Right, every action leading up to Christmas Day started yesterday, and although this was a very watchable episode - in the past week, we've noticed how the pacing of the episodes have changed, and how the writing is sharper - this episode featured what's become a staple of the show of late ... characters who have faces like slapped bottoms, faces just begging to be spanked ... just like a certain boastful commentator currently resident in a trollpit masquerading as a fan forum.
So here we go with the Gallery of Spanked Faces.
Dexter and the Magic Negro.
And thus, we have Newman's enduring legacy - the Hartmans and Sam. I'm sure, in her economically-minded little brain, she was convinced that they were an extension of the Branning dynamic as well as the infamously advertised "new family."
This lot hang around and linger like a bad stink, and they should all be going. I recall right after both Clare Perkins and Cornell S John were cast, people on the old Bullyboi Forum and Digital Spy going into spasms of excitement at the prospect of two such "good" actors joining the show,
Ava the Rava, the Magic Negro, instead, became one of the most ludicrous characters ever appearing in EastEnders. A Deputy Head teacher who lived on a sink council estate, a teacher who never taught, and when she did, referred to her pupils within earshot as being "poison." A teacher who spent her days trolling the streets of Walford and having endless days off. Did you know that teachers can have days off to grade papers or for their son's birthday or for any reason whatsoever.
Her various silly hairstyles - the pineapple was my favourite - coupled with her bad grammar (so inappropriate in a teacher) and her screeching voice ...
Dex-TAAAAAAAAAA!
She reminded me of and she'll become one day Aunt Esther from Sanford and Son.
Cornel S John spent his tenure on the show trying to prove his worth as an ac-tor. James Earl Jones, Billy Dee Williams, Sidney Poitier, he tried to be them all. And failed.
Even last night, in his really and truly last appearance, he strutted the stage, pausing ineffectively after each word carefully enunciated with noticeable emphasis and using vocal projection similar to that of a stage actor.
Khali Best is simply an insult to the programme.
Dexter is one of the most unlikeable and shittiest characters ever to appear. As Max, himself, stated, he treats Max's home like a hotel, and why he's allowed to stay there by Max, who's the householder and who is buying the house from Jack, is beyond me. Cora horned her way into the household when Max was absent, and when he returned, she refused to leave; and it was down to Cora who gave Dexter permission to stay.
He has no respect for anyone, he's rude, he's mouthy and he's unintelligible. He's a testament to Ava's abysmal parenting. He's twenty-one and he has the demeanor of a spoiled twelve year-old, He needs, to be brief, a smack.
He is one of the more unlikeable self-obsessed characters on the programme, and there are still too many of them. In reality, he should be leaving this programme with the atrocious actors who played his parents. The only reasons he's remaining are down to the fact that he comes cheap and the colour of his skin.
A pox on all the Hartmans, and the doughty old trout who sits around doling out unsolicited advice, which really shouldn't be followed, and when she's not doing that, she's drinking.
Lauren and the Dirty Perv.
Easily, the most unappealing couple on the show - and I'm not talking about Jake and Sadie, as it's clear that we're supposed to perceive Sadie as a cold, controlling and unfeeling bitch, and instead root for her filthy-faced lard-arsed husband and his teenaged doxy.
Why? This is yet another endless chapter in the year-long, totally boring and overwhelming Lauren Story, fronted by ...
THE. WORST. ACTRESS. EVER. TO. APPEAR. IN. EASTENDERS.
DTC, in his opening interview, poo-poohed the idea of rehashing storylines, but what is this but a thrice-told tale told before with Tanya-Max-Rachel and once again, more recently, with Tanya-Max-Stacey. This could be an epiphany for Lauren, in realising that she is really no better or no worse than either of her morally putrid parents.
But since this is Eastenders 2.1, it's probably just a ruse to move Lauren into young adulthood by making her a homewrecker before she's twenty, resulting in her getting involved with an "older" man.
Jamie Lomas, on the other hand, looks like he needs to be doused in a bath of carbolic soap, and he sounds like a pervy paedophile, aided by the fact that Jossa, billed by the programme as EastEnders' version of Michelle Keegan, still looks like a collagen-enhanced schoolgirl.
Pride Goeth Before the Fall: Dot.
