EastEnders: Bullies and Entitlement - Review 30.04.2013

I realised tonight that, for the most part, I find many of the characters pushed at us deeply unpleasant and unlikeable. They are the worst sort of people, and the fact that so many brainless, dimwits oozing admiration in their direction from the confines of fora, Facebook, Twitter and other assorted places reflect the worst part of Britain - the selfish, entitled, ignorant, semi-literate I'm-All-Right-Jack-Fuck-You borderline violence of chav society.

I found tonight's episode extremely difficult to watch - not because it was bad (it was), but because it showed various sorts of bullying, belligerant behaviour in several of the main characters toward people who were clearly vulnerable. The other scenes fed off a formerly iconic original character who's been so badly written this time around that the actress in question has requested a time out for her character, with instructions to a singularly inadequate writing room to sort her character out, because Sharon Mach III is all wrong.

I wish more actors had the chutzpah of Letitia Dean. How many read what's said about them on fora and recognise, themselves, that a characterisation is wrong from the getgo. No one knew Sharon better than the actress who's played her, off and on, for the past 28 years. Her latest reincarnation depicts her as a weak-willed wet blanket, utterly dependent off a man's company, desperate to be friends with the Square's resident yummy mummy, who happens to be a scrubbed-up version of poor white trash.

Letitia Dean was right in suggesting to TPTB that Sharon needed a female friend. As much as she was always into the Mitchells, Sharon always interacted well with other females on the show - the fable friendship with Michelle, Pauline, Pat, her sister Vicky and (until she was exposed as Den's murderer) Chrissie. But Dean, in no way, suggested a Tanya-Sharon friendship. However, in pitching a female friend for Sharon, she gave Simon Suck-the-Brannings'-Collective-Asshole Ashdown free rein to create Sharon in Tanya's shallow image and not only make the two bosom buddies, but attach Sharon emotionally to Jack Branning and bring her into the Branning fold.

And that was disastrous.

Tonight was the worst of the ethos EastEnders is promoting at the moment - bullying culture.

It's no wonder that a strain of bullyboi behaviour pervades Digital Spy and, especially, Walford Web discussion fora.

I hated this episode.

Since EastEnders is now appealing to the childish element (yes xTonix lollol, I mean you and you, Mr Bex and *Betty*), this song is for you ... and Kat and Bianca and Michael and Carol ...

Mr Passive-Aggressive

Michael Moon is doing what we've seen him try to do before. 

Scarper.

Remember when Janine was sitting, waiting at the hospital with a very ill baby and a consultant who wanted to speak to both of Scarlett's parents, and Michael was nowhere to be found. His phone was turned off, he was incommunicado. Janine sent Whitney, in desperation, to Walford to find him, and find him, she did ... with his bags packed and ready to leave.

He was caught again tonight.

Please. Disabuse yourself of the notion that Michael loves his daughter. He doesn't. She is a tool whereby he's able to scam and use other people to his own advantage. A single man with a young child is always pitiable - so pitiable that people whom he's hurt and hurt badly in the past (Roxy, Kat, Janine) are willing to forget his lamentable sins, for which he's never apologised.

Odd, how Michael scammed major money from Jean, even ensuring that she embezzled from her family and employer, only to have Janine, who was wealthy in her own right, be blamed for that sting - even though it was Janine who repaid, in full, every penny of the money Michael scammed. Oh, and the money was scammed off Michael's family, it must be said.

Scarlett is also an object, which is how Michael sees her. An object that someone else wants, so he's willing to take his toy and run away with it. Pschopaths can charm the magnolia blossoms off trees, but they can't love or bond with other people. Scarlett is an object which is necessary for Michael's scamming success. Without her, he becomes just another dodgy businessman in a sharp suit, with no money and no hope of any.

Michael has a thing against mothers. In his own warped mind, his very own psychopathic mother betrayed him with her death, which was orchestrated inadvertantly by herself, so now he projects all that anger and rage onto Janine, which is what he did from the very beginning - telling her how inadequate and awful a mother she was, planting doubts in her mind at a time in her life when she was most vulnerable, suffering from PND and clearly hormonal.

It's easy for him to promote a sympathetic image of himself and Janine as the bugaboo, especially since Janine wasn't the most popular of people in Walford, herself, and also since she has no real family to come to her aid and defend her person.

He plays himself as the eternal victim - whining to the insipid and singularly stupid Alice about how unfair "the system" was in that he was unable to qualify for legal aid. He's supposedly the part-owner of a business, so he has assets in excess of a certain amount of money, yet he as no bank account and takes whateve is given him by the real owner as cash-in-hand.

I'm glad Janine's guard went down briefly tonight, when she mentioned counselling and control being an issue. So it's clear that Janine's journeying - if, indeed, she did travel the earth - included an extended spell of counselling. It wouldn't surprise me if she didn't flee Britain for someplace like France or Australia (where she has relatives, one of whom is a healthcare professional) or even Canada or the US, where she sought psychiatric help - not necessarily for her PND, but for all her other demons stemming from her childhood and her parental situation.

It showed her humanity and her vulnerability. It also showed, although the Michael-shippers will refuse to see it, what a totally heartless, cold and ruthless bully Michael was - the way he insinuated how inadequate a person and a mother Janine was, chipping away, bit by bit, at her fragile self-esteem; but I'm glad she rose to the occasion and reminded him of one of the common bonds held between them - that they'd both grown up with and lost mothers early on in their lives under tragic circumstances, something she never wanted her daughter to suffer.

Interesting to note - and again, the Michael-knicker-creamers will disagree - that Janine clung to the hope that Michael did, one time, love her, yet he maintains that he never did. That's probably the one bit of truth he's told. He wanted her money, and he wanted control of her and her fortune. Once she took that away and left him with the child, after being convinced that she was the lowest of the low, he had nothing and had to use the child to get by.

