Lauren Week: The Worst Family EVER - Review: 31.05.2103

Watchable episode, but not good. Not good at all.

The Branning dynamic is shrinking. I can't ever remember a family thrust to the forefront of the programme, grown beyond proportion to the point of taking over most of the Square, who's been so disliked and viewed so pejoratively.

The Brannings are nothing positive at all. They are entilted, scrubbed-up, hypocritical pieces of poor white trash, booted, suited and convinced they represent the Middle Class. They are amoral, self-obsessed, selfish, materialistic, thuggish bullies, and they deserve every piece of bad luck that ventures their way. They are abysmal parents and thankless children.

I am glad their dynamic is being culled, with Derek's death and the impending departures of Tanya and Jack, the biggest male slut ever in the history of the show.

The door is hanging open for more departures - Abi the Dough-Faced Girl, who's turned into a bossy, demanding little bitch; Lauren the Lip, the single most disliked ingenue in the show's history, who offers nothing except good looks but who is rude, lazy and entitled, besides being played by 

THE. WORST. ACTRESS. EVER. IN. EASTENDERS.

... who also gurns and calls it acting; Joey, a hulking mouth-breather, played by an actor so bad he makes Liam Bergin's Danny Mitchell look talented; Cora the Bora, an interfering, drunken old witch, who thinks she's wise, especially when she's in her cups ... and the newest Branning satellites: The Magic Negro, Sam the Sham and their Little Cock.

Ava the Rava is the Magic Negro who makes an ethereal living walking the streets of Walford and whose cornrows grow bigger by each episode. If Sam the Sham's smile gets any wider, pretty soon I'll expect to see him tug his forelock and obligingly bow, muttering, Yes massah, before bursting into a chorus of Old Man River ...

Can you imagine Sam the Sham singing this about the Thames?

No, neither can I ...

And finally, the strutting Little Cock can leave as well. The acting profession, always one which promoted good pronunciation and enunciation of lines, is ill-served and the BBC in ill-repute with its flagship show offering such dire examples of the acting industry as Tony Discipline, David Witts and Khali Best, all untried, inexperienced and utterly unintelligible.

The Slaters were John Yorke's wet dream of a family, which sputtered to nothing within ten years. They've now been absorbed by the Moons. The Ferreiras and the Millers came and went without a whimper. The Brannings are slowly disintegrating and could be further dismantled, sooner, rather than later.

The awful truth is that there have never been families who've outlasted the families introduced in the original and second stint era of EastEnders, remnants of which still remain with the show - the Beales, the Watts family, the Butchers and the Mitchells. These families may be down on numbers and they may be about to be strengthened; but there still remains of them, some of the most iconic characters on the programme.

Say what you will about Ian, Sharon, Janine and Phil, but they are the most watchable and history-laden characters on the show, and it's pathetic how ill-served this writing room has been toward them at various times.

The Brannings? Bah! 

Losers.

The Brannings Think Their Shit Doesn't Smell.

It does.

And it was rank tonight.

Lauren wasn't drunk when she walloped Lucy, and it doesn't make any difference under the law, that Lucy provoked her. How did she provoke her? Simply by observing that Joey seemed to prefer Lucy to Lauren because Lucy wasn't related to him and she also wasn't a drunk.

Harsh observations, that's true, but no need to respond the way Lauren did, and then further the incident by committing criminal damage. When she hurled that jar of sugar through the cafe window, she did so with some force. Something like that, as well as the shattering glass becomes a lethal weapon. What if that had hit someone like Dot or one of the small children?

And Max was wrong. This wasn't a schoolyard fight or handbags at twenty paces. Lauren hit Lucy so hard that she was knocked to the ground. It takes some strength, plus a pretty hard punch to achieve that. Lucy could have hit her head on the pavement and then Lauren would have been liable for further damage. And even if Lucy's guilt-tripped by Max's passive-aggressive bullying enough not to press charges, there still remains the fact that Lauren willfully did criminal damage to Lucy's property, which is also illegal. But, hey, what's a little shattering glass amongst friends?

If my friend had decked me, bloodied my nose, bruised my face and hit me so hard I was knocked to the ground, she wouldn't be my friend anymore. If she'd chucked an object through the front window of my business in the middle of the afternoon on a busy day, when customers were scattered around inside, she'd be more than an enemy, she'd be on the ass-end of a legal suit.

But this is Walford, where Lola Pearce plows a car through Ian's chippy window and gets a job there. So Lauren, who is so entitled that she lashes out in arrogant reaction to the police, is let off scot-free too.

Here's an interesting dichotomy, which is the real problem the Branning girls have, especially Lauren.

Lauren constantly points out to her parents that she's an adult. They can't impose a curfew on her or prohibit her from seeing her friends. She is legally entitled to drink. She can also drive a car, work and pay taxes. Living at home, an adult, with her parents, she should have been expected to contribute to the family income, if she had decided she didn't want to pursue any further education, and doing that, she should have paid her parents for room and board.

Instead, she does nothing, expects to be treated like an adult, bring her fuckbuddy cousin home to share her bed, all the same time expecting her parents to sub her money to fund her lifestyle. So whilst she wants to be considered an adult, she wants to be cared for and mollycoddled like a child.

Her putrid, hypocritical mother has accomplished this with both daughters and has even managed to inculcate a broad materialistic streak in Abi, along with the attitude that any man romantically involved with Abi from her onwards, should be expected to provide for her materially and to hand money over to her on demand.

But being an adult comes with consequences. If you commit a crime and are caught, you are treated like an adult by the police, as the desk sergeant reminded Tanya tonight.

And Lauren's behaviour has been learned sub-consciously by inadvertantly observing her asshat parents. Tanya was rich - shouting the odds at Max for his behaviour at the police station, when she was being belligerant, demanding, entitled and rude to the desk sergeant on her arrival.

