Monty Python has a remedy for some of the actors in EastEnders ...
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times ... well, the present isn't one of EastEnders' best tomes, but tonight's episode showed the best of EastEnders, alongside the worst of the show.
Saturday midnight saw (at last) the long-awaited news that Tony Discipline, arguably one of the worst actors ever to appear on the show, was being axed. In truth, Discipline should have left last year, when Matt Lapinskas left. In truth once more, were it down to deciding which Moon brother to remain longer on the Square, most viewers agreed that Lapinskas was the better actor, One presumes that the show had some sort of contingency plan on hold for Discipline, considering he faced a very real possibility last summer of being convicted of GBH and imprisoned.
Still, he remained, hovering in the background of the show, mumbling his lines and cultivating a beer gut. Front and centre featured another "acTOR" hired for his looks and with no experience - David Witts, fey in real life, but who effects an accent so garbled and so bad, he almost makes Discipline look good. Then there's this year's model: Cock. Dexter. Or, rather Dex-TAAAAAAAA. EastEnders have thrown in an Afro-Carribbean variety of untried, untalented, inexperienced and unintelligible youth, just to show that they are, indeed, an Equal Opportunity Employer of bad wannabe actors. Dex-TAAAAAAAAA is the lovechild of Star Trek's Mr Worff, and Mr Spock with a soupcon of a bad Will Smith impersonation. He has Worff's forehead, Spock's ears and he's yet another species of mouth-breather with Daddy Issues ...
(Yes, my sentiments, exactly).
So, Discipline is going. In fact, he finishes filming in the next couple of weeks, and The Star's article sounded suspiciously like he'd only been apprised that his services were no longer required. Also, according to the article, he was "gutted." (Well, he would be, wouldn't he? He may get Strictly or Dancing on Ice, but after that, who knows? Back to the Billingsgate Fish Market and part-time underwear modeling?) Ironic that he wasn't told of his sacking - and the article mentioned sacking, there was no euphemistic "left by mutual consent" - until hisbeard girl friend, the show's current go-to girl being foisted upon the unsuspecting public, was out of the country on a holiday of her own.
I admit, I expected one of the dire trio of dimwitted youths would go, in the wake of BenJones Hardy arriving as Peter Beale. The show is simply too heavy on the youth demographic. EastEnders is not a niche soap, and it's time TPTB stopped pandering to the silly tweenies who share a collective brain cell that isn't keen on being developed. I expected Discipline's Tyler would go, but he's been pushed so far into the background, that I doubt his leaving will affect any of that demographic much.
I didn't think Witts would go - after all, he's a Branning, and Newman thinks he's "beautiful," and Khali Best is there for the duration of Newman's tenure. She created him, after all.
But now that the axe has been wielded in the direction of the cluster of unlikeable youth dominating that show, I'd like to see someone show some balls and pare down a fair few of them - Lauren, Abi, Joey,Whitney, Dex-TAAAAAAA should all be looking over their shoulder in trepidation.
Team Peter.
OK, credit where credit is due: I like him.
Now, see what you get when you apply yourself to finding someone with some sort of acting experience and a smidgeon of developable talent?
Peter Beale was always the nicer twin, the one who was overlooked as Santer honed in on Lucy's so-called rebellious personality, played by the one-trick pony known as Melissa Suffield. But then, Peter was played by Thomas Law, and drying paint was more interesting than he was.
I was one of the first to be sceptical about NuPeter, who was hunked up and looks a lot like he could be Leonardo di Caprio's baby brother, but he's good. The actor, like Nigel Harman, is a public schoolboy, and - again, like Harman - he's toned his posh tones down just a degree - enough to sound local, but not overdone to the point of being a stereotypical cockney, which Ian's children never were.
Of the three of Ian's recast children, I'd say Ben Hardy, ne' Jones, is the best actor and the most likeable of the lot. It appears that TPTB have decided to play up the cold bitch part of Lucy, after progressing her so far from her ditzy, entitled and lazy mates, and in regressing her, have made her eminently unlikeable in a way far worse than Melissa Suffield's Lucy was.
