Branning Central: The Start of Something Big - Review 16.04.2013

Poor Ray is toast
Poor old Ray is toast
They went and axed a player
'Fore he offered the most

He was retconned as you know
But that's normal in this show
Epic fail once again

Poor Ray has left
He's packed up and left
They have an ethnic quota
That is surely bereft

The Rava and her son
Are clearly Newman's ones
And husband Sammie too

Do we give a shit?
We don't give a shit
We'd like a bit of drama
And a show that was a hit

I never thought I'd say
That Corrie nowadays
Is the soap that's really good.

Isn't it a coincidence that TPTB and the cowardly Newman left it until Cornell S John had been cast as tje latest ethnic character to fill a quota Ava's long-lost other half and that casting had been announced? Chucky Venn's departure - and make no mistake about it, Venn was sacked and sacked to accommodate John's arrival - marks the departure of yet another male character from the 25-55 age demographic. OK, John replaces him, but the viewers knew Ray, they were familiar with him, and he was a character who was wantonly cast and then left underdeveloped until it had reached the point where he was little more than a rank stereotype.

Chucky Venn is an accomplished actor. But wait, say the numpties creaming their knickers on Walford Web Bully Emporium and Digital Spy, Cornell S John is a well-known actor.

Two words: Jamie Foreman.

It matters not how well-known or accomplished an actor is, if the writing is shite, they'll be shite as well. That's a proven.

In the meantime, it's same shit, different day.

This episode was one which, I'm sure Newman thinks is the start of something big ... Well, Amy did speak.

(Hey, Alfie and Kat could sing this).

And now, some observations on tonight's episode. Let's start at the bad end.

The. Worst. Actress. Ever. On. EastEnders.

In case you're in any doubt about her identity, here's her picture ...

Here's her acting technique ...

For every line
Gurn, gurn, gurn
There is a comic
Face to pull

And a shouting
Fest accompanied
By gesture

A gurn for a smile
A gurn for a frown
Words shouted out loud
All other sounds drowned
Gestures of great wide expanse
All done to hide the fact there is no talent.

Just put these words to this tune and they'll run through your head each time you see Jacqueline Jossa thrust at us on the screen by Newman and Co.

As if it's not enough, we've got to suffer the full force of the Brat Pack tonight and all its incumbent talent - Joey and his awful diction and mouth-breathing ...

Tyler, with his beer gut and flat hat (and equally unintelligible offerings), and Whitney the Walford Mattress. 

This lot of cack stay on whilst older actors leave.

Of course, all this tonight was a the start of something big ... Lauren's much-touted drinking problem. EastEnders has been stringing this chicken along for such a long time that the egg's gone rotten.

Yes, Lauren's got an alcohol dependency problem. She's not a binge drinker, she's an alcoholic - and there are several different shades of alcoholics. Yes, it manifested itself seriously when her selfish, stupid mother entrusted her with her cancer cold secret and decided not to have any treatment, but Lauren's learned from an early age, from that mother, that alcohol is the answer to any problem, any anxiety, any loneliness, any cheerfulness a person might have. She grew up thinking a wineglass was a natural part of Tanya's hand. In truth, if Tanya drank whilst she breast-fed Lauren, Lauren was hooked on booze from a baby.

Tanya and her sometimes-younger-sometimes-older (depending on the writers) sister Rainie, cultivated their alcohol dependencies at the smelly feet of their rancid old hag of a mother.

In short, it's a generational issue, and to be properly addressed, the show has to use all generations contributing to Lauren's dependency. Instead, this will be a YOOF storyline designed to make people feel sorry for poor, pitiful Lauren and to get her back on fuckfesting her cousin Joey, like the true piece of white trash they are.

But the question is, who - apart from the prepubescent fanbois and lobotomied possessors of one brain cell like the unfortunate Digital Spy commentator xTonix (hyuck hyuck) - actually likes Lauren? A more selfish, more self-centred, more entitled, generally unlikeable ingenue never ever existed in the history of the show.

Lauren offers nothing positive. She is a spoiled and lazy brat. She's rude and thoughtless. Why the hell she's bothered about her father's current wife being pregnant (if she is) is beyond me. Max and Tanya are divorced. He's remarried again, as had Tanya when she married Greg Jessop. Is there some great unwritten rule that says Tanya can remarry to prove a point (and then fall in a vat of shit), but Max must remain single, celibate and worshipping at the altar of Queen Tan? Max and Kirsty can have as many kids as they want.

It's simply no business of Tanya's, and it's certainly no business of Lauren's.

This little bitch was well out of order in what she said to Kirsty tonight, as well as being wrong. Max is actually pretty loyal to his children. His relationship with Bradley as a child was destroyed by Tanya's demands and Rachel's refusing him access. If Tanya hadn't wantonly got pregnant with Lauren, Max would probably have stayed longer, if not forever with Rachel. Max doesn't get women pregnant and dump them. That's not his style - although, granted, this relationship with Kirsty is his first where the woman wasn't pregnant before he married her.