It also amazes me how, whenever Tanya and Max are apart, for whatever reason, she seeks to exclude him from their children's lives. When Greg was showering her with money, she was encouraging the girls to go to Greg instead of Max, and even encouraged Oscar to bond with Greg. When Max left to give her space after the Stax reveal and after she tried to murder him in the most horrendous way possible, she proceeded to lie to her daughters, even attempting to rid the house of Max's clothing and pictures as if he were dead. She contrived a situation,when caught in adultery with Max, whereby Max got the blame for the entire deed, and she stood by and tacitly condoned her daughters' presumptuous demands that Max leave the area.

Whenever they're apart, Tanya not only excludes Max from anything concerning their children, she encourages the girls to exclude him as well. It's all right for Tanya to divorce Max and marry Greg Jessop, but Max, as a single man, isn't allowed to marry again?

The truth is self-evident again tonight - that Tanya is incapable of coping without Max, and when Max is with her, his attempts to instill discipline into the kids are undermined by Tanya, who, basically, wants the girls to like her and side with her. How pathetic.

She deliberately chose not to tell Max about Lauren's latest misbehaviours, instead pushing money on Lauren every time she behaved civilly as if she were some sort of retard with behavioural problems instead of a nineteen year-old woman. Even hearing that Lauren had been arrested, she willfully decided against telling Max, even to the point of telling a bare-faced lie about not having time to call him, although she had time to arrange childcare with Cora and drop him by the launderette.

And at the copshop, their argument centred, rightfully, on Max not being informed of his daughter's arrest and Tanya lying her fat arse off and trying to justify her actions and make Max look worse than bad, instead make him look as though this were his fault.

But in the end, Lauren gets let off the hook again ... first by her mouth-breathing cousin, with whom she wants to inbreed ...

... who stands around tonight and does his usual party piece of hanging his head to one side and gaping his mouth open. Not attractive. Not even smart. And did you understand his dialogue?

Thought not.

Then, she gets let off the hook by gormless Lucy Beale, after receiving a masterclass in passive-aggressive bullying from Max via the tale of one of many of Max and Jack's childhood fights. This wasn't a schoolyard tussle. It was a vicious punch leveled at another person, basically over an ineffectual undeserving male and the hard home truth that Lauren is a drunk. If the punch can be forgiven, then damage done to someone's place of business can't. That was a wanton criminal act, but Lauren gets let off with a caution, and gets hugs and kisses from Mummy and Daddy, telling her everything is going to be all right ... That's it. Paper over the cracks an kiss it better.

Special mention tonight to two characters about whom I've felt to be particularly dislikeable lately, who came up trumps tonight - Abi and Kirsty.

Abi found some common sense and decency tonight, first stepping in to break up the devolving free-for-all between her parents, and then calling Tanya out for the liar she was, berating her for not having called Max, and not buying for one instant the lie that Tanya didn't have time to call Max. I'm surprised a vicious bitch like Tanya didn't douse Abi with her hot tea, as she's so wont to foist beverages over her children when they don't see or do things her way.

And secondly to Kirsty, first for telling Max about the situation that occurred with Lauren, and then for taking Tanya's uncouth and ill-mannered rudeness on the chin at the copshop, before making Tanya look small by showing her what a dumbass she was:-

You can hate me all you want, Tanya. I can live with that; but don't blame Max for this. It's the children who'll suffer.

And they have. Tanya is an abysmal mother, and all of this behaviour is down to her insipid jealousy of Kirsty being Max's wife and her having been the other woman in his life, yet again.

Everything Tanya's ever achieved in her life, she's achieved by her sexual association with a man. There's a name for a woman like that. As for Kirsty, she doesn't try to be something she isn't ... except when she's lying about her pregnancy.

Awful family, the lot of them.

Suicide Blondes.

Well, Shirley and Sharon, bonding, of course ...

It seems TPTB are doing a little crow-eating and damage limitation with Sharon's character lately ...

Lorraine Newman with Her Lunch at the Elstree Cantine

Letitia Dean, effectively, announced she was taking a "little break" and politely requested that the people responsible for fucking her character up, restore Sharon to health by making her the strong person she once was, again ... and also by specifying that she really thinks Sharon and Shirl could make it as friends.

Tonight's gabfest in the front room of the B and B saw a burgeoning and grudging respect evolving, at least on Shirley's part. Shirley thought Sharon at first was an ageing blonde slapper? Well, what's Shirley when she's at home?

Shirley still thinks she knows Phil better than Sharon, but she doesn't. The portrayal of Phil as someone who took everything Shirley had to offer and then gave back nothing in return was accurate, but then that applied only to Shirley. When she pushed Sharon to admit that Phil threw her out on her tod after making one mistake, all Sharon offered in reply was that her mistake was a big one.

Shirley also only knows Sharon and her association with Phil from her jealous assumption of Sharon's character before she'd even met her. For years, she'd known that Sharon was the woman Phil had loved above all others, but who was elusive from his grasp. She was jealous of the idea of Sharon, knowing that Phil would never let his addictions slip up in front of her or that he'd ever cheat on her. Shirley also thinks that Sharon's bent over backwards to accommodate Phil throughout the ages the way Shirley did in her relatively short association with Phil.

She couldn't be more wrong.

It's always been Phil bailing Sharon out, and it's always been Sharon walking back from Phil - returning to Grant, leaving Walford ultimately, refusing to consider marrying him and adopting a child. Phil has rescued Sharon emotionally from Grant, he's even revealed the treachery behind Chrissie, her step-mother and got the Vic back under Sharon's control.

Sharon's given Phil relatively little in return. Please, shut up about Saint Dennis. Whatever happened between him and Phil, Dennis, an adult, sealed his own fate by making the wrong decision. That wasn't Phil's fault, that was Dennis's.

The truth is, whilst Phil has loved Sharon practically all his adult life, Sharon - whilst she's fond of Phil - only loves him when there's no better option about. Her first question when she landed back in Walford was the whereabouts of Grant. And believe you me, should Sharon and Phil get back together (and they will), and Grant stroll back into Walford, Sharon would bed Grant in a New York minute.

