Tonight I was forced to admit something deeply disturbing: I hate EastEnders. That's disturbing and upsetting because this used to be my favourite show. I never missed it. It got my undivided attention because in those days, I knew you had to listen, really listen to the dialogue - not because the actors weren't enunciating clearly (as they don't do now) - but because a lot of the dialogue, the characterisations and the storylines were so nuanced, so multi-levelled that one had to pay attention because the message being imparted was often subliminal.
Take the Saskiagate storyline for example, which - I realise - is beyond the ken and the memory of most viewers today. The story of Saskia lasted one year, precisely - from Valentine's Day 1999 until Valentine's Day 2000. One entire year.
And you know what? The public never tired of it.
Even more unusual, the storyline's main centres of interest were characters new to the programme - Steve Owen and Melanie Healy (the archtypical prototype of Jack and Ronnie - and if you'd ever have seen Steve and Mel, you'd know how watered down Rack was) and Matthew Rose. Saskia, herself, wasn't really a character perse se; she was a plot device - in fact, the plot device to end all plot devices. The dippy ex, who wouldn't let go, until she attacked Steve Owen, who whacked her with a marble ashtray in the presence of Matthew Rose, and the the two disposed of the body - another burial in Epping Forest.
The timing and the writing concerning this storyline was impeccable. There was tension and cliffhangers, interspersed with weeks where nothing would happen, lulling not only Matthew and Steve into a false sense of security, but also the audience, to the point where you actually thought that maybe, just maybe, they'd pull it off.
And then, in the summer of 1999, Saskia's body was found.
The most amazing thing about this storyline was that it began almost instantly Martin Kemp, Tamsin Outhwaite and Joe Absalom joined the cast. We didn't know these characters - Steve (Kemp) took over the old E20 club (now the ineffectual R and r), Mel (Outhwaite) was the first of the ice queens who showed up on the Square, the sister of the local vicar, who got fed up with Saskia's pesterings and took up romantically with Ian Beale; and Matthew (Absalom) was the son of the market inspector, who was not a jobsworth and who had a wife suffering from multiple sclerosis - yes, a real bona fide disability.
Interspersed with this storyline, we saw the off-screen death of Cindy Beale, the arrival of an adolescent Janine Butcher (the previous year) in the form of Charlie Brooks, the death of Tiffany Mitchell, and the departures of Grant Mitchell and also of Bianca, in the wake of her disastrous affair with Dan Sullivan.
Of course, all this was overseen by Matthew Robinson, an executive producer under whom Lorraine Newman trained.
It appears that she learned nothing.
Tonight, I was forced to admit that there really isn't a single character in the show about whom I care enough even to like - apart from Janine, and she cannot hold the show alone. I fear for her, also, because someone on Digital Spy Soaps Forum said something today which is the truest statement I've ever seen about this particular regime at EastEnders: That TPTB are now targeting the audience demographic who only started watching the programme from 2006 - the Stacey-shippers, those people who saw the Brannings rise from an occasional family to the dominant force in the Square, Ronnie and Jack fans, the lower end end of the Shannis gene pool, that sort of viewer. And amongst those viewers are the lowest common denominator who get turned on by Joey's six-pack, who lust after
The. Worst. Actress. Ever. In. EastEnders.
These are the viewers who don't think critically, because they can't. Thus, they can't see that most characters, as humans, are multi-faceted. They get confused when Phil, whom they perceive to be a thug, does a nice turn. They can't conceive of Janine being anything but evil. Try explaining her background and her issues, and their eyes glaze over. As for Michael, who's clearly a pejorative character, being a psychopath, he's the latest sex symbol. After all, it's better for a child to be raised by a psychopathic father, especially if he's cute.
And this flotsam and jetsam detritus for whom the production staff cater just love Kat's and Bianca's antics - free rein to intimidate simply because they have funny laughs.
So the ineffectual production team does the easy thing - they play to the pits, and this is exactly what the show is at the moment: the pits and sinking.
Everything I hate about EastEnders was rampant tonight in an episode written by some kid right out of their Writers' Academy - someone who, like the rest of the millennials, doesn't have any sort of appreciation for history, especially if anything happened before they were born or able to remember.
