I thought Katie Douglas was leaving. In fact, I thought she'd left the writing room, but there she is, here in January 2014, still churning out more scripts. She's arguably one of the worst, if not the worst, writer on the show at the moment, and I thought she'd be long gone after this.
Tonight's episode was yet another filler, but "filled" with innuendo concerning fast-approaching storylines.
EastEnders Does Inverted Racism?
I know that EastEnders has shied away from addressing racism full-on in the past. Its stories concerning what is still a big problem in Britain, if not the world today, have been shallow, brief and pithy over the years. In fact, their efforts have been embarrassing. Instead of showing people's ingrained prejudices, we get offensive racial and cultural stereotypes, from the Irish Fowlers to Fatboy, Wayne and Dexter.
Ray was the archtypical angry black man. Kim was the sassy and loud black woman. And all around, the community of Walford existed in rainbow racial harmony.
Well, it looks as if that might be changing this time around with Mr DTC. On one side, we have Linda ("Some of our best friends are black") Carter and across the Square, we have Shabnam ("Dad shouldn't be with a white woman") Masood.
Inverted racism much?
Neither attitude is excusable, but Linda's is a result of a lifetime of that sort of upbringing, in a household where men were men and women were women and the races didn't mix sexually or romantically. She was raised to believe in a white world where everything British was best and the Royal Family would always be there to guide you.
But Shabnam's racism has been recently acquired. Shabnam I was a pole dancer. She partied with her white friends, Carly and Dawn. She was open-minded and accepting. She was secular. Odds are that she probably knew about Syed's secret lifestye, and she didn't appear to judge. Now she returns, rude, petulant and entitled, clothed in a hijab and being far more judgemental and disdaining of the people around her than Zainab ever was.
Walford hasn't changed, but Shabnam has. And it's not for the better.
Her behaviour towards Carol yesterday was rude. Today, it was despicable, Even early on, this wasn't about Mas having moved on from Zainab and seeing another woman, it was obvious from the get-go that this was all about Mas seeing a white woman, an infidel. She even voiced this at the end of the episode.
If DTC is doing what I think he's doing, it's bloody clever, but almost too clever for the core viewer to see. He's showing that racism cuts both ways, and it has two sides. On the one hand, we have pretty, blonde Linda Carter, raised by parents who probably lamented openly behind closed doors the changing face of the Britain of their youth, and Linda, now an early forty-something, absorbed this. The next generation, Linda will socialise with people of other races, and she'll banter with the gay population, but she's built an invisible wall around her lilywhite, immediate family, which - until now - she thought was impregnable.
On the other hand, we have Shabnam Masood, in her late twenties, who now believes not only that races shouldn't mix, but that every person in Walford not of the Muslim faith, is tainted, especially white people, who shouldn't mix with her family at all. But she's worse. Her attitude doesn't come from her upbringing, which has been as British in its own way, as Linda's, but from the last six years she's spent, as an adult, in Pakistan. She left an open-minded person and returned a bigot and a racist. This is what religion does, and she's as bad an example of Islam as Dot is of Christianity. I thought the character was more intelligent than to be snookered like that. Her racism and bigotry is more open and more pejorative than Linda's, because her attitudes are dictated by religion.
I wonder if she's totally shunning her gay brother, not so much because of his lifestyle than because his husband is white?
I was looking for Carol to rip the bitch a new arsehole tonight, and I'm no fan of Carol's. The actress sounds and has mannerisms akin to the worst of Lucy Beale, and I hate those snide faces she pulls.
If DTC is doing what I think he's doing, it's brilliant, showing that racism isn't confined to the Caucasian community only, but then, it's equally as plausible that Shabnam's been rewritten in retcon mode as mini-Zainab and that's that.
Anyway, I hate NuShabnam, and I think Mas needs to tell her what's what, otherwise, we'll have yet another gobby female dictating to a gaggle of gormless men.
Me Me Me It's All about Me.
It's hard to sympathise with Carol when she's so inherently selfish. It's hard to see David as noble when he's one of the biggest arsehole bastards around the place. He's telling himself he's doing everything for her, but as soon as she goes downhill in her illness, he's gone.
First off, Carol was an absolute bitch to Masood. And I don't mean today. She was wrong to cheat on him the way she did. And she was also wrong to play the selfish diva and lash out at her family the way she did, then run off and leave them to wonder.
Being told you have cancer is frightening enough, without lashing out against and pushing away the only emotional and moral support network you have.
