventure, starring Bianca, her brood and a gang so surprisingly ... awful ... that the viewer is actually embarrassed.
EastEnders have a thing about gangs. They keep pushing storylines about them, one every couple of years; although we've had one toward the end of last year, and now we have another.
Ah, but this gang storyline is different. It's been recommended by and written in conjunction with Comic Relief. The BBC, you see, wants to teach its viewers something, and since EastEnders seems to be playing to thepeanut gallery the youngest sort of viewers these days (and the dumbest), they;ve chosen to warn these easily influenced lowest common denominator of viewer about the dangers of gang culture.
But the problem is that EastEnders doesn't do gangs very well. Not very well at all.
For example, the BBC and EastEnders are so politically correct and so sensitive to what they perceive to be the sensitivities of minority groups, that they invariably get gangs wrong. Most EastEnd gangs are either Afro-Caribbean or Asian. Most are considerably more violent and sophisticated than the token representatives taken from Anna Scher, Sylvia Young and Italia Conti and presented to us as stereotypical gang members.
A few years ago, when Jay got involved with a gang, they were all portrayed by white, middle-class drama school kids. Ditto the laughable girl gang tormenting Lola last year. Billie Jackson's gang were masked adults in their early twenties riding around on BMX's. But this current gang is the most ludicrously hilarious.
They're certainly the dumbest, which is totally in character with the limp biscuit otherwise known as Liam Butcher. Liam has a monotone delivery, is reasonably well-spoken, has a low forehead (denoting low intelligence) and flat head in general. He has the personality of an amoeba. He's a seventeen year-old playing a fourteen year-old who gets mixed up with a gang led by someone who looks as though he's in his thirties and is portraying a wayward teenager.
This gang is peopled by a couple of token black kids, a token Asian, the ubiquitous biracial kid, and a black girl (who kills two quotas for the price of one), and led by an ugly, neanderthal-headed, terrible amateur actor, who looks more as if he'd be marching with a Doc Martens-clad brigade of the British National Party instead of leading a multi-cultural band of wannabe brigands in looting and pilfering.
This lot are so scary, even Dot manages to scatter them about. Seriously. Undoubtedly, the biggest haul they've achieved has been nicking Tamwar's moneybelt, and the lead up to his "mugging" (which was laughable, really), was so choreographed - gang members walking two by two, in step, putting up the hoodies in tandem, a sort of photography that someone from Islington or Hampstead Heath would deem edgy. There was even an accompanying sort of music in the form of a syncopated drumbeat, which, ostensibly, denoted some sort of tension.
Instead, I kept expecting to see this:-
Both of these "gangs" look more dangerous than this Gangabanga, and all of them are trained ballet dancers.
Please, please, EastEnders, stop trying to be relevant when you don't do the research necessary for the relevancy.
And once again, EastEnder's version of Little Orphan Annie, the obnoxious Tiffany, witnesses Tamwar's "mugging," and she's traumatised. This is the kid, remember, who probably watched her Uncle Derek "snuff it" on Christmas Day and told the tale afterward without even blinking. We should be spared this poisoned dwarf too. Besides, she's growing up, and the cute routine is becoming ugly.
Of course, this storyline will heighten the various tensions which already exist between the Masoods and Bianca's poor white revue. Tiffany and Mowgan Le Fat sabotage Zainab's water feature, Liam's Gangabanga mug Tamwar. Bianca will probably defend that too.
As for Tamwar, he's depressed. He misses his mother and he's disdainful of his father's middle-aged fling with Ayesha. He hates his job, and frankly, he's treated abysmally by such pond life as Tyler Moon (another unintelligible asshole hired for his looks) and Kat Moon, Walford's matron saint of victims. They should be smacked, and if I were Tamwar and hated my job enough, I'd smack them too. At least at the end of the day, Bianca paid the pitch fees.
By the way, Bianca's homelife is a mess. If we're supposed to think her kids are cute, they're not doing a good job of spin. They're not. They're bloody annoying.
The Gangabanga storyline is one of the worst the show's attempted (Shaggerman apart), and it exemplifies everything that's wrong with the show at present.
Women Scorned: Katshit and Kirsty.
Kirsty wants a place of her own, but Max, he says, is skint. I believe him. How can you survive trying to sell four cars on the forecourt of the carlot? He must be paying the rent and utilities on the house from which he's been banned, which means he's paying of for electricity and gas for the likes of that scrubbed-up slut Tanya, lazy skank Lauren, spoiled Abi and the old grey hag. (Actually, Max shouldn't have to pay for the gas because Cora the Bora is a big enough gas bag that her hot air could service the whole of Walford).
So Kirsty's going to give up facials until they get a deposit. (Already, I'm bored). And when she asks Roxy for a raise, after quitting on short notice a couple of months ago, and gets refused, she takes the entire bit of spite out on - not Roxy but Alfie, clueing Katshit in on a spiffing solicitor who's bound to stitch Alfie up even though he's said sincerely that he isn't going to stitch her up.
