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.