Pitstop at the Pity Party
A verse about Joey Branning from Don Henley's song:-
Well, I coulda been an actor, but I wound up here
I just have to look good, I don't have to be clear
Come and whisper in my ear
Give us dirty laundry
Billy's birthday party at the Vic, funded by Janine, is the backdrop of all the "community action" tonight. Funny, how everyone had a rough word for Janine but they all stayed and drank the champagne and ate the cake she provided.
Just a few words about the minor irritations that arose here.
I'm going to say it. I don't give a rat's arse about Ava the Rava, the Magic Negro, the deputy head teacher who never seems to see the inside of a school. OR her stereotypical black urban youth son, who tries to be the English equivalent of Will Smith playing the Fresh Prince of Bel Air.
Ava is one of a quartet of female characters who looks like a man in drag, especially tonight. Normally, she's got a face like a wet weekend, and reminds me of the character of Aunt Esther in the old 70s sitcom Sanford and Son (the American version of Steptoe and Son.
It's clear TPTB hired Clare Perkins on a whim, and now they're stumped for what to do with her character; so until they get a firm idea, they have her wander aimlessly about the Square, dispensing wisdom and light as if she were Bagger Vance looking for a golf course. (It's also obvious that Lorraine Newman must have a thing for Will Smith, as his influence is heavy in these characterisations).
I guess that means poor Billy Mitchell is The Magic Negro's Junnah, the perenniel loser who'll be redeemed into thinking himself a winner when Ava the Rava touches his magic wand - Billy's, that is.
Ava is a character that promised much on paper and offered nothing. Another circular merry-go-round where she and her birth mother Cora the Bora will do a kabuki dance for all the wrong reasons. Once more: Cora is not Ava's mother. She's someone who shat her out, put her up for adoption and forgot about her, losing herself in her favourite companion, booze. Why Cock, the Fresh Prince, is so fascinated by her is beyond me. She is worse than an old lag; as she proved tonight, she is poor white trash.
The only thing Cora the Bora and The Magic Negro have in common is that they both look like men in drag. So Cora was the second of the drag queens to show up in the Vic tonight.
Her white trash quotient was established via her needless confrontation with Bag o'Bones Beale and Joey Branning, who was at his unintelligible best tonight.
Cora the Bora is all concerned and in a huff because Joey and Lucy showed up at the pub, after Joey had dumped Lauren ... the cousin he was fucking.
Cora doesn't mind that aspect of the former relationship. I mean, any decent person would be relieved that their dippy, drunken granddaughter wasn't fucking around with her kin anymore. But poor whites aren't like that. They believe that vice is nice but incest is best, and it's better for Lauren the Lip to be loved up with a family member than for Joey to be seen in public with Lucy Beale. So she tries the intimidation act.
Butt out, you drunken old bitch. In fact, eyes open, everybody ... fucking your cousin isn't illegal, but it's creepy, and your kids can be seriously fucked up genetically.
I loved Joey's explanation to the old drunk about his relationship with Lucy:-
Acshah wa ja fraaas.
Lucy's back on her power trip, I see, getting her skinny knickers in a twist because Ian doesn't want to be a cog in the wheel of "her" empire, by opening yet another eating establishment in the Square. Let's see ... that's the cafe, the chippie, the forgotten Fargos and now Ian's new digs. People never starve in Walford.
It was quite arrogant for Lucy to surmise that, really, all Ian was fit for was running the market stall, the one part of her "empire" she wanted to sell, because it was too naff for her and the history of the stall within her family wasn't important to her at all (another millennial attitude, see?) She was miffed as well that (a) Janine sought to lend Ian the money for this venture and (b) Ian profusely thanked his girlfriend Denise for her support. Not Lucy. Another entitled little bitch who expects it all.
Anybody see Max Branning in the pub tonight? No, he wasn't there, but David Witts was doing a fair-to-bad impersonation of him. In case you hadn't noticed, Joey is trying to morph into a beefcake version of Max. Witts, an untrained and inexperienced actor, looks to Jake Wood for onsite impromptu acting classes - only Witts thinks Wood's advice is tantamount to imitating him. It looks as though TPTB concur as they've written dialogue which suggests Joey is telling Lucy to tone down her treatment of Ian.