NuBobby is just annoying - pure stageschool kid who's far too aware of himself, and well on his way to rival Maisie Smith in becoming Walford's version of Simon Barlow.
Peter knows his twin better than anyone else, and he knows what a scheming and lying little bitch she can be. I cheered tonight when Ian actually told Peter that Lucy honed in on him when he was vulnerable and took everything from him - his businesses and his home. And he acknowledged to Peter that she wanted the lot for himself.
I'm not certain how I feel about Ian's assertion that taking Lucy's money the way he did was merely taking his own money. Legally, for the moment, the lot is hers, and he embezzled from her. But I liked the fact that Peter asserted to Ian that he would help him get the entire lot back, and I liked the fact that he stood up to Lucy's lies and her attempts to insinuate that Ian had lied to him, by reminding Lucy that both he and Bobby were a part of what Ian had built up as well. She had, in fact, snookered their inheritance.
And Peter's done what precious few characters have done - admitted his culpability. He knew what was going on with Ian and chose to ignore it; but now he was home, he's going to right the wrong.
The scene is set for an obvious confrontation between Peter and Joey, the way he's honed in on taking what he wants from the cafe without paying. I only hope this isn't going to lead to yet another ubiquitous and boring love triangle, involving Peter, Lauren and Joey. He certainly doesn't deserve Lauren. Or Whitney, for that matter.
In fact, I'm actually surprised he'd want to see Whitney again, considering she dumped him so unceremoniously last time for Connor. But I'm also glad that they remembered his friendship with Fatboy,and included a scene where he visited Dot - with Dot reminiscing about Pete and Kathy. Even his last scene, which saw Max acknowledge him and reference his previous friendship with Lauren (by way of a a warning) was nice continuity.
This is a positive - the scenes like that, and another one tonight, with old and legacy characters interacting, a real reminder of what EastEnders is all about, and not the ugly thing it became when the Brannings arrived.
And finally, I'm glad that Peter upbraided Lucy on something scores of people have noticed - how she never once acknowledged that Ian was ill. Even today, she holds the blame for his desertion of her and Bobby over Ian's head like the Sword of Damocles, willing him to feel guilty for doing what he did, when he was ill and couldn't help himself. Peter really wants to get Ian to stop apologising for Lucy and giving her credit for holding everything together. She simply didn't, until she had his assets in her greedy little anorexic hands.
EastEnders really should stop showing full-body shots of Hetti Bywater. There's thin and there's emaciated, and there's nothing of this actress. It's not attractive.
All in all, Peter Beale is the first re-cast/new character who seems to have worked from the beginning.
Let's just hope he continues in this positive vein.
The only downside was the mysterious phonecall he received - obviously from Lucy's "best friend" in Devon - which means at some point we'll be seeing yet another teenaged character filled with entitlement.
Melodrama Dot.
Poor pitiful Dot ... elderly, unwanted and feeling sorry for herself ...
Dot's really throwing herself a pity party, and she's winning in achieving the attention she craves. Her mighty pride has been dented by the scandal of Snake-and-HookerGate, and not even a nice Jewish girl like Poopy-Le-Dim offering to attend church services with her can allay her self-pity.
Just think, she would have been able to have counted Poopy-Le-Dim a convert of sorts.
We saw the worst and the best of Dot tonight - the over-acting pantomime melodrama queen, all high and might wounded righteousness with the vicar, and Dot at her best - first with Sharon, and this was Sharon at her best as well. I've always said that she works best with actors with whom she's the most familiar - Steve McFadden, Adam Woodyatt, June Brown and Charlie Brooks. Of course, the writing has to match as well, and Sharon giving Dot a pep talk tonight to cheer her up and flatter her ego was entirely within character for Sharon as most long-term viewers know her (and by long-term, I mean, those who knew her before she became needy and clinging with fey Dennis). That was the Sharon who would put gumpf and go and fighting spirit in someone.
Matt Evans, who wrote this episode, is one of the post-2006 crew,and it's obvious that someone's been doing their homework on these older characters and the ones who have been established and legacied prior to the 21st Century. Good work.