And as for Max leaving a relationship, he never does that unless he's banned. Rachel banned him from seeing Bradley, so he took his teenaged mistress and left the area (which suited Tanya). And every time there's a ructure with Yummy Mummy, either she or Lauren and Abi ban him from Walford. Perhaps if this worthless piece of teenaged flesh were sober long enough, she could realise that her banishment of her father back in 2011 resulted in Kirsty coming into their lives. 

So let's blame Lauren.

Jossa can't do drunks. And her acting technique in general consists of shouted lines, exaggerated gestures so extreme they'd be out of place on stage, gurning faces, with emphasis on her collagen-enhanced upper lip, and a consciousness of the camera. She really fancies herself as a Jennifer Lawrence clone, but she's got none of Lawrence's talent.

Lazy, untalented actress, who plays a totally unlikeable character.

Lauren needs a slap, and I was hoping Kirsty would oblige her, and - guess what? - Lauren finding out another "Branning secret" and letting it slip to Tanya.

Well, I hope Tanya's leaving involves the discovery of another "Branning secret" - the fact that she tried to bury Max alive.

Observations: EastEnders fattens women. Kat's piling weight on. A few weeks ago, I noticed the bulges around the midriff, and now her face is noticeably fuller. But why was she hunkering down in the Vic, earwigging Kirsty's conversation with Lauren the Lip and cackling like the witchbitch she's become? Kudos to Kirsty for telling her to mind her own business. The skank comes in for change and stays to scoff, earwig and drink. How to run a business financed by your ex-husband. Bitch.

And Tanya is a real crapshit mother. Yes, a parent's relationship changes as a child grows up, but Tanya's always been pushing the girlie-girlie let's-be-friends meme, especially with Lauren. I actually hated the way she told Lauren not to flash the earrings she bought her as a present about because she didn't get Abi anything. What sort of mother says that about a child? Max and Tanya are so caught up in their collective traumas that they only care about what's happening with their kids when it suits them - usually when it's too late.

A Tale of Two Avas.

Remember when Tanya went to Ava's leafy, suburban school to find her? Remember when Ava returned Tanya's purse? Remember what Ava was like then?

I'll tell you: she was a well-spoken, soft-voiced, sensible professional, who seemed to have common sense.

That was Original Ava, when she was only supposed to be included in five episodes. And remember when Tanya asked her if she had any children, she demurred and said she had enough children with the ones she taught.

Second-Stage Ava, or Ava the Permanent Character, AKA Ava the Rava, now known as The Magic Negro, speaks with guttersnipe Estuary English, uses bad grammar regularly, lived on a sink estate, screeches like a fishwife, swans about the Square during the day when she should be teaching and, although she offers sage advice to others, she doesn't have very good common sense, herself.

Oh, yes ... and she has one little cock of a son, who's one of the biggest racial stereotypes of black males ever to appear on this show. His presence is an indictment of the white privilege and ignorance of the people running this show.

Tonight, Ava came home to find Cock and the Old Grey Drunken Hag playing cribbage. I guess Cora the Bora was trying to make up lost time by inculcating Cock with his white heritage, telling him about playing cribbage with her old gran - his great-great grandmother.

Sonny, if you even presented yourself to your great-great grandmother, she'd beat you to a crisp with the broom she traveled around on, because you would have been one step lower on the social rung ladder than she was. That's the white heritage Cock should be learning - that he wouldn't ever be a part of Cora the Bora's world, so stop pretending.

Cora is arrogant in and of herself, to think she can force her presence on Ava the Rava by means of her dimwit, unintelligible son. Cora is not Ava's mother. She is the woman who gave birth to her. Cora's mother is the woman who raised her from an infant, but knowing Lorraine Newman, this will probably be developed into something warm and fuzzy and loving, when many times, things don't work out between adoptees and their birth parents. It would be interesting to know if Ava's parents are alive. And I'd be as wary of having my son associate with his devious and degenerate old hag as I would my daughters. She's done no one any favours.

It seems that Ava the Rava's managed to furnish her newly rented flat in style, complete with expensive flat-screened telly as well. Maybe she did have insurance, after all; but maybe this is just EastEnders being unrealistic. Example: Ava had returned home to find Dexter, who said Phil had shut the Arches early. For what it's worth, teachers - especially Deputy Head teachers - don't swan off home in the middle of the afternoon or earlier. As this occurred roughly about the same time as Lauren was getting soused in the pub (i.e., lunchtime), that's even more implausible that a teacher would swan home for lunch. Teachers and heads arrive at the school before students in he morning (by at least 8 am) and leave after the students have gone (not really before 4 or 5 pm). EastEnders' writers really are an ignorant bunch, and therein lies the problem.

I loved Ava's new common-and-garden accent.

See ya la'urgh.

As if.