So while Shirley whines about the many injustices Phil has afforded her and assumes Sharon's received the same treatment, Sharon keeps schtum, wisely. She knows different. She knows that maybe, just maybe Phil also felt she was treating him as a rebound occurrence and using him as a crutch. She's got a lot of fence-mending to do there, and Shirley is wrong.

Nice quirky friendship developing there, especially Sharon sounding like the old Sharon when she archly remarked that she doesn't quite know what to make of Shirley yet.

Welcome back, Princess. It's been a long time coming.

A Menopausal Minute.

Nowt wrong with Carol that a bottle of the below wouldn't remedy.

Mood swings, sudden fits of crying, hormonal surges, itchy skin, hot flashes ... comes to us all.

I'll tolerate this storyline more, as it appears accurate, if it affords her the chance to smack the living shit out of the odious Tiffany, who's overdue a wallop. Send Lauren round to do the deed.

Magic Negro Worf and Sam the Sham ...

Did you know that, when she was a drunken slut of a teenager, Cora the Bora lost her heart to a starship trooper?

Here's The Magic Negro's father in action ...

And here's Sam the Sham's old man ...

Ava the Rava continues to be someone's idea of a joke teacher. Whatever she studied, she sure as hell didn't study English grammar. No teacher, I repeat, no self-respecting teacher, even speaking colloquially, would make such idiotic grammatical mistakes as 

"me and Dexter" 

or 

"them buns"

Seriously, is this woman for real? As well as being Ava the Rava and The Magic Negro, she's something of a streetwalker, because all she did at the sink estate where she mysteriously lived before was patrol the streets, and all she does in Walford is walk the street and pick public fights.

Also, notice how they're retconning her backstory and getting it wrong. In 1993, Ava was living in a squat in Croydon ... She's fucking twenty-eight years old and living in a squat?!!!

In Croydon?

Croydon, being Greater London, is cheaper than the area in which Ava finds herself now. And, at twenty-eight, considering her story to Cora the Bora last year, she'd been well finished with a top-flight university education, provided by her adoptive parents, and she'd been in the teaching profession for six years.

So what the fuck was she doing living in a squat in Croydon? At twenty-eight, Sam could very well have been in the building profession, as he is now. Builders had more than a few bob then, and considerably more than they have today.

So, I repeat, what the fuck were they doing living in a squat? With a baby?

And all this shit about abandonment issues ... Please, spare me. Janine Butcher has abandonment issues. So does Michael Moon. They both remember parents walking away from them and leaving them to the kindness of strangers, and they suffer for it to this day. 

Ava was not abandoned. She was given up for adoption to a couple who treated her as a much-loved and much-wanted child and as their own child. Was Sharon Watts abandoned? No. Does she consider herself as such? Never. And Sharon, like Ava, met her birth mother and was really rejected by her.

So spare insulting my intelligence with a sob story about Ava's abandonment by Cora the Bora. And spare the attempts at bonding these two. Ava's parents are still alive, and Cora is just a drunken slut who couldn't be bothered to raise a biracial byblow and walks in on the finished product after all the hard work has been done, thinking she can step up to the plate and be a parent as well. She can't. She simply isn't entitled.

And for all Ava's remarks about spending all her adult life teaching girls to better themselves when she can't stay away from a man who bailed on her twenty years ago, she's a pretty weak and dire character. And pointless.

Once again, this pathetic excuse of a woman takes Cora's skewed advice and tells Sam the Sham to leave Walford. 

I don't want you 'ere, Dexter doesn't want you 'ere. Nobody wants you 'ere.

Really, Magic Negro? You now speak for the whole of Walford, having not been there long enough to cut a lasting fart? Cora had no right to give that advice, and Ava was damned stupid to take it. And, Sam ... Dexter is no longer a boy.

In fact, that's quite offensive to use that word in connotation to him. Racial politics and the Australian writer's ignorance in the face thereof, Dexter, like Lauren, is an adult. In fact, he's older than Lauren, turning twenty-one this year.

Dexter is no more a boy than Ava is gurning Oscar's aunty ... and in certain parts of the world, calling a black woman that has racial connotations also.

Cora is not Ava's mother. She merely gave birth to her. Ava's mother is the woman who raised her. Ergo, Tanya is not Ava's sister, merely a woman who shared a birth mother. She is no more Tanya's children's aunt. Not even close. These people are strangers.

As for the Ava-Sam-Dexter borefest, one again, spare us. Token characters fulfilling a racial quota. Chucky Venn is sacrificed for EastEnders' Mr BOGOF? Are they really that cash-strapped that Cornell S John not only has to play the youngish, sexually-active black man (replacing Chucky Venn), he also has to double as the natural successor to the plank of wood known as Jack Branning?

These characters, along with their Little Cock, are boring and unlikeable, played by unengaging, wooden and stilted actors. I realise they are Newman's Negroes, but let's hope her successor treats them as what they really are - unnecessary deadwood - and prunes accordingly.

EastEnders takes Equal Opportunity Employment to such a ridiculous level, it's not only insulting, it's racist.

Mr Passive-Aggressive

There's a gaggle of silly girls (and some fanbois) on Digital Spy Forum who clearly have no common sense and probably go to toilet by sticking their elbow down the can - because they clearly don't know their arseholes from their elbows.

One female waxes almost lyrical, rife with misspellings, about how sexy Michael is - how manipulative and controlling he is, as if she wishes she were in Alice's place and as if these are positive attributes in a man.

This is the 21st Century. Women have been through an awful lot so that this dumbass can cream her knickers wanting to be manipulated and ordered about like a piece of shit by a man who's identified as a psychopath and who looks like the lovechild of a corpse and Mr Spock on a bad day.

Seriously? Seriously, it's all right to be manipulated into thinking you're worthless, to have your every action clocked and watched. To be told to do something even when you know that it's wrong. To be used?

