The End? - Review:- 29.11.2013

Apologies for the delay in the reviews this week. There was a death in my family, so all the usual death threats and snide remarks and accusations from the haters who, somehow, can't help reading this blog actually paled into the insignificance that they are in view of that.

There's a battle raging right now on Digital Spy forum about the Mitchell Sisters and their value to the programme. As I've said before, the Mitchell Sisters are retconned children of a retconned character. For years, we only knew that Eric Mitchell had one brother, Clive. Suddenly, as of 2007, he had another brother, Archie, who had two daughters.

I appreciate some of the cultists' devotion to the Mitchell sisters, but it's usually been the Ice Queen who's received their adoration. (And, people, if you don't think that woman's had cosmetic surgery, you don't know anythin about cosmetic surgery). Normally - until recently, actually - the distaff half of les soeurs Mitchell - Roxy, that is - has retained the same lack of affection reserved for the other runt of the Mitchell litter, Billy, who featured heavily in Friday's episode.

Roxy was always deemed the dim slut, to put it succinctly.

Now there seems to be an element of viewer on Digital Spy, who've probably finished teething and have been weaned in the six years since the peroxided blondes arrived, who are creaming their y-fronts about the "return" of the Mitchell Sisters.

You're forgetting one thing:- Ronnie Mitchell turns forty next year, and Roxy's thirty-six. Both these women are old enough to be the mothers of teens, and you're forgetting that if the sainted, soppy Dani-elle had survived, Ronnie would have been the grandmother of a toddler today.

So this regression of the sisters to cackling, insulting, entitled partygirls (or one partygirl puppet whose strings are being pulled by a psychopath) is a bit much to comprehend, especially since most of the tweenies would be bum-clenchingly embarrassed to see women of that age behaving like airhead banshees and sidling up to men young enough to be their sons. Even moreso in Ibiza.

The battle waging on DS at the moment concerns Ronnie's manipulation of Roxy, which one erstwhile teenager, iMatt101, refuses to see. You remember iMatt101. He's the child who decided to watch Emmerdale, and after one episode,deemed it a pile of crap. When other forum members nicely tried to tell him that you need to give a programme more than one episode for making a judgement, and that his reasons for dissing the programme being that people "talked too much" in scenes were not quite valid, iMatt101 started squealing like a stuck pig, pleading his youth and whining that people were picking on him.

Ladies and gentlemen, meet a Class A Millenial - incapable of thinking critically, sustaining a discussion, tolerating any difference of opinion and thinking that if something happened before he was born or before his memory, it's not worth it. Hey, history can be changed, ya know.

Of course, it can, in the eyes of people who live in a dream world and cannot reason. But, why take my word for it? Read the thread for yourself. You can find it here. 

Pages 2 and 3 are particularly insightful into the mind of a narrow-minded millenial, who, when challenged, resorts to petty insults.

If this is the target audience Dominic Treadwell-Collins is aiming to sell the show, it's lost. How long before this becomes the standard fantasy staple of vampires and zombies?

Friday's episode sucked mightily.

A Tale of Two Kidneys.

It's time for Daddy to go ...

Absolute line of the year has to go to Ava the Rava ... you cannot deny that when she wants to do so, the Magic Negro can pull it deep out of the hat:-

Please tell me you didn't come back here just for my son's kidney!

Well, that one was about as bad a secret as Jake and Sadie being married. Everyone knew from the very beginning, of if they didn't know,they suspected, that Sam suddenly appeared, not out of fatherly devotion, but out of need of a bodily organ.

This is the beginning of the end for two-thirds of the worst family to appear on the show since the infamous Ferreiras (and they had a kidneygate too). Why is it always a kidney transplant that's foisted on unpopular characters in a last-ditch effort to get them to appeal to viewers?

Ava the Rava was an insult to teachers everywhere - note to DTC: Teachers, unlike most other professions, can't just take the odd day off here and there. Their "leave" comes with the copious mid-term and summer breaks during the school term. Teachers cannot have "days off" to grade papers or to host twenty-first birthday parties for their children. Judging by the amount of time Ava's had off from her classroom duties, Walford Education Authority must have bags of money to lay out for supply teachers.

Sam the Sham went from being James Earl Jones to Billy Dee Williams to Lenny Henry's impersonation of a stereotypical Jamaican. At times, I almost thought he was ready to burst into a rendition of Old Man River.

As for Dexter, not only is he about to become the worst actor on the programme (with David Witts's departure), but his character is an offensive racial stereotype. He's the only member of what we now know was Newman's surreptitious "new family" who's staying, but that isn't because he's popular. He isn't.

The only things that are saving Khali Best's bacon right now are the fact that he comes cheaper than most of the other older actors on the show and the colour of his skin. That's a fact. Three of the first five actors axed by DTC were ethnics - two Afro-Caribbeans and an Asian. If DTC had wiped out one Afro-Caribbean family in one fell swoop, there'd have been hell to pay from the PC brigade. 

So, basically, Dexter gets to stay and morph into Black Bradley.

The problem with this trio, Branning satellites that they are, is that they were so badly portrayed and badly written, that the public couldn't seem to invest properly in them.

