Branning Telstars - Review: 10.10.2013

Before anything else and at the risk of stirring up a hornet's nest of Ronnie-shippers, fanbois and the lowest common denominator of teen, I want to comment on a scene from Tuesday's show, and that's Lola's sudden epiphany regarding Ronnie.

It's bullshit. She doesn't know this woman from Adam. Until she showed up, swanning around the Square as if this were her fucking manor, Ronnie was an unknown quantity to Lola, who didn't even realise that she was part of the Mitchell dynamic until two years ago.

No matter what Phil or Billy say or how much they invoke "family," Ronnie is a stranger, and she is also a criminal and a far worse criminal than Lola could ever be.

And, I'm sorry, but Lola referring to Ronnie as "a good mum" is a superfluity. She is not. She is a manipulator, a fraud, a psychopath and a kidnapper. For all she cared for the Moon baby for four months, that was not her remit. It was a crime and it was cruel, and the sooner Lola realises that Ronnie only does things which suit Ronnie, the better off she'll be.

King Phil did everything in his power to take Lexi from Lola, and Lola is part of the Mitchell dynamic. Why is Ronnie so different? Why is she so special? I wonder if Phil had succeeded in getting custody of Lexi, if Lola would be so generous to this awful woman?

It bears thinking about.

Last night's episode and the controversial, cruel and ignorant discussion it provoked bears thinking about as well.

The Hag with the Fag Gets Bagged.

Putrid old Cora is back and looking worse than usual. Is Ann Mitchell ill? Because she looks very much the worse for wear to the point that it should be causing concern.

Anyway, she waltzes in in October in sunglasses only to be apprised of Max's circumstances and those concerning Dexter.

Cora isn't the font of wisdom, and her skewed advice to Dexter tonight shows exactly why she should never be considered matriarch material. Then there's the hilarious incongruity of her suddenly-acquired black family, who knew nothing about her until late last year.

OK, this is a crisis for Ava, but where are her parents? You know, the people who raised her? The people who sustained her through other crises, helped with Dexter's problems, sat with her through childhood illnesses, loved and sustained her?

Instead, we have this stiinking old drunken bag of a trout flesh barging through the hospital doors, looking as out of place in that dynamic as a bastard at a family reunion, shouting the odds about her grandson.

In the first place, she holds no influence over Ava Hartman. She is just the rank piece of flesh who shat her out and passed her onto someone else to raise. She has no right to any opinion in whatever Ava or Dexter does, but Dexter seems so intent on having a white family and a common-and-garden white trash family, he's drawn to the old dragon.

Another interfering, self-righteous little bitch is Abi, snorting and giggling her way through bonding with Gumby Dexter. The incestuous strand is running through the trailer trash Branning line, because she always seems so eager to flirt with that spoiled brat.

And face it, Dexter's running out like that had nothing to do with Ava and everything to do with Dexter's ego. He was, frankly, a coward. But what changed his mind was Cora the old trout spouting off.

His noble speech about knowing his father and wanting his putrid old grandmother and his Magic Negro mother to bond if anything happened to him was so Islington politcally correct, but Richard Lazarus missed a moment.

Cora was shooting off at the mouth about Ava being more concerned about saving the life of a man who walked out on her ages ago and "forcing" her son to save the life of a man whom, a couple of months ago, he didn't know from Adam, but Dexter should have pointed out, succinctly, to the old bag that a year ago, he didn't know she existed, that he's only known she was his grandmother since January. She wasn't around all his life when he was growing up. It was his other white grandmother who gave him emotional support and sustenance. Who the fuck was this old drunk to utter any opinion that counted? She swans in at the eleventh hour and thinks she can come the family matriarch with them? Fuck off, bitch. Dexter is an adult, Sam is his father and its his decision.

If the truth be known, Cora did fuck all for her granddaughters who are "working themselves to the bone" (not) during their childhood, and what the fuck is she doing living under the roof of an ex-son-in-law she hates, who's married to another woman? She's not a part of that dynamic any longer. Max - or Kirsty - should kick her foul ass out.

By the way, I like Kirsty's new hair colour, but I want the likes of Dexter, Cora and (eventually) Abi to leave.

Everybody's Talking at Everybody.

What a beautiful friendship Whitney and Lucy have. Self-obsessed to the point of parody, one talks and the other doesn't listen.

Whitney is an arrogant, rude, self-righteous skank. She's rude to David when she has no right to be. David is staying in the house owned by Janine, whhose rent is paid by Carol and who's given David the right to stay. David is also the grandfather to Liam, Tiffany and Morgan. Whitney needs to learn some respect. What's happened between Carol and David is none of her business.

So why do I think this skank bike will end up in bed with David? Well, David's taste in women tends to go to the younger sort. When he was on the show in the 90s, whilst in his mid-thirties, he bedded and had an affair with Sam Mitchell, who was still in her late teens. He even tried a come-on with his own daughter. Last time he surfaced, he tried to sleep with Roxy Mitchell, who was a good 15 years younger. 

As the saviour DTC is more than just a casual fan of sensationalist plots, I can easily see Whitney bedding David, and Carol bitch-slapping her. Shades of Connor! Of course, the one remaining Branning brother will also be called upon to intervene.

Whitney is another entitled character, reckoning she's easily got the job of teaching assistant (er, should those secondary jobs have been sorted out by the education authority before the school term started, considering that we're almost at half-term time?) because Ava was doing the interview.