I fear two things:
Farting Shits Parting Shots:-
Take the Saskiagate storyline for example, which - I realise - is beyond the ken and the memory of most viewers today. The story of Saskia lasted one year, precisely - from Valentine's Day 1999 until Valentine's Day 2000. One entire year.
And you know what? The public never tired of it.
Even more unusual, the storyline's main centres of interest were characters new to the programme - Steve Owen and Melanie Healy (the archtypical prototype of Jack and Ronnie - and if you'd ever have seen Steve and Mel, you'd know how watered down Rack was) and Matthew Rose. Saskia, herself, wasn't really a character perse se; she was a plot device - in fact, the plot device to end all plot devices. The dippy ex, who wouldn't let go, until she attacked Steve Owen, who whacked her with a marble ashtray in the presence of Matthew Rose, and the the two disposed of the body - another burial in Epping Forest.
The timing and the writing concerning this storyline was impeccable. There was tension and cliffhangers, interspersed with weeks where nothing would happen, lulling not only Matthew and Steve into a false sense of security, but also the audience, to the point where you actually thought that maybe, just maybe, they'd pull it off.
And then, in the summer of 1999, Saskia's body was found.
The most amazing thing about this storyline was that it began almost instantly Martin Kemp, Tamsin Outhwaite and Joe Absalom joined the cast. We didn't know these characters - Steve (Kemp) took over the old E20 club (now the ineffectual R and r), Mel (Outhwaite) was the first of the ice queens who showed up on the Square, the sister of the local vicar, who got fed up with Saskia's pesterings and took up romantically with Ian Beale; and Matthew (Absalom) was the son of the market inspector, who was not a jobsworth and who had a wife suffering from multiple sclerosis - yes, a real bona fide disability.
Interspersed with this storyline, we saw the off-screen death of Cindy Beale, the arrival of an adolescent Janine Butcher (the previous year) in the form of Charlie Brooks, the death of Tiffany Mitchell, and the departures of Grant Mitchell and also of Bianca, in the wake of her disastrous affair with Dan Sullivan.
Of course, all this was overseen by Matthew Robinson, an executive producer under whom Lorraine Newman trained.
It appears that she learned nothing.
Tonight, I was forced to admit that there really isn't a single character in the show about whom I care enough even to like - apart from Janine, and she cannot hold the show alone. I fear for her, also, because someone on Digital Spy Soaps Forum said something today which is the truest statement I've ever seen about this particular regime at EastEnders: That TPTB are now targeting the audience demographic who only started watching the programme from 2006 - the Stacey-shippers, those people who saw the Brannings rise from an occasional family to the dominant force in the Square, Ronnie and Jack fans, the lower end end of the Shannis gene pool, that sort of viewer. And amongst those viewers are the lowest common denominator who get turned on by Joey's six-pack, who lust after
The. Worst. Actress. Ever. In. EastEnders.
And this flotsam and jetsam detritus for whom the production staff cater just love Kat's and Bianca's antics - free rein to intimidate simply because they have funny laughs.
So the ineffectual production team does the easy thing - they play to the pits, and this is exactly what the show is at the moment: the pits and sinking.
Everything I hate about EastEnders was rampant tonight in an episode written by some kid right out of their Writers' Academy - someone who, like the rest of the millennials, doesn't have any sort of appreciation for history, especially if anything happened before they were born or able to remember.
Pitstop at the Pity Party
A verse about Joey Branning from Don Henley's song:-
Well, I coulda been an actor, but I wound up here
I just have to look good, I don't have to be clear
Come and whisper in my ear
Give us dirty laundry
Billy's birthday party at the Vic, funded by Janine, is the backdrop of all the "community action" tonight. Funny, how everyone had a rough word for Janine but they all stayed and drank the champagne and ate the cake she provided.
Just a few words about the minor irritations that arose here.
I'm going to say it. I don't give a rat's arse about Ava the Rava, the Magic Negro, the deputy head teacher who never seems to see the inside of a school. OR her stereotypical black urban youth son, who tries to be the English equivalent of Will Smith playing the Fresh Prince of Bel Air.
Ava is one of a quartet of female characters who looks like a man in drag, especially tonight. Normally, she's got a face like a wet weekend, and reminds me of the character of Aunt Esther in the old 70s sitcom Sanford and Son (the American version of Steptoe and Son.
