Spoiled Brats - Review:- 12.12.2013

Tonight's episode was considerably better than Tuesday's offering, and it comes on the eve of the long-awaited interviews released by the Saviour - gee, and right here at Christmas too.

One of the things The Chosen One will reveal is that the Ice Queen of Botox is his chosen villain of the piece. Good. Why?

Because villains, especially psychopaths (as much as they are revelled to such a degree in today's popular television culture), have very short shelf-lives.The most successful villains in television history are those whom we love to hate - J R Ewing, for example. There's nothing to love, or even like, about Ronnie Mitchell. There is no warmth, nothing to inspire warmth. Her fiercest defenders are often those fans who lack the ability to think critically and who don't understand that a psychopath is someone devoid of true feeling, totally unable to empathise, whose obsessions some people wrongly identify as love, masqued by an innate desire to control along with a feeling of superiority and entitlement.

These sorts of villains have short shelf lives. They simply must. Otherwise, they'll risk turning into clown factors, like Tracey Barlow. They usually end up on the receiving end of a knife (Michael Moon) or a blunt object (Archie Mitchell). 

I know the awfully compassionless Ronnie is a particular favourite of DTC's, but I hope he doesn't let his ego get in the way of the monster he's creating in thinking it clever to give the soap world its first bona fide female villain. He'd be pandering to the lower end of intelligence in the realm of viewers. EastEnders is not a programme for the stupid. It's pandered to that demographic for too long.

There's nothing likeable about this retconned character. I hope she leaves when her year's contract is finished. In a box.

You Don't Own Me.

There was a subtle link in the first scene in tonight's episode, which showed a woman in her late thirties, the mother of a near-adult child, skipping a fare on the London Underground and being chased halfway across the Square.

Tina Carter is much more than a girl behaving badly. She's yet another childwoman who's never grown up. From the mishmash fashion she espouses to her feckless attitude, she's immature almost to the point of retardation. She has no job, so she must be supported by her sister, who works in a corner shop on minimum wage. One wonders how her daughter got as far in life as she did, but then this is Tina Mach II. The original off-screen Tina was a woman near-enough Shirley's age, who lived in Spain with her boyfriend. This Tina is a good fifteen years younger and a lesbian.

Despite all of the above, it's easy enough to like Tina, especially when she inadvertantly runs into Roxy leaving Carl's flat early in the morning. The two bond over their misbehaviour.

So back Ronnie goes, a thirty-six year-old woman slinking in with a lie on her lips to justify her lifestyle to her manipulative,psychopathic, over-controlling older, plastic-faced, botoxed, sugly blister. Why is it that in every successive episode Ronnie's face looks more and more like that of  refugee from Area 51 in Arizona?

Roxy's only responsibility is to Amy, and she's failing in that respect. She should realise that her rebellious, yet self-pitying behaviour is totally selfish. She can stop out all night and drink herself rotten as long as she knows there's someone there to give Amy her tea and a bath and get her to bed. No wonder the kid never speaks.

(And memo to Pete Lawson and the non-existent research and continuity team: Amy turned five years old in November, not that we had even a mention of her birthday, amonst all the other trauma of that month. She should be in the entry class of Walford Primary - you know, the school where Ava is supposed to work? In fact, in an earlier episode this week and in a few last month, we actually had Roxy reference the fact that Amy was in school. Yet today, Ronnie pointedly remarked that she had taken Amy to nursery that day. Maybe Ronnie is so caught up in keeping those objects of her obsession - Roxy and, by extension, Amy - in a state of perpetual infancy, that she took Amy to nursery and scared and threatened the nursery nurse into keeping the child amongst the youngest of children).

I wonder if Amy is potty trained? In fact, I wonder, with Ronnie around, if Roxy is even allowed to go to the toilet by herself? It wouldn't surprise me if Ronnie keeps her in adult nappies and nurses her every night before she puts her to bed.

