Since the Messiah took the helm, this has, arguably, been his worst week. Oh, you'll get the usual numpties on all the fora, jumping up and down and frothing at the mouth about how good the damned thing is, but the actual truth is that EastEnders has a long way to go, and there are fans who are a bit cynical about it making its destination..
Whinge all you want about certain fans never deserting Coronation Street, no matter what, but that's one of the reasons Corrie's still on the air after more than fifty years, and it's one of the reasons why, at its worst - and it's going through a meagre patch at the moment, it will still be there or thereabouts in being at the top of the soap genre, despite having many of the major problems EastEnders has.
It hasn't lost its brand. You know when you watch Coronation Street, you're watching Corrie. There's something in the show for every sort of viewer, from the old to the young, from the sublime to the ridiculous.
Last night's episode illustrated magnificently why I'm cynical and wary to trust Dominic Treadwell-Collins. Yes, I know he's a good storyteller, and that's the reason why all the fanbois and cheerleaders are raving about every episode and magnifying by ten how good each one is. But there are many who are not, and most of the ones casting a disparaging eye are people who have watched the show from its inception, or at least, from the 1990s. DTC has two dynamics to which he's aiming his fare - people who have only seriously started watching the show since 2006, and those who started in 2000.
He obviously views the ones who've watched since 2000 as significantly long-term viewers. These are the people who refer to John Yorke's tenure as "the Golden Age" of the programme, when it's not. In fact, Yorke is responsible for many of the problems the show still has today - namely, the epitome of the "strong" woman as a gobby, mouthy cow with a loud voice; the sibling friendship to the exclusion of all others; and the beginning of the depiction of male characters as inherently weak.
And as Head of Continuing Drama at the BBC, Yorke subsequently was responsible for hiring Louise Berridge, Kathleen Hutchison, Kate Harwood, Diederick Santer, Bryan Kirkwood and Lorraine Newman as Executive Producers. That's quite a line-up. The Peter Principle (known in the UK as "Sod's Law") saw Kate Harwood now in Yorke's old role, and she's hired DTC.
Of course, he's pitching his ware to the EastEnders 2.0 crowd. They're the ones who started watching when he started devising storylines. Under Santer's tenure, they papered over the cracks of a show who'd been bleeding viewers sinde Dirty Den rose from the grave, and they did this by bringing back old characters as a sop to the older viewers and by sensationalist storylines.
Yes, DTC had a lot of success, but he had a lot of stinkers too - the Range Rover in the Lake (which was supposed to end the Mitchell-Beale feud and only got about 4 million viewers in the bargain), Max Branning being buried alive by his wife and being run over by his daughter in the space of one year - the Brannings treat his burial now as a joke and neither Tanya nor Lauren have ever paid for any of the crimes they've committed), Mad May blowing up the Millers' house, and Darren Miller fathering Heather's baby.
He's promised a lot of things to viewers this time around, but increasingly, EastEnders is looking like a vehicle of his own ego. Yes, we know he's on record as saying Sharon is his favourite character. We know he loves the Mitchells and created the Mitchell sisters. We also know he wants Shirley, his first creation, at the centre of the show.
And yet, he's promised to bring Sharon back to the glory she held in the 80s and the 90s, he's promised that the show wouldn't be The Stacey and Ronnie or The Carters Show, and he's already failing on two of those three counts.
But ...
Certain people will give him a break,because - gee, because he's DTC, that little charmer and he just lurrrrves this show so much. Well, so do I, but it's already been abundantly apparent to me that he's turning the show into a vehicle of his own creation, taking a peripheral character with little sympathy, turning her into the power force of the Square and totally retconning and creating a family around her to suit whatever storyline he has for her.
I'm waiting with baited breath (not) for two murderers to run rampant in the Square - Stacey and Ronnie - because punishment for your crimes, if you're female and pretty - is a thing of the past.
And DTC is not the Messiah, he's a very naughty boy who should know that those who are ignorant of the past are condemned to repeat it. Last night we saw a Newman production. I'm willing to bet a tribute to Kirkwood is on its way.
Fanfare for the Common.
Of course, you realise that the past two Carter-centric episodes were all a fanfare for the introduction of Daddy Carter, played by no less than Timothy West, CBE, who appears on Monday.
Some souls are relishing the fact that West is joining the cast of EastEnders, but West had a very successful professional life before EastEnders, and he'll have a very successful one afterward.