It's clear TPTB hired Clare Perkins on a whim, and now they're stumped for what to do with her character; so until they get a firm idea, they have her wander aimlessly about the Square, dispensing wisdom and light as if she were Bagger Vance looking for a golf course. (It's also obvious that Lorraine Newman must have a thing for Will Smith, as his influence is heavy in these characterisations).
I guess that means poor Billy Mitchell is The Magic Negro's Junnah, the perenniel loser who'll be redeemed into thinking himself a winner when Ava the Rava touches his magic wand - Billy's, that is.
Ava is a character that promised much on paper and offered nothing. Another circular merry-go-round where she and her birth mother Cora the Bora will do a kabuki dance for all the wrong reasons. Once more: Cora is not Ava's mother. She's someone who shat her out, put her up for adoption and forgot about her, losing herself in her favourite companion, booze. Why Cock, the Fresh Prince, is so fascinated by her is beyond me. She is worse than an old lag; as she proved tonight, she is poor white trash.
The only thing Cora the Bora and The Magic Negro have in common is that they both look like men in drag. So Cora was the second of the drag queens to show up in the Vic tonight.
Her white trash quotient was established via her needless confrontation with Bag o'Bones Beale and Joey Branning, who was at his unintelligible best tonight.
Cora the Bora is all concerned and in a huff because Joey and Lucy showed up at the pub, after Joey had dumped Lauren ... the cousin he was fucking.
Cora doesn't mind that aspect of the former relationship. I mean, any decent person would be relieved that their dippy, drunken granddaughter wasn't fucking around with her kin anymore. But poor whites aren't like that. They believe that vice is nice but incest is best, and it's better for Lauren the Lip to be loved up with a family member than for Joey to be seen in public with Lucy Beale. So she tries the intimidation act.
Butt out, you drunken old bitch. In fact, eyes open, everybody ... fucking your cousin isn't illegal, but it's creepy, and your kids can be seriously fucked up genetically.
I loved Joey's explanation to the old drunk about his relationship with Lucy:-
Acshah wa ja fraaas.
Lucy's back on her power trip, I see, getting her skinny knickers in a twist because Ian doesn't want to be a cog in the wheel of "her" empire, by opening yet another eating establishment in the Square. Let's see ... that's the cafe, the chippie, the forgotten Fargos and now Ian's new digs. People never starve in Walford.
It was quite arrogant for Lucy to surmise that, really, all Ian was fit for was running the market stall, the one part of her "empire" she wanted to sell, because it was too naff for her and the history of the stall within her family wasn't important to her at all (another millennial attitude, see?) She was miffed as well that (a) Janine sought to lend Ian the money for this venture and (b) Ian profusely thanked his girlfriend Denise for her support. Not Lucy. Another entitled little bitch who expects it all.
Anybody see Max Branning in the pub tonight? No, he wasn't there, but David Witts was doing a fair-to-bad impersonation of him. In case you hadn't noticed, Joey is trying to morph into a beefcake version of Max. Witts, an untrained and inexperienced actor, looks to Jake Wood for onsite impromptu acting classes - only Witts thinks Wood's advice is tantamount to imitating him. It looks as though TPTB concur as they've written dialogue which suggests Joey is telling Lucy to tone down her treatment of Ian.
I fear two things:
- I still remember TPTB's first PR blurb last year about Joey and Lucy being the new power couple on the Square, this generation's Grant and Sharon. I felt as though I wanted to puke.
- I also fear that, with Jack departing, TPTB will promote Joey to resident Class A Branning Male status as almost an equal of Max's. Morph Derek and Jack into Joey and give Max an adult Branning male off which to bounce and bond. Now I really am going to puke.
The Drag Queen Slut and Her Ginger Hyena
Nice one, EastEnders.
Let it be known throughout the land that the BBC really does, as the latest report on the corporation confirms, promote a culture of bullying.
Last week we saw Bianca the Village Retard defeat the gangabanga, effete bully who was ruining her oldest child's life. This week, we saw Bianca as the bully. Oh, she's been a bully before. Who can't forget Kat and Bianca taunting Tamwar on his first day as assistant market inspector when he caught them on an infringement? They called him "weirdo" and "freak."