Whilst Roxy's lying her arse around Ronnie and failing epically, Tina and the Creature from the Black Lagoon (otherwise known as Shirley) are having a laugh in the caff over Tina's escapades the night before. She's had a ONS, as well, and Shirley's enjoying the gossip. Quite the opposite to Ronnie's reaction to Roxy - but then, Ronnie objects to Roxy fucking Carl White.

Shirley is her sister's keeper as well, except she's not as bright, controlling or psychopathic as Ronnie, so she gets rumbled from time to time - like Tina's lie about Billy needing forty quid for the electric, only to stumble into Ronnie on the rampage in the middle of the Square, giving her the third degree about Roxy's lie that she'd spent the night at Billy's after being on the tiles with Tina.

(Observation: a subtle indication of the entitled arrogance of Ronnie the hateful bitch, the way she ploughed into Sadie and didn't even apologise. To her credit, Sadie carried on walking, and didn't even acknowledge the inadvertant contact with that walking piece of shit.)

One of the lines of the night goes to Tina:-

Lying to your sister? Now that is low. Wanna help me pay the electric?

Of course, the big sister brigade suss both Roxy's lie and Tina's deception and track them down in the Vic, two hopelessly immature women of a certain age, acting like a pair of saddoes.

The two scenes of the night gleaned from this vignette have to be the one where Roxy confronts Ronnie, throwing Christmas ornaments against the wall and ranting, in full cognizance, about Ronnie's unreasonable and stifling control.

Who does Ronnie think she is, dictating to an adult about whom she can and cannot see, complete with the ironic line:-

Stop acting like a spoilt brat!

But that's just what Roxy is, Ronnie. You've seen to that. You've kept her in a state of perpetual childlike emotional dependence, until she behaves exactly the way you want her to behave - like a spoilt brat, just so Ronnie can play Mommie Dearest.

Yet Roxy is right. This isn't about Ronnie. It's about Roxy - as she says, her own woman, and not who Ronnie wants her to be. Roxy knows exactly what Ronnie wants to do and with her, and she's not having it, which spurs the Walking Nostril into unreasonable action - confronting Carl.

The scene in the Vic was preposterous to the point of being funny. Carl got the best line:-

Who do you think you are? Phil Mitchell in high heels?

When she was standing in front of that darts board, I was willing Carl to plant that dart in the middle of her unnaturally smooth forehead, just to see the toxic botulism and collagen liquid pour out.

So back to Eye-bee-tha they go, one way this time, for New Year's Day. Again. Rumours say the bitch is going to kill Carl - over what? Because he slept with Roxy? This bitch needs slappin' dahn.

And Roxy is not the Queen of Ibiza. She never was. Anytime anyone has to vocalise a brag like that, it's clear that she wasn't. She wasn't even the Queen of bloody Sheba.

Another Spoilt Brat.

Why hasn't Max tossed this tosser out onto the street where he belongs? Cora didn't ask Max's permission for Dexter to come live there, and as Cora contributes nothing except  grief to Max's household, maybe she should go also.

Dexter is the product of Ava's bad parenting. He is a victim of The Little King Syndrome, a child who's been given his way in all things and never denied anything material in his life to the point now that he's the one controlling The Magic Negro. As much as I  hate to admit this, Cora was right to upbraid Ava the Rava about wrapping Dexter in cotton wool. Dexter is an adult, he's not a kid, although Ava the Rava thinks he is, which is his problem. He's as emotionally immature as Roxy.

That shows in the way he behaves at work. He's in a strop, so he sulks off work and when he's caught out, he backchats Phil Mitchell. He's lucky Phil sacked him. I'd have knocked the shit out of his ugly face. As for Cora demanding he show respect for his mother, Cora's one to spea about respect - she certainly didn't inspire respect from her own children nor did she instill respect for parents in her grandchildren. She was totally disrespectful to Dot, who put a roof over her head in total generosity.

And what a petty little arsehole he is. This is the second time he's put the moves on Lola and got knocked back, and because he's such a loser, he has to come into someone else's home where he's staying, and snitch on his cousin's boyfriend, accusing him of cheating on her, when all Jay did was kiss another girl.