If that's what this idiot on DS believes, then stay away from me. You have no self-respect.

What Michael is doing with Alice is a deviant of Max's manipulation of Lucy Beale. But it was still the same - passive-aggressive bullying.

For those of you wetting yourselves with Michael-love, may I remind you that Michael the psychopath's tactic is to punch down - to choose an emotionally vulnerable woman - Kat, Roxy, Jean, Janine and now Alice - and manipulate their weak point to his advantage. 

Alice is finding that she genuinely likes Janine. Janine pays her, and when she feels Alice does something extra, she's rewarded accordingly.  Michael paid Alice with counterfeit money, IOUs and Janine's old dresses. Alice also sees how Janine does love her daughter. Maybe she's spooked by some of the things she's heard Michael say to the child about Janine. Anyway, she's caught in the middle in a deception to an employer who's shown her nothing but kindness, and she wants out.

Unlike her putrid cousins and brother, Alice is basically a decent human being. But Michael is using her insipid affection for him, which is wearing thin, as well as throwing guilt her way, to force her to do his will. Maybe, also, she sees that to him, Scarlett is merely a means to an end. She's totally creeped out by his bloodless remark about fathers seeing daughters every day, because that's what they do.

No, it isn't what they do, and Alice knows that, because she was eighteen years old before she saw her own father.

Anyone who's Team Michael in this is shallow and dense, with a memory the size of a pea, especially if they can't remember how he treated Janine when she was laden with post-partum hormones, stress from a sick child and a wedding and various mistreatments at the hands of idiots like Cora, Rose and Jean - or immediately before that, his callous sham of Jean, even sending an undertaker to the Vic, assuming Stacey's death in front of Jean. That was cruelty in itself.

No wonder the show sinks sometimes to such idiotic depths.

A watchable episode, but by no means a good one.

Sometimes what's bred in Australia needs to remain in Australia.

Lauren Week: Entitlement - Review 30.05.2013

Wow, just what we all wanted and needed! An episode wasn't enough, we had to have an entire week to study in-depth the pitiful, pastiche of a drinking problem suffered by the person Lorraine Newman is trying to stuff down the viewers' throat as the resident ingenue on the Square.

Lauren Branning.

Natural successor to Sharon Watts.

Not.

Natural successor to Bianca Butcher.

Not.

Natural successor to Tiffany Raymond.

Not.

Natural successor to Stacey Slater.

Not.

All of the above had their faults, and there certainly was no young female character (until Lauren) who was more entitled in her outlook than Stacey Slater, but in empathy, sympathy and likeability, Lauren doesn't even come close.

Every previous young female character was basically a positive character. Sharon rose above the catastrophe of her parents' marriage, her father's presumed death and her mother's alcoholism, a stormy marriage and an affair to become landlady of the Vic. When Bianca was Lauren's age, she had her own market stall and was aspiring to go to fashion college. Tiffany went from material girl to serious wife and mother. Stacey, like Bianca, had her own business. Michelle Fowler and Sonia Jackson, as single mothers, rose against all odds to get academic and professional degrees.

And Lauren?

Lauren is the spoiled, lazy, rude, selfish, entitled daughter of selfish parents, one marginally better at parenting than the other. Lauren cares about no one but herself, and like most of the women these days in Walford, she is another prime example of the eternal victim, never taking responsibility for her actions and wallowing in self-pity.

She asserts that she's an adult and wants to be treated as such, yet she expects her parents to finance her lifestyle, and when she doesn't get what she wants from them, she takes.

I appreciate Lorraine Newman wants us all to love and sympathise with Lauren because she's a Branning and she's beautiful, but she's beautiful like a red, shiny apple, who's rotten to the core. And no matter how much she keeps pushing this character at us, we're not going to like her, unless we happen to be a pubescent boy, becoming familiar with his right hand, his willy and a roll of paper towels, or any viewer possessing only one braincell and the inability to think critically.

It doesn't help matters either that Lauren happens to be played by 

THE. WORST. ACTRESS. EVER. IN. EASTENDERS.

For every scene
Gurn gurn gurn
There is a chance to
Gurn gurn gurn

And a chance
To speak loudly
And wave arms about.

No one likes Lauren. Or Joey. Or Whitney. Or Tyler. Or Dexter. Abi is becoming more and more unpopular. Jay has been castrated to the point that he's being ordered about by Ajay.

There are too many young characters. Yes, they're cheaper, but this is not a CBBC show or a niche teen soap, and the people playing these kids, for the most part, have neither acting experience nor talent.

Someone has to start wielding an axe with impunity, starting with Lauren.

Poor Little Drunk Girl.

My, oh my! Lauren's got quite a rap sheet, hasn't she? 

Attempted murder, drunken driving, and now common assault and vandalism. And all before she's twenty years old. 

I hope Lucy calls the Old Bill. This would be a great leaving line for Lauren, to see her being pushed, head first, into a cop car and driven off to prison.

Lauren is not only a budding alcoholic, she's now officially a liar and a thief. And a petty, spoiled child who kicks off and screams bloody murder when she doesn't get what she wants - and what she, inexplicably, wants is her doltish, unintelligible hulking cousin Joey.

If no one else in either the Branning family or Walford questions the dubious white trash propensity to fuck a close relative, then Lucy Beale certainly does and doesn't hesitate to point this out to Lauren. She has two obvious attractions to Joey which Lauren doesn't have - she's not his relative and she's not drunk. That doesn't belie the fact that she's still a Bag o'Bones, but at least she's sober.

The author of tonight's piece is an Australian. 'Strewth. Germaine Greer should be on hand with a cricket bat to beat Peter Matessi's ass. This is the 21st Century, and in EastEndersLand, we still have two women fighting over what amounts to be a pretty ineffectual man - Kat and Roxy fighting over Alfie, Tanya and Krusty fighting over Max, Lucy and Lauren, the first generation of women to come of age in the 21st Century, fighting over Joey.