I'm not the biggest fan of Dot's, but - dare I say it? Here's a rehash again. Dot's been scammed and robbed before - back around Easter 2003 or 2004, when Saint Dennis Rickman still patrolled the Square. And she's scammed in much the same way again, this time by a well-spoken con artist and his briefly seen friend, who rob her of her money raised for the church.
Dot's waved the 900-odd amount a bit too much, it seems, and whether her electricity problems were really caused by the Butcher-Beale-Jackson-Spraggan extravaganza next door or contrived by the con artists is debatable. The fact is that Dot was swayed by a well-spoken man's demeanor at her door and bouyed by the fact that she could be due some money, she trusted him on site and let him in. She got thirty quid and lost over nine hundred.
For all she's a practicing Christian, Dot is one of the annoying, overt types, advertising her Christianity and her self-importance in relation to the church in an over-bearing way. I wanted to shove that bell and that carol as the malarkey it was being Dot's idea of her "important" contribution to Midnight Mass. Surely Midnight Mass is all about Jesus, Dot, and less of a stage on which you're asked to perform?
Carol of the Hells.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes ... she's a brilliant actress, the best on EastEnders, never fails to entertain and all that ... yet the only major storylines the show can come up with are ones of her shagging a various man/boy and breast cancer. Again. Carol is the new Peggy.
But the truth is that Carol, as watchable as she is, is simply not a very nice person.
In fact, she's a bloody awful person.
Carol wastes so much time and energy in anger and selfishness - the times she's cut her chilren totally out of her life because they went against her will.
Carol's way or the highway.
Yes, I'm sympathetic to her finding a lump. Yes, I'm sympathetic to her fear. Been there and done that, myself. But I hate the mean-spirited way she lashes out at people when things in her life don't go the way she wants - be it being dumped by a man, being shown up by a child or finding a lump in her breast.
It's difficult to feel sympathy for her, the way, at the best of times, she's so rude and off-handed to other people. It's no wonder she has no friends.
The Carol-David dynamic is another retcon allowed to remain from the Bryan Kirkwood era because it feeds the fantasies of a younger demographic. They like Carol because she's another gobby mare of a character whose temper tantrums make anger mismanagement a positive option for them to aspire. Carol and David were never Pat and Frank, and the sooner TPTB stop trying to make them such, the better the dynamic will be.
The Queen of the Night.
Both have been at the distaff ends of their families for so long, and it's obvious that the only reason the bulk of her family approach Janine is for financial hand-outs. Watching Janine lord it over everyone tonight in the misguided belief that she had the Vic gave one reason to wonder that, had Charlie Brooks not handed in her notice before DTC's appointment was announced, he may have placed her behind the bar. It would have been interesting to see Janine as landlady, with Billy and Lola fronting the bar.
Line of the night goes to Billy, basking in her glory:-
David, we're trying to buy a pub 'ere.
And there David was, on his uppers, cadging money off Janine again. Cast back to 2012 and his approaching her to pay for Pat's funeral.
Joey playing the mumbling, bumbling Banquo's Ghost, glowering in the distance and bringing Janine's accusations into the open. I'm still uneasy at his levelling accusations, even if they are the obvious plot device to get David suspicious and force Janine's hand into confessing. Joey said several things tonight that would add up in Janine's favour:-
He kept going on about Alice's size and how she could never be able to have killed someone Michael's size. Well, Alice has admitted trying to poison Janine, she's admitted trying to kidnap Janine's baby (and that brings up another moot question - where was Scarlett tonight? and who's paying the Jackson-Butcher-Spraggin electric bill? Who leaves Christmas lights on all night anyway?) And when someone is attacking another person who's trying to kill a third person, adrenalin rushes in and strength is enhanced. That argument went out the window.
The second point is that Joey suspects, knows, from Alice telling him that Michael wanted Janine dead, that he tried to kill her. Well, surely, that's another point in Janine's favour, for if she killed Michael, she did so in self-defence. The police have photo documentation of the injuries Michael levied on Janine.
And, thirdly, Joey's revelation that Michael had been stabbed twice fell flat for me, because he accused Janine of stabbing Michael in the back. Alice stabbed Michael in the back, literally and figuratively. Janine's blow came from the front.
Finally, in no way did Janine "drive" Michael to attempt to kill her, and if they're going to ship this premise, it's wrong.
Let the games begin.
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