EastEnders: MisMatched - Review 14.05.2013

CocaCola is a famous soft drink. It's said that its unique taste is a special secret recipe, known only to the family/people/conglomerate who own the business. Several years ago, these selfsame people thought the taste of Coke was a bit tired, so they came up with a newer, fresher - and what they called - a more exciting new taste for the drink.

People fled from buying it. It wasn't that they didn't like the new taste, it was just that it didn't taste like Coke. It looked enough like it, and it was there in the same bottles and tins, but once the liquid hit your tongue and taste buds, it was more than obvious this wasn't CocaCola.

The consumer knew more than the corporate powers that be that Coke's brand was in its unique taste, and when the drink was seen to lose its identity, then the consumer public backed away.

This wasn't Coke anymore.

So, CocaCola ditched the new flavour and reverted to the old, familiar brand.

This is how I feel most long-term viewers feel about EastEnders at the moment. I'm constantly bringing up Brookside as a bad example, but EastEnders is falling prey to the same dilemma that affected Brookside.

Brookside was known for its gritty realism and its fearless addessing of current issues of the day, and it did so in a realistic manner. It dealt with infidelity, domestic abuse, gay and lesbian issues, drug abuse, infertility and euthanasia in the most realistic of manners.

Then, they got saddled with a new producer, who sought to remould the show into what he thought its image should be. Gritty was exchanged for titty, and we got the insipid, talentless likes of Jennifer Ellison's surgically-enhanced tits and Clare Sweeney's Hollywood-teeth-meets-gangstaland gurning, and the show was on a hiding to nothing. What formerly was realistic now was lost in a welter of pretty girls, fit lads and sensationalism. There were lots of bangs and lots of banging,

The show lost its brand. It wasn't Brookside anymore. 

The same can be said for EastEnders. Oh, the titles say it's EastEnders, but most of the time, it's really The Branning Show. Most of the residents are attractive, and those who aren't, are objects of ridicule. Beloved characters like Kat are turned into narcissistic, nasty, self-serving bitches in the stroke of a pen. Bianca, who was a successful stallholder in the 1990s and was intelligent enough to earn a place at fashion college is now a near-emotional and behavioural retard.

And Sharon ...

The worst damage of all was reserved for Sharon. The actress is the same, and the character is called "Sharon," but where Sharon was strong, this woman is needy and clinging to any man willing to have her. Where Sharon was tolerant and understanding, this woman is bitchy, judgemental and hypocritical. Where Sharon would rise from any defeat and could stand alone from any man, this woman wallows in herself.

She looks like Sharon. She walks like Sharon. She probably smells like Sharon. But she isn't Sharon. The Shannisites, who only know and remember Sharon from her second and (in my opinion) less successful stint begun under John Yorke, are bitterly disappointed in the fact that she seems to have moved on to the point of forgetfulness away from Saint Dennis's memory. The viewers from the 1980s and 1990s remember the woman who pitted Mitchell bruv against Mitchell bruv and lived to tell the tale, and they are bitterly disapointed that she has yet to mention her real best friend (Michelle Fowler) and her own sister (Vicky).

The 80s, the 90s and the early Noughties ... that's three decades of fans deserting the sinking ship. The only demographic seemingly loyal to this current EastEnders and its "warmth and friendliness" promoting production team are the tweenagers, those people who didn't begin watching EastEnders until it was virtually The Stacey Slater Show, and the dimwits like Digital Spy's xTonix, who'd watch EastEnders and praise it blindly if this were a storyline ...

The current Executive Producer, in an effort of promoting warmth and friendship, also seems to be on a quest to pair up any stray person of a certain age hanging about, unattached, in Walford. Incongruously.

From the woman who gave you the unimaginably awful relationship that was Jack and Sharon, we are now being asked to suffer Denise and Ian, Masood and Carol, and - even more unimaginable, Ava the Deputy Head Teacher, and Billy Mitchell, a loser who's barely literate.

All for warmth and friendship and community spirit.

This is not Kat, Lauren and Bianca, singing to Lorraine Newman, although I bet she wishes they were ...

Her Name Is Lola, She Is an Asshole ...

I decided tonight that I don't like Lola. She's a vengeful, little bitch. A couple of years ago, and she hadn't even heard of the Mitchells and now she's calling the shots. OK, she's young, but her attitude to Sharon's addiction problem sucks royally. This is the girl who saw fit to take her baby with not even a nappy change or food and hole up in a crack den with her ASBO buddy from the care home, yet she equates Sharon with the sort of addicts and fly-by-nights she grew up around in a sink estate before going into care.