Not only that, but we have Sharon fanagling to move back in with Phil, and Shirley bitterly resenting that Phil kicked her out. Denise is turned on by Ian's flashing - but wads of money instead of his willie.

Carol is crying over Masood.

The only strong women at the moment in EastEnders are Dot and Janine. Think about it.

Joining Lauren in her sense of entitlement is Abi, who's more and more becoming a sanctimonious, grubby, materialistic, demanding little bitch. The way she hist on Jay for money, constantly whingeing that he doesn't spend enough on her, demanding that he buy her things and take her on holiday and today, publically demanding that he hand over money which she can give to Lauren so she can replace the twenty quid she stole from her putrid grandmother's purse.

Cora the Bora had to go without drink because Lauren stole her booze money.

The latest kick-off was because Lauren took offence at Tanya's cack-handed approach to make her see sense, which ended up, somehow, with Lauren being compared to Rainie, the unacceptable face of Branningdom. You see, Rainie, and her addictions, remind them of that place from whence they came - the gutter. 

However, it's Rainie who's seeking help. Rainie's admitted she's an alcoholic, gone on the wagon and distanced herself from the cause and encouragement of her problem.

Let's hope that, along with Tanya, the problems that are Lauren, Abi and Cora the Bora, distance themselves from EastEnders.

Meanwhile, here's a song for Lauren:-

Mamma Tried.

Tanya is just about the worst mother in Walford ... next to Cora the Bora. 

She certainly is ineffectual. And stupid.

Tanya's always been the undermining good cop to Max's disciplinarian bad one. One thing Tanya did get right yesterday in her brief moment of sympathy with Kirsty, was telling her that although Max might be many bad things, he was a good dad, and that is essentially true.

At least, he's a better dad than she is mother, although both are intrinsically selfish and often put themselves before their children. But cast your mind back to 2007, when Lauren stole Max's credit card in order to buy a camcorder so she could record and post films of herself on her Mates' Gate page. Of course, Max found out that £300 had been lifted from his credit card when the camcorder came through the door, and quite rightly, he punished Lauren.

But Yummy Mummy rose to the rescue, berating Max for the treatment of his daughter to such an extent that, by the end of the episode, Max not only relieved Lauren of her punishment, he fucking apologised to her.

That's the pattern of events forever in the Branning household. Kid does wrong, Max punishes, Tanya plays Perry Mason for the Defence and Max ends up apologising to the kid. Such is life there that Max's children can dictate when he can and can't stay in Walford. They've ordered him to leave town, and he's left. They've forbidden him the house and he's obliged - but when a bill arrives or they need money for books, clothing or having a good time, they show up wherever he's living with their hands out, palms up.

Tanya's reinforced their sense of entitlement, especially with Lauren, by rewarding her, monetarily, for doing nothing but behaving within the realms of polite normality. FFS, she's almost twenty years old, and - as she never ceases to remind both Max and Tanya -she is an adult. Adults should only be paid for behaving civilly if they're mentally deficient and don't know any better.

The penny's beginning to drop about Lauren with Cora the Bora, but not far enough. She recognises the Rainie symptoms in Lauren - the lying, the stealing of money to fund her addiction. Except that neither Cora nor Tanya realise that Lauren's own behaviour and alcohol dependency has its roots in their own behaviour. 

Because as well as Rainie, Cora and Tanya are functioning alcoholics as well. In fact, a few months ago, Cora was sharing a drunken night with a litre of whiskey with Lauren, and a few years ago, she got an underaged Abi drunk one afternoon and laughed it off. She was drunk once and in charge of Oscar, when he fell down the stairs and hurt himself. Cora has a permanent buzz on and probably suffers withdrawal symptoms if she doesn't neck at least 500cl of whiskey per day. Remember the flask she carried to Derek's funeral and her drunken eulogy?

As for Tanya, from Yummy Mummy, Lauren probably learned that it's OK to drink to celebrate or to commiserate. You can drink when you're lonely or in a crowd of people. Just make sure you start drinking before everyone else and finish last. And you should never ever be without a wineglass either to hand or in your hand. Drink while you play, drink while you work, and have a nightcap at the end of the day.

Lauren's alcoholism is an acquired behavioural pattern, and it's a shame TPTB aren't studying it properly as a generational problem rampant in the Cross family. Cora's a drunk, both her white daughters are drunk, her granddaughter's a drunk, and the way Ava the Rava knocks back booze and makes a beeline to the Vic every day, she's probably a drunk too.

And now we have the emergence of St Tanya the Martyr. Once again, she's excluding Max from  Lauren's problem. Her reckoning is that Max has his own family now, with Krusty and the non-baby. 

Sorry, but Max is still the father of Abi, Lauren and Oscar. He doesn't stop being their father because he's married to another woman, and they don't cease to be a part of Max's family unit. She goes from being concerned about Krusty being upset yesterday to being rude to her today and lying to Max about Lauren.

But we all know that Tanya copes so well on her own. Not. She's a man's woman, and according to EastEnders' version of women in the 21st Century, she's not complete unless she's got a man on her arm, preferably a solvent one.

Her obvious weakness as a parent showed abundantly today in the way she allowed Lauren to walk all over her pithy attempts to pussyfoot around the discovery that not only had Lauren scammed a tenner off one grandmother, she'd actually stolen from another. Sometimes, the short, sharp shock of a situation is the best route. As soon as Lauren walked in that room, Tanya should have told her the facts: that she'd been caught stealing from her grandmother, a pensioner, and she needed to apologise, personally, and return the money stolen (which had been shaken down from her new-found cousin Cock - who admired the shakedown, the unintelligible little cur).

Instead, we get more of Tanya's sweet, understanding little smiles, which say, Vere, vere dahlin'. I ain't angry wiv yer,  when she needs to be chewing-nails-and-pissing-rust angry.

Let's face it, if ever any child deserved a smack around the face, repeatedly, it's Lauren.

Tanya can't leave quick enough.

Daddy's Home.

