EastEnders: Contrived Nonsense - Review: 09.05.2013

I didn't watch this on Thursday night. I was quite ill. So ill that I couldn't sit up in bed, so watching EastEnders was the last thing on my mind. So I left it until I was, at least, able to sit upright in bed and feel reasonably normal to watch this episode.

Now I feel worse.

I have some unanswered questions, mainly about divorce:-

• Is Tamwar divorced yet? It's been a year since Affia left, after all; yet we've heard nothing about her, nothing about her contacting a solicitor, sending papers or even wanting Tamwar back?
• Is Roxy divorced? All this talk of being with Alfie and having his child, but the last we saw of Roxy's husband, Sean Slater (a successful amalgamation of Grant Mitchell and Dennis Rickman, was Sean slinking out of a freezing lake, like the Creature from the Black Lagoon, and scurrying away into the night. That was Christmas 2008, so he's been God-knows-where for almost five years now, which isn't long enough to declare abandonment. So, technically, Roxy is still Jean Slater's daughter-in-law.
• Is Bianca even thinking about divorce? Or is she going to skip through her newly retarded life, pretending she's the oldest of a passel of brats and not give Ricky the chance to move on with his?
• How did Janine and Ryan Malloy manage to get a divorce before they had been married a year? Because they were married at the end of September 2010, and by the same time in 2011, he was on the run for murder.
• Why wasn't the Christmas registrar even bothered about seeing Max's or Tanya's decree absolute? EastEnders can't plead ignorance, because the whole drama around Alfie marrying Kat ten years ago this Christmas, was based on the fact that his ex-wife had yet to sign the divorce papers, which he had to show the registrar.
• Why is everything written for the level of idiots?
• Why are there no more multi-faceted, nuanced characters? They've managed to spoil Phil Mitchell sufficiently since 2010 that the lowest common denominator of tweenie, to whom the show is pitched now, sees Phil only as a thug. Max Branning is becoming a caricature, and Janine is hovering on the pantomime ledge again.
• Why did Lorraine Newman vociferously state in two interviews early in her tenure that no old characters would be returning, when we hear from the horse's mouth that Barbara Windsor is being courted as we speak and Michael French is returning?
• Why do the long-term viewers put up with shit, the likes of which we were dished on Thursday?

There should be a health warning attached to that episode.

Pity, because Pete Lawson used to be one of the better writers, and his last two episodes, both this week, sucked. Before any character is terminated, Newman needs to look at her writing room.

Contrivance Number ONE: The Young Romcom That Wasn't.

Here's another unanswered question:-

Why does Poppy always remind me of this song?

There is an answer, actually. It's because it's the sort of fast-paced, run-together drivelly nonsense someone like Poppy - or Poopy La Dim, as I call her - would say.

Yes, yes, yes, I know Poopy is sweet and nice. She's kind to old ladies and helps her unfortunate friends, but she's as shallow as a creek in a drought. She can tell dippy Alice such aphorisms as "the eyes are the mirrors to the soul" with such conviction as to convince Alice she knows what she's talking about when she really doesn't. She's just talking, saying words she's heard other people say, thinking that if she repeats the mantra, she'll understand its meaning. But she doesn't, and she really doesn't care.

She doesn't care because she's got what she wants - a job, a place to live and Fatboy, who's a real catch.

Oh, here's another unanswered question:-

What, exactly does Fatboy do?

Seriously, he lost his job at McKlunkey's and was given a job at the Vic last year, by Alfie. Yet, I don't think we've seen him working in the Vic at all this year. And there he is staying at the B and B, paying around 60 quid a night, which he must pluck off some tree someplace.

Poopy La Dim and Fatboy have paired Tamwar and Alice up for a blind date, neither of which are at all excited to be in the company of each other. The evening sounds a real winner - dinner at McKlunkey's followed by Grime Night at the R and R.

Suffice it to say, it was an epic fail, so there went a grand total of about ten minutes wasted.

Nothing happening here, move on. This was just a vignette to remind people that Tamwar was still hovering about, occasionally being given a soupcon of a storyline. If this is the best they can do with Himesh Patel, then it's time they thought about axing him ... and Ricky Norwood and Rachel Bright. Ah, but this is Newman's sweetness, light, warmth and friendship EastEnders.