And even though Dot forgave and forgot Lauren's scam, I'm glad to see her hold firm and refuse her money, even telling her robustly to get the fuck home and sober up, in a nicer way, of course.
Don't get me wrong - at the best of times, I've never been a Dot fan, but, melodrama apart, she worked tonight.
The Psychopath Punches Down (Again).
Boy, he's seen Alice coming. For anyone still thinking Michael Moon is a nice person, you've seen proof that he isn't. He never has been, so wise up. And he's always managed, not that you'd care to notice, to punch down with his victims.
Here's what his victims all have in common: they're women who are at a particularly vulnerable point in their lives - Kat (twice - the first time when Alfie was taken away to prison leaving her alone in a foreign country; the second time when he'd just told her he wanted a divorce); Roxy (lonely and isolated with a small child); Jean (naive and trusting, missing her children, suffering from a bi-polar condition); Janine (isolated, lonely, grieving for Pat and her grandmother, separated from her siblings, later tired, emotionally bullied, hormonal) ... and now Alice, who's also grieving for a dead parent, somewhat friendless, naive and trusting.
He was the picture of passive-aggressiveness tonight - first yelling remorselessly and frighteningly at her in the street, then preying on her crush on him in order to lift the keys to Janine's house from her. Alice is all over the place at the moment. She was meant to hate Janine and she likes her, to the extent that she feels bad about having deceived her. I could almost feel sorry for Alice if it weren't for those ridiculously over-large plastic-looking veneers she calls teeth.
Boy, someone saw her coming. They almost - no, they do - look like false teeth.
But it's important to remember that what we're seeing with Michael is the real nature of his psychopathic personality - his coldness, his self-centredness, his total disdain and disregard for other people. This is a man who would kill someone, even a child, without any remorse. A psychopath is a master manipulator. And any fangirl dying to be manipulated by someone like Michael Moon is truly a sick individual. There's a name for someone like that - a masochist.
The Children's Hour (Again)
If there's a God in heaven, please can He give Lorraine Newman strength enough to rid Walford of Abi the Dough-Faced Giggling Girl? She is appalling.
Yes, yes, yes, I feel immensely sorry that she isn't being noticed by her parents in their all-out ad sudden concern for Lauren. But I'm getting mightily bored with The Tale of the Greedy Girl, the Car, the Boy with Daddy Issues and the Holiday.
This non-storyline has been going on for too long. Why, in the 21st Century, would any girl expect her boyfriend and her cousin, whom she didn't know existed this time last year and who owes nothing to her benefits-minded feckless friend, to pay for a holiday for the quartet?
The fact that Jay's ticking off of spoiled brat Dex-TAAAAAAAA regarding Sam the Sham's offer to pay again for the car his little Klingon-Vulcan Cock destroyed, if it were sufficientley repaired, achieved nothing, yet Abi's little childish giggles sent him running toute-suite to Daddy dearest, telling him to pay up and then get out of the game.
Pardon me, just who is this little piece of shit to demand that his father leave Walford? There's too much of this children-demanding-parents-acquiescing on EastEnders, and it's time this stopped. I want to see one of these parents, when held to a demand by a recalcitrant child, reach over the table and clout the offending offspring, like a meatier version of this ...
Since Sam the Sham's arrived in town, he's had no less than Cora the Bora, The Magic Negro and now the VulKlingon Cock demand he leave.
You know, were I he, I'd stay just for spite, even if it meant snogging Kim.
Welcome to the House of Fun
starring ...
THE. WORST. ACTRESS. EVER. IN. EASTENDERS.
You know, I'm no fan of Tanya's, but there's no doubt that she's been a significant character for the past seven years in EastEnders. Then why do I get this feeling that her departure line will be more like Ray Dixon's than like that of Peggy or Zainab - meaning that Tanya's leaving line is going to be more about Lauren than about Tanya?
There were some interesting scenes played out in BranningVille tonight ...
And some pithy home truths told, at last.
From Max accusing Tanya of turning a blind eye to Lauren's stockpiling enough booze to open an off-licence right under her nose, with Tanya (of course) denying anything was her fault. Line of the night, regrettably, goes to Abi the Dough-Faced Girl.
