In the Shadow of Emmerdale - Review: 21.10.2013

I watched Emmerdale last night ...

Siege week.

Know what? It was good. Very good. Brilliant. The writing was great, the direction was tight, there were night shots and realistic rain. The acting was impressive. I hadn't watched the show in years, and I was pleased to recognise Nicola, Rodney, the two remaining King brothers, Laurel, Marlon, Zak and Lisa Dingle, Chastity (always my favourite), and Andy Sugden amongst others.

In short, I recognised the brand.

I also remembered how much I liked Zak and Lisa, and how much I liked the remaining Sugdens.

Cameron Murray, ED's resident psychopath with a shotgun and an obsession about Dob-beh Dingle, was truly scary. The actor who played him deserves any and all kinds of accolades.

And, tonight, I watched Monday's episode of EastEnders.

Almost immediately, the difference in quality is all too apparent. The writing is amateur, long-established characters are virtually unrecogniseable, and the EastEnders' 2.0 cast component (those who arrived after 2006 and especially after 2010) are eminently unlikeable.

Characters I formerly loved (Sharon) have been made into one-dimensional bitches. Edgy characters (David Beale Wicks) have been turned into Mister Rogers, that American children's favourite from the 1970s. Can't you just picture David Wicks or (as some Digital Spy cesspit numptie referred to him) "the old guy" singing this?-

You almost get that feeling with the Newman tripe. Seriously. David Beale Wicks reduced to playschool and monitoring his granddaughter and nephew, who are blissfully unaware of their relationship.

Nothing and no one is nuanced anymore. Gone are characters who are good, but could be capable of bad things, or bad guys capable of doing good.

Compared to Cameron, Michael Moon comes across as a straw man and a weirdo. Not Tamwar. Never Tamwar.

Scott Maslen was right. Corrie and Emmerdale are better. EastEnders needs to lose its arrogance, find its humility and a better writing staff and storyliners.

Sorry, Peter Matessi. I'm sorry you had to write this tripe. This was not one of your better efforts, although I caught the desperation at having to write EastEnders for Special Ed. Try having the characters walk around with Post-Its on their foreheads next time.

Epic fail. Emmerdale deserved that win.

However, Mr Matessi, you did catch a moment ...

Moon Dance.

Here we go again.

This is what I mean by simplistic. In the past, likening himself to Ronnie, Michael has actually outed himself to Jack as a functioning psychopath. Since then, for the benefit of that incredibly dense element of the viewing public who, for some reason, find him "cool," he's gone about, literally, explaining the behaviour of a psychopath, not only to the dumbass who's fascinated by him - dippy Alice -but also to the viewers.

Jesus Christ, how explicitly do TPTB have to say to viewers, This man is a psychopath. He's dangerous. Lesson One: Psychopaths use sex as a means of manipulation, especially to naive and vulnerable young girls. Lesson Two: Psychopaths are arrogant narcissists.

Get the picture? Michael said it in this episode:-

Alice, there are two reasons why I walk around aloof and superior. First, it's because I am ...

How bloody clearly does one have to have narcissism explained? The numpties probably thought this was an attempt at wit, but it was desperation on the writer's part to impart the fact that Michael is a functioning psychopath.

• Psychopaths have no empathy (Michael doesn't give a rat's arse about Alice)
• Psychopaths manipulate and use sex as a manipulative tool
• Psychopaths are narcissists with high opinions of themselves
• Psychopaths are control freaks

Oh, and they're not nice people. They kill, which is what Michael has in mind for Janine.

As I've said before, I'm glad EastEnders are continuing in their fine old tradition of making a departing character excessively unlikeable - in this case, Alice. Who says they don't do continuity?

Alice is, put succinctly, a Grade A Bitch. Worse, she's a stupid Grade A Bitch. Anyone with a soupcon of nous would know that Michael's vague promises are bullshit. They'll be far away from Walford. Well, if his plan worked, he'd be off swanning in the sun with Scarlett and forever looking over his shoulder, and Alice would be languishing in Holloway Prison. His refusal to be precise with her is neither coy nor cute, but she's too deluded to see that. As well, his admonition to keep things "normal" is actually quite smart and proves how much of a dumbass Alice is.