Contrivance Number TWO: The Old RomCom, the Village Idiot and the Unattractive Child.

This is not Mas and Carol.

Carol was right. She did look like mutton dressed as lamb when she was dolling herself up for a  date with Masood. Roller disco? 

I wonder at the extreme personality transplant the writers gave Masood when Zainab left. Their parting, albeit rushed, gave the audience one of the few genuinely good episodes thus far this year. It pained him to give up on his marriage, and in his own way, he still loves Zainab. 

Yet he went to almost eloping with a girl young enough to be his daughter, to lusting after a yoga instructor to now cuddling up with Carol.

I also decided tonight that I really hate Bianca's face as much as her attitude and demeanor. Janine doesn't have to ring the doorbell because Janine owns the house you live in, skank chav; and Carol had no right to speak to her that way either. Line of the night goes to Janine:-

Oh, the dishwasher's speaking now?

It might have been short notice, but "Auntie Bianca" wasn't doing anything, so maybe she should have looked after Scarlett for awhile, although it has to be said that not once has either Bianca or Carol been to see the child since they've returned. However, Jack could dump Amy on "Auntie Bianca" anytime. In fact, it was "Auntie Bianca" who urged Jack to forge Roxy's signature on Amy's passport application.

I always find it incongruous how Bianca treats her Butcher and Beale relations as strangers, yet clings to the Branning connection when most of them look at her as though she were shit on the soles of their shoes.

Yes, Carol chickens out of a date, which she always does when entering into a new relationship. Here's her technique: make a date, cancel it, then rearrange (for the same evening), then snog the guy. If he's someone like Steve or Eddie Moon, the snog would lead to an immediate fuck, but Masood's going to take some work to corrupt.

Those kids ... as well as seeing all sorts parade out of Whitney's room, they have their grandmother servicing clientele as well. And they have a nerve to criticise Janine.

Once again, the contrivance of Tiffany the Wonder Child (another cute mite growing into a very plain girl) acting coy and coming up with the old "I-Need-Help-with-My-Homework" trick, just to lead Masood back to the Butcher house as Carol descends the stairs.

Har-dee-har-har-har-har.

Cue inevitalbe scene of Masood and Carol watching some old film, scoffing crisps and cuddling, as Tiffany and her retarded mother earwig.

Seriously, Bianca is retarded; and I don't mean that in a way disrespectful to anyone mentally impaired. I mean it totally and fully and pejoratively as applied only to Bianca - retarded, ignorant, rude, immature, entitled and allowed to get away with bad behaviour. We're supposed to like this chav? What about all this talk of bettering herself? She couldn't even better batter. Ian Beale was right - hiring Bianca and Carol would have put diners off their food.

Since Patsy Palmer uses this show as a cash cow, maybe it was time she left too. Can't she get pregnant or something?

Contrivance Number THREE: Teenage Kicks (in the Arse).

Here's a song for Lauren - well, the chorus is what she should be saying to the licence fee payers:-

Whenever you get the combination of Lauren the Lip, Bag o'Bones Beale, Joey and Twitney, you get zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

First of all, Whitney is supposed to be shit skint - so much so that she's having to work two jobs to pay for her big fat gypsy wedding ,,,

(can you imagine .... gypsy meets chav in Walford?) when she appears in public looking as though she's been expensively sandied and mahoganied. You know, EastEnders has always done this - present someone as poor and downtrodden, then feature a close-up of their hands which show (as do Whitney's) an expensive manicure. Pauline was expensively manicured. Dot is. So was Sonia when she didn't have a pot in which to piss. The other incongruous angle was having such poor, humble folk sporting expensive fake tans or the real things, at the time of the year when tans are rare. 

Wendy Richard and Pam St Clement always looked tanned in the heighth of winter, and Kat always looks orange. And there sat poor, pitiful Whitney tonight, positively burnished.

This was also an exceptional episode in that Tony Discipline had more than one line of dialogue, albeit all was mumbled.