Tanya: I can't keep watching her every hour of the day, Max. I've got a business to run and three kids to look after.
Abi: When it suits her.
That was a classic argument between Max and Tanya, and whilst Max is at fault for Lauren's behaviour to an extent, Tanya was with her 24/7 and had assumed the role of full-time parent, effectively cutting Max out of the equation unless money were needed.
It was Tanya, who buried her head in the sand and refused to acknowledge Lauren's drinking was out of control.
Surprisingly, even Cora the Bora was talking sense tonight, referencing her experience in dealing with Rainie, in trying to advise Tanya, still in denial and peeved that people would think this were her fault that Lauren was the way she was.
Actually, I am amazed that EastEnders refuse to tackle the subject of generational alcohol abuse with this family of women. They did so, brilliantly, with the Mitchells, and Eric Mitchell didn't even make an appearance, but his unseen presence was felt. Why can't anyone see that Tanya and Cora are functional alcoholics? They have a drink dependency. Cora always has a buzz on; Tanya reaches for the bottle on the flimsiest of excuses. Rainie admits her addiction and removes herself from her family in recognition that they were the cause and encouragement of her behaviour.
Lauren's drink dependency has been learned in the home,from her mother and her grandmother. And no one's touching on this.
The only downside to these scenes was the pisspoor performance put in by Jossa. First of all, she appeared to get drunk from half a bottle of wine filched from a table at the Vic. She had no money. Secondly, when she's drunk, she's almosta comic reiteration of a drunk- speaking loudly and in funny voices, gesticulating wildly and gurning. Gurning is her specialty.
She stank up the place, especially her wildly inordinate behaviour in the pub, not to mention her trash-talking of Dot at home. However, this all reiterates what crap parents the Brannings are. the crappiest of parents. Abi whines because too much attention is paid to Lauren, who's acting out because (amongst other things) too much attention is being paid to Abi. This is what happens when Mummy Dearest seeks to play good cop and undermine Daddy's discipline.
And of course, we have yet another parent, who's remedy to a child with problems is to lock them in their room. That's actually illegal. considering Lauren is an adult.
Joke of the night: Tanya asserting that she was going to get Lauren professional help. Yeah, sure ... that's something you'll never see in EastEnders.
Apart from Jossa and both the respective brat packs, this wasn't a bad episode. There's promise, but can it be sustained?
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times ... well, the present isn't one of EastEnders' best tomes, but tonight's episode showed the best of EastEnders, alongside the worst of the show.
Saturday midnight saw (at last) the long-awaited news that Tony Discipline, arguably one of the worst actors ever to appear on the show, was being axed. In truth, Discipline should have left last year, when Matt Lapinskas left. In truth once more, were it down to deciding which Moon brother to remain longer on the Square, most viewers agreed that Lapinskas was the better actor, One presumes that the show had some sort of contingency plan on hold for Discipline, considering he faced a very real possibility last summer of being convicted of GBH and imprisoned.
Still, he remained, hovering in the background of the show, mumbling his lines and cultivating a beer gut. Front and centre featured another "acTOR" hired for his looks and with no experience - David Witts, fey in real life, but who effects an accent so garbled and so bad, he almost makes Discipline look good. Then there's this year's model: Cock. Dexter. Or, rather Dex-TAAAAAAAA. EastEnders have thrown in an Afro-Carribbean variety of untried, untalented, inexperienced and unintelligible youth, just to show that they are, indeed, an Equal Opportunity Employer of bad wannabe actors. Dex-TAAAAAAAAA is the lovechild of Star Trek's Mr Worff, and Mr Spock with a soupcon of a bad Will Smith impersonation. He has Worff's forehead, Spock's ears and he's yet another species of mouth-breather with Daddy Issues ...
(Yes, my sentiments, exactly).