Michael didn't grow up; Janine did. MIchael used Alice to get free childcare, first from Roxy, then from the totally stupid Alice, who sees everything through a schoolgirl crush, and who's ripe for the manipulations of a psychopath, and occasionally from creepy Jean.

Don't ever forget that Jean told Janine her baby wouldn't be loved, and Katshit the bitch told her that Michael didn't love either her or the baby.

Don't feel sorry for Michael. He wouldn't feel sorry for you. He's lost his meal ticket, otherwise known as Scarlett.

Fat Barbituate: Denny is NOT Mother's Little Helper

Sharon the drug addict. No wonder Letitia Dean is taking a break. Not just taking a break, but taking a break whilst putting a flea in Lorraine Newman's ear either to sort out Sharon or else.

What a drag it is being jilted at the altar by Jack Branning! To this version of Sharon, that's a fate worse than death.

Dean's doing the right thing by stepping back and giving the incompetents running this programme a chance at damage limitation re her character. It's one thing to destroy Kat, a character TPTB had raised to near-iconic status. It's another to make Bianca totally vile and borderline retarded. It's quite another thing entirely to utterly destroy an original character and one who was the daughter of Den and Ange.

She went from eating Phil's face to having a self-pity party with Tanya to taking funds from a business in which she has a share to fund her habit.

Question: Why did she take money from the till? Sharon is management and a shareholder in the business. Surely she had enough money of her own to buy her fix. And from the way she told the dealer that what she wanted could be bought on prescription but not int the UK, I would reckon she's addicted to Vicodin, which is a Class A drug in the UK and not available by prescription - so any of the assholes on Walford Web Bullyboi Academy or Digital Spy reckoning she's addicted to paracetamol or ibuprofen need to insert foot into mouth and shove.

If the sobstory she told Tanya were true, I'm not surprised that Denny is having nightmares every three hours a night. His mother is a bloody walking nightmare, herself; and she's enough to frighten the kid, with her peripatetic lifestyle. 

This Sharon is not Sharon. She's some totally weak and vapid character introduced as Sharon, but the long-term viewer sees only a stranger, whom we're told is Sharon (as much as we're told that Cora the Bora is the new Square matriarch). We're not buying either.

Yep, Sharon's an addict. She lies to cover the fact that she'd do anything for a fix, and she knows Tanya (who was weaned on drugs, herself) is dim enough to buy the pity line about migraine headaches.

Spare me.

I don't know what was more comical - Sharon chewing two capsules purloined from Tanya's kitchen bin (why is it soap characters seem to be able to take capsules without a swallow of water?) or whiney, self-entitled, selfish Lauren sulking on the sofa and mourning being dumped by Joey.

I'm still baffled that Tanya and the rest of the family seem to take Lauren fucking her cousin as totally normal.

Still, as Lauren asserted, at least she's not a "feevin' junkie."

WORST. ACTRESS. EVER. IN. EASTENDERS.

The Embarrassment Known as The Masoods.

Even Men Behaving Badly and Two-and-a-Half Men are better by far, and they're pretty cringeworthy.

Masood is mooning after Carol Jackson. This is Masood, a practicing Muslim, although this seems to have been left by the wayside, as well as the fact that Masood wouldn't touch a single mother with four children by four different men and lax morals even in the wake of the menopause with a barge pole.

Tamwar had the most sensible line of the night: He still missed his mother, although Masood admits to only missing her occasionally.

It was, frankly, butt-clinchingly pukeworthy to watch Carol and Masood kabuki-dance, throwing sheep's eyes and blushing smiles at each other like a couple of shy high-school kids, determining who would ask whom on a date. Nice that Carol's got the innate approval of her margially retarded daughter, Bianca; it means free tutorials for her ungrateful children and all the curry they can eat.

This is not love's young dream. It's Lorraine's attempt at love and warmth by throwing together two people of similar age with nothing in common simply because they were both at loose ends. If nothing better can be drummed up for Lindsey Coulson or Nitin Ganatra, then these characters should just be discontinued.

Mas and Carol are not Fred and Ginger.

The Emasculation of Jay ...

Abi the Dough-Faced Girl, the Little Cock her cousin, and Jay have become bores. This is nothing new for Abi the Dough-Faced Girl or Cock, who is a pointless character whose very being detracts from Jay's screen presence. Jay has now been domesticated to a point where actually death was welcomed by Jamie Mitchell. The next thing we'll see is Jay in a pinny, doing the washing up. As things stand, this riveting storyline is a contest between him and Little Cock, the show's resident stereotypical workshy urban Negro youth, to see who works harder.

In a broader sense, Jay's complaining about Cock trying to boss him around. Could this be a subtle manifestation of white privilege? Unintentionally, I think it is.

Abi is just a crushing bore of an unpleasant girl. She should just leave with her mother. Jay used to be an interesting and edgy character. The worst mistake was pairing him with this doughgirl. She looks, acts and sounds like a twelve year-old.

The Big Bullies.

I hate Kat and Bianca.

I'm not a fan of Mr Lister, and I know he's supposed to be an occasional, blustering and comic figure, but he's also someone who's just doing his job. As much as Bianca has spent the past month wah-wah-wahing about how her boy was being bullied by Kane and the Gang, how "nuffink" was his fault and how everyone should help her wah-wah-wah, she indulges in full-scale bullying of someone who's simply doing his job. 

This isn't funny. Lister, out of the kindness of his heart and after the two spoke of their own family situation before Christmas, lifted his ban, which was part of her probation, from working on the Square or on Bridge Street. This is how she repays him. And not only that, she and Kat have openly and brutally bullied Tamwar - calling him weirdo, Kat taking him to her home for a bit of passive-aggressive bullying. Their behaviour tonight was nothing short of cruel - undermining his position with the market traders by labelling him a prat, mucking about with the joke sunglasses and filling his tea with salt.

