Family Tradition - Review: 18.07.2013

For a filler episode, this was a pretty good one, and the virgin episode for someone named Natalie Mitchell. (Yep, I kid you not). She's tweeting that it's always been her dream to write for EastEnders, and it came true tonight.

Not a bad effort for a virgin - in fact, it's damned sight better than the fare served up by the likes of Jesse O'Mahoney, Perrie Balthazar, Peter Mattessi, Lauren Klee and a host of others who have no appreciation of the history of the show and who retcon the characters to fit the storyline.

And, at least, she was astute enough to do what used to be done on the show years ago - and I'm talking about the 90s, here. There used to be a continuous theme linked to the storylines featured throughout a particular episode, and Natalie did that tonight.

All in all, the girl done good. Could she have done better? Well, yes, there were iffy moments, but on the whole, this was the best episode of the week, and miles above those presented earlier, which were written by Colin Wyatt, a veteran writer (who, more than likely, knew he'd been shoved a bill of goods).

I'd urge TPTB to give Ms Mitchell more episodes. After all, she's got the same name as Pat Evan's daughter-in-law (Natalie) and the surname of one of the most iconic families in the Square. If she doesn't know the show, no one does.

And here's a hint about the linking theme:-

The Beale Squeal.

The Beale saga, at the moment, continues to be the most interesting piece of drama within the programme, now that they seem to have temporarily back-burnered Janine and Michael (but only temporarily, mind). However, I do have a bone to pick with something about this dynamic.

We all know what Ian was like this time last year, and we all know how Lucy treated him. For anyone in any doubt or not possessing enough brain cells to remember the events, the only way Lucy would allow a mentally, emotionally and psychologically fragile Ian to return home is if he signed over all his business holdings and the house, itself, to Lucy. Only then, would Ian be allowed to live under the same roof.

Even then, he was consigned to the garrett room, whilst Lucy and Joey romped the double bed in Ian's room. Joey even verbally abused him and told him to start pulling his weight. Lucy's reason for doing this was, in her words, to ensure that Ian wouldn't "abandon" her and Bobby again, leaving the poor widdle stick insect to fend for herself.

Even now, Lucy still refers to Ian abandoning her and Bobby, as if he walked off without a care in the world, not looking back.

So for everyone who still finds it easy to believe that Lucy's warped point of view is the right one, here's the episode where Ian "abandoned" Lucy.

Now, if you will, please notice a few things about this clip:-

• First, Lucy actually does notice that something's not quite right about Ian. She tells Tanya that nothing Ian's saying is making sense and wonders if they should call a doctor. (He is running around Walford in his dressing gown and pyjamas, after all).
• Ian left the house, with his wedding ring, smack dab in the middle of some pancake mixture cooking in a frying pan on the Beale cooker. Lucy returned to find this weird condiment, so surely she twigged this wasn't normal.
• And Ian left Walford, barefoot, dressed in pyjamas, moving forward without direction and a blank stare on his face. That's hardly a man who knew what he was doing.

Lucy never thought to call the police, alerting them to Ian's unexplained absence. Instead, she relied on Phil Mitchell, who had a special reason for not involving the police, and then she allowed herself to be manipulated by Deek Branning, who targeted her because she spiked his daughter's drink. That nuisance wasn't eliminated until Joey arrived on the scene and figured Lucy was a meal ticket in need of a meal herself.

So that's putting straight what really happened with Ian and how Lucy is making this all about herself.

Obviously, Peter doesn't know the background to all this. He wasn't around, and I don't think Ian has fully told him. Denise doesn't know either, which explains why both of them are viewing Ian as the villain of the piece here. That's a wee bit of bad continuity here, because shortly after Peter returned, he readily twigged that Lucy's "takeover" of Ian's businesses meant that both he and Bobby stood absolutely no chance of receiving any sort of inheritance from Ian at all. Lucy had taken it. The most either of them could hope for is working as a lowly paid employee in Lucy's catering empire - Peter on the stall and Bobby serving up chips. (Actually, it's beyond my ken why Peter Beale would be content to run a market stall for a wage in this day and age. Ian actually always did want better for his children, or he should have, anyway.)

So now we're to believe that the Beale twins ran off in a huff to hide at the B and B, peeking down from the upper stair level like frightened little kids. And they hid behind Mummy Denise's skirttails.

Actually, Denise is bloody annoying me lately. For all TPTB have brought her front and centre and are seeking to integrate her into the Beale family, possibly even its matriarch, she's just not working at the moment. For a start, she treats Ian like a borderline idiot. She totally believed Jean's absurd claim that Ian had sexually harassed her and was pressing him to apologise to Whitney. There was even an instance where she told Peter, rather patronisingly and pleased with herself, that she was "working on Ian's social skills."