So, Discipline is going. In fact, he finishes filming in the next couple of weeks, and The Star's article sounded suspiciously like he'd only been apprised that his services were no longer required. Also, according to the article, he was "gutted." (Well, he would be, wouldn't he? He may get Strictly or Dancing on Ice, but after that, who knows? Back to the Billingsgate Fish Market and part-time underwear modeling?) Ironic that he wasn't told of his sacking - and the article mentioned sacking, there was no euphemistic "left by mutual consent" - until his
I admit, I expected one of the dire trio of dimwitted youths would go, in the wake of Ben
I didn't think Witts would go - after all, he's a Branning, and Newman thinks he's "beautiful," and Khali Best is there for the duration of Newman's tenure. She created him, after all.
But now that the axe has been wielded in the direction of the cluster of unlikeable youth dominating that show, I'd like to see someone show some balls and pare down a fair few of them - Lauren, Abi, Joey,Whitney, Dex-TAAAAAAA should all be looking over their shoulder in trepidation.
Team Peter.
OK, credit where credit is due: I like him.
Now, see what you get when you apply yourself to finding someone with some sort of acting experience and a smidgeon of developable talent?
Peter Beale was always the nicer twin, the one who was overlooked as Santer honed in on Lucy's so-called rebellious personality, played by the one-trick pony known as Melissa Suffield. But then, Peter was played by Thomas Law, and drying paint was more interesting than he was.
I was one of the first to be sceptical about NuPeter, who was hunked up and looks a lot like he could be Leonardo di Caprio's baby brother, but he's good. The actor, like Nigel Harman, is a public schoolboy, and - again, like Harman - he's toned his posh tones down just a degree - enough to sound local, but not overdone to the point of being a stereotypical cockney, which Ian's children never were.
Of the three of Ian's recast children, I'd say Ben Hardy, ne' Jones, is the best actor and the most likeable of the lot. It appears that TPTB have decided to play up the cold bitch part of Lucy, after progressing her so far from her ditzy, entitled and lazy mates, and in regressing her, have made her eminently unlikeable in a way far worse than Melissa Suffield's Lucy was.
NuBobby is just annoying - pure stageschool kid who's far too aware of himself, and well on his way to rival Maisie Smith in becoming Walford's version of Simon Barlow.
Peter knows his twin better than anyone else, and he knows what a scheming and lying little bitch she can be. I cheered tonight when Ian actually told Peter that Lucy honed in on him when he was vulnerable and took everything from him - his businesses and his home. And he acknowledged to Peter that she wanted the lot for himself.
I'm not certain how I feel about Ian's assertion that taking Lucy's money the way he did was merely taking his own money. Legally, for the moment, the lot is hers, and he embezzled from her. But I liked the fact that Peter asserted to Ian that he would help him get the entire lot back, and I liked the fact that he stood up to Lucy's lies and her attempts to insinuate that Ian had lied to him, by reminding Lucy that both he and Bobby were a part of what Ian had built up as well. She had, in fact, snookered their inheritance.
And Peter's done what precious few characters have done - admitted his culpability. He knew what was going on with Ian and chose to ignore it; but now he was home, he's going to right the wrong.
The scene is set for an obvious confrontation between Peter and Joey, the way he's honed in on taking what he wants from the cafe without paying. I only hope this isn't going to lead to yet another ubiquitous and boring love triangle, involving Peter, Lauren and Joey. He certainly doesn't deserve Lauren. Or Whitney, for that matter.
In fact, I'm actually surprised he'd want to see Whitney again, considering she dumped him so unceremoniously last time for Connor. But I'm also glad that they remembered his friendship with Fatboy,and included a scene where he visited Dot - with Dot reminiscing about Pete and Kathy. Even his last scene, which saw Max acknowledge him and reference his previous friendship with Lauren (by way of a a warning) was nice continuity.
This is a positive - the scenes like that, and another one tonight, with old and legacy characters interacting, a real reminder of what EastEnders is all about, and not the ugly thing it became when the Brannings arrived.
And finally, I'm glad that Peter upbraided Lucy on something scores of people have noticed - how she never once acknowledged that Ian was ill. Even today, she holds the blame for his desertion of her and Bobby over Ian's head like the Sword of Damocles, willing him to feel guilty for doing what he did, when he was ill and couldn't help himself. Peter really wants to get Ian to stop apologising for Lucy and giving her credit for holding everything together. She simply didn't, until she had his assets in her greedy little anorexic hands.