Tonight's scenes between Ava and Sam the Sham were embarrassing in the extreme. For fuck's sake, this is a prime time soap opera, not Ibsen at the National Theatre. I saw enough of Cornell S John's tombstoned teeth in his clipped enunciarion to last a lifetime, but we also had to contend with shots of Clare Perkins's tonsils and her screaming. Oh, and enough allusions to the effing pint of milk story.

This is Dexter's 21st birthday. It just dawned on me tonight that he's older than Peter Beale. He's actually the oldest of that demographic comprised of himself,Peter, Lola, Jay and Flabi the Dough-Faced Girl. A group that ranges in age from twenty-one to seventeen. The oldest behaves more like a twelve year-old than someone who's proverbially come of age.

So Sam is gone (but not for good - he's got one more appearance to make), but I wasn't moved by Dexter's pithy speech - another retconned moment, being that Dexter has pined for Daddy Dearest since he was  wee lad, but instead had to make do with mountain bikes and Playstations. Sounds like the proverbial spoiled brat to me.

Anyway, his mamma and daddy both love him, but Daddy simply can't stay - to accommodate a "child" that's really an adult - because he really couldn't abide a lifetime with Mommy.

Well, who could live with this?

Sam the Sham went back to the Pharoahs ...

Well, Dexter thinks he's gone to Birmingham for the weekend.

This was a disgrace when you think of the non-departure Scott Maslen, an actor whose character had stayed at the forefront of the show for six years, received, in his three-minute decision to be psychologically bullied out of Walford by his psychopathic ex-wife leave town.

One wonders why?

The Famous Five Goes to a Party.

In the beginning, there was Spanky (the fat one), Darla, Jackie, Alfalfa and Buckwheat.

Now we're served up with Flabi (the fat one), Lola, Peter, Jay and Dexter.

I found it totally unreal that Sam managed to wind his way to the hospital, casually "find" one of the nurses who'd taken care of Dexter, and brought her home as a birthday present for him. Even stranger is that I find both Dexter and Sam, each with one kidney and newly recovered from the operations, were drinking Patrick's 100-proof rum drink. Does this show not do any research? Like with Max and Phil, both of whom have lost spleens, is there any reference to them being consigned to take daily doses of penicillen for the rest of their lives? Sam will still have to take anti-rejection drugs to keep his kidney intact.

I also find it incongruous that Peter Beale's twin is moving in adult company circles, whilst Peter is still seeking harbour in the company of children. But, as I said, I find it difficult to believe Dexter is the oldest of this lot. The scene on the market was cringeworthy, including the shot of Peter gratuitously removing his shirt in order to change for the children's party. (This is supposed to be the end of November, and already one of the dynamic was complaining about "freezing.")

Ah, yes, there was the ubiquitous remark made by gossipy Flabi the Dough-Faced Girl, who sanctimoniously opined that if she were Roxy, she'd never forgive Alfie for what he'd done. Well, miss, perhaps you'd like to remember Phil engaging your boyfriend in concealing a murder or Ronnie dumping her dead baby on the Moons and taking their child. Maybe you'd like to remember your sister trying to kill your dad.

The scene where the "gang" were ribbing Dexter about being dumped by the clearly reluctant nurse was one of the worst I've seen on the show. Oh, and we're getting the lead-in to the new big romance between Lola and Peter, by having her invite a moon-faced drama school student trying to sound like a pool hall chav and looking more like a long-lost juvenile Mitchell relative, having him make remarks which clearly indicated that he was more of a Daily Mail reader than a chav ...

Single mothers are gagging for it.

She's a tramp.

All within Lola's hearing, of course, and all designed to make Peter defend her honour. Actually, I like this couple. They have the accidental making of another Stacey and Bradley. And the slow-burn of their attraction had been the most natural and subtle storyline around. I don't approve of the way they'll eventually get together (involving the atrocious Fatboy and the equally atrocious Poopy-La-Dim.

Sisters Are Doing It For Themselves.

As much as I like Tina Carter as a new character, her "quirkiness" might begin to wear thin if they keep her as a dippy comic foil to Shirley's bitter old bat.

So Phil's hospitality wears thin, and he kicks them both out, but it also was bloody hypocritical for Tina to assert that Phil should have beaten Alfie for what he'd done to Roxy. Shirley surely wouldn't have been too good to politely point out that it was Phil who'd harboured a murderer - the murderer of her best friend, no less - under his roof with Shirley living there. If what Alfie did to Roxy is worse than what Ben did to Heather and Phil hiding his guilt, then there's a skewed sense of morality in this programme. We're certainly being asked to consider the kidnapping of a child far less serious than dumping a woman with a dubious sexual history on the wrong side of thirty at the altar. I suppose now, we'll be asked to consider Heather's murder a non-entity because she was fine, fat and over forty.

Seems like the Mitchells can commit the most heinous of crimes and expect to be thanked for it, whilst the victims are treated like pariahs.

So Shirley pimps her sister out to get Billy Mitchell, the runt and Village Idiot of the Mitchell clan, to secure them a place to stay. Hang on ... I thought Denise had given Shirley an advance on her wages so they could get a deposit for a flat? Bad continuity again?

This was a poor episode, the second of as many in a gaggle of good episodes. It's this inconsistency which affects EastEnders as much as the poor writing, dire acting and bad characterisation.