Of course, Masood thought Carol was breaking with him in favour of David. He's had every reason to think as much. She's continued to live under the same roof as he, and it must have made Masood feel like the proverbial spare part to visit the home and to find David there acting as a rude mein host.
And David can't help but assume that he and Carol are an item again, after she slept with him on Friday. For all she can shout about wanting some time for herself, she engineered the situation from the get-go, when she allowed David to stay.
Masood is absolutely right, however. What David and Carol have isn't some Erich Segal EastEnd star-crossed Love Story. It's sordid and pathetic. They fucked as fourteen year-olds behind the bikesheds at school and got Bianca. She fucked him in the 1990s to get back at Alan's infidelity, and he reciprocated because she was the only person in Walford in the wake of him sleeping with his brother's wife, who'd have anything to do with him. His own mother and his aunt shunned him. That was comfort sex on his part. And they fucked again in 2012 as a means of his assuaging his grief at Pat's death, the same way Carol had fucked Connor in the wake of Billy's death two years before.
That's hardly a romance.
Sure, they have a bond in Bianca, but Carol and David as "parents" are the utmost joke. Carol's reaction at the beginning of the episode when Bianca reflected on Pat's quick death from cancer was petty, rude and puerile, almost catty. When Bianca apologised, she sneered, Well, it's too late. You've said it now.
As for David, who the hell is he to sit in judgement of Terry Spraggan? Granted, the man is mad to want to associate, even on a friendly basis, with Bianca, much less get involved romantically; but he's a good man and he seems sincere. Carol bullied Ricky away the last time, is David going to do the same with Terry? Besides, David had fuck-all to do with Bianca until she was virtually an adult. One wonders if his feelings towards her are of a different nature as he'd fancied her before when she was only a teenager.
And why does he never mention his son, whom he also abandoned when he critically needed David? I don't want to see this awful man mophed into a paterfamilias when he's always been and always will be a loser.
My Sharona.
Sharon is back - I mean REALLY back, and she means business. It's easy to see the chemistry between Letitia Dean and Steve McFadden when they're on fire the way they were tonight.
Sharon wants answers to Phil's secrets. Phil thinks the Sharon he's got now is the same girl he's always known. (Linda references that she and Mick have been together for over twenty years, and Sharon reasons that she's known Phil that long).
But Phil is selectively forgetting something of which Carl's phone reminded Sharon - that the Mitchells do decidedly dodgy things, which often catch up with them and involve innocent people, Like when Grant's proposed robbery with an army mate goes wrong - Michelle gets shot and Sharon almost gets raped.
She's also lived with the fact that her other husband (well, her brother) Dennis was a murderer who consorted with gangsters,and the smashed phone, hidden in a drawer, has all the Mitchell earmarks of trouble enough to alert Sharon.
She's right to demand honesty from Phil, and he's a Luddite, who's thinking in the Dark Ages about keeping Sharon in shiny things and hoping she'll look the other way - whilst the viewers are not forgetting that Phil's harbouring an even bigger secret from Sharon.
I'm looking forward to how this pans out.
The EP's Vanity Project.
I'm glad that Alfie didn't succumb to Shirley's job tip about the con man carper on the South Coast, but I'm not convinced at DTC's new omniscient, omnipresent Shirley as the Wise Woman of Walford. Shirley feeling compassionate for Alfie's plight, when she and Tina were laughing and making fun of Alfie and Kat being evicted from the pub.
And we got some hints of things yet to come in tonight's episode. Daddy Carter got a mention tonight, and it appears that there are bad feelings toward Daddy Dearest, especially from Mick and also from Shirley. Now we know that Timothy West, CBE, is about to appear on the show.
And did Alfie mention that Spencer had acquired major financial backers in his bar venture in Australia? Cue Shane Richie's panto gig to begin when this was filmed. I still wonder where Ian and Phil are going?
Tonight's episode was yet another filler, but "filled" with innuendo concerning fast-approaching storylines.
EastEnders Does Inverted Racism?
I know that EastEnders has shied away from addressing racism full-on in the past. Its stories concerning what is still a big problem in Britain, if not the world today, have been shallow, brief and pithy over the years. In fact, their efforts have been embarrassing. Instead of showing people's ingrained prejudices, we get offensive racial and cultural stereotypes, from the Irish Fowlers to Fatboy, Wayne and Dexter.
Ray was the archtypical angry black man. Kim was the sassy and loud black woman. And all around, the community of Walford existed in rainbow racial harmony.