Nice to know she's inherited the Cross cowardice. Cora the Bora is too arrogant to think Ava wouldn't want to see her, but if that's the case, why did she even move to Walford, much less to the Square where her birth mother lives?

Of course, this has got to be the start of something big ... the coming of Uncle Sam (no, not the Americans, just another racially stereotyped black male character ...)

Children Should Be Seen and Not Heard.

The Simon Factor lives on. It's bad enough that we have Tiffany's awful cheekiness foisted upon us as cuteness, now we have to contend with fey Dennis and NuBobby Beale.

NuBobby is of the Simon Barlow mould, Cockney-style. He talks, he walks, he does both at the same time and is conscious of the camera. He also wobbles his head and makes funny faces ... gurning again! Do stage schools teach gurning as a matter of course now?

He's head of his stage school class, and I preferred Alex Francis's gentler, nicer Bobby, with a smidgeon of mischief. For all I know, this kid could be a midget in disguise, as in the Munchkins ... (Well, if the BBC won't play it, I will).

Then we have dancing Dennis, who's almost seven but behaves like a three year-old and talks to his teddy bear. I blame Sharon. She talks to him as though he were still a toddler. Once again, bad writing; and someone, please, get that kid a haircut. I cannot believe any mother would allow a boy to waft about with hair down almost to his shoulders and hanging in his eyes.

Yet another stage school kid - the male equivalent of Shirley Temple, clasping wooden Jack and wanting Jack to be his dad. Just have Phil dig out Old Ben's magic tap shoes and Jack will be forgotten. Or maybe NuBobby the Midget, who's not above a bit of vandalism, might have lifted Dorothy's (not Cotton or Branning) ruby slippers. He'd be satisfied with those.

So Jack's left for a bit, going on a trip. I'd love to know where. At least he remembered to say goodbye to Amy and wonder of wonders, a miracle occurred ...

AMY SPEAKS.

For the first time ever Amy speaks. One word ... "yes" ... but four times. So she can handle dialogue. That was easily the high point of the episode.

Yes, one wonders where Jack's bound. It would be nice if he were going to visit Penny or to re-connect with Richard (just happening to let it drop to Grant Mitchell that his ex-wife is back in town and that Jack almost married her.

I actually thought Phil was right tonight when he came to pick up Sharon's things from Jack's flat, and Jack ventured to wonder how Dennis was - not about Sharon, but about Dennis. Phil told him he gave up any rights he had to Dennis when he humiliated his mother at the altar. Quite right. But I wanted Phil to remind Jack that he had other children about whom he should be concerned, not just Dennis.

The big question is why Jack gave Sharon the key to his flat and told her in the note to "go home" and stay there until he returned. WTF? She's peripatetic enough, and her kid needs stability. What's wrong with staying at Phil's?

Obviously, the Children's Hour portion of this programme was the start of two somethings really big ...

In Ian's case, we now know he's thinking about renting the Moon's old emporium (in which they squatted) and turning it into a restaurant - as if there aren't enough nosh places on the Square - the cafe, the Vic (although I suppose Jean's sausage surprise might take its place on the menu again), McKlunkeys and now whatever this is.

I can't figure out if Bag o'Bones Beale is genuinely concerned with Ian going into a business venture of his own because of his recent mental health issues or if it's because she likes calling the shots in his life. I wanted to smack her anorexic cheeks (on her face) the way she cattily dismissed Ian's ambitions as pipe dreams. Who, she scoffed, would finance his venture.

Don't you worry, Lucy ... a better woman than you'll ever be is at hand. Come Thursday ...

Can't you imagine Walford's own Queen of the Night slapping Lucy Beale down like this?

The brouhaha with DamienDen was nothing more than the heralding of Sharon's start of something big ... addressing her addiction issues at last.

And I suppose Jack's start of something big is gearing up for him leaving whenever. 

Best Bit of the Night: Shirley

If Newman's production team have done anything right thus far, it's the repair and restoration of Shirley. This is Shirley Round One, when she first popped up in Walford - a brilliantly sarky and streetwise stand-alone character replete with one-liners and hidden warmth.

I've always pushed the Shirley-Denise friendship. As Pat and Kathy bonded over their shared experiences as wives of the late Pete Beale, then Shirley and Denise share the Kevin experience. Shirley attracts thuggy-but-dim street youths like horses attract flies, but she's brilliant in dealing with them - from the CCTV incident to dousing the little toerags with their own fizzy drink and chips.

Loved her line "Would you like chips with that?" as a parting shot, as well as her pinching half a loaf of Denise's cheapo bread. Still, Shirley and Denise in the Minute Mart - although didn't Denise turn down Tamwar's hours to Masood sometime ago, saying all new staff had to go through a regional office interview? Yet she's offered Shirley a job off the whack. I'm not complaining. I'm just glad they've moved Shirley out of self-destructive mode and away from the Mitchells.

Just another filler episode. Nothing to see here.