She was at this again tonight - harbouring the twins, like drowned rats, taking Ian to task for what he "did" to Lucy, then advising Peter to deal with reasoning with Lucy whilst she dealt with Ian. And when Ian confessed what he'd done that caused his taking back his businesses and also his distress, even after Ian had told Denise not to interfere, she interfered.

OK, I know Ian's always had an Oedipal streak, especially in the early days of his association with his last two wives (especially Jane, who sounded like Kathy Beale); but both of those relationships all ended in tears when the Mummy half of Laura and Jane asserted herself over Ian. Ian was unfaithful in both instances (and so were the women). Denise needs to take note of this and mull over it.

Two of the best scenes in this storyline concerned Daniel Coonan, who continues to impress me as a class actor. Several viewers are referring to him as Derek-Lite. He's anything but. Derek was a panto villain, someone who would have been easily recogniseable as a 50s or 60s vintage hard man, had Derek, himself, been a decade older. But Derek was a contemporary of Carol and Jean Slater, and that was incongruent.

Carl's the sort of villain, much in the mould of early Yusef, who seems to have a nice and caring side, but who could easily turn psycho at the drop of a hat in order to get what he wants. Remember Denise's disbelief at Ian's confession that Carl was aggravating him for the money Ian had "borrowed?"

Carl was so nice and polite. He helped out around the B and B, he smiled at Dennis. And Carl, after hearing Denise's reasoned plea for Ian, handed her her skinny arse in the most frightening way possible - telling her exactly what Ian had done, how much he'd taken and that he wanted it back immediately. Without ever raising his voice.

It was chilling. Chilling enough to send Denise running right to Phil Mitchell. A big kudos to Natalie Mitchell for the dialogue bit where Denise reminds Phil that he and Ian have history and are indelibly linked forever through Ben. As much as Phil wants to leave Ben out of this, Ian is Ben's brother; he's Lexi's uncle, and more to the point, Phil owed Ian for keeping quiet about Ben's involvement in Heather's death.

And was it me, or was there just a slight soupcon of foreshadowing, when Denise reminded Phil that Carl was beginning to swagger about Walford, calling the shots like the big man Phil used to be? I ask this because in the subsequent scene with Phil and Carl, where Carl reminded Phil that if someone owed him ten grand, he'd stop at nothing to get it, it seemed that they both struck a common chord.

Phil's a man in his fifties, and Carl's a man in his mid-thirties, roughly the same age Phil was when he first appeared in Albert Square. One wonders if this could be a subtle passing of the torch for years to come? (Not anytime soon, Phil-haters).

The ultimate scene where Ian pays Carl three grand of the ten he owes him, was a classic in the real Phil Mitchell mould. Phil would have done precisely that - added interest to the amount ... until some calm and stable influence (like Sharon or Kathy) put him straight and he backed off. (If only Kirsty were stable ...)

Because it seems that Carl, for some reason, still loves Kirsty, who loves someone else, who ...

Max's Little Secret.

Max isn't coping. We know he isn't coping because he's moping around and burning the toast. We also know he isn't coping because Abi the Dough-Faced Girl told him so. And TPTB are trying to promote Giggle-Mouth as wise. Well, she's probaby wiser than her putrid grandmother.

So Abi and Uncle Jack conspire to book Max into a hotel near the drying-out clinic where Lauren's staying and probably in the town where Tanya and Oscar are too, which is a lot of horseshit.

Lauren, in a clinical situation dealing with her addiction, would not be allowed to see any family member until her doctors and counsellors reckoned she'd made enough progress to warrant a brief in-house visit. Until then, she wouldn't even be allowed to call home until after a particular period of time.

But Max has a troubling secret, which he tells Jack: he still loves Kirsty, which makes me wonder if Carl is being the Vanessa figure here - the catalyst who reunites Max and Kirsty. So, now he loves Kirsty, after that heartfelt, long good-bye to Tanya the other week, promising with all his heart that Tanya was the one for him - and she even reiterated that: Max belonged to Tanya, no matter with whom he was.

So off Max goes, this time in a 54-plate Merc, when he had a 54-plate Audi the other week. He's off to spend a few weeks on hols before he goes off to New York to tape the voice-overs for the autumn batch of Geico Gecko adverts ...

Like this ...

I mean, Max (not Jake Wood, because we all know Wood's off to get paid a small fortune for the Gecko commercials, in addition to his EastEnders' salary) is off to visit Lauren.

He'll be back in August. With Lauren and her new blonde highlights, no doubt.

Moons Major.

It's rare that I've liked Alfie and Kat since their return in 2010. In fact, I haven't liked Kat at all. And tonight's vignette about them, hidden behind their mutual concern for Jean and her latest inappropriate man, was heavy on the foreshadowing of the big storyline to come, but this was easily the best thing I've seen concerning Kalfie in recent times.