Daddy Phil, that is, and he's all alone in that big, empty house. And there's little Denny, missing him.

And here's bitter and twisted Shirley, encouraging Phil to spell it out to the kid (and the mother) that he's finished with her. As if, Shirl. As if that would make Phil spend the rest of his life gnawing on a gristly scrag-end of meat when he can have a fatty piece of sirloin to nibble each evening.

As much as this episode was more watchable than any other offering thus far this week, the best scenes by far were the early ones between Phil and Sharon and that brief interaction between Phil, Sharon and Janine.

Like Pat, Janine is the only resident of Walford who refuses to kowtow to Phil Mitchell. She never feared him when she was poor, and she certainly doesn't fear him now that she's worth a few bob. Janine inviting Phil to test the new vodka she ordered, then indicating the rubbish bin as the suggestion box for the R and R were priceless remarks. And Sharon standing up to Phil in those moments afterward was definitely the Sharon of old.

Yes, she wants to be back with him, and her weakness and dependency still showed in that clutching-at-straws moment when he invited her around with Denny to spend the afternoon. And, yes, he does want her back. He just needs time to adjust to the fact that the damsel in distress he'd put on a pedestal has feet of clay just like his. In short, Phil needs to stop throwing his toys out of the pram and man up when it comes to Sharon.

And is that the end of her addiction? I don't know, but it seems like a certain EP is doing a bit of damage limitation on Sharon's character at long last.

Ooh Baby, Baby ...

Kirsty is still lying, still looking like she crawled from a hedgerow and still lolling around in bed. Nothing new there. Let's move on.

Lola's not even going to bed, and what is the point of this storyline? To show how stupid Lola is? She's got her child back now, so she's sleeping one hour a night so she can watch Lexi whilst she sleeps and has eschewed work, which Social Services wanted to see her pursue in order to build a career for herself and provide for her daughter. This is David Cameron's Britain, you know, where benefits are few.

Is this leading to some situation where Lola gets so tired, she conks out, and Lexi hurts herself? And strange how, when she asks Poopy-Le-Dim if she can bring Lexi to work, the idea gets poopy-poohed because of 'Elf'n Safety, when it was OK for Lola to bring a much younger Lexi to work and smear her with adult beauty cream.

I also decided tonight that I hated Trish Barnes's whispery voice. It's as if TPTB are trying to tell us something - that Trish, the middle class professional, who used to be an evil force in Walford, doesn't speak in high-toned cacophony like the rest of the hoi-polloi. Neither did May or Stella, come to think of it and they were barking (mad, that is, not Essex).

The whole exercise was pointless. Lola got whispered into using the care plan she and Social Services had developed for Lexi, Phil agreed to babysit Lexi (because he was lonely, Sharon and Denny having, summarily, left) and Lola gets to work ...  Easy peasy and boring.

Poopy Goes Political.

Hillary Clinton had style. (Well, no she didn't, actually; she had balls). Margaret Thatcher had style. (Well, no she didn't. She also had balls). Jackie Kennedy - someone I was amazed Poopy knew - had style. (Yes, she did, but that was aided and abetted by the fact that she managed to marry two extremely wealthy men).

So, for Dot to be able to win over the formidable curate Ms (pronounced "Muzzzzz") Quinn, she had to have a style change. Actually, the style change wasn't much of a difference from Dot Mach II, and an elderly woman doesn't look right in skinny jeans.

This was Newman's standard warmth and friendship moment, which usually features Fatboy and Poopy-Le-Dim doing good and spreading sunshine throughout Walford. It's also a prelude to next week's sitcom about Dot and the Snake. If you think that sounds phallic, don't get excited. It's not.

An average episode, better than the previous two, but still drowning in mediocrity.

Lauren Week: Just When You Thought It Couldn't Get Any Worse ... Review: 29.05.2013

Just when you thought the show might be turning a corner ...

They start dishing the shit again.

This week is Britain's Got Talent week. Cheap tabloid television, I know, but the hoi-polloi love it, and last night EastEnders came third - third, which rhymes with turd - in the viewing stakes behind Corrie and Emmerdale. That's right, Emmerdale, the early evening soap which has suddenly become EastEnders' main competition.

According to the continuity announcer for the BBC, this is a big week for the show. Lives will be changed. Destinies altered. 

Now on Corrie this week, it seriously is a big week. The Rovers re-opened, Dev began to suspect that Karl might be telling porkies, and Tina had the baby early in the middle of Izzy's and Gary's meltdown. Now she's having second thoughts about handing the baby over to them.

So, in CorrieLand, lives will be changed this week, and destinies will be altered.

Instead, EastEnders plays it sitcom safe, and when were not watching what really should be pilot shows for those hilariously unfunny sitcoms, Kim! and Poppy Pulls It Off, we're watching the same old same old droning on and on and on and on about characters who bore us to tears (Krusty and Max), or characters about whom we really couldn't give a rat's arse on a bad day (The Magic Negro, Sam the Sham and their Little Cock) or characters we hate (Lauren).

That's what makes a difference of more than 2 million viewers. That's what's putting EastEnders below Emmerdale in audience and qualities. 

And that's why the BBC and Lorraine Newman need to sit up and take notice.

She Walks Alone (Well, She Doesn't Teach): Retconning The Magic Negro ...

There she is again. You know where you'll find her. Any school day, walking the streets of Walford. Walking her adult son to his place of work, arranging lunchtime with mummy (in the pub, of course), walking around the Square on Morning Magic Negro Patrol.

This is Ava the Rava, the biggest joke character ever in the history of the show. Ava is a teacher - nay, she's supposed to be a Deputy Head, yet she has no briefcase, no bookbag, and she never ever goes to work. Nope, in AvaLand, Deputy Heads get days off to grade papers (for teachers who actually teach, I suppose) or do lesson plans (again, for classroom teachers - Ava's supposed to be in administration). Yet instead of doing those things, she's walking from pillar to post - from the Minute Mart to the cafe to the pub - always to the pub.