Well, it looks as if that might be changing this time around with Mr DTC. On one side, we have Linda ("Some of our best friends are black") Carter and across the Square, we have Shabnam ("Dad shouldn't be with a white woman") Masood.
Inverted racism much?
Neither attitude is excusable, but Linda's is a result of a lifetime of that sort of upbringing, in a household where men were men and women were women and the races didn't mix sexually or romantically. She was raised to believe in a white world where everything British was best and the Royal Family would always be there to guide you.
But Shabnam's racism has been recently acquired. Shabnam I was a pole dancer. She partied with her white friends, Carly and Dawn. She was open-minded and accepting. She was secular. Odds are that she probably knew about Syed's secret lifestye, and she didn't appear to judge. Now she returns, rude, petulant and entitled, clothed in a hijab and being far more judgemental and disdaining of the people around her than Zainab ever was.
Walford hasn't changed, but Shabnam has. And it's not for the better.
Her behaviour towards Carol yesterday was rude. Today, it was despicable, Even early on, this wasn't about Mas having moved on from Zainab and seeing another woman, it was obvious from the get-go that this was all about Mas seeing a white woman, an infidel. She even voiced this at the end of the episode.
If DTC is doing what I think he's doing, it's bloody clever, but almost too clever for the core viewer to see. He's showing that racism cuts both ways, and it has two sides. On the one hand, we have pretty, blonde Linda Carter, raised by parents who probably lamented openly behind closed doors the changing face of the Britain of their youth, and Linda, now an early forty-something, absorbed this. The next generation, Linda will socialise with people of other races, and she'll banter with the gay population, but she's built an invisible wall around her lilywhite, immediate family, which - until now - she thought was impregnable.
On the other hand, we have Shabnam Masood, in her late twenties, who now believes not only that races shouldn't mix, but that every person in Walford not of the Muslim faith, is tainted, especially white people, who shouldn't mix with her family at all. But she's worse. Her attitude doesn't come from her upbringing, which has been as British in its own way, as Linda's, but from the last six years she's spent, as an adult, in Pakistan. She left an open-minded person and returned a bigot and a racist. This is what religion does, and she's as bad an example of Islam as Dot is of Christianity. I thought the character was more intelligent than to be snookered like that. Her racism and bigotry is more open and more pejorative than Linda's, because her attitudes are dictated by religion.
I wonder if she's totally shunning her gay brother, not so much because of his lifestyle than because his husband is white?
I was looking for Carol to rip the bitch a new arsehole tonight, and I'm no fan of Carol's. The actress sounds and has mannerisms akin to the worst of Lucy Beale, and I hate those snide faces she pulls.
If DTC is doing what I think he's doing, it's brilliant, showing that racism isn't confined to the Caucasian community only, but then, it's equally as plausible that Shabnam's been rewritten in retcon mode as mini-Zainab and that's that.
Anyway, I hate NuShabnam, and I think Mas needs to tell her what's what, otherwise, we'll have yet another gobby female dictating to a gaggle of gormless men.
Me Me Me It's All about Me.
It's hard to sympathise with Carol when she's so inherently selfish. It's hard to see David as noble when he's one of the biggest arsehole bastards around the place. He's telling himself he's doing everything for her, but as soon as she goes downhill in her illness, he's gone.
First off, Carol was an absolute bitch to Masood. And I don't mean today. She was wrong to cheat on him the way she did. And she was also wrong to play the selfish diva and lash out at her family the way she did, then run off and leave them to wonder.
Being told you have cancer is frightening enough, without lashing out against and pushing away the only emotional and moral support network you have.
Of course, Masood thought Carol was breaking with him in favour of David. He's had every reason to think as much. She's continued to live under the same roof as he, and it must have made Masood feel like the proverbial spare part to visit the home and to find David there acting as a rude mein host.
And David can't help but assume that he and Carol are an item again, after she slept with him on Friday. For all she can shout about wanting some time for herself, she engineered the situation from the get-go, when she allowed David to stay.
Masood is absolutely right, however. What David and Carol have isn't some Erich Segal EastEnd star-crossed Love Story. It's sordid and pathetic. They fucked as fourteen year-olds behind the bikesheds at school and got Bianca. She fucked him in the 1990s to get back at Alan's infidelity, and he reciprocated because she was the only person in Walford in the wake of him sleeping with his brother's wife, who'd have anything to do with him. His own mother and his aunt shunned him. That was comfort sex on his part. And they fucked again in 2012 as a means of his assuaging his grief at Pat's death, the same way Carol had fucked Connor in the wake of Billy's death two years before.