The man is 80 years old and accustomed to the occasional television appearance, films and stage productions. In other words, genres where lines are learned to be repeated night after night or for one weekly or annual appearance on TV or in film. To expect West to adapt and work within the soap genre, one of the toughest in the business, at his age is expecting too much. He "joined the cast" of Corrie last year for three months, following in the footsteps of Sir Ian McKellan and Robert Vaughan, who also did similar stints. He'll probably stay that long in EastEnders.
After all, he's there for a purpose. Apparently, he has loadsa money the sibllings want. Oh, and he was mean to poor, pitiful Shirley, who's become the heroine for whom we should all root, because the family dog loves her.
The Carters are almost ridiculously British - and by British, I mean English. They are a caricature of everything pejorative in British culture. That most of them can manage to be remotely likeable is a feat in itself.
I do like Mick and Linda, but each time I see them in the pub, I see someone taking off Alfie Moon and another person who can't decide if Angie goes best in the pub or Peggy. Even the "nice gel" commoned up Zara Phillips clone is coming along nicely. But once again, at twenty-one, is all her life's ambition to serve drinks behind the bar of the Vic? As for Johnnie, the hit of the family, how is he expected to go to classes at some phantom university conveniently nearby (which wasn't so conveniently nearby when they lived in Watford), and cook lunches and dinners daily in the Vic? Friday night, cooking up the menu was far more important for his mother's ego than doing an essay for uni.
The Carters have been shown to be not the brightest lightbulbs in the pack. This is obviously the first time they've ever owned a business outright, so all the gumpf about having been in the pub trade for twenty years is a load of old codswallop.They got a bill of goods off Phil Mitchell. They've got rising damp, and Shirley, the so-called matriarch of the clan bought a brace of dodgy meat off Kat and proceeded to bake it into pies. It may be dog meat,but then again, it may not be. Still, people ate it, including Linda, and now Elf'n Safety have been called, and the Carters could be fined.
They've spent all their money they had - and I'm still trying to figure out how they came by having 1.25 million quid in cash on hand - and now they've got to fork out thousands more on the upkeep of the Vic. Linda keeps screeching for Mick to go to his old Dad, from whom he's been estranged and who, allegedly, has money to burn from being a Billingsgate fishmonger. Go figure.
Shirley's estranged from him also, allegedly because he predicted that "her type" would be dead before she was thirty. But this is the problem. We don't know what Shirley's "type" is. We don't know why she abandoned her small children. Now it appears she brought her younger siblings up, but how could that be, as they were small children when she was married, at eighteen, to Kevin?
To add insult to injury, this is all being played out against a backdrop of Bar Wars, with Sharon - Sharon! an original and iconic character, the daughter of Den and Angie no less - being depicted as the villain of the piece. From the first scene in last night's episode to the last one, we saw a snobby, entitled Sharon trading barbs with Shirley, ending with Shirley referring to her as a "menopausal Barbie." That whole shabang was totally out of Sharon's character, but it was obvious that DTC meant the audience to think of Sharon as a bitch and root for Shirley and the newest Carters.
It almost got to the point that it was implied that Sharon had no right to open a bar, in the old Dagmar premises, because the Carters were ensconced in the Vic, and you know that DTC is going to orhcestrate an epic fail on Sharon's part because the Carters are set to dominate the programme as Vic landlords. Look on any EastEnders' site and you'll see their gobs plastered all over the place, especially on the BBC. They are the programme now, and if that isn't making EastEnders into The Carter Show, I'm the heir to the throne of England.
The New Kid in Town.
Another trait of DTC is his love of pregnant women having babies on the show. During his last stint Tanya had Oscar, without making any mess at home, Dawn had Summer, Roxy had Amy (and forgot about her) and Heather had George.
Already we have Kat having twins and now we have to sit through nine months of teenaged kicks with hairy Cindy the Greek having a baby with TJ Spraggan.
This tells me two things - first that the EP may be a closet misogynist, with a view that all women were made to be pregnant, including teenagers. Secondly, this is an elitist's view of working class youth or his idea of them, that they automatically start fucking like rabbits as soon as puberty sets in and then start breeding.
Another teenage pregnancy is something this show doesn't need. It's obviously being done to "redeem" hairy Cindy the Greek, a totally unsympathetic character who's yet to be punished for lifting ten grand off Phil Mitchell. People thought Melissa Suffield a cold actress, but this girl is so entitled she makes Suffield's Lucy look kind.
