Final Moondance - Review: 01.11.2013

Well, did Lorraine pull that one off? In a word, yes, and with a nod and a wink to Kathleen Hutchison and another famous exit?

Need reminding?

Two twists in the tail of this tale, except that in this instance, there's no third witness.

I had sussed that when Alice realised that Michael wanted to kill Janine, she's stop short of that sort of thing. Murderers in Walford are few and far between. And, for the record, Janine - a multi-layered and complex character who's a result of her sporadic upbringing punctuated by periods of abandonment and trust issues - did not kill Barry. 

Watch carefully ...

Janine is a self-fulfilling prophecy, and if there's any character on the Square at the moment who has the potential to turn into what Janine has become, it's Dennis Rickman Jr. 

Janine was the product of a doting parent (Frank) who blew hot and cold with her. He loved her unconditionally, but he found her a nuisance as a small child, and she was passed back and forth between Frank and Clare like a game of pass-the-parcel.

She, at once, loved yet resented Pat's presence, thinking that Pat prevented Frank from giving all his attention to her, yet being totally dependent on Pat when Frank abandoned her. Janine's real downside came when Frank and Peggy split, and Peggy threw Janine, all of sixteen years old, out onto the streets.

Therein lies Janine's trust issue, and she's learned to depend on no one but herself. Security for Janine, until recently, has been a financially stable older man who would keep her in material comfort.

Even with her return in 2008, she's been kept at arm's length by her family - Ricky being influenced by the intolerant Bianca. And even now, the Jackson-Butchers treat her like a piece of shit unless they want to smarm some cash from her.

Therein lies the difference between Janine and Michael. Janine is, indeed, capable of showing empathy. The one moment in the jacuzzi, to which Barry referred, was Janine actually trusting Barry enough to let her guard down. Janine looks after her family and her closest friends (Billy and Lola), even though family and friends might take her for granted. 

For example, Billy used her credit card behind her back to kit Lexi out in the latest designer baby furniture. She could have prosecuted him, but she didn't. She took him back in his old capacity when she re-opened her company. She allows the Butcher-Jacksons to remain in Pat's old house for a peppercorn rent, and they take full advantage of her - being constantly behind with the rent and hurling verbal abuse at her at every opportunity. Her own step-brother hit her twice for financial loans, yet couldn't even be bothered to spend her birthday evening with her.

This was a seriously good episode - at least, the best since Kat's epiphany, and by a new writer as well. Apart from a dodgy moment at the beginning of the episode, with Michael's signature Nosferatu look, I'd say this was Newman's best effort.

Essentially a three-header, the episode made use of other recogniseable regulars, but in a background capacity, which added to the tension to the entire episode, as well as some quick subtleties.

So essentially this was a planned encounter - not for the purpose of murder, but for the purpose of getting Michael arrested for breaking his injunction and for assaulting her. We know that Janine is capable, when desperate enough to prove a viable point, of self-harming to serve a purpose.

Who didn't guess when Alice disappeared, that she went directly to Janine to tell her what Michael was planning, which meant that, possibly, when Michael was having dinner with Janine, Alice was right upstairs in the very house. Janine, getting Michael to chop vegetables with the knife, it all had a purpose.

Including Alice grabbing Michael's hand and shirt cuff, while her hand was still covered in Janine's blood and Janine's cleverly disarranged kitchen, which so clearly not only showed signs of a struggle, but also left the poisonous sleeping powder on display.

In a nutshell, this was a perfect presentation of a psychopath losing control, and the tension was heightened by his chance encounters and distant sightings of Square residents, with Michaeo wary of ultimately and totally losing control of the situation on his way to Janine's house. Remember, he thought he was going to "discover" the body, the plan always being to pin the blame on Alice.

Trying to sneak past Kat and Tommy (and it still annoys me that Kat refers to Tommy as being "Michael's" boy. Michael provided the sperm, nothing more. He's never cared about Tommy because he's incapable of caring about Tommy ... Then running into Alfie outside the house and wantonly lying about Kat and Tommy being inside. Briefly running into Lauren, Lucy and Whitney as he was trying to dispose of Alice's top and the soiled towel and spying Carol and the kids trick-or-treating.

All of this heightened the atmosphere of impatience, with the viewers awaiting his discovery that Janine was still alive, and that the initial twist was that she and Alice had plotted his comeuppance that would result in him being arrested and imprisoned.

Now we witness the final and desperate attempts by a psychopath to regain control of a situation lost to him - please remember that Steve John Shepherd painstakingly explained that psychopaths are incapable of feeling empathy, and no matter how hard people might think that the might "help" these damaged souls, they are incurable.

Alice was still deluded, even until the very end, claiming that Michael hated himself and loved only her and Scarlett. That was a prime Michael manipulation, with his poor-little-boy-lost act. A psychopath loves only himself and thinks himself superior to everyone else, whom he disdains. Remember Michael saying this?

There's a reason I act smug and superior, Alice. It's because I am.

Psychopaths are manipulators, who target vulnerable people. Throughout the encounter with Janine tonight, he veered from blatantly blaming Alice, at the same time, trying to convince Janine that he still loved her, that they could start again and that this encounter was the kickstart their relationship needed, to openly castigating Janine, when he saw that Alice was still open to being manipulated by him.

Caught in the middle of two schemes, Alice couldn't go through with either one - she couldn't kill Janine or countenance it, neither could she lie to the police about Michael assaulting Janine, although she could tell them of the murder plot.

And note Michael's outburst, his true colours, when Alice tried to persuade him to run from the police,to run with her, when he couldn't get Scarlett. That's when the penny finally did drop with Alice, who wasn't phased at all earlier by Michael panicking and reminding her that not only would he go to prison, but she would also, for this.


The scene in the kitchen where he told Alice exactly what he thought of her, how pathetic and weak and deluded she was. His original plan, which came to nought, was to have Alice arrested for the murder, whilst he scarpered with Scarlett. 

Charlie Brooks was magnificent, easily the best actress in the programme at the moment, and she'll be sorely missed. Janine knows exactly why Michael's undermined her and chipped away at her self-confidence since Scarlett's birth and since her return - he's punishing her for his mother's suicide. He was hoping to kill Janine and delude Scarlett with misinformation about her mother not loving her enough because she'd "committed suicide".

The piece de resistance was obviously the final scene, with the police pounding at the door, as Michael is trying, once again, to choke Janine to death, and Alice stabs him.

The minute that happened, I knew that this was a redux of Den's demise, but my only criticism is that Alice stabbed him hard, and whilst I know that injured people can and do summon strength to rise up from seemingly mortal injuries, it seemed as if Michael literally jumped up again and Janine grabbed a towel with which to hold the knife (and thus not show her fingerprints) and stab Michael again, this time fatally.

No witnesses, with Alice at the door, this is also Janine's ultimate revenge on the insipid girl who threw back Janine's generosity in her face and still wanted to side with this psychopath.

The ending was a bit weaker than Den's demise, but by far, this was a good episode considering the recent efforts. 

Put it this way: I'm going to watch this episode again, and that's a first for me in years.

One psychopath down, one to go.