I've felt all year that Newman was shoving Saint Kat down our collective throats, that she was willfully orchestrating a cack-handed redemption of this ruined character in the most obvious way, and most of the discerning long-term viewers weren't buying the con. In fact, most of us are still awaiting her donning of responsibility for her breaking up her marriage and the abject treatment of a husband who loves her.

Well, we got as close as we'll ever get to that tonight.

First, we had the missing link (in more ways than one) of Jean as family, a non-fact Alfie mentioned not once, but three times. Jean is Kat's first cousin by marriage, which makes her Alfie's first cousin by marriage by marriage again. Go figure. She is linked with the Slaters thus, the Moons (because that's what's left of the Slaters) and with Roxy Mitchell, because Jean was (and still may be) Jean's mother-in-law, who briefly thought Amy was her granddaughter.

So, I guess Jean's family, of a sort for Kat, Alfie and Roxy.

And because Jean's thick as the proverbial pigshit, Alfie decided to vet her romantic interest.

I actually liked Ollie for the first time tonight, and I suppose it's a continuation of The Bill theme that Jack's character was the equivalent of his Bill character, that Ollie should be an ex-copper as well. The first bit of foreshadowing was Ollie's mistaken belief that Kat was still Alfie's wife.

I saw the way you looked at your missus last night. You couldn't take your eyes off her. Mind you, a lot of other men couldn't either.

(At this point, Alfie thought he was talking about Roxy).

Must be the leopard skin print. That always does it for a bloke.

And now Alfie knows that his secret is out - not to Roxy, but for everyone else to see, and it's put into words later, when he visits Kat to tell her about his meeting and stays to see Tommy.

For the first time ever since their return, I saw something of the old spark between Kat and Alfie, reminiscing about something concerning Jean none of us had ever heard about, bantering with Tommy to the point where Kat comes clean, after admitting she'd received the decree nisi, and confessing that she wanted to be with Alfie and Tommy again, the way they should be, as a family.

(OK, they've forgotten the awful bit about Michael Moon confessing his paternity to a two year-old who understood little of what was being said, but I'll forgive them for that this time).

It's also obvious that, as much as Alfie loves Kat, he doesn't trust her; in fact, he actually thinks she's with Carl at the moment. This line from Kat was telling:-

I could sleep with every man in this Square. You probably think that already.

And that, folks, is as close as TPTB will ever let you get to an admission of responsibility by Kat Moon. No "dirty girl" mention, just a tacit acknowledgement that she'd done wrong, wants to atone and wants Alfie back, even though she sees through his insistence that he's moved on, and so should she. Her last words to him were more than prescient.

You'll never love her the way you loved me.

Reminds me of something ... Wait ... This:-

We-e-e-ell, she still sorta kinda blames Roxy, you know.

Speaking of Roxy, I like her too, and one of the things I haven't liked about this storyline is how Roxy's been made to be, variously, the desperate, clinging woman or the bitch, who's marring Alfie's and Kat's happiness.

When Kat was away in the Spring of 2012, I liked the Alfie-Roxy dynamic. I liked the way she handled herself, when Alfie told her, up front, why they couldn't be together.

There's an element of viewer, the dimwitted female type, along with a known troll of that dynamic on Digital Spy ...

... who actually think Roxy is a slut, for some reason.

She simply isn't, and these are the same numpties who probably thought Dawn was the same and who think that Janine is just evil.

Roxy is loyal and loving. Since she arrived in Walford six years ago, she's slept with the following men:-

• Jack Branning (ONS, resulting in a pregnancy; later another ONS one year ago).
• Sean Slater (casual sex at the same time she slept with Jack; thought Amy was his until a DNA test proved her wrong; married him - may even still be married to him)
• Jase Dyer (twice, once during Christmas 2007, when she dressed as Santa's helper for him)
• Al Jenkins (brief relationship before he left; he asker her to go with him. She refused)
• Ajay Masood (ONS and a moment of madness)
• Alfie

Jase occurred in 2007; Jack, once in early 2008 and in 2012, and Sean for most of 2008. Al Jenkins occurred in 2010. Ajay was also last year, and Alfie's real sexual relationship began early on in 2013.

That's six in six years, and two of them were and are reasonably serious relationships. One resulted in a child, and she is on good terms with Jack. She genuinely liked Al, just not enough to marry him; and Ajay ... God only knows what that was. Still, we're all entitled to do stupid things at least once.