I'm just surprised that some otherwise intelligent viewers fell for this poor-little-girl-lost routine she fed TJ.
Allegedly, she wants to keep the bay-bay because no one else loves widdle Cindy. Well, she's not even likeable much less loveable.
Further, I think she's playing TJ because he's a soft touch, and he'll be willing to stand by her in the pregnancy. Just what this means, I don't know, because he's fifteen and still in school. I suppose it means that his family will stand by her, as will the Social Services and the government with benefits.
Whinge all you want about certain fans never deserting Coronation Street, no matter what, but that's one of the reasons Corrie's still on the air after more than fifty years, and it's one of the reasons why, at its worst - and it's going through a meagre patch at the moment, it will still be there or thereabouts in being at the top of the soap genre, despite having many of the major problems EastEnders has.
It hasn't lost its brand. You know when you watch Coronation Street, you're watching Corrie. There's something in the show for every sort of viewer, from the old to the young, from the sublime to the ridiculous.
Last night's episode illustrated magnificently why I'm cynical and wary to trust Dominic Treadwell-Collins. Yes, I know he's a good storyteller, and that's the reason why all the fanbois and cheerleaders are raving about every episode and magnifying by ten how good each one is. But there are many who are not, and most of the ones casting a disparaging eye are people who have watched the show from its inception, or at least, from the 1990s. DTC has two dynamics to which he's aiming his fare - people who have only seriously started watching the show since 2006, and those who started in 2000.
He obviously views the ones who've watched since 2000 as significantly long-term viewers. These are the people who refer to John Yorke's tenure as "the Golden Age" of the programme, when it's not. In fact, Yorke is responsible for many of the problems the show still has today - namely, the epitome of the "strong" woman as a gobby, mouthy cow with a loud voice; the sibling friendship to the exclusion of all others; and the beginning of the depiction of male characters as inherently weak.
And as Head of Continuing Drama at the BBC, Yorke subsequently was responsible for hiring Louise Berridge, Kathleen Hutchison, Kate Harwood, Diederick Santer, Bryan Kirkwood and Lorraine Newman as Executive Producers. That's quite a line-up. The Peter Principle (known in the UK as "Sod's Law") saw Kate Harwood now in Yorke's old role, and she's hired DTC.
Of course, he's pitching his ware to the EastEnders 2.0 crowd. They're the ones who started watching when he started devising storylines. Under Santer's tenure, they papered over the cracks of a show who'd been bleeding viewers sinde Dirty Den rose from the grave, and they did this by bringing back old characters as a sop to the older viewers and by sensationalist storylines.
Yes, DTC had a lot of success, but he had a lot of stinkers too - the Range Rover in the Lake (which was supposed to end the Mitchell-Beale feud and only got about 4 million viewers in the bargain), Max Branning being buried alive by his wife and being run over by his daughter in the space of one year - the Brannings treat his burial now as a joke and neither Tanya nor Lauren have ever paid for any of the crimes they've committed), Mad May blowing up the Millers' house, and Darren Miller fathering Heather's baby.
He's promised a lot of things to viewers this time around, but increasingly, EastEnders is looking like a vehicle of his own ego. Yes, we know he's on record as saying Sharon is his favourite character. We know he loves the Mitchells and created the Mitchell sisters. We also know he wants Shirley, his first creation, at the centre of the show.
And yet, he's promised to bring Sharon back to the glory she held in the 80s and the 90s, he's promised that the show wouldn't be The Stacey and Ronnie or The Carters Show, and he's already failing on two of those three counts.
But ...
Certain people will give him a break,because - gee, because he's DTC, that little charmer and he just lurrrrves this show so much. Well, so do I, but it's already been abundantly apparent to me that he's turning the show into a vehicle of his own creation, taking a peripheral character with little sympathy, turning her into the power force of the Square and totally retconning and creating a family around her to suit whatever storyline he has for her.
I'm waiting with baited breath (not) for two murderers to run rampant in the Square - Stacey and Ronnie - because punishment for your crimes, if you're female and pretty - is a thing of the past.
And DTC is not the Messiah, he's a very naughty boy who should know that those who are ignorant of the past are condemned to repeat it. Last night we saw a Newman production. I'm willing to bet a tribute to Kirkwood is on its way.
Fanfare for the Common.