People should try that tactic with them. And I wonder how smitten Masood would be if he saw Carol unjustly badger and berate Lister whilst harbouring the disgusting Kat and Bianca who were hidden in the cafe's loo. These are not some teenaged idiots like Lauren. We're talking about a thirtysomething and fortysomething, both of whom have children. It's no wonder Bianca's kids are rude and misbehaving, and I fear for Tommy, with that as an example. And, of course, it was all a joke when their livelihood is justifiably ripped from them for three weeks.

Actually, he was right to condemn the state of their stall. Anyone could easily have tripped over those cardboard boxes, and that was contravening Health and Safety rules.

I also wonder how attracted Masood would be to Carol if he knew her putrid daughter was responsible for bullying his son during working hours.

Yet another forced friendship that does nothing for either Kat or Bianca.

I'm still waiting for this journey of self-discovery Newman promised us in Kat's redemption; because it's almost May now, and all I see is a cold-hearted, mean and sniping skank bitch, who's always the victim, but never the perp.

Someone should have balls enough to call time on these two.

Bad episode,for all the wrong reasons.

Reading for Comprehension

Digital Spy should make this a requirement of anyone posting on their fora:-

New Rule: If you cannot read for comprehension, don't bother to post.

Why?

Consider the most recent revelation about Letitia Dean.

In a thread initiated about the Digital Spy article, the opening poster (shellbiggs08), opines:-

So the Tanya/Sharon thing was all her idea.

NO. It wasn't. If shellbiggs08 had bothered to read the article for comprehension, that person would have read Dean's quote thus:-

 When I talked to the bosses about coming back, I mentioned that I wanted Sharon to have a girl friend. Since Michelle Fowler back in the old days, I can't think of a female character she's been close to. So it's been nice to see her have a mate in Tanya.

At no point in that statement does Dean say it was her idea for Tanya to be Sharon's new BFF. All she said was that she wanted Sharon to have a girlfriend and that she hadn't had a close female friend since Michelle Fowler. She couldn't think of any remaining character, new or old, with whom she'd been close or with whom she could possibly have a friendship.

Considering Simon Head-up-the-Collective-Branning-Arse Ashdown was probably part and parcel of her character negotiations, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree in determining a new friend for Sharon.

On another note, shellbiggs08 implied by the title of the thread that - surprise surprise - Sharon was taking another break, which wasn't the crux of the article at all. Far more important was the fact that the actress is slightly more than discontent at the weakness purveyed by her character this time around, and she's not a happy bunny. She's due some time off, so she's basically told TPTB to sort Sharon out.

It's actually positive that a long-standing character is defending what she sees as damage to her brand. Maybe more should have spoken out - like Jessie Wallace.

Update: And for what it's worth, NOWHERE did it say ANYTHING about Coronation Street AXING John Michie. The minute the actor's character lit those rags in the cellar of the Rovers, he knew he had a limited shelflife. Such a professional as that would know the score. Read for comprehension and stop making your stories up. This is how rumours start.

Alfie and the Vic

Goodness knows, I'm no fan of Shane Richie's and I have no reason to defend him, but there's a thread on Digital Spy about actors holding producers to ransome, which is beyond stupid.

Let's get one thing straight. A lot of Richie's perceived "failure" as Vic landlord, on both occasions was down to circumstance and not the actor, himself.

When he has to step up to the plate, Richie delivers; it's just that the rest of the time, the writing for Alfie Moon is lame. During his first stint, he was bumped from the Vic to accommodate the great Leslie Grantham's rising from the dead - and that worked out very well, didn't it? Richie was hired by Louise Berridge specifically to front the Vic, and then almost immediately, in a panic attack at Coronation Street's sweeping the BSAs that year, he was removed as landlord because Grantham was back.

Also, Alfie and Kat, as a proper couple, never had a chance to be explored, because during this period, Jessie Wallace was either on suspension for bad behaviour or she was off pregnant.

Let's be brutally honest about Richie this time around: he's suffered because he was brought back - in a move endorsed by John Yorke - to front the Vic; but Bryan Kirkwood and his merry men and women in the writing room totally demolished Alfie's and Kat's characters. He went from a cheeky chappy with a resolve of steel and a dark side, to an abused doormat, whose wife is a serial cheat and an abuser who presents herself as an eternal victim. And at the same time that the Moons were brought back to front a newly-decorated Vic, the heart of the action of the show was moved from the Vic (traditionally the centrepiece of action in this programme) to Max Branning's front room, as we watched the show, under Kirkwood and more recently under Newman, morph into The Branning Show.

Now, Newman is intent on rehabilitating Kat, who was one of the first characters for whom she was responsible in creating. Kat was a much-loved character who left on an arc high and returned to be wantonly destroyed by the very programme who made her into an icon. She is spent; yet instead of rectifying a plethora of wrongs affecting the programme as a whole, Newman was intent on forcing the public to like Kat again, at the expense of many another character who deserved development.

Alfie and Roxy proved that that partnership worked, and it gave Alfie Moon a new lease on life. Yet in Newman's efforts to reunite Kat and Alfie, Roxy is made to be sacrificed.

It's not the fact that Richie is a bad actor. When called upon to turn a serious bent, he's one of the strongest actors in the show. It's just that lazy and weak writing has badly let this actor down.

As someone else pointed out, if Alfie were not in the Vic, who else is there? Sharon has been ruled out; indeed, she's another character who's been demolished by this writing room, possibly beyond repair. Phil isn't interested. Peggy has gone. Forget the Brannings or any permutation of their satellites - and, yes, vaslav37 the Obsessive, I'm talking about Cora the Bora; do we really want the Brannings dominating the forefront yet again?

As for the "new family," EastEnders tried once before introducing a new character as landlord of the pub. That venture failed so miserably, we ended up having Nick Cotton kill him off - or how many people don't remember Eddie Royle?