You know, back in the late 1990s, there was a character on the programme who was a teacher - Julie, Nigel Bates's second wife. OK, we never saw her hanging around the Square much. We always saw her at home, in the evening with Nigel,making allusions to her day at work. We don't even see that with Ava, and the writers and storyliners have given up alluding to her working.

But this week is half-term. Again. And there she is, playing The Magic Negro of Walford.

Let me say this: Clare Perkins is nothing to write home about as an actress, nor is Cornell S John or whatever he calls himself. As characters, I care nothing for her, him or Cock. They are, like the vast majority of characters introduced over the past two years, extremely bland or extremely unlikeable.

Ava seriously looks variously like a man in drag, Mr Worf's lovechild ...

or Fred Sanford's Aunt Esther ...

Has anyone noticed the difference between "temporary character Ava" and "full-time Ava?"

Cast your mind back to the time when Tanya traced Ava to the leafy suburban school with the glossy brochure. Ava was presented as well-spoken, softly-spoken and an educated professional. When brought face to face with Cora, she couldn't emphasize enough how much her adopted parents loved her, how much they encouraged her and gave her the best education possible. She even admitted being tempted to trace Cora a decade before, but decided against it, because she had the best kind of parents and tracing Cora would prove nothing.

Fast forward to "full-time Ava" - chasing after Cock through the Square, screeching like a fishwife, using appalling grammar (especially the word "ain't" - tonight it was using objective pronouns as subjects and using personal pronouns first, which is wrong - "me and Dexter"). Listen, I don't give a rat's arse what los.kav the poseur professor on Digital Spy forum says about it's ok to use incorrect grammar in the classroom, because it shows your students that you're "approachable" and "not stuffy." That's the biggest load of bullshit going.

The object of education is to improve one's person, and that includes the way you speak. You don't have to use received pronunciation, but speaking with good grammar creates a good impression. As for your students appreciating your appearing to be more like them, believe me, they think you're a prat. Ava sounds like just another inarticulate, uneducated, ill-mannered chav on the Square, and she behaved like one tonight - shouting the odds in the Vic at Sam the Sham in the middle of the day. Jesus.

And as per usual, they've retconned her backstory more than just a bit. First of all, Sam makes reference about Ava's paranoia about her mother having abandoned her reflecting in her distrust of him and her thinking he'd cheat on her, when they were together many years ago. That flies in the face of everything she told Cora, and what she told Cora wasn't a lie - because that was the mini-storyline as was supposed to be presented at the time. Also, during the gangabanga storyline, in her guise as The Magic Negro, she waxed lyrical about how much love,help and support she got from her  white adoptive family when Cock was gangabanga-ing about. The grandparents even send Cock presents - remember the shirt? So now, all of a sudden, we're supposed to believe this woman's gone all her life, a nervous, neurotic wreck, thinking of nothing except how her birth mother abandoned her.

What a steaming, stinking crock of shit! Get your act to-fucking-gether, EastEnders, and stop trying to change the backstory to suit the storyline.

Another thing ... Ava and Sam the Sham were together when Dexter was born twenty years before, living in a squat. They referred to themselves as just "a couple of kids." I beg your pardon, but this summer The Magic Negro will be 49 years old. Cock will turn 21. When Cock was born, Ava was twenty-eight. That's hardly a child. Her lilywhite half-sister was suckling a baby at eighteeen. That's a kid. Lola's a gymslip mum at sixteen. That's a kid. At twenty-eight, you're a mature woman. Janine had a baby last year when she was twenty-eight. Is she "just a kid?"

I don't give a shit about plug-ugly Ava or Sam, the BOGOF economy character who comprises the requisite young-ish, sexually active black man (to fill a quota) as well as a plank of wood (replacing Jack Branning). I certainly don't give a shit about The Little Cock, who's just one-third of an unintelligible trio of talentless young men who've never acted before and who gets by on an English version of a bad impression of Will Smith.

They are pointless, irrelevant characters who do nothing for and add nothing to the show - another long-lost relative whose wife never stopped loving him and who'll probably indulge in a secret shag, as well as yet another character with a daddy thang ... Please. We've had enough of this trite shite.

She's Here, She's There, She's Every Fucking Where ... Hag City.

Yet another man-in-drag tonight. Cora the Bora.

Make no mistake, this was yet another pisspoor episode, but the abject hypocrisy of Cora lecturing Sam the Sham outside the Vic about the audacity of him thinking he could just walk back into Cock's life was supremely laughable.

Because Cora the Bora thinks she's entitled to walking right back into The Magic Negro's life and that of her son and playing Mummy Dearest and Nana. One year ago, she didn't even realise this rainbow grandson existed, and for the record once again ...

Cora is not not not Ava's mother.

She is simply the woman who gave birth to her. Ava's mother is the woman who raised her from an infant, who sat up nights with her whilst she was teething, who ministered to her when she was ill, who ferried her back and forth to school events in all sorts of weather,and who was always there when she needed her. She owes Cora nothing, and for Cora to presume to lecture Sam is the height of stupidity, cupidity and hypocrisy.

The total arrogance of this woman is amazing.

Her war with Dot continues, even to the point of condescension in the face of Dot's exercise in graciousness, even though Dot was only going through the learning curve of a charm offensive, remarking patronisingly about Dot being forgiving towards Lauren for her scamming a tenner from her.

Cora blames Dot for willingly giving Lauren the money without Lauren asking for it, but Lauren did worse than steal money from Dot. It was, indeed, fraudulent, it was taking money under false pretences, implying that she had no money to go out partying with her friends, which prompted Dot, her grandmother, to do what grandmothers usually do - offer financial help. Lauren knew very well what she was doing - showing up and essentially buttering Dot up for one purpose. For Cora to defend that was yet another example of what a lowlife she is - Cora took more than a tenner from Dot; Cora failed to pay Dot's council rent when she was sub-letting her house, brought lodgers in and then took their money to fund her habit in booze and cigarettes. She almost caused Dot to lose her home, and thought to make it up to her by throwing her a pithy party in the pub.