As for Lucy, hands up, those who didn't see a relationship looming on the horizon with Gary Lucy's character? I can almost see the smoke issuing out of vaslav37's ears right now on Digital Spy forums. Now we see the pattern emerging with ingenues such as Hetti Bywater (who looks as if she's beginning to eat three square meals) and ...

THE. WORST. ACTRESS. EVER. TO. APPEAR. IN. EASTENDERS.

TPTB are moving Bywater's character and the atrociously unlikeable Lauren into the realm of young adults, giving them significantly older boyfriends - Danny Pennant must be at least 32 to Lucy's rising 20 in December. Lauren the Lip will be consigned to a married Manc who looks like a dirty tub of lard and who's a good sixteen years older than the self-obsessed character Newman's designated as a self-perpetuating virgin.

My only nit-picks with the "yoof" scenes tonight - well, with the girls, anyway - is twofold:-

• why was the scene with Lauren and Joey even necessary? It seems that TPTB go out of their way forcing Jossa's bad acting, lack of talent and smug presence on the viewing audience. No one likes her, except adolescent boys with hands down their trousers and silly fangirls, and her mother who lives vicariously through her. Lauren's exchanged a steroidically-enhanced mouth-breather ...

... for a Mancunian tub-of-lard.

• It baffles me that David only acknowledged Whitney in the cafe, when she was sitting right there with David's own niece. Nor did Lucy acknowledge him. TPTB had better not be retconning David's relationship to Ian via Pete Beale.

PsychoKiller ... Qu'est que c'est ...

You can almost hear Michael Moon singing that, can't you?

OK, let me say this: Last night on Digital Spy forums, someone started a thread about Michael and Janine and their final scene by saying Janine deserved everything she got in that incident. The discussion was heightened by another moron who happened to be a Scouser who said that some people "deserved" violence. Amongst others in that discussion, were some - and some of these were women, I might add - who were advocating open violence against women, calling Janine all sorts and defending Michael as the innocent party here. It was easily the cruelest, most sinister and violent thread I've seen on that forum, and I'm happy to say that some moderator pulled his head from his arse and deleted it.

First of all, Janine is no angel. No one is saying she is. No one's attempted to do a Snow White job on her character the way they have with Kat, Lauren and Saint Ronnie. Janine is what she's always been - a bitch who owns that fact, unlike the myriad of other bitches who reside in Walford.

But Janine's behaviour in the final scene where Michael showed his true colours was reactive in every sense of the word. People who are rushing to defend Michael Moon are refusing to acknowledge the fact that he is what he, himself, says he is - a functioning psychopath. Psycopaths think of nothing or no one but themselves. Their every action is for self-satisfaction. They revel in controlling situations and people. Re the latter, they punch down. As children, they bait and torture small animals and smaller children. As adults, they look to bait and torture the most vulnerable - and torture, by no means, signifies physical torture.

Michael took advantage of Kat when she was at a low point, of Roxy when she was lonely, of Jean who isn't the brightest light bulb in the pack, and of Janine, his wife and the mother of his child, when she was weak and hormonal, suffering from PND and looking after a sick infant.

He doesn't love Scarlett. Psychopaths love only themselves. Scarlett is the ultimate person with vulnerability. She would by utterly at his mercy as a child. Psychopaths are manipulators. Look no further than dippy Alice -who is emotionally unstable as well. He's grooming her as much as if he were a paedophile - and as psychopaths do - he'll use sex as a means of control.

Throughout the early scenes in this episode, it was Michael who was doing the undermining of Janine, exactly the same way he did in the aftermath of Scarlett's birth - calling her a bad mother, undermining her parental skills, baiting her confidence, chipping away at her resolve as a human being. Even worse was his demonising of her to the insipid Alice, sending her out to do his dirty work. but Janine wasn't falling for that either.

I thought that Jasmyn Banks looked like a vampire in this episode - all over-sized veneers and pukey red lipstick, and I'm glad Janine sent her on her way.

The final scene was everything Michael deserved. It was payback for some of the awful things he said to Janine last year when she was at her lowest point. Now she was going for his jugular, and it proved exactly what he was - a functioning psychopath. That's another thing, numpties ... Psychopaths are prone to sudden outbursts of violence. Think Ronnie glassing Roxy. Think Michael grabbing Jean by the neck upon the mention of his mother.

Mummy is a sore point with Michael, just like Archie is a sore point with Ronnie.

Mummy Moon was a psychopath as well. Only she used suicide attempts as a means of controlling Eddie - especially after abandoning her less-than-perfect older son, Craig, to a home for Downs' Syndrome children. Mummy Moon would swallow some pills and call Eddie, in order to keep him on a short lead. But one time, she decided she wanted Michael to find her and call his father. Only Michael was too self-absorbed outside in the garden (probably pulling the legs off a frog or something) and she died. Quite accidentally. Psychopaths don't commit suicide, except by accident.

So when Janine mentioned Mummy Moon, she wasn't provoking him to do what he did at all. She was immensely shocked or she wouldn't have apologised as quickly as she did. She knew if she didn't, he'd have killed her right there and thought nothing about it, taken Scarlett and disappeared. His smile at the end, which some asshole ignorami thought was cool, was total evidence that what he did meant nothing at all to him. For Alice even to be enamoured of such a dangerous person is signing her own death warrant, which is probably what will happen.

Whispering Dopes.

Phil and Carl.

Janine and Michael saved this episode.