I'm for keeping Alfie in the pub. If I had my way, Jessie Wallace would get her marching orders, and I'd be doing more to move Rita Simons to the centre of the action. Her character badly needs developing.

Update: Proof positive that people cannot think critically is the insipid Digital Spy poster priscilla, who has a problem taking literally the fact that Roxy calls Alfie "granddad." FFS, it's a pet name, it has nothing to do with age. As pointed out Roxy is 35 and Alfie is 48, the same age difference which existed between Tiffany Mitchell and Grant Mitchell. In fact, both of Billy Mitchell's wives were far younger than Roxy is in relation to Alfie. As well, Kathy Beale, who was eleven years older than her second husband, Phil Mitchell, regularly called him "granddad," but that wasn't the reason their marriage imploded.

Roxy calls Alfie "granddad," because he was greying around the temples when she first met him; he calls her "peroxide," for obvious reasons. They are terms of endearment, which are far, far more original than the ubiquitous "babe."

Deal with it.

EastEnders: Plumbing the Depths - Review 29.04.2013

Even an Emmerdale reject (Paul Quiney) couldn't save this programme. It's back to the same old same old - that is to say, total awfulness.

This is the biggest problem with this show at the moment - it's only consistent in inconsistency. We are so used to such episodes as tonight's, an example of everything that's bad with the show, that when we're thrown a few crumbs of mediocrity, we grasp them like last straws and convince ourselves how good things are and how the corner's being turned.

Three episodes last week, which - in another day and time -would have been middling passing, are hailed as good. Then the week is finished off with mediocrity again.

Ava, a pointless character, is hailed as a godsend; the fabled "new family" is awaited with baited breath. Peter Beale returns looking like a poor man's Leonardo di Caprio and thousands of teenaged girls and Mute Banana on Walford Web's Bully Emporium, cream their collective knickers in anticipation.

Save the premature ejaculations. This show is bad. Thursday night didn't even cap 6 million viewers. EastEnders is no longer being compared with Corrie - and Corrie isn't at its best at the moment; it's being levelled with Emmerdale, so maybe Paul Quincey was doing his old soap a favour tonight; because this episode was high on the old fertilizer (which is a euphemism for being full of shit).

Sad to say it, but it isn't working, Lorraine. Such high hopes when you came in, to stauch the flow of viewers streaming away from Kirkwood's stuffing.

Nothing's changed, like the song says ...

First the bad bits ...

The Redemption of a Slut at the Expense of a Chav.

Let's take a drive through the old town
Back past the place where we met
Some things are hard to remember
Some things you never forget 

Lorraine Newman has worked on EastEnders for over twenty goddamned years. Does he have a memory problem, because I'm beginning to believe that some things are hard for her to remember - like Bianca used to run a market stall on her own. Shit, she even referenced it tonight.

She not only had that market stall, she ran it, herself, when she was little older than Lauren, and she was successful at it. She even incorporated some of her own designs on the stall and left to go to fashion college. Hard to believe it this time around, but Bianca used to be a pretty plausible businesswoman, as far as market trading goes. Now, she's presented as a near-retard, totally rude and behaving in an extremely unacceptable way with the public and any customer she might have. It's as if she is totally ignorant and stupid beyond belief.

On the other hand, Mother Superior Kat is the soul of discretion on the stall, with sales' and social skills anyone would envy, confident in her banter, a paragon of professional virtue. Here's a clip from Octorber 2010, when Kat the Queen Bitch returned with Little Bitch Stacey, and how they doused the Market Inspector, which enabled Stacey to lose/quit her stall.

Ah, but you see, that was Bryan Kirkwood's Kat; this is Lorraine Newman's redeemed Kat - ne'mind, we still don't know why she slept with Derek; ne'mind, that she's never taken responsibility for that venture, instead blaming everyone from Derek to Roxy to Alfie, himself; ne'mind, she's behaved like a totally immature, spoiled, skanky little bitch when she hasn't got her way around him; ne'mind that she's about to enter into a shitsucking scheme with Michael to deprive one woman of her child, even after another woman tried to deprive Kat of hers; ne'mind, that Kat actually played a monumental part in breaking up this woman's previous marriage as well.

This is Saint Kat, the Kat we're all supposed to love, the Kat some dumbass punters on Digital Spy like 

among others, seem to think it's au fait to restore a character to some magical point where she was twelve years ago. You can't go home again, and that is not character progression, that's regression. Kat's no longer the tart with a heart woman in her early thirties; she's a single mother, and an abysmal one, an eternal victim, who whines when she gets caught in a caper which is never her fault, but always someone else's. She's a fortysomething woman, who dresses like a streetcorner whore and looks like a man in drag.  The way she was dressed tonight, on the stall, on a working day in a cold spring with her tits half hanging out all over the place was disgusting.

We've had many people comment, and rightly so, about how various characters like Roxy are being sacrificed at the alter of Saint Kat's Redemption, and now we can add Bianca to the list. Bianca sacrifices what weary brain cells she has left to become a rude, aggressive chav-like retard, just so Kat can shine in a superior way.

Spare me this bullshit, please.

Two Fat Ladies.

One of the biggest problems this show has endured is the fact that probably the most iconic female character in its history, Sharon, has returned; but the writing for her has been worse than abysmal.

Why?

Because there appears to be no one in the writing room who "gets" Sharon. Sarah Phelps understood Sharon's character impeccably, but she's not there anymore. Tony Jordan perfectly understood her character, but he's not around either.

Christopher Reason and Rob Gittins were certainly around when Sharon was living on the Square in the 80s and 90s, as well as during the pithy Shannis years. But they don't seemto get the episodes which feature her.

Simon Ashdown definitely does not understand the character, or else he wouldn't have plopped her amidst the Branning family, with Jack for a fella and Tanya as her new BFF.

Once again, the question must be asked:

Why hasn't she even mentioned the names "Vicky" and "Michelle?"