Here's another character who should have a short shelf life. He's an insulting racial stereotype, and the only things saving him from pushing off with the actors who play his parents are the fact that he comes cheap via inexperience and the colour of his skin.

Axe, please.

Alice the Goon and Watching the Detectives.

Yes, Alfie employed a cheap shot, using mention of Michael to Janine in an effort to get her to consider buying the Vic. But, at least, it got her thinking about it.

On the other hand, Joey's got Kat to see Alice - why? I understand that Joey thinks his sister is innocent, but the bulk of what she told Kat, she told the police and Joey as well - that she was in love with Michael, that he told her that he, she and Scarlett could be a family, that she thought he loved her. She understood that Michael wanted her to drug Janine, to kill her and kidnap Scarlett. And she understood that Michael certainly was trying to kill Janine that evening, when Alice stabbed him.

As someone else said on DS forum, Stacey killed in cold blood, Janine killed in order to prevent Michael from killing her - self-defence. Alice is not innocent, and is Joey that stupid not to realise that Michael, first, attempting to kill his wife and enlisting Alice as an accomplice, embroils Alice as an accessory to the crime and further proves that Janine killed, if that even is discovered, in self-defence.

All this whining on his part about Alice being "just a kid" doesn't cut any ice with me, especially when I remember her condescending tone in speaking to Janine and the way she played Tamwar. Alice, like Dexter, Roxy and Tina, is an overgrown spoiled brat.

One remark with which I take contention,and that one is from Kat-

Tommy will never know 'is REAL dad.

Uhhhhh, sorry, you dosy mare, but Tommy does know his real dad - Alfie. It's Alfie whom he calls "daddy." It's Alfie who stayed up with him all night when he was ill, Alfie who spent time for him and cared for him. Michael was the sperm donor. He wasn't even a real dad to Scarlett. He couldn't even call her by her given name until Janine returned, and then she became an obsession, a possession for which he had to fight.

In the same breath, Kat informed Alice that Michael didn't love anyone, he didn't know how (a cack-handed definition of a psychopath, but there you go), so she's wanting her son to know what his "real dad" was like? Isn't the kid going to be confused enough? And she called herself his "friend" after all of that? Michael thought as much of Kat as he did of Alice or Janine - he quite simply didn't give a rat's arse.

One for the Road.

That would be hairy Cindy the Greek, the boy in drag.

I've yet to understand why Ian Beale would allow the open result of his wife's infidelity coupled with her attempt on his life and the kidnapping of two of his children, to remain under his roof and as part of his family. I'm all for Cindy Sr's second daughter as a legacy character in her own right, but at least eight or nine years down the road, and not now, in a show that's overladen with characters under the age of twenty-five.

I'm even more confused as to why Ian would jump to her defence when she's telling a bare-faced lie about Ian's great-nephew - real family, a boy who bears Pete Beale's blood, not someone who's the daughter of the local trollop and some half-Italian gigolo businessman. And where is Nick Holland, anyway? Can't he appear and take this boy in drag away before his balls drop and he starts to shave? (Can you just imagine Terry Jr's reaction to that one?)

At least we know that the Mystery of the Missing Money hasn't been forgotten. I wonder for whom Cindy the Greek bought that gift, and I wonder if that stall-holder's look was one of suspicion was because of all sorts of notes, the fifty-pound job is the easiest to counterfeit. Remember Derek's stash?

Then there were the reactions of Denise and Bianca to Cindy's lie and Liam's dilemma. Denise likes to play the good cop and undermine Ian - as if that kid would even tell Denise when she was ready for sex. Denise is so intent on making a good impression on Ian's kids, she forgets that she's undermining him as well, especially the way she speaks to him as though he were a recalcitrant child.

Bianca easily gets the line of the night:-

When you are ready, yer know ... yer might wanna put somefink on top of it.

The highlight of the entire episode, however, was the re-appearance of the delightful Nikki, a wonderful cross between Sam Mitchell and Mandy Salter, who's come upon receiving the lowdown on the Butcher-Beale-Jackson set-up.

I loved her last words to Bianca:-

I'll see YOU at Christmas.

Bring it on ... but bring an axe as well.