Alfie is sincere, and the best scene of the piece when he was explaining to Roxy how seriously he took his wedding vows when he married Kat (something Kat didn't do, but expects all the benefits that marriage entails), and he wants to to best by her in this divorce and still remain friends. Katshit is actually insulted that Alfie has even consulted a solicitor, which is generally what one does when one divorces. I honestly think that Kat cannot comprehend that Alfie would actually proceed with divorcing her, she's such a narcissistic bitch.
All of this, of course, reinforces Roxy's insecurity about the relationship.
As for Kirsty's "sacrifice," she sees Max hand Abi some money and gets pissed off. Well, that pissed me off too, but for another reason. Abi treats Max like shit. She needs money for Sixth Form - we're never told how much - but she can't ask her mother and she's broke, herself, so she hits on Max, as a last resort. Yes, she treats dear old dad like something she steps on in the kerb, until she needs some dosh, and then she's all sweetness and light. Abi looked weird tonight - like a younger version of Renee Zellweger who'd chewed a wasp.
Nothing happening here, move on.
Dot's Martyrdom.
They're choosing a new pope, you know. I'm wondering if maybe Dot could convert to Catholicism, because she'd surely be on a fast track to sainthood, considering she was in full martyr mode tonight. From the crusading Wrath of Dot to Dot the Martyr in two episodes.
Dot sits and stews on her misfortune - the fact that she's going to be evicted - and shares her problem with no one. It's not as if Dot's alone. She's got a family, including a stepson who always seems to be flush and who'd help her out of her jam in a New York minute. But Dot chooses to suffer.
One gets the impression that she likes this. It ennobles her. She feels she's sinned in unintentionally defrauding the council, so now this suffering, this eviction is her penance.
This - and pantomime Dot whom we saw last week - is one of the reasons June Brown's never been a favourite of mine.
As for Poppy and Fatboy ... meh ... two characters who reached their sell-by date ages ago, when they started on the programme.
This was not a good episode. If it didn't display all that's tragically wrong with EastEnders at the moment, it would be unintentionally laughable.
I was caught up in the Snowmageddon yesterday, hence the late review. It takes a lot out of one when one spends over four hours making a journey of five miles, which usually takes ten minutes on any other day.
However, it's nice to know I didn't miss anything of any consequence. This was one of those fidgety episodes, where you never seem to get comfortable and keep looking at the clock; then when the thirty minutes or so are up, you realise the reason you couldn't settle down was really because the episode was just so piss poor.
And that was what was wrong with this one. EastEnders has been reduced to the occasional good episode, which gets everyone's hopes up, only to be followed by a plethora of episodes which can only be described as pure, unadulterated shit.
This was such an episode.
It was one of those episodes where nothing was perceived to have happened - even when it did.
The Missing Link, or Gangabanga DeLuxe.
If there were any sort of tangible link in tonight's episode, it's the awful, awful, simply awful Liam's Amazing Gangabanga Adventure, starring Bianca, her brood and a gang so surprisingly ... awful ... that the viewer is actually embarrassed.
EastEnders have a thing about gangs. They keep pushing storylines about them, one every couple of years; although we've had one toward the end of last year, and now we have another.
Ah, but this gang storyline is different. It's been recommended by and written in conjunction with Comic Relief. The BBC, you see, wants to teach its viewers something, and since EastEnders seems to be playing to the
But the problem is that EastEnders doesn't do gangs very well. Not very well at all.
For example, the BBC and EastEnders are so politically correct and so sensitive to what they perceive to be the sensitivities of minority groups, that they invariably get gangs wrong. Most EastEnd gangs are either Afro-Caribbean or Asian. Most are considerably more violent and sophisticated than the token representatives taken from Anna Scher, Sylvia Young and Italia Conti and presented to us as stereotypical gang members.
A few years ago, when Jay got involved with a gang, they were all portrayed by white, middle-class drama school kids. Ditto the laughable girl gang tormenting Lola last year. Billie Jackson's gang were masked adults in their early twenties riding around on BMX's. But this current gang is the most ludicrously hilarious.
They're certainly the dumbest, which is totally in character with the limp biscuit otherwise known as Liam Butcher. Liam has a monotone delivery, is reasonably well-spoken, has a low forehead (denoting low intelligence) and flat head in general. He has the personality of an amoeba. He's a seventeen year-old playing a fourteen year-old who gets mixed up with a gang led by someone who looks as though he's in his thirties and is portraying a wayward teenager.
This gang is peopled by a couple of token black kids, a token Asian, the ubiquitous biracial kid, and a black girl (who kills two quotas for the price of one), and led by an ugly, neanderthal-headed, terrible amateur actor, who looks more as if he'd be marching with a Doc Martens-clad brigade of the British National Party instead of leading a multi-cultural band of wannabe brigands in looting and pilfering.