As many have pointed out, this character looks like Sharon and sounds like Sharon, but she isn't Sharon. She's a completely new character.

Now we are about to begin a major storyline that first surfaced back in the autumn - Sharon's addiction to painkillers. I'm not talking about Tylenol or paracetamol. I'm talking about heavy-duty prescription drugs. 

There are two things which worry me about this storyline. First of all, for someone to get addicted to painkillers, usually, you experience pain which initiates your dependency. So, this means, Sharon must have been experiencing some sort of physical pain, severe enough to mean that some doctor, someplace, prescribed drugs for her malaise. This means something like back pain, or pain from some sort of injury. These aren't muscle-relaxants which double as drugs used to calm nerves (like valium). These are hardcore painkillers.

Secondly, the fact that Tanya used these drugs as her (her words) "cancer painkillers" is totally incongruous. Tanya had primary cancer, detected in its early stages. She took chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Yes, there are discomforts with these treatments - usually nausea with chemo, and some burning during radiotherapy - but pain, real pain,  is only suffered during secondary cancer, and secondary cancer is terminal.

Pain for terminal cancer is managed by diomorphine - controlled heroin. So Tanya wouldn't really be suffering pain from her cancer at all. Once again, this is a fallacy propagated by Eastenders. Also, why does Tanya even keep these drugs in the house if she has no further use for them? Doctors and health specialists tell you that once you've finished your course of cancer treatment and have been given an all-clear, either destroy the left-over medication you have or give it back to your healthcare provider. Shit like that lying about is dangerous.

Am I the only one who found Sharon's desperation near comic? I know addicts aren't above using people close to them in any way as a means of funding their addiction. (We've all seen Dot buy heroin for Nick). But this goes a long way to show the viewer how false was the friendship between Sharon and Tanya. And is Tanya so weak that she couldn't have forcefully told Sharon to piss off when she forced herself into her kitchen with some shit story about a bake sale for the school? How clear does she have to make herself for Sharon to understand that she had other things on her mind - chiefly, that she's noticed some of her cancer drugs have gone and thinks, thanks to the old grey hag (another man in drag, along with Sharon and Kat), that Lauren is indulging.

It was highly ironic to listen to Tanya and Cora the Bora, both functioning alcoholics, discuss Lauren's drinking problem, and not understanding that excessive drinking does lead to black-out situations, where the victim doesn't remember anything that happened after drinking a certain amount. Actually, it wasn't that long ago that Tanya suffered a black-out episode from drinking too much and woke up next to Phil Mitchell. And yet, are they in such denial that they rationalise Lauren's inability to remember the events from the previous evening to her nicking Tanya's painkillers, when the real culprit is throwing eggs around the floor in Tanya's kitchen and ordering her to go out and buy some more.

Tanya was either too distracted or too stupid to notice Sharon's desperately manic behaviour, which was badly written and even worse performed. From the moment she was frantically rummaging through her handbag in the cafe, you knew which road this storyline was going to take.

Odd, how EastEnders can make Sharon a desperate addict, but totally ignores Tanya's and Cora the Bora's problems, and will probably cure Lauren the Lip in just a week's time.

The Worst Thing(s) About EastEnders at the Moment.

Worst. Actress. EVER. In. EastEnders.

NICE GUY, SHAME ABOUT THE LACK OF TALENT.

AND THE MOUTH-BREATHING.

The most astounding thing about the Lauren-Joey romance is the fact that no one in their family bats an eyelid at their close consanguinal relationship. They are first cousins, and even though that romantic association isn't illegal, it's still icky and closely related enough to produce children who are genetically messed up. Tanya and Max accept it without compunction, and you'd think someone of Cora the Bora's generation would be squeamish, yet when the old grey hag spotted Lucy "comforting" the utterly unintelligible Joey in the cafe (probably because she couldn't understand a word he was saying), she lambasted Lucy for meandering onto Lauren's "territory" when she ought to have been congratulating Joey for removing his dick from the family's collective gene pool, but then poor whites most generally do inbreed.

How long has Jacqueline Jossa been on the show? Almost three years, coming up this autumn; yet no one's thought to tell her that this is television, luv; let the camera take the subtlety. This isn't the stage, where you have to overpronounce every word in a voice that's projecting to the back of a theatre that isn't there - only the microphones provided and a television audience who are put off by over-exaggerated vocal expressions, larger than life movements of the arms to indicate some unknown emotion and obsessive gurning.

Line of the night from Lauren the lip, shrilly spoken to Joey ...

HIIIIIIIIIIII-EEEEEEEEEEEEE.

And its purpose? Who knows, but one thing Jossa knows and is totally aware of at all times, and that's the camera on her. I've never seen an actress with less talent love herself more. And don't think it didn't go unnoticed tonight that, although she was playing Lauren Branning, she was trying to look like Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss in The Hunger Games.

It didn't work. You can look as much like an actress with talent as you want, if you don't have her talent, it's all worthless.

Go away. No one gives a shit about Lauren and Joey, and we give even less of a shit now about Lucy reverting to a type this actress doesn't fit and plotting with jealousy to break up a shitty relationship because she still has a thing for the wooden-headed prick of a male.

A few weeks ago, EastEnders actually insinuated something ingenuous - a budding friendship that just may have evolved into a relationship between Tamwar and Lucy. The most shallow-minded of viewers, who seem to be the favoured element of Lorraine Newman's audience, would have groaned at that, especially as they think Tamwar ugly and boring; but time was, this sort of slow-burning relationship would have worked and would have drawn audience support.

But Lorraine has made it abundantly clear that she likes pretty people together.

Queen of the Night to Prick of Darkness or Sociopath vs Psychopath.

Sociopaths and psychopaths share similar traits. The difference is that sociopaths are the way they are as a result of the environment in which they were nurtured, and psychopaths often inherit their condition. Sociopathy can be cured with treatment. Psychopathy cannot.