Of course, you realise that the past two Carter-centric episodes were all a fanfare for the introduction of Daddy Carter, played by no less than Timothy West, CBE, who appears on Monday.
Some souls are relishing the fact that West is joining the cast of EastEnders, but West had a very successful professional life before EastEnders, and he'll have a very successful one afterward.
The man is 80 years old and accustomed to the occasional television appearance, films and stage productions. In other words, genres where lines are learned to be repeated night after night or for one weekly or annual appearance on TV or in film. To expect West to adapt and work within the soap genre, one of the toughest in the business, at his age is expecting too much. He "joined the cast" of Corrie last year for three months, following in the footsteps of Sir Ian McKellan and Robert Vaughan, who also did similar stints. He'll probably stay that long in EastEnders.
After all, he's there for a purpose. Apparently, he has loadsa money the sibllings want. Oh, and he was mean to poor, pitiful Shirley, who's become the heroine for whom we should all root, because the family dog loves her.
The Carters are almost ridiculously British - and by British, I mean English. They are a caricature of everything pejorative in British culture. That most of them can manage to be remotely likeable is a feat in itself.
I do like Mick and Linda, but each time I see them in the pub, I see someone taking off Alfie Moon and another person who can't decide if Angie goes best in the pub or Peggy. Even the "nice gel" commoned up Zara Phillips clone is coming along nicely. But once again, at twenty-one, is all her life's ambition to serve drinks behind the bar of the Vic? As for Johnnie, the hit of the family, how is he expected to go to classes at some phantom university conveniently nearby (which wasn't so conveniently nearby when they lived in Watford), and cook lunches and dinners daily in the Vic? Friday night, cooking up the menu was far more important for his mother's ego than doing an essay for uni.
The Carters have been shown to be not the brightest lightbulbs in the pack. This is obviously the first time they've ever owned a business outright, so all the gumpf about having been in the pub trade for twenty years is a load of old codswallop.They got a bill of goods off Phil Mitchell. They've got rising damp, and Shirley, the so-called matriarch of the clan bought a brace of dodgy meat off Kat and proceeded to bake it into pies. It may be dog meat,but then again, it may not be. Still, people ate it, including Linda, and now Elf'n Safety have been called, and the Carters could be fined.
They've spent all their money they had - and I'm still trying to figure out how they came by having 1.25 million quid in cash on hand - and now they've got to fork out thousands more on the upkeep of the Vic. Linda keeps screeching for Mick to go to his old Dad, from whom he's been estranged and who, allegedly, has money to burn from being a Billingsgate fishmonger. Go figure.
Shirley's estranged from him also, allegedly because he predicted that "her type" would be dead before she was thirty. But this is the problem. We don't know what Shirley's "type" is. We don't know why she abandoned her small children. Now it appears she brought her younger siblings up, but how could that be, as they were small children when she was married, at eighteen, to Kevin?
To add insult to injury, this is all being played out against a backdrop of Bar Wars, with Sharon - Sharon! an original and iconic character, the daughter of Den and Angie no less - being depicted as the villain of the piece. From the first scene in last night's episode to the last one, we saw a snobby, entitled Sharon trading barbs with Shirley, ending with Shirley referring to her as a "menopausal Barbie." That whole shabang was totally out of Sharon's character, but it was obvious that DTC meant the audience to think of Sharon as a bitch and root for Shirley and the newest Carters.
It almost got to the point that it was implied that Sharon had no right to open a bar, in the old Dagmar premises, because the Carters were ensconced in the Vic, and you know that DTC is going to orhcestrate an epic fail on Sharon's part because the Carters are set to dominate the programme as Vic landlords. Look on any EastEnders' site and you'll see their gobs plastered all over the place, especially on the BBC. They are the programme now, and if that isn't making EastEnders into The Carter Show, I'm the heir to the throne of England.
The New Kid in Town.
DTC has finally recognised the fact that there is a growing number of Eastern Europeans in the East End and has added an Eastern European character. Enter Aleks, the new Latvian market inspector, replacing the recurring character of Mr Lister.
Aleks is more in the line of Tricky Dicky Cole, the suave Northern market inspector of the Nineties, who bedded, amongst others, a teenaged Bianca and Rachel the university lecturer.
He's a nice piece of eye candy, and apparently the actor is a well-known German television actor, who makes no secret of the fact that he's using his casting in one of Britain's best-known television shows as a means of widening his repertoire and in hopes of breaking into the English speaking media market.