She's that intolerant that she doesn't understand why someone like Sharon would resort to prescription meds to dull the pain of what's happened to her in her life. This is a woman who thought her father had died, who endured an abusive marriage and fell in love with her husband's brother. She was virtually thrown under the emotional bus by the pair of them but left Walford with her head high. She suffered complications from an abortion which led her to believe she could never have children. She saw one fiance burn to death in a fire, nursed her alcoholic mother to her death, losing everything she owned in order to pay medical bills. Her father re-entered her life again, only to be brutally murdered in the very place where she grew up. Her husband was also murdered, right outside the pub, after just learning that she was pregnant with their child.

Did I mention, amongst all that, that she managed to find her birth mother, only to be rejected? That too.

If Billy hadn't found Lola, she'd be in some Young Offenders' Prison now, smoking crack cocaine and selling herself in exchange for some loose change with which to buy her next fix. If there had been a Lexi, she most certainly would be in care.

In all her high-minded morality, she doesn't stop to think that the way she's approaching this situation would put Sharon on edge even more. Yes, Sharon is an addict, and she's in denial as much as Phil ever was when he first started his drinking forays years ago.

I hate that scrunched-up evil little face she pulls every time something doesn't go her way and the way she, and only she, can be right. In retrospect, since she's been released from care, she's had it relatively easy. She ploughed through Ian Beale's chipshop window and got a job, stole from Roxy at the Salon and got another job. Her bad behaviour was rewarded and even encouraged by Billy, and she acts as if it's an affront that Janine, Billy's employer, doesn't support them fully and financially. The only reason she got pregnant was for the government benefits.

What would exposing Sharon's addiction prove? It may remove Sharon from the equation, but how long will it be before Lola is bored with the nights in, the baby puke and smelly nappies and is out painting the town whilst Billy minds the baby?

Spare me this rude, little cockney sparrow. She isn't even appealing.

I wonder ... does she know her Pops's history of child abuse and drug-dealing? At one time, Billy could just have sold some vicodin to Sharon and his gear would be strewn around their squat.

The Mitchell Family Dinner.

We've had some memorable ones - always a foodfeast, followed by a fable of home truths, followed by some sort of fight.

Here are a few recent memories ... like Christmas 2007, with Auntie Sal's remark about Roxy being Santa's festive whore, who'd had it off with a reindeer.

Or this vintage piece from Christmas 2008, which featured Suzy Branning's apt assessment of the Mitchell family.

Or my personal favourite from August 2010.

Sharon had her first Mitchell dinner - the first without Peggy interfering, that is. This was a tepid, lukewarm affair, but full of warmth and friendship on the surface. Sharon and Phil deemed this a Mitchell family dinner, and the Mitchells now consist of Phil, Sharon, Billy and Roxy (the runts of the Mitchell litter), Lola (the bastard at the family reunion) and Alfie, who seemed as gobsmacked as anyone in being there.

Lorraine Newman likes family gatherings. The first three months of this year never saw a week pass by that there wasn't some sort of Branning gathering, and now that a few more of them are about to scarper, she's cobbled together enough Mitchells to fill a room and conjured up a meal. For no real reason other than for a desperate Sharon to curry favour with a jumped-up little piece of shit who's really of no consequence (pun intended).

As if one dinner isn't enough, there's another across the way, and Lucky Billy has an invitation to both.

Billy has a date. With Ava the Rava, no less - and this is one of a gaggle of incongruous relationships in which Lorraine has asked us to invest at the moment, a situation which sees a woman of a certain age and unattached, coalesced with a man of a similar age and also unattached. The fact that the woman is supposed to be a highly educated professional and the man a total loser, ex-drug dealer and general village idiot. And how are they going to spend this first date? Why, a family dinner, of course.

On the upside, I like Sharon's new haircut, now that she's got away from the Brannings and those hair extensions.

Ava the Mismatched Misfit

Sorry, but I can't find the enthusiasm for this totally unthought-out, incidental character, brought in to bring ethnic diversity to the Branning clan. She is completely devoid of personality. She is a teacher who has yet to see the inside of a school, instead walking the streets of Walford by day and frequenting the pub at noon and in the evening, dispensing wisdom and observations galore to and about the local populace.

She is Walford's very own Magic Negro.

Only Ava the Rava isn't magic. She isn't even grammatically correct, which is de rigueur for a teacher, much less a deputy Head. I can totally understand her inability to connect emotionally with her jumped-up poor white trash putrid mother and equally shallow sister. After all, these are not her family. They are strangers - and nosey strangers at that, judging by Tanya's conduct tonight.

Currying favour and inching for gossip, Tanya scurries Ava the Rava back to the Salon for a freebie manicure and some booze. (Has Ava not noticed how much these people depend on booze?) We're subjected to yet another Tanya one-way dialogue about how Ava should be all but orgasming in her ironclad knickers at the prospect of sharing a table with Billy Mitchell.

As bloody if.

Ava would never in a million years be Billy's type. Billy's wives have included two childlike overgrown girls who shared a braincell between them - you could tell when the braincell was working because their voices lowered and octave ... and Julie, Lola's grandmother, whom Lola disliked and ran away. Honey apart, these women may not have been raving beauties, but at least they didn't look like a man in drag or some disapproving maiden aunt ...