Alice actually thinks they can love-up in public and still retain Janine's trust. Her treatment of Tamwar was callous, shallow and cruel. The way she shrugged off his birthday was absolute shit in arrogance. I was glad that, after being coerced by Michael into trying to get back together with Tamwar, he effectively blanked her, telling her that their splitting would only put his life back on normal mode.

What a put-down for this snide little Branning bitch!

I know he's unpopular and the shallow numpties inhabiting the Digital Spy cesspit refer to him as Tambore, but Tamwar is a nice guy. He's suffered a lot in recent years. He was always socially gauche, but had a dry wit. His parents' marriage collapsed, his mother was subjected to domestic violence, he was badly scarred in a fire, his wife left him, his brother embezzled from his business, causing it to fail, and he's in a job where he gets scant respect and lots of abuse.

He's depressed, and he doesn't need this sort of treatment from a girl, who - if she had another braincell, would be dangerous.

I'm fed up to the tits with EastEnders' staple of arrogant, entitled young women who strut their stuff and think their shit doesn't smell - Poppy, Alice, Lauren, Whitney ... they can all take a running jump into oblivion.

I'll be glad to see the back of Alice and her wonky veneers. I hope she leaves in the back of a police car, handcuffed.

Observation: Much has been made of the fact that Sharon upbraided Janine for leaving Scarlett alone in the house in order to run some errands on the market, with scores of the Sharon-haters and baiters calling Sharon a hypocrite. Are Sharon and Janine good mothers? No, for various reasons. They both have issues, but I seriously don't imagine that Sharon ever left her infant son on his own for five minutes as a baby.

What was out of order was Alice's reaction, demanding to know who Sharon was to make a remark like that.

I'll tell you who she is, bitch ... She babysat Janine when Janine was five years old and Sharon was a teenager dating Janine's stepbrother. She is also a mother and someone who's known Janine longer than Alice has. And as for Alice's impromptu speech about Janine needing support and help in parenting because parenting is so difficult, that's a homily I'd apply not only to Janine but to Sharon as well.

In another blog, I remarked that Janine was the closest, in circumstance, to Sharon on the Square at the moment. Both are single mothers. women who never expected to be mothers in their lives, and both are isolated. Sharon has no relatives, per se; and Janine's family are scattered, and those living on the Square only contact her when they want money. Both women, on a parental level, have no emotional back-up.

True, Janine could have Billy and her Jackson-Butcher relatives, but she has trust issues, and she's now tired and vulnerable and the people who've seemed to come down on her side are now about to try to destroy her.

At the moment, the most sympathetic figure on this programme, and the one who's carrying it, is Janine.

As for Michael Moon, Dominic Power's Cameron Murray made mincemeat of Steve John Taylor's Michael Moon. Murray was a truly nuanced character, with issues which, at times, made him sympathetic. Moon was too quirky to even be likeable.

Oh Dennis Doobydoo.

Well, there's a battle raging in the cesspit (DS) about this, with scores of people revealing how apt they'd be to commit child abuse.

I'm no fan of Harry Hickles or of Dennis the child. I didn't like him from the onset, and he wasn't a bad child then. Dennis isn't bad or evil.

He is, however, angry, frustrated and desperate for his mother to pay him ample attentions so that she can address his needs. Like all children his age, he craves stability and structure. He has neither. In one year, he's known three father figures and four homes, ending in a B and B, which is a public establishment, where he has neither privacy nor peace.

He's never known his father and he craves a father figure. He bonded with Jack, then he bonded with Phil. He sees his contemporaries in stable family environments, and he feels on the periphery, but he can't articulate this to his mother. Undoubtedly, she loves him, but she's inconsistent in her attention, smothering him with affection one instant and dumping him on all and sundry in another to pursue her career or another interest.

In order to get the sort of attention he wants from Sharon, he's acting out and he's using other adults as a means to get to her, specifically either those adults who know his mother well (Dot) or adults in position of authority (Ava/Whitney).

The problem is that he isn't getting the response he needs, especially from his teacher. A child as young as Dennis acts out for a reason, but neither Ava nor Whitney have pursued this reason. Instead, they've wantonly written the kid off as "bad." They don't like him, so essentially, he's not worth the effort. How to consign a child to the dustbin of society.