I am so tired of Lauren's drink problem. In fact, I'm tired of Lauren. And Joey. And Whitney. And Tyler. And Lucy, when she's with these losers. In fact, EastEnders is sporting the most unlikeable group of young people now in the show's history - Lauren, Abi, Joey, Whitney, Tyler, and Dexter are all shit. There. I said it. Totally unlikeable, played by totally mediocre-to-incompetent actors and totally pointless.

I'm tired of Lauren mooning about over Joey dumping her, and I'm tired of no one acknowledging the fact that these two are cousins, for Christ's sake. The liaision may be barely legal, but the blood tie is close enough to qualify as incest; but then, EastEnders, in this century, has been bang on bad for misinforming the lower end of the intellect scale. They know most of its audience is totally incapable of thinking critically, so they offer up their own versions of life, but not as we know it, and hope for the best. 

Thus, we have a generation of millennials thinking it's perfectly acceptable for someone to fall in love with and marry their adopted sibling. So now, it's ok to fuck your cousin.

Oh, and here's another song for Lauren, whilst I think of it:-

When she's not sobbing about Joey, she's sobbing because she has no money, and what money she has, she drinks away. She doesn't drink to forget or because of the stresses and strains of her unduly hard and underprivileged life, she bloody well drinks because she likes it and it's in her genes. She is the alcoholic daughter and granddaughter of alcoholics.

When she's sober, she's immature. She walked into the Vic looking like jail bait on a street corner, thinking the prostitute look would catch Joey's eye - although why he's such a catch, who would know? She was also totally ungrateful to Whitney for letting her have the Class A minimum wage job at Ian's restaurant. And the "gang" who are usually sking - Joey working minimum wage bar at the R and R (again, we never see him at work anymore - yet another unanswered question), Tyler scraping a pittance selling junk on a market stall and sleeping on the Butchers' couch, and Whitney doing unpaid training at the creche - are all going to find money to have a slap-up meal at the restaurant ... courtesy of Lucy, of course, whom they expect to get them a discount. Entitlement much?

But to Lauren, who appears to be retarded in a Bianca sort of way also, was offended that they would even come into such place and eat while she works. So she proceeds to get drunk, because Lucy's talking to Joey. And Whitney sends the Tyler, who's now become the Walford Sage, to mumble words of wisdom to her.

Here's the ultimate unanswered question:-

Why is Tony Discipline still there?

I can't remember a time in this show's history when an actor so bad - when so many actors so bad - were allowed to stay on. Matthew Robinson, for whom Lorraine Newman surely worked, allowed a character one year to gel, before he was out. John Yorke allowed six months. But there Discipline is ... coming up for two years. And Witts, approaching his first year's anniversary and no sign of something shiny called an axe. Then there's Dexter, who serves no purpose whatsoever. Their single unifying distinction is that they are all singularly indistinct. And bad actors - two models and a 26 year-old with no previous acting experience. 

This show smells more like dying Brookside daily.

Oh, hell ... Lauren snogs Tyler and Whitney gets angry. Now Lauren's Lauren-No-Mates, but she's friends with the bottle. Could this finally, really, surely, undoubtedly be the actual beginning to Lauren's serious drink problem we've known about since God was a boy but hasn't really got off the ground and will be solved within a week when it's acknowledged?

Contrivance Number FOUR: Mother Superior Jumps the Gun.

This is what we all need after this episode. EastEnders drives one to drug use.

OK, let's get one thing straight right now. Lorraine Newman failed in her quest to make Kat a superhero. I know that it's been her aim, since the beginning of the year to redeem Kat in the public's eyes and to make us all love her again, but she was too damaged and too skewed by the previous EP - a characterisation of which Newman approved - to be repaired. Sometimes, when something's broken, it can't be fixed.

Lorraine failed tonight, because she wanted us to see Kat fly to Roxy's rescue, when it wasn't Kat who saved Roxy from being robbed, it was Amy's sudden and silent appearance.