EastEnders really should stop showing full-body shots of Hetti Bywater. There's thin and there's emaciated, and there's nothing of this actress. It's not attractive.
All in all, Peter Beale is the first re-cast/new character who seems to have worked from the beginning.
Let's just hope he continues in this positive vein.
The only downside was the mysterious phonecall he received - obviously from Lucy's "best friend" in Devon - which means at some point we'll be seeing yet another teenaged character filled with entitlement.
Melodrama Dot.
Poor pitiful Dot ... elderly, unwanted and feeling sorry for herself ...
Dot's really throwing herself a pity party, and she's winning in achieving the attention she craves. Her mighty pride has been dented by the scandal of Snake-and-HookerGate, and not even a nice Jewish girl like Poopy-Le-Dim offering to attend church services with her can allay her self-pity.
Just think, she would have been able to have counted Poopy-Le-Dim a convert of sorts.
We saw the worst and the best of Dot tonight - the over-acting pantomime melodrama queen, all high and might wounded righteousness with the vicar, and Dot at her best - first with Sharon, and this was Sharon at her best as well. I've always said that she works best with actors with whom she's the most familiar - Steve McFadden, Adam Woodyatt, June Brown and Charlie Brooks. Of course, the writing has to match as well, and Sharon giving Dot a pep talk tonight to cheer her up and flatter her ego was entirely within character for Sharon as most long-term viewers know her (and by long-term, I mean, those who knew her before she became needy and clinging with fey Dennis). That was the Sharon who would put gumpf and go and fighting spirit in someone.
Matt Evans, who wrote this episode, is one of the post-2006 crew,and it's obvious that someone's been doing their homework on these older characters and the ones who have been established and legacied prior to the 21st Century. Good work.
And even though Dot forgave and forgot Lauren's scam, I'm glad to see her hold firm and refuse her money, even telling her robustly to get the fuck home and sober up, in a nicer way, of course.
Don't get me wrong - at the best of times, I've never been a Dot fan, but, melodrama apart, she worked tonight.
The Psychopath Punches Down (Again).
Boy, he's seen Alice coming. For anyone still thinking Michael Moon is a nice person, you've seen proof that he isn't. He never has been, so wise up. And he's always managed, not that you'd care to notice, to punch down with his victims.
Here's what his victims all have in common: they're women who are at a particularly vulnerable point in their lives - Kat (twice - the first time when Alfie was taken away to prison leaving her alone in a foreign country; the second time when he'd just told her he wanted a divorce); Roxy (lonely and isolated with a small child); Jean (naive and trusting, missing her children, suffering from a bi-polar condition); Janine (isolated, lonely, grieving for Pat and her grandmother, separated from her siblings, later tired, emotionally bullied, hormonal) ... and now Alice, who's also grieving for a dead parent, somewhat friendless, naive and trusting.
He was the picture of passive-aggressiveness tonight - first yelling remorselessly and frighteningly at her in the street, then preying on her crush on him in order to lift the keys to Janine's house from her. Alice is all over the place at the moment. She was meant to hate Janine and she likes her, to the extent that she feels bad about having deceived her. I could almost feel sorry for Alice if it weren't for those ridiculously over-large plastic-looking veneers she calls teeth.
Boy, someone saw her coming. They almost - no, they do - look like false teeth.
But it's important to remember that what we're seeing with Michael is the real nature of his psychopathic personality - his coldness, his self-centredness, his total disdain and disregard for other people. This is a man who would kill someone, even a child, without any remorse. A psychopath is a master manipulator. And any fangirl dying to be manipulated by someone like Michael Moon is truly a sick individual. There's a name for someone like that - a masochist.
The Children's Hour (Again)
If there's a God in heaven, please can He give Lorraine Newman strength enough to rid Walford of Abi the Dough-Faced Giggling Girl? She is appalling.