For all of you fangirls and bullybois being taken in by Michael's perceived devotion to Scarlett, she is just a means to an end. She is the object he needs to show Janine that he is the one who's still in control.

Of course, Janine is going to be uneasy around her child - she had it drilled into her head from the time she brought the baby home that she was an inadequate and unfit mother. Now, every time Scarlett cries, she is faced with this accusation. The moment the viewer saw Michael in McKlunkey's listening to Janine dealing wtih Scarlett, you knew Janine was going to find out about this situation, and you knew from Billy's look that she'd found the babycom. 

That was as illegal as Jack forging Roxy's signature on Amy's passport application, only worse.

I'm glad Janine pointed out explicitly in the presence of her solicitor and Michael's the games he played with her, both after Scarlett's birth and when she brought the baby home. Billy Mitchell and Tiffany Dean sat with her at the hospital more than Michael ever did, and once, Janine sent Whitney back to Walford to find Michael who was late for an appointment with the consultant, only for Whitney to find him packing his bags to scarper. And it's totally true about him avoiding the house on a daily basis. He spent most of the days lying to her about where he was and spending her money on luxury items.

The truth is that during her absence, Michael palmed Scarlett off on all and sundry until he conned Roxy into moving into his house. Scarlett now is a means of him staying in a house for which she paid and which she maintains. He has no meetings he's missed because of Scarlett. He palmed her off on various babysitters and swanned around in the pub, drinking.

Janine was right. She was ill after Scarlett's birth and after dealing with a very sick baby for several weeks, on her own. He did nothing but chip away at her self-esteem and her integrity. His treatment was the worst form of psychological and emotional bullying I've seen for a long time in a soap - not since Charlie Stubbs in Coronation Street. Whatever mommy issues he has and whatever anger he's feeling toward his mother, he's projectin onto Janine. Scarlett is just an object - and I'll say it again: ANY ASSHOLE WANTING THIS PSYCHOPATHIC PIECE OF SHIT TO GET CUSTODY OF THAT BABY IS SICK. WHO THE HELL WOULD WANT SOMEONE OF THE ILK OF ARCHIE MITCHELL TO HAVE CUSTODY OF A BABY?

One thing Michael doesn't know - precious few people cross Janine and come out of that vat of shit smelling like roses.

(And notice when Janine produced Michael's "bugging device" how quick he was to blame the insipid and vapidly stupid Alice, whose smirk on her face gets more slappable each day. I am waiting for Janine to bitchslap Alice and Kat in totally royal fashion.

She was the best thing about a bad episode.

(Janine Beats Alice in German)

EastEnders: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly - Review: 26.04.2013

According to Digital Spy, EastEnders is odds-on the bookies' favourite to come away from the BSAs next month with the Best Soap gong.

I hope not.

I know those awards given by public vote amount to nothing more than a glorified popularity contest and mean nothing in terms of quality and execution, but TPTB at the helm of the show are just arrogant enough and suffering from such a terminal case of headuparseitis ...

(Lorraine Newman)

that they just might think such an award might be evidence that what they're doing is fine and it's what the public want.

What frightens me is that the show just might win the award, and that would truly be a crime. The award would be won on the backs of such high-browed hyuck-hyuck viewers like the woefully semi-literate xTonix, who would watch the show if it were nothing more than the BBC test symbol, or the shipper-in-chief dan2008, who is the biggest apologist for EastEnders not to be on its payroll, and I'm still not sure he isn't on the payroll. Or IceDragon1 or Falling Piano or the notorious monalisa, any of that lot, plus the Walford Web bullyboi stalwarts Willie Wanker Mitchell Slutter (or whatever) Bex-the-man and other assorted creatures ... all of whom will find ways to vote multiple times in order to ensure an EastEnders win ... and a licence for Lorraine to carry on with her warm, fuzzy and bland poop, her teenfesta and beautiful people, her tripe.

Remember last year's after-party when Perry Fenwick admitted to being gob-smacked that EastEnders won the award, when he clearly thought Coronation Street would be the recipient?

The awful truth is that EastEnders shouldn't win the awary, and if they do, it's a sham, a betrayal of the show and of the fans who've watched since the beginning or at least for the past two decades.

And it will be a triumph for the brain-dead.

I thought it couldn't be done, and I was right. We've had three episodes of reasonably good quality, then the week is finished with the usual mediocrity - not entirely bad, but not the better quality of the rest of the week.

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

The Good.

Well, it's Janine, isn't it? Anything with Charlie Brooks is watchable, and thus far, her return has been spot-on. She's not a full-on pantomime bitch; she's still vulnerable, and she's being victimised and passively-aggressively bullied by her psychopathic husband and the doltishly naive Alice (whose face becomes more and more slappable with each episode.)

So besotted is she with Michael and his "rights," that she doesn't realised she's being played like a fiddle and strung up like a kipper. In short, she's being used. She's been being used all along, doing all the heavy work with his child - and really, who would trust someone as inexperienced as Alice with a small baby? She's had no dealings with infants or young children; indeed, she's a sheltered virgin, compared to all the other sluts-in-training ripping around Walford.

For anyone thinking otherwise, if you watch the toddler scene again, Janine isn't bored with the set-up at all, but she's tense and nervous under scrutiny and also vulnerable, recognising that Michael is doing exactly the same thing, albeit differently, as he did when she was on the Square before. Passive-aggressive bullying, marginalising her. In fact, I'll wager that this was the first time Michael had actually been to that group. It's something that he would entrust the insipid Alice to do, and if you notice, he's just holding the child, it's Alice who's doing all the interacting.

I felt sorry for Janine, the way her piece-of-shit husband and his creature were patronising her at the end of the toddlers' group, chipping away at her confidence around Scarlett. I hated Alice's puke-inducing nicknme of "Scarlie" and I loved Janine's put-down of her. And Scarlett's "itinerary"? Really? You cannot tell me that it's Michael who goes swimming with her or to "sign and mime?" 