The whole Billy meal ordeal was Cock's end of a bargain which would see Ava spending more time with Cora the Bora, the drunken old hag who thinks she's entitled to filial affection from Ava. She isn't. She gave birth to a child and she gave that child up for adoption. As for Cock's unnatural interest in this ASBO granny, he's got a perfectly good set of white grandparents with whom he was raised and who seem to be totally alive someplace else. They give him presents, at least. I wouldn't want any chld of mine, male or female, within spitting distance of Cora. She's not fit to be around children of any age.

Cock's about to be surrounded by bad influences, however, as the closing credits and scene showed. In one of the tritest, most cliched end scenes ever in EastEnders' history, we get introduced to Sam, Ava the Rava's ex.

The entire nature of the scene was of rank amateur quality, even the acting of the two principals...

Ava (opening door to a man standing away from her): Excuse me?

Sam (turning around): .... A ... Ava?

Ava (unbelievingly): Sam?

Dexter (in the background): Mum!

Sam: Is ... is that Dexter? Is that mah son?

This was so damned trite and so laboured, I honestly thought for a moment that the show was going retro and instead of the duff-duffs, you'd hear this ...

My first impression of Sam wasn't favourable either ...

I know he's only had a few lines, but his delivery was so stiff and wooden, he reminded me of 

this well-known icon ...

Daddy's home! And just what the show needs, yet another character with Daddy issues and yet another female who clearly isn't over someone from twenty years ago.

Billy is clearly a plot device.

Two Retards: Bianca and Ajay.

Like Tanya, all Bianca ever thinks about is sex. And now she's amazed that Carol's seen Masood all of two times, and she hasn't caught him sneaking out of Carol's room of a morning. She wants that to change. On occasion, Carol can be rather intelligent, and she would appreciate that a man of Masood's bearing, religion and culture wouldn't take a sexual relationship lightly.

Who am I kidding? Someone like Masood wouldn't go near an old bike like Carol, and an infidel, much less. Masood values respect and love in a relationship, and it's beyond my ken that they've moved the character on so quickly from the aftermath of his marriage to Zainab, a work in progress of about thirty years.

Once again, Carol is a fiftysomething woman, unattached, and Masood is a fiftysomething man, also unattached. There's absolutely nothing for either character to pursue other than a sexual adventure with each other. Ne'mind the fact that they have no chemistry nor that a woman of Carol's ilk would ever consider dating someone like Masood, or that he would consort with Carol, other than to pay her for her services. It's probably far too boring a story to show Masood as a mature student trying to attain teaching qualifications, or for Carol even to take up some sort of training - a proper cookery course or cake-making and start up a bit of a business on the side. Nope, it's got to be a romance. So they cobble this shit together in hopes that all of us will react in unintelligible hyuck hyuck lollol gibberish a la xTonix, because Masood and Carol are just so interesting.

Bianca shows what a retard she is by blaring out to all and sundry in the cafe about Carol being frustrated at not "getting it," just in time for Masood's retarded brother to emerge from the men's room to remark that Masood was a slow learner. So Bianca contrives a date with herself and Ajay and the kids, to give Carol and Masood time to fuck, especially in the candle-filled room where Carol's youngest child died. Gee, Carol even obliged by turning up in pajamas.

Maybe Bianca and Ajay will hit it off, marry and produce a legion of retards who'll stand in the middle of Walford Market forever, with an earpiece dangling from their ears and squawk unintelligible sounds at passers-by.

The No-Babe Babe

Kirsty's still not pregnant, and she's still lying that she is. Same shit, different day. How long, O Lord?

And Finally ... The Bad Smell.

Just when you think some progress is being made with Shirley's character and that she's moved on from Phil, there she sits at the bar of the pub, earwigging Roxy and Alfie talk about the impending Mitchell repast. Shirley wants to go. She wants to be a part of the Mitchell dynamic so bad she can (bad pun) taste it - even after what that family did to her best friend. 

Shirley still loves Phil. And now we see that her real venom isn't meant for Phil, but for Sharon, because for years Shirley's known that the love of Phil's life wasn't herself, but Sharon, and the inevitable happened. Sharon walked back into Walford and Phil went running ... from Shirley. Even now, Shirley could end it all for Phil by confessing to the police Phil's part in the cover-up of Heather's murder, but she won't.

Instead, she sits around morosely, like Banquo's Ghost and trades barbs about Sharon, taking no comfort from Roxy (from whom she stole with impugnity) that she was better off out of that dysfunctional lot. Move the fuck on.

Parting Shot ... Le Square Prepares for .... SAUSAGE SURPRIIIIIIIIIIIIISE!

Is Ian serious? He wants Jean to audition to be his sous-chef? Does he have a death wish?