Yes, yes, yes, I feel immensely sorry that she isn't being noticed by her parents in their all-out ad sudden concern for Lauren. But I'm getting mightily bored with The Tale of the Greedy Girl, the Car, the Boy with Daddy Issues and the Holiday.
This non-storyline has been going on for too long. Why, in the 21st Century, would any girl expect her boyfriend and her cousin, whom she didn't know existed this time last year and who owes nothing to her benefits-minded feckless friend, to pay for a holiday for the quartet?
The fact that Jay's ticking off of spoiled brat Dex-TAAAAAAAA regarding Sam the Sham's offer to pay again for the car his little Klingon-Vulcan Cock destroyed, if it were sufficientley repaired, achieved nothing, yet Abi's little childish giggles sent him running toute-suite to Daddy dearest, telling him to pay up and then get out of the game.
Pardon me, just who is this little piece of shit to demand that his father leave Walford? There's too much of this children-demanding-parents-acquiescing on EastEnders, and it's time this stopped. I want to see one of these parents, when held to a demand by a recalcitrant child, reach over the table and clout the offending offspring, like a meatier version of this ...
Since Sam the Sham's arrived in town, he's had no less than Cora the Bora, The Magic Negro and now the VulKlingon Cock demand he leave.
You know, were I he, I'd stay just for spite, even if it meant snogging Kim.
Welcome to the House of Fun
starring ...
THE. WORST. ACTRESS. EVER. IN. EASTENDERS.
There were some interesting scenes played out in BranningVille tonight ...
And some pithy home truths told, at last.
From Max accusing Tanya of turning a blind eye to Lauren's stockpiling enough booze to open an off-licence right under her nose, with Tanya (of course) denying anything was her fault. Line of the night, regrettably, goes to Abi the Dough-Faced Girl.
Tanya: I can't keep watching her every hour of the day, Max. I've got a business to run and three kids to look after.
Abi: When it suits her.
That was a classic argument between Max and Tanya, and whilst Max is at fault for Lauren's behaviour to an extent, Tanya was with her 24/7 and had assumed the role of full-time parent, effectively cutting Max out of the equation unless money were needed.
It was Tanya, who buried her head in the sand and refused to acknowledge Lauren's drinking was out of control.
Surprisingly, even Cora the Bora was talking sense tonight, referencing her experience in dealing with Rainie, in trying to advise Tanya, still in denial and peeved that people would think this were her fault that Lauren was the way she was.
Actually, I am amazed that EastEnders refuse to tackle the subject of generational alcohol abuse with this family of women. They did so, brilliantly, with the Mitchells, and Eric Mitchell didn't even make an appearance, but his unseen presence was felt. Why can't anyone see that Tanya and Cora are functional alcoholics? They have a drink dependency. Cora always has a buzz on; Tanya reaches for the bottle on the flimsiest of excuses. Rainie admits her addiction and removes herself from her family in recognition that they were the cause and encouragement of her behaviour.
Lauren's drink dependency has been learned in the home,from her mother and her grandmother. And no one's touching on this.
The only downside to these scenes was the pisspoor performance put in by Jossa. First of all, she appeared to get drunk from half a bottle of wine filched from a table at the Vic. She had no money. Secondly, when she's drunk, she's almosta comic reiteration of a drunk- speaking loudly and in funny voices, gesticulating wildly and gurning. Gurning is her specialty.
She stank up the place, especially her wildly inordinate behaviour in the pub, not to mention her trash-talking of Dot at home. However, this all reiterates what crap parents the Brannings are. the crappiest of parents. Abi whines because too much attention is paid to Lauren, who's acting out because (amongst other things) too much attention is being paid to Abi. This is what happens when Mummy Dearest seeks to play good cop and undermine Daddy's discipline.
And of course, we have yet another parent, who's remedy to a child with problems is to lock them in their room. That's actually illegal. considering Lauren is an adult.
Joke of the night: Tanya asserting that she was going to get Lauren professional help. Yeah, sure ... that's something you'll never see in EastEnders.
Apart from Jossa and both the respective brat packs, this wasn't a bad episode. There's promise, but can it be sustained?
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