And in the end, I'm glad she was royally handed her putrid, stinking, wrinkled arse ... because Lauren scammed her too, and in the worst sort of way. She actually stole from Cora the Bora, taking money from her purse. The words "eat" and "crow" come easily to mind.

Another ironic scene occurred when Cora the Bora attempted to play the matriarch and epically failed. This was when she tried to have a conversation with Lauren about why she drinked. A provocative piece of dialogue would have been for Lauren to riposte:

Why do YOU drink, Nan? Huh? Why does me mum drink too? Because that's where I learned this.

But, sadly, no one in the writing room has enough nous to approach Lauren's drinking problem from this angle, which is, actually, the truest and most realistic one.

Still, the look on the old seahag's face was priceless, especially after that bragest she and Tanya performed, patting themselves on the back for the success they had in bringing Lauren up to be the woman she is. And how does Cora reward herself? By going to the pub and having a bevvy.

And, please, please, please stop saying Lauren is like Tanya was "at her age." When Tanya was Lauren's age, she was married with a kid.

Jesus, it's not rocket science.

Hattrick: Kim's Journey Around Herself

Here's why Ray wasn't that keen on Kim ... he found out she was a man-in-drag.

Kim is supposed to be funny, but she's not. And the morality play presented tonight as a form of vain comedy, was terrifically unfunny. Tameka Empson is one of the weakest actresses on the show. She's either pretending to be the late Flip Wilson as Geraldine Jones or she's acting like a white man's version of a stereotypically sassy, urban black woman.

Either way, it isn't working. 

What TPTB wanted to show tonight was that Kim was really, deep-down, hurting at losing Ray, comforting herself and her pride with the fact that she dumped him - Ray was the dumpee. We saw the bleeding obvious - that Denise the Wise saw through her charade, that Kim was doing what someone reckons a lot of women do in the face of a break-up - sweep clean with a new broom, out with the old and in with the new look.

And after Bootie's unseen Gaynor did her a make-under in the make-up department, Kim thought better of the situation: in fact, she thought she was perfect the way she was. And that was the moral of the story - be true to yourself, even if you do insult your sister's taste in clothing.

Really, Kim's out-stayed her welcome, and I can't help thinking that she's going to be ethnic quota victim number two, in favour of Ava. After all, how can you compete with The Magic Negro ...

It's Almost Over Now, Baby Blue.

Max and Krusty are not Sonny and Cher ... for starters, Sonny was hirsute.

Yep, the beat goes on ... Kirsty's little miracle is actually that Max hasn't found out about her little secret yet.

Seriously, love, Max is only with you at all now because he believes you're pregnant. Max is always devoted to whatever woman is carrying his baby, even if it means leaving his wife to be with the mother-to-be. Just ask Rachel, his first wife.

Time's ticking on and sooner or later, Krusty's going to have to explain the absence of a bump. Today, she neatly avoids a scan Max arranged (which will show nothing but the truth), by having a panic attack in the clinic's reception area, then running away. Now that was unintentionally funny.

Later, she talks cryptically about lying to Max, and he thinks she's talking about their baby she aborted on Derek's command.

The most interesting bit about this ever decreasingly circular storyline was when one of Krusty's false eyelashes became partially detached.

Move on.

Poopy the Sugar Plum Fairy.

Now at last ... EastEnders has the real making and build-up of a storyline. Dot's campaign to be church warden, which led to Poopy-Le-Dim, Life Coach Extraordinaire, honing Dot's PR skills, will come to fruition next week and will involve a reptile.

Stay tuned, if you're awake. 

The moral of tonight's story was: To thine own self be true. (And that's from Shakespeare, not the Bible).

Only Poor White Trash Drink from the Bottle.

Well, there's a lot of white trash honky tonk in Lauren, but she sure is no angel.

She is, without a doubt, the most unlikeable ingenue in the history of the programme, played by,  coincidentally ...

THE. WORST. ACTRESS. EVER. IN. EASTENDERS.

The scene at the end, where she's popping the top on a bottle of wine bought with money stolen from her putrid grandmother (who actually used to sit necking booze with her), summed up the entirety of what the Brannnings really are: a bunch of self-entitled losers, scrubbed up poor white trash thinking to pass for middle class respectability, but failing to do so, because the core of their existence began, thrives and will die in trailer trashville.

Lauren doesn't drink because her mother prefers Abi. (For the record, Tanya never did). But she'll tell herself that's one of the reasons, because it will make Tanya feel bad and reinforce Lauren's idea of self-pity. 

She doesn't drink because of her family's dysfunctionalism. She didn't neck booze when Tanya married gormless Greg or when Max hooked up with Vanessa. The only reason she's pissed off at the prospect of Max starting a family with Krusty is that there won't be enough money from Max to which Lauren feels entitled. That's selfishness. But she'll tell herself and Max that, because, again, this will make Max feel guilty and feed her burgeoning self-pity even more.

She doesn't drink because Joey dumped her and her friends shun her (because of her drinking). TPTB may want us to believe in the epic story of forbidden love that was Joey and Lauren, but most of us saw it as a one-week fuckfest between a gurner and an unintelligible dolt. But she'll tell herself that too, because it makes her appear tragic and gains her attention.

She drinks because of the same reason her mother, her aunt and her grandmother drank and still drink: because she likes it. She likes the buzz it gives her. She likes the freedom it bestows to say what she thinks and reveal who she really is and afterward blame everything on the booze. She drinks because she likes the anaesthetic comfort of passing out cold. A hangover is a small price to pay for a drink dependency.

I hate to say this, but Lauren is one of the most unlikeable characters on the show, but her addiction storyline is actually more realistic than that one they're pursuing with Sharon at the moment. It's just a shame that neither will be, ultimately, given justice.

Very poor episode, in a week when the show should be fighting to be on top again.