Or when the slut and the retard were late setting up, when Katshit "invited" him to her home and passive-aggressively bullied him into holding her stallspace for her whenever she was late.
On Monday and Tuesday, we watched, very uncomfortably, as Kat and Bianca wantonly pilloried and publically humiliated Lister, the Market Inspector. Carol even got in on the act, sheltering them as they ran, cackling like schoolgirls from his wrath and accusing him of targeting Bianca. He banned them from the market for three weeks, and they immediately tried to make it seem as if he were the perpetrator of a great wrong. Neither one of them took responsibility for their actions, rather they blamed him for doing his job.Bianca whining about feeding her skanky kids and becoming belligerant.
Well, tonight, EastEnders, the flagship programme of the BBC, promoted the bully cycle to the fullest. Instead of presenting Lister as a bit of a jobsworth, but a decent man - remember, he revoked the ban on Bianca working on the Square or on Bridge Street - being castigated unjustly for doing his job, tonight we are presented with him being a vain and shallow man, easily attracted by Kat's seductive charm (puke-a-buzzard ... if people want to complain about how bad Letitia Dean is, then Jessie Wallace was atrocious in that scene tonight.) The two bitches set him up and then sought to blackmail him to get their pitch back - and they succeeded.
You know, this would have been a viable storyline, had Lister been portrayed as a predator or a bully, himself; but he's just a humbug, doing his job. As he said, the job, after the break-down of his marriage and the loss of his family, was his life - and both of these skanks could identify with that. And the message being promoted amongst the pondlife attracted to this shit, is you can behave anyway you want with a figure of authority - just try to trick them into a compromising situation and blackmail them. It promotes that sort of behaviour as fine, if it's meant to be a laugh.
Lister's last words were that he didn't forget things. I hope a big dose of karma comes their way, because I virulently hate these two women.
Dumbasses.
As for Kat getting involved in Michael's situation, that's none of her business either. No one in that Square knows the reason Janine left, bar Billy and certainly Michael. So no one has a right to make a remark or pass judgement.
Even Roxy was giving Janine the rough side of her tongue, telling her not to "flaunt" Scarlett like that. WTF?
Has this woman forgotten what Michael did to her, to her sister and even to Jean, only last summer?
I know all the tittery little Michael shippers on Digital Spy, who haven't got a clue what a psychopath is, were all agog at Michael's "clever" remarks to Phil about Sharon, which were totally out of order. Phil's sleeping with Sharon, a woman he's known for twenty years and with whom he has a romantic history. Michael's slept with Kat Moon and Roxy Mitchell and, a couple of months ago, was sniffing around Kirsty Branning. I'd say Michael has a penchant for STDs.
He's got no reason to slate Sharon. There are some truths about him however that he lets slip - when he remarked that it's never good to go back to a relationship, he slipped and remarked to Roxy that he'd make the exception for her. Several times during his courtship with Janine, he made similar remarks to Roxy.
For anyone fooled by Michael's "breakdown" in the pub tonight and afterwards, know this: psychopaths are prime manipulators. They're facile actors too. All that was a show for attention and sympathy. Poor Michael. Look how he's suffering. Aw, poor man, he's lost his baby.
Another truth spoken in that great soliloquy tonight - the fact that he told Katshit and their latest recruit, MyAssholeAlice (whose gleaming new teeth paid for by the licence fee are too big for her mouth), that he wasn't the type of man to be around children. That much is true, but he cleverly twisted the story around to place the blame firmly on Eddie Moon - Daddy again - when the real source of Michael's problem was his mother and the fact he inherited her psychopathy from her.
And how, exactly, does Katshit, the eternal victim, who viscerally hates Janine, propose to "get Alice back" for Michael? This is a woman whose child was taken from her by another woman, and who - if truth be known - has struggled to bond with that child since his return. Tommy gets more love, care and attention from Alfie than he ever does from Kat. She's a narcissistic slut. A real cat is a better mother.
Of course, Janine is struggling. And she's alone, within a hostile area and with no emotional or familial support. Her retarded sister-in-law, who lives for a peppercorn rent in a house Janine owns and who's let them stay out of care and concern for their welfare, will probably spew Kat's poison right back in Janine's face.