Roxy is loyal, and Alfie is probably her first really adult relationship. She genuinely loves him, but I think she does feel that Alfie isn't too sure. Women's intuition tells her that he's not over Kat; and I think Alfie genuinely was thinking about ending it with Roxy tonight, but she caught him up in the moment, he realised what a truly nice person she is, and - in an effort to prove to himself that he had to get over Kat and move on - he proposed to Roxy.

Was that wrong? Of course, it was. As he said, he doesn't deserve her; and it was eerie, the way Roxy echoed Kat's words when Alfie returned to Walford for her on Christmas Day 2005:-

Don't say this, Alfie, if you don't mean it.

And he didn't. His face, at the duff-duff moment, told the truth. Thus beginneth here, the reunion of Kat and Alfie. 

May the cheating stop and may they never be separated again ... and may it be discovered that Tommy is Alfie's biological son. Jessie Wallace wants that, and so does Shane Richie, and in this instance, they know best.

Moons Minor.

The never-ending story of Michael "Ian Brady" Moon and Janine, and how they play one another off.

Michael brings a belated birthday present for Scarlett. Janine's annoyed and Michael's secretly pleased to have scored points. 

Janine seeks him out later, agreeing to a birthday party for Scarlett, with the two of them and their child. Janine walks off smirking, whilst Michael gurns unpleasantly, being played at his own game.

Repetitive mind games. This storyline better move up fast, but I suppose it's got to wait its turn behind the return of Ronnie Mitchell, the Moons, Max and Kirsty, Phil and Carl's Crash, a Peggy Redux and Jack's departure - not to mention the return of ...

THE. SECOND. WORST. ACTRESS. EVAH. IN. EASTENDERS.

Oh well, you can't always have your cake and eat it too.

Shameful Sharon and The Creature from the Black Lagoon.

For Sharon:-

And for Shirley:-

OK, I buy that TPTB are trying to write Sharon in a more positive and stronger way, but I actually think that Sharon's biggest problem is Denny. 

Ditch the kid.

Rumour has it, that when Ross Kemp agreed to return to the soap in 2005, whilst Dean was in the cast, Tony Jordan wanted a Sharon and Grant reunion, whilst she was married to fey Dennis. You know the score, and you could picture the scene.

Sharon tells Grant that she aborted his baby years ago. Grant gets angry and chases her around the kitchen table, upstairs at the Vic, breaking a few plates along the way. He catches her, they kiss and have angry sex on the table. She feels guilty and returns to the pretty boy, saying nothing. She discovers she's pregnant, Dennis dies, thinking the baby is his, but Sharon knows differently.

This is what Jordan intended. And we know that none other than Kate Harwood poo-poohed his idea. There was no way she'd insult the Shannisites, who failed to believe how Sharon could ever have fallen for a bald-headed thug like Grant Mitchell when Dennis was just so pretty ...

Here's a song that reminds me of Dennis:-

So Grant eventually fucked Jane on the table - and if you believe there was chemistry in that, there's a bridge in New York I want to sell you - and we get Little Lord Fauntleroy, the ultimate stage school Justin Bieber wannabe.

It's not that the kid is duff, it's just that we're totally unaccustomed to seeing Sharon as a mother, especially now that they have her in smothering mother mode again. Imagine both the impact and her behaviour, were she to have returned to Walford with Grant Mitchell's six year-old son.

This kid's standing in line behind Bobby Beale waiting for Ben's old tap-dancing shoes.

Still, the feud with Shirley is unusual and unreal, considering the fact that, before her departure, they had developed a modicum of respect between the two of them, to the point that Shirley actually intervened in Jack's harassment of Sharon. Now, they've fallen out because Sharon refused to agree with Shirley that they shared a common bond of having been "done over" by Phil Mitchell.

Sharon was right. Phil still loves her. Not Shirley - no matter what Phil subsequently does to help The Creature from the Black Lagoon Shirley out.

But picking a fight with a child is totally out of order. In the first place, kids do get restless and Dennis wasn't kicking Shirley's chair deliberately or out of spite. Shirley had to resort to insulting a child and stealing his breakfast. Really, Shirley? And people think this character is worthwhile? In the space of three weeks, she's done criminal damage to a local business, and now she's bullying and terrorising children.

And even though Sharon's complaint about Shirley's smoking was OTT, herself, it was valid. Smoking is forbidden in the B and B, and Denise has even warned Shirley about her breaking the rules.

Of course, the real reason Shirley left was the non-payment of rent, which Kim could still sue her for, and because her benefits have been cut. I'm still trying to figure out how Shirley, Jay and Fatboy manage to afford the fees of a London hostelry like that?

The Creature's off with her binbag, and Sharon really should leave the B and B and find a flat to rent. It's not as if she's destitute, and I'm tired of the B and B being the general repository of every waif and stray not attached to someone else in Walford.

Decent episode. Surprisingly.