This lot are so scary, even Dot manages to scatter them about. Seriously. Undoubtedly, the biggest haul they've achieved has been nicking Tamwar's moneybelt, and the lead up to his "mugging" (which was laughable, really), was so choreographed - gang members walking two by two, in step, putting up the hoodies in tandem, a sort of photography that someone from Islington or Hampstead Heath would deem edgy. There was even an accompanying sort of music in the form of a syncopated drumbeat, which, ostensibly, denoted some sort of tension.
Instead, I kept expecting to see this:-
Both of these "gangs" look more dangerous than this Gangabanga, and all of them are trained ballet dancers.
Please, please, EastEnders, stop trying to be relevant when you don't do the research necessary for the relevancy.
And once again, EastEnder's version of Little Orphan Annie, the obnoxious Tiffany, witnesses Tamwar's "mugging," and she's traumatised. This is the kid, remember, who probably watched her Uncle Derek "snuff it" on Christmas Day and told the tale afterward without even blinking. We should be spared this poisoned dwarf too. Besides, she's growing up, and the cute routine is becoming ugly.
Of course, this storyline will heighten the various tensions which already exist between the Masoods and Bianca's poor white revue. Tiffany and Mowgan Le Fat sabotage Zainab's water feature, Liam's Gangabanga mug Tamwar. Bianca will probably defend that too.
As for Tamwar, he's depressed. He misses his mother and he's disdainful of his father's middle-aged fling with Ayesha. He hates his job, and frankly, he's treated abysmally by such pond life as Tyler Moon (another unintelligible asshole hired for his looks) and Kat Moon, Walford's matron saint of victims. They should be smacked, and if I were Tamwar and hated my job enough, I'd smack them too. At least at the end of the day, Bianca paid the pitch fees.
By the way, Bianca's homelife is a mess. If we're supposed to think her kids are cute, they're not doing a good job of spin. They're not. They're bloody annoying.
The Gangabanga storyline is one of the worst the show's attempted (Shaggerman apart), and it exemplifies everything that's wrong with the show at present.
Women Scorned: Katshit and Kirsty.
Kirsty wants a place of her own, but Max, he says, is skint. I believe him. How can you survive trying to sell four cars on the forecourt of the carlot? He must be paying the rent and utilities on the house from which he's been banned, which means he's paying of for electricity and gas for the likes of that scrubbed-up slut Tanya, lazy skank Lauren, spoiled Abi and the old grey hag. (Actually, Max shouldn't have to pay for the gas because Cora the Bora is a big enough gas bag that her hot air could service the whole of Walford).
So Kirsty's going to give up facials until they get a deposit. (Already, I'm bored). And when she asks Roxy for a raise, after quitting on short notice a couple of months ago, and gets refused, she takes the entire bit of spite out on - not Roxy but Alfie, clueing Katshit in on a spiffing solicitor who's bound to stitch Alfie up even though he's said sincerely that he isn't going to stitch her up.
Alfie is sincere, and the best scene of the piece when he was explaining to Roxy how seriously he took his wedding vows when he married Kat (something Kat didn't do, but expects all the benefits that marriage entails), and he wants to to best by her in this divorce and still remain friends. Katshit is actually insulted that Alfie has even consulted a solicitor, which is generally what one does when one divorces. I honestly think that Kat cannot comprehend that Alfie would actually proceed with divorcing her, she's such a narcissistic bitch.
All of this, of course, reinforces Roxy's insecurity about the relationship.
As for Kirsty's "sacrifice," she sees Max hand Abi some money and gets pissed off. Well, that pissed me off too, but for another reason. Abi treats Max like shit. She needs money for Sixth Form - we're never told how much - but she can't ask her mother and she's broke, herself, so she hits on Max, as a last resort. Yes, she treats dear old dad like something she steps on in the kerb, until she needs some dosh, and then she's all sweetness and light. Abi looked weird tonight - like a younger version of Renee Zellweger who'd chewed a wasp.
Nothing happening here, move on.
Dot's Martyrdom.
They're choosing a new pope, you know. I'm wondering if maybe Dot could convert to Catholicism, because she'd surely be on a fast track to sainthood, considering she was in full martyr mode tonight. From the crusading Wrath of Dot to Dot the Martyr in two episodes.
Dot sits and stews on her misfortune - the fact that she's going to be evicted - and shares her problem with no one. It's not as if Dot's alone. She's got a family, including a stepson who always seems to be flush and who'd help her out of her jam in a New York minute. But Dot chooses to suffer.
One gets the impression that she likes this. It ennobles her. She feels she's sinned in unintentionally defrauding the council, so now this suffering, this eviction is her penance.
This - and pantomime Dot whom we saw last week - is one of the reasons June Brown's never been a favourite of mine.
As for Poppy and Fatboy ... meh ... two characters who reached their sell-by date ages ago, when they started on the programme.
This was not a good episode. If it didn't display all that's tragically wrong with EastEnders at the moment, it would be unintentionally laughable.
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