Janine is the only good thing in this programme at the moment. Indeed, she's the only thing Bryan Kirkwood got right, but even she isn't strong enough to save this ship from sinking.
Fat Barbie the Barbituate Queen.
Kudos to Danielle Harold for the performance of the evening, but even after those scenes, I can totally see why Letitia Dean is calling time for a break from this stranger-than-strange Sharon, with instructions to Newman and co to get this right.
Whatever kind of doctor Sharon saw in the States after "grieving" for Dennis's death must have been a backstreet hack to prescribe what can only be vicodin for her - "to take the edge off" her grief. A doctor would have sparingly supplied anti-depressants - uppers, if you will. Definitely not barbituates like pain-killers. So someone got the medical angle wrong.
A more realistic storyline would have been a fall in her house in Florida, injuring her back and getting addicted that way. But that's too taxing for the writers. We had to get in a mention of Saint Dennis (but no mention of Michelle or Vicky), and that "losing yourself in a foreign country" was bunkum. Sharon had lived in Florida off and on for years. She had close family there. If she were in need of emotional support, she could have called on Michelle or Vicky. Even if she lived in the Southern part of the state and they lived on the Northern panhandle, a visit is only a 45 minute plane ride.
I don't like this weak and clinging Sharon, begging Lola not to tell Phil - pardon me, I thought Phil knew she had an addiction problem? More retconning? And to add insult to injury, this is all tacked onto the Lexi Custody Battle, which is now set to run in tandem with the Scarlett Custody Battle as well.
- The fact that Michael fully expected Ray to have a drink with him wasn't quirky, it was a psychopathic trait. Michael doesn't give a rat's arse about people. He can treat someone like shit one moment and expect a normal reaction the next. The fact that his behaviour has been fed and accepted and responded to thus by the brian-dead Moon/Slater/runts-of-the-litter Mitchell faction has only contributed to his arrogance. Kudos to Ray for brushing that piece of shit back to the woodwork where it belongs.
- I'm sorry, but Masood and Carol don't work, and I get the impression that since both are fifty-somethings and on their own, Newman thought - for warmth and affection - to throw them together and see if they work. They don't. Masood is a practicing Muslim, who's only integrated so far into Western society. He would blanche if any of his children married outside their faith - Syed, notwithstanding, and we know his issues with Syed have yet to be resolved - so why is he slinking around Carol this way? Besides, she is the last sort of woman he'd even think about being serious with - four children by four different men and promiscuous (by his standards) even into her fifties. Besides, her family have openly bullied and tormented his son and were involved in his mugging. As for Carol, how is she going to stand spending an evening with a man who's completely teetotal, as well as one who's reasonably well-educated and civilised with regard to the way he comports himself in public?
Personally, Masood's character became redundant the day Zainab left. Their shelf life is significantly shorter.
- The fact that Fatboy and Poppy think Tamwar and MyAssholeAlice make a great couple because they like westerns and she's "homely" says everything about the shallow values being promoted on this show.
The BBC really need to grow a pair and confront the problems that have made their flagship show a total and embarrassing pisstake.
(By the way, the other two men in drag tonight were Kat and Sharon. The only one missing was Kim.)
Final Observation: Yes, yes, yes ... TPTB, this Academy Writer showed his cleverness by getting Michael to paraphrase the poet Philip Larkin in his final rant about parents fucking their children up. Kudos to the more intelligent viewer who picked it up, but, yes, I do think TPTB were having a laugh at the viewers' expense. They knew the Luddites watching, just like the skank Luddite and the thickaspigshit Luddite listening to Michael would take it as a great emotional moment from a psychopath. By the way, psychopaths can only show one emotion - rage.
(By the way, the other two men in drag tonight were Kat and Sharon. The only one missing was Kim.)
Final Observation: Yes, yes, yes ... TPTB, this Academy Writer showed his cleverness by getting Michael to paraphrase the poet Philip Larkin in his final rant about parents fucking their children up. Kudos to the more intelligent viewer who picked it up, but, yes, I do think TPTB were having a laugh at the viewers' expense. They knew the Luddites watching, just like the skank Luddite and the thickaspigshit Luddite listening to Michael would take it as a great emotional moment from a psychopath. By the way, psychopaths can only show one emotion - rage.
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