Sign and mime? 

The kid is only ten months old. What the fuck is "sign and mime" for a ten month-old? And I would definitely not trust dippy Alice taking my infant swimming.

For anyone thinking Janine found that hard going because she's "not maternal," I beg to differ. She found it hard-going, because - like Jean with Ian the previous day - she recognised all the signs that Michael was manipulating her again.

I'll keep saying it - anyone who wants a psychopath to get full custody of a child is just sick, themselves. Michael is a psychopath. He isn't ever going to change. Never. Ever. And any child cursed with a parent like that is in serious trouble.

The biggest fool of all is Alice, who believes in his sincerity; but then she's the only person who regarded a father she hardly knew as a saint.

I'm glad Janine's got Billy in a position of trust, and I'm equally glad that Billy also knows how far he can go in that trust relationship. His scenes with Ian were great tonight, from  his "Mr Vader" line to his executive pose and "Impress me."

Either Ian was desperate, or he truly believed Billy's power capacity in his sales pitch about his restaurant. The look on his face when Billy closed the "deal," and then told him that he was almost 50% certain that Janine would okay the venture was classic. The ultimate irony of those scenes was that, usually, it's Billy who's come, cap-in-hand, to Ian mooching and begging a job or some favour. I'm reminded of the offhand and disdainful way Ian used to treat Billy when Billy worked for him on the stall, especially the year when Billy and Honey were about to get evicted from Mrs Patel's flat, and Billy was so destitute, he was actually stealing from Ian and Peggy. Now the shoe is on he other foot, and Billy's going to milk this situation. If nothing else, at least he got a free lunch, although his ploughman's didn't have any pickle.

The Bad ... Where Do I Begin?

Well, there's Max and Kirsty. Again. Kirsty's hair is beginning o annoy me seriously. There's too much of it, and it looks too dirty. So all this subterfuge was about them getting a flat and Max having to okay it with Tanya that he is living just across the Square from her?

They even almost got a blessing and a plant from The Magic Negro, who - guess what? - isn't teaching again today. Please, stop this insulting pretense that Ava the Rava is a Deputy Head or that she's even a teacher. All she does is waft about Walford all day, popping up here and there to spread either wisdom or venom, depending on the person on the receiving end.

Max only found out he'd got the flat that morning, so how did she surmise someone was moving in so she could buy a housewarming plant? And how rude - the minute she saw the occupants were Max and Kirsty, she leaves in a huff.

I truly don't understand this. She has not bonded with Tanya, nor does she identify with her in any way; and yet, she sits in judgement on Max Branning without knowing any of the details of that situation - the circumstances under which he met and married Kirsty? Does she not realise that Tanya is just as amoral as Max, except that she masks her amorality behind petty hypocrisy and self-victimisation?

Please. Who is this woman? She couldn't wait to apprise silly Lauren (see below) of the fact that Max and Kirsty had - shock horror! - got a flat. Why is she, and more to the point, why are the two spoiled Branning bitchbrats upset that Max has found a place to live and has chosen to live on the Square? He was a divorced man when he married Kirsty, and he can live anyplace he liked. They never had any problem with Tanya pitching up with gormless Greg to live on the Square across the way from Max and Vanessa, so why their reactions to this? Where did they expect Max to live? In a hole?

Jesus, these people are too full of themselves.

And speaking of teen angst ...

Oh ... goody goody gumdrops, Jay's finished Community Service! Let's have a party, a get-together in the Vic ...just for originality. And we'll meet at lunchtime, and The Magic Negro will be there drinking (alcohol, when she should be at school teaching or administrating).

Gosh, talk about variations on a theme. For a moment there, I thought I was watching a 1930s kidult move, as in "Let's put on a show!"

Somebody's got the message about Abi the Dough-Faced Girl. Her thighs and arse are massive, so now she hides her thighs with the biggest cushion possible and wears a wide-bottomed jacket over her wide bottom. EastEnders should do a fatfarm special, starring Morgan and Abi.

And since when does Jay merit a key to the Branning house? Or is Tanya now condoning him and Abi sleeping together in a house where her young child lives? I'm waiting for Abi to give up on her exams and become another teenaged bride who'll be divorced by the time she's twenty, when she's axed or Jamie Borthwick decides to try something else.

Lucy was working, run off her feet, in the cafe. But what were the other assholes doing? I thought Tyler with his ridiculous hat, had a market stall. In fact, I thought Kat and Bianca should have been on the stall, but Bianca kept screaming down the phone and Kat kept whining about having to do her bookkeeping and wanting to know if you have to pay taxes if you're skint. (Short answer? If you're self-employed, yes). Whitney's hours at her daycare centre are as haphazard as The Magic Negro's teaching, and Joey doesn't really seem to work anyplace anymore. If he works at the club, surely he'd be fast abed in the morning, having to do late hours.

Who knows and who cares? This gag-a-maggot storyline was just another excuse to showcase the abysmal non-talent of 

The. Worst. Actress. Ever. In. EastEnders.

Please, someone send this poor excuse of an actress to a masterclass to learn how to play a drunken person. I've seen all sorts of drunks in my time, but I've never seen one who whoops and yelps like Lauren does ....

Woooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Line of the night. Not. The only thing positive I'd say about this scene is that Lauren's drunkeness shows precisely how vile a person she is, because as the old saying goes, in vino veritas ... a person's real personality comes to the fore when they're drunk, and Lauren's line tonight in celebration of Jay finishing his community service - Hevvah Trot is forgot - was nothing short of despicable. The only thing missing from that scene was Shirley hanging around within earshot of that remark and nutting Lauren roundly about the head.

What a totally cruel, self-obsessed and mean remark to make.