Whist he was within earshot, Whitney told his mother that Dennis was "poison." OK, replace Sharon with - Bianca, Carol, Zainab, Denise, Tanya, Kat - and imagine someone telling them that Morgan, Robbie, Kamil, Libby, Oscar or Tommy were poison, whilst the kid was within earshot. To say there'd be hell to pay would be an understatement.

This episode concentrated on how Dennis's perceived bad behaviour was reinforced by Whitney's unprofessionalism.

To begin with, Whitney dresses like a dominatrix. Her wardrobe for school reflects her self-importance and arrogance. Teaching assistants, like teachers at junior school, dress for comfort and to be able to move comfortably amongst their charges.

Whitney accusing Dennis of tearing up her card is just that: an accusation. Most likely, he did. Why? Because kids perceive when adults don't like them, and Dennis has got that vibe distinctly from Whitney on several occasions. But she has no proof of him destroying her silly card, and her reaction was puerile, in itself. Approaching a child in an out-of-school environment to accuse him openly and even to level a threat against him, only to back off like the coward she is when Sharon confronted her is totally unprofessional. She was intimidating and bullying. That's one thing teaching assistants do not do.

What she did was add fuel to Dennis's intention to get even with her. Whitney verbally abuses Dennis, he rips up her card; she intimidates him and threatens him in the Minute Mart, Dennis seizes an opportunity to get back at her. She warned him she'd be keeping an eye on him, and he's working to get her out of the picture. Why? Because he's scared.

He's scared.

He's a seven year-old kid, for fuck's sake.

Then, there was the playground incident - and Whitney really shouldn't be assisting at a school where her siblings are pupils. There is such a thing as conflict of interest. There's also a thing called in loco parentis, which means that when a child is at school, the teachers and assistants have a duty of care equal to that of a parent.

Dennis fell on the playground and scraped his elbow. His first words to Whitney was that his arm hurt. There's a procedure to follow. Complete and accident report in the accident book and escort the child either to the school nurse or the first aid room to attend the injury. Whitney did neither of these things. Instead, she told him to run water over the wound (when it should have been properly cleaned with a sterile cloth and dressed). In fact, she made a snide remark to him about chasing girls as he left the playground,something which could be construed as humiliating. Again, highly unprofessional.

For all her tailored dominatrix clothing and marital aid shoes, she's highly inexperienced. Also,remember that Whitney has form in approaching people in public about their children - Amy, anyone?

Sharon's reaction in this instance wasn't over the top. Most parents whose children tell them they've been hurt by an adult do actually tend to believe the child. Do children lie? Yes, they do, but not the majority.

Dennis has no concept of what his lie will do to Whitney. He just knows that she threatened him and this was his retaliation, in fear. Any parent who doesn't believe a child when that child says that an adult has hurt them, lives to reap their just reward. Remember that Viv Slater didn't believe Kat about Harry.

The Newman Negroes.

Spoilers: Tonight on The Newman Negroes, Fred and Lamont are recovering from major kidney surgery. Fred has been out of hospital for a week and is already seeing a consultant for aftercare.

Aunt Esther ...

... takes another day off from her teaching job (innit) to cluck over Fred and Lamont's recovery. Fred thinks up a scheme to send Aunt Esther to Brixton for some fizz lemon, whilst he and Lamont repair to the allotments to drink beer (less than a fortnight after losing and receiving a kidney each) and bond.

Observation: Sam's looking after Billy's allotment? He wouldn't be allowed to pick up a saucepan, much less a shovel or a coolbag full of drinks. And it's October. Green tomatoes in October?

The harvest is done, dude.

And this is NOT Australia.

The Children's Hour with Grandad/Uncle David.

David Wicks reduced to nannying children? And swanning about Walford radging up his brother.

Please, when is David going to tell Bobby that he's his uncle? When is David going to tell Tiffany that Ian is her great-uncle?

Those damned walkie-talkies again, and David getting off on bringing two ten year-old crushes together behind Ian's back. What is this studying that Ian has Bobby doing? For Eleven Plus? Is he hoping to get Bobby into a grammar school?

But you know something? One thing Ian said tonight was correct - parents should hope for and strive for something better for their children. I'm glad he pointed Libby's example out to her own mother, and it's interesting that we've finally learned what happened to Libby - that she's working in student recruitment at Oxford.

Sharon turned into a bitch and David becoming Mr Mum. And Ronnie the Psychopath is Mother Theresa.

No wonder EastEnders is third.