That's hardly a romance.
Sure, they have a bond in Bianca, but Carol and David as "parents" are the utmost joke. Carol's reaction at the beginning of the episode when Bianca reflected on Pat's quick death from cancer was petty, rude and puerile, almost catty. When Bianca apologised, she sneered, Well, it's too late. You've said it now.
As for David, who the hell is he to sit in judgement of Terry Spraggan? Granted, the man is mad to want to associate, even on a friendly basis, with Bianca, much less get involved romantically; but he's a good man and he seems sincere. Carol bullied Ricky away the last time, is David going to do the same with Terry? Besides, David had fuck-all to do with Bianca until she was virtually an adult. One wonders if his feelings towards her are of a different nature as he'd fancied her before when she was only a teenager.
And why does he never mention his son, whom he also abandoned when he critically needed David? I don't want to see this awful man mophed into a paterfamilias when he's always been and always will be a loser.
My Sharona.
Sharon is back - I mean REALLY back, and she means business. It's easy to see the chemistry between Letitia Dean and Steve McFadden when they're on fire the way they were tonight.
Sharon wants answers to Phil's secrets. Phil thinks the Sharon he's got now is the same girl he's always known. (Linda references that she and Mick have been together for over twenty years, and Sharon reasons that she's known Phil that long).
But Phil is selectively forgetting something of which Carl's phone reminded Sharon - that the Mitchells do decidedly dodgy things, which often catch up with them and involve innocent people, Like when Grant's proposed robbery with an army mate goes wrong - Michelle gets shot and Sharon almost gets raped.
She's also lived with the fact that her other husband (well, her brother) Dennis was a murderer who consorted with gangsters,and the smashed phone, hidden in a drawer, has all the Mitchell earmarks of trouble enough to alert Sharon.
She's right to demand honesty from Phil, and he's a Luddite, who's thinking in the Dark Ages about keeping Sharon in shiny things and hoping she'll look the other way - whilst the viewers are not forgetting that Phil's harbouring an even bigger secret from Sharon.
I'm looking forward to how this pans out.
The EP's Vanity Project.
I'm glad that Alfie didn't succumb to Shirley's job tip about the con man carper on the South Coast, but I'm not convinced at DTC's new omniscient, omnipresent Shirley as the Wise Woman of Walford. Shirley feeling compassionate for Alfie's plight, when she and Tina were laughing and making fun of Alfie and Kat being evicted from the pub.
And we got some hints of things yet to come in tonight's episode. Daddy Carter got a mention tonight, and it appears that there are bad feelings toward Daddy Dearest, especially from Mick and also from Shirley. Now we know that Timothy West, CBE, is about to appear on the show.
And did Alfie mention that Spencer had acquired major financial backers in his bar venture in Australia? Cue Shane Richie's panto gig to begin when this was filmed. I still wonder where Ian and Phil are going?
Give it 6 weeks and Shabba will have ditched the head gear, will be plotted up in the Vic getting hammered with the likes of Roxy.
ReplyDeleteThat's what usually happens with these strong religious types.
I agree totally with your profile of Linda - & it is much more common than is believed. The only reason it's not more prevalent is down to the completely over the top PC world/Country that we live in.
But behind closed doors it's there, and always will be. I am 39 - around the same age as Linda and I am exactly how you describe Linda. Black/Asian friends have known & tolerated gays but I would never consider dating other than white women.
I don't even find black ladies attractive - I do Asian ladies but despite growing up with black and Asian folk it just wouldn't 'feel' right to be in a relationship.
My parents are NOT racist. Also as I grew up in a big City I grew up with different races but having moved to a small town a few years ago I was VERY surprised at the open racist attitude of the locals. But then as a small town they had not had the influx of immigrants until the last few years.
The one thing that I hear most from disgruntled white folk is this :-
""Do you think 'they'd let us build churches next to their mosques ?
I really dont like the new Shabnam!
ReplyDeleteShe used to wear "normal clothes", no head scarfs, party, hang out with white people ect. Now she comes back this rasist judgemental little bitch. I would have told to her f*** right back to Pakistan if I was in Masoods shoes. Anyway who the hell does she think she is- she used to pole dance and now she disrespects her father- big no"s in koran. She cant judge!
Then she got all freaked out because Fats had a beer... what was that all about? Its not like he was forcing her to have it. Or is it against her religion to even be in the same room with alcohol? Bullshit, her parent sold alcohol in the restraurant.