As for Lucy's spiking of the drink ... well, anyone with any common sense would taste the alcohol in a drink that's been spiked, especially when a double shot of the stuff had been put in the lemonade. Even insipid Alice, who was a teetotal when Lucy spiked her drink last year (spiking drinks seems to be Lucy's particular party piece), should have noticed that her soft drink tasted suspiciously different than normal; but this is EastEnders, and I suppose the writers are as stupid as the characters they portray.

I know we're supposed to be Team Lauren the Lip in this one, but I'm glad Lucy did that, if for nothing else than, as I said above, it showed Lauren in her true colours and made all the other numpties, who should be shitting themselves at the thought of receiving their P45s and UB40s, an excuse to distance themselves from this social pariah; but then Lucy only did it because she's jealous that Lauren's fucking Cousin Joey.

Joey's line:

Laurr-arrggh Ah caydodis. (Lauren, I can't do this) ...which should mean: Lauren, I can't go on fucking you because you're my cousin and that's wrong. It's creepy and sick.

Ach, who am I kidding? It doesn't mean that at all, it just means he can't be around a stinky, drunken sodding little spoiled bitch any longer.

Good. Does that mean he's going to leave? Maybe he can ride the other wooden plank known as Tyler out of Walford?

I guess this is the beginning of Lauren's big drinking issue storyline at which we'll all be riveted. Not.

The Ugly - Kane, Bianca's Voice and Another Piece of Retconned Shit.

I find it hard to believe Harry Rafferty is a model. I find it even harder to believe he calls himself an actor. This guy has got a seriously disturbing face, as well as no acting talent. And why does he talk like a black kid? Was Kane originally supposed to be black and was re-cast as white at the last moment in a fit of specious political correctness suffered by Lorraine Newman and masqueraded as the vapours? I wonder, because when he tried to denote a soupcon of emotion, quoting his "it costs nothing to be polite" line his mother always said, he did so in a strong West Indian accent; and Kane isn't even bi-racial. (Nor is Ava the Rava for that matter, but EastEnders banks on the viewers' collective stupidity.)

The tension stoked in last night's episode evaporated into nothing tonight. A real menace like Kane wouldn't have thought twice about knifing Liam for the grass he was considered to be. The fact that he thought the police would even believe a retraction of Liam's statement wasn't protracted under duress was totally lost on this retard, and his interest in Liam seemed more psycho-sexual than anything else.

Of course, the climax (pun intended) of the entire vignette and, indeed, the storyline, itself, was all about Bianca. It was her reaction, her manner of dealing with the situation and how the denouement affected her. And that was cheesy and second-rate. Again, it was a showcase for the infamous Patsy Palmer scream, as she lunged at Liam's attacker. Message: Bianca is the feral mother who protects her young. Did she not stop to think that a no-mark like Kane would be so familiar with the system that he could play it to the point that she could have been done for assault, and she, being on licence, would be sent back to prison?

And now for the big retcon moment. Bianca stated tonight that Ricky never once came to see her when she was in prison the last time.

That is a blatant, blatant lie, and Carey Andrews wants to heave up off her lazy arse and fucking do some research from the archives - from last JUNE, I might add. When Ricky returned for Janine's wedding, bringing Tiffany and Morgan in tow, he told Janine that he'd been to the prison to visit Bianca several times and that they were getting along better. Yet tonight, she specifically said that Ricky never bothered to visit, and that as far as he was concerned, his attitude to the children was "out of sight, out of mind" and even implied that Ricky wanted to see Liam more than Liam wanted to see Ricky.

Well, here is proof that Ricky visited Bianca - his words, she "lets him visit her now" (4:30 mark) and this is from June 2012:-

And if it has to be repetition for emphasis, once again, here's Ricky's departure episode from January 2012, complete with his full distress at leaving his children, especially Liam (from the 6:00-minute mark):-

OK, I realise that it might tax a low-information viewer's intelligence to remember something from 15 months ago, but someone like a professional writer should be au fait with a significant moment in the show's history. For all he was gormless, Ricky Butcher was an important part of EastEnders' folklore and the scion of an iconic family. But there really is no excuse for writer or viewer not to remember something from 10 fucking months previously.

The reality of this show at this point is that the lazy writing room, signed off by Simon Ashdown and Lorraine Newman, write tripe, more than often making up background, irregardless of recorded fact, as they go along to fit the storyline and the character's circumstances. And they do it, because they can. Because the viewing public who still loves this cack haven't a collective braincell to rub together and don't even know what critical thinking is. They can't fathom a character can be a good person with bad traits or a bad person showing some sort of good. They haven't the capacity to recognise that Phil Mitchell can show remorse, that he can show restraint; that Max Branning is capable of loving his children and showing compassion, but his character flaws prohibit him from doing it in a purely conventional way; that Janine can really care for her family and see that they are provided for or even recognise that she's basically an insecure person with massive trust issues, instead of the pantomime "evil Janine."

Because of this, not only is it easy for the writers to retcon at will, it's also easier for them to present formerly nuanced characters as one-dimensional props. Alfie Moon originally had a dark side to him and wasn't above smacking his wayward wife. Roxy Mitchell had a wry sense of humour and some wicked one-liners. Bianca was once intelligent enough to run a business on her own and win a place at fashion college. Now she's the village idiot and a rampant chav with no modicum of commonsense.

Thank goodness James Forde has left. I would reckon that if Liam returns (and please let this be the beginning of an exodus of a plethora of needless teenaged characters), he'll return with a new head and played by someone closer to Liam's real age of fourteen and not someone old enough to be classed as an adult. But Bianca's last shrieked, stage-managed line, "We won!" is something I hope isn't shrieked by anyone connected with this programme next month at the British Soap Awards.

Because after such an abysmal year, such lazy writing, a plethora of such unlikeable characters  in whom the thinking public find it hard to invest any interest or emotion, they simply don't deserve anything but a kick up their collective arse to do better.

And even that's doubtful.