The Good Samaritan act of helping out in the Vic was another contrivance, especially the poor, pitiful, hard-done-by Kat act telling Roxy how Alfie is a one-woman man, who doesn't cheat on his partner. That skank bitch knew that, and yet she had no compunction about cheating on Alfie. Had he done that to her, there would have been hell to pay. The final contrivance was having Roxy act like an ungrateful jerk.

I can understand Roxy's insecurity. She wants a relationship with a man she loves, yet his ex keeps popping up (and popping out - if I see any more of Jessie Wallace's tits, the show should get an x-rating). Roxy also knows that Alfie has a bond with Kat. It's the same sort of insecurity Kirsty Branning feels toward Tanya.

I like Roxy. She played second-fiddle long enough to the Ice Queen, and now she's being sacrificed at the altar of Saint Kat, yet another overripe character past her sell-by date, who should have slithered back into the gutter last Christmas. Bitch.

Contrivance Number FIVE: The Queen of the Night and the Prince of Darkness.

A baby reacts to the sensibilities of the person caring for the child. An infant can pick up on tension, anger, calm ... anything can cause a child to react in kind. Scarlett senses Janine is tense, so she is tense. At least when the child cries, she doesn't turn up the music volume to drown out the cries, the way someone else did.

Janine also knows exactly what Michael is and how he can manipulate, and her trust issues flew to the fore tonight.

Michael doesn't want shared custody, he wants it all. Scarlett is his possession. Of course, Janine is nervous and unsure of herself. She left with his critique of her as an unfit mother resounding in her ears. She is still unsure of herself. The Brazilian toyboy meme was a lie. If anyone is capable of listening, Janine let slip last week that she was in counselling. Of course, she's wary from the start of Michael's approach.

Michael doesn't want her back? Bullshit. If she asked him to come back, he'd come back for the money, alone. But he parries that ball neatly back into her court. The fact that Scarlett calmed down one he took her doesn't mean he's the familiar figure - after all, Jack was allowed to visit Tommy from time to time as well (unwise). No one's said anything to Janine about how her moods affect the child's reactions, because there's no one with any sort of knowledge giving her any advice or expertise. Pat is dead. Diane is in France. Clare in Australia. The retard and the dishwasher don't want to know, and Tanya - who (oddly) was a help before - has problems of her own. Here's where Dot could do a good turn.

Janine felt Michael was doing exactly what he'd done to her before she left, and immediately she felt that, her guard went up.

Steve John Shepherd and Charlie Brooks are the only two actors in that show earning their crust at the moment, and they're carrying it. But yet, this storyline tonight was filled with contrivances - like why, for example, Roxy sought to wind Janine up by telling her Michael had moved on and in with Kat, when she knew better? In fact, why is Roxy being so subversive to Janine? 

She has nothing against Janine. In fact, it was Roxy who was breathing fire for justice when Janine disclosed to the world that Saint Stacey Slater had killed Roxy's father. Someone will bring up the chestnut about Janine knocking down and killing the dippy deer in the headlights known as Danielle, but that was as much an accident as Frank Butcher knocking down and killing Tiffany Mitchell.

And, of course, this led to the contrivance of Janine, out walking Scarlett to calm her down, to head for the Slater Arms Hotel.

Of course, Michael saw her coming. He saw her in the Square through the curtains, and left them open just enough when he saw her make a beeline for the house to give Kat a comforting hug. Michael doesn't give a rat's arse about Kat, even though Kat suffers from a Bianca form of retardation in not understanding what a psychopath is to think she's got some sort of special friendship with him  - at the expense of forgetting how he mercilessly scammed Jean last summer. Once again, Michael was using the person as a prop to achieve the reaction he wanted.

Previously, as well, I thought he was patronising when he told Janine how it took him months before getting it right with Scarlett. Let's read that as it took him months before he convinced Roxy to move in and look after the child, and then Jean occasionally, and finally dipshit Alice. Because Michael never as much changed a dirty nappy. He's too fastidious. He couldn't even call her by her name, for fuck's sake.

As for Janine's last line to Scarlett, that was all of her abandonment issues brought to the fore again - Frank leaving a daughter behind in pursuit of some woman, Pat or Peggy.

The psychological depiction was good; the contrivances awkward and amateur.

Peggy got another mention tonight. Watch this space.