Having said that, he speaks better English than most of the cast.
He's as dodgy as Tricky Dicky as we saw at the end, when his sly announcement earlier to Kat and Bianca, as they dissed what a pushover Tamwar was, resulted in Tamwar getting three weeks' pitch rent off Kat, only to pocket it when Tamwar wasn't looking, taking advantage of the fact that Tamwar didn't get a receipt from Kat because he didn't have any to hand.
Line of the night goes to Bianca, in a shining example of her ignorance.
Kat: 'Ere, where you from?
Aleks: I am from Latvia.
Bianca: Is that in Poland?
And they say Americans are dumb.
Aleks will probably stay one or two years, have a dark secret, shag Roxy and get killed by Ronnie.
Teenaged Kicks.
Another trait of DTC is his love of pregnant women having babies on the show. During his last stint Tanya had Oscar, without making any mess at home, Dawn had Summer, Roxy had Amy (and forgot about her) and Heather had George.
Already we have Kat having twins and now we have to sit through nine months of teenaged kicks with hairy Cindy the Greek having a baby with TJ Spraggan.
This tells me two things - first that the EP may be a closet misogynist, with a view that all women were made to be pregnant, including teenagers. Secondly, this is an elitist's view of working class youth or his idea of them, that they automatically start fucking like rabbits as soon as puberty sets in and then start breeding.
Another teenage pregnancy is something this show doesn't need. It's obviously being done to "redeem" hairy Cindy the Greek, a totally unsympathetic character who's yet to be punished for lifting ten grand off Phil Mitchell. People thought Melissa Suffield a cold actress, but this girl is so entitled she makes Suffield's Lucy look kind.
I'm just surprised that some otherwise intelligent viewers fell for this poor-little-girl-lost routine she fed TJ.
Allegedly, she wants to keep the bay-bay because no one else loves widdle Cindy. Well, she's not even likeable much less loveable.
Further, I think she's playing TJ because he's a soft touch, and he'll be willing to stand by her in the pregnancy. Just what this means, I don't know, because he's fifteen and still in school. I suppose it means that his family will stand by her, as will the Social Services and the government with benefits.
But hairy Cindy the Greek was feeding TJ a tissue of lies.
- First, she said that neither Peter nor Lucy cared about her. Not true. Both the twins on Thursday and Friday admonished her about bunking off school, with Lucy even reminding her that this year was critically important to her.
- Then she said Ian only tolerated her because he felt guilty. That's an obvious lie. Ian has no reason to feel guilty about this child. Her mother, his first wife, tried to have him killed, then kidnapped two of his children for a year, got together with a wealthy businessman and produced Cindy. He owes her nothing, and she scammed him into allowing her to stay.
- She says her grandmother is "nearly dead." That's a lie and a gross exaggeration. Bev Williams housed and cared for both Peter and Lucy at various times. And what happened to Gina Williams, who is Cindy's legal guardian and with whom she was living in 2007? Bad DTC - you've forgotten dippy Gina.
- She's obviously in touch with her father, because she referenced Nick Holland bringing her an expensive phone from Japan.
So hairy Cindy the Greek isn't without concern or support. I'm calling this that she has the sprog, dumps it on the Spraggans and then leaves, which means that we've got several more months of angst with this unlikeable and superfluous teenaged character.
So much for DTC's telling us that the kids would be taking a backseat to the parents. Bullshit.
Third-Rate Romance Low-Rent Rendezvous.
Well, for me this was the most entertaining aspect of the programme, and I wasn't proven wrong. I wondered how long it would take for Nikki Spraggan to come onto David Wicks. She's certainly his type, moreso than the selfish and self-centred Granny Carol, who's willing to believe that any man is the man as long as he shags her.
Yes, she has cancer, and yes, we all feel for that, but just like everything is all about Bianca, then everything, equally, is all about Carol. She wants her "family" (which curiously includes Kat, but doesn't include Nikki who's the mother of Terry's children whom Bianca doesn't want those kids to see) to have a normal night of drinking in the pub before she begins three months' chemo and then a mastectomy.
Hang on, that diagnosis doesn't sound right. Yes, chemo first to contain the cancerous clusters,and then a lumpectomy to remove the cancerous mass, but in real time, the mastectomy would come first, and the cancer would have to be severe for that measure to be taken (yet Carol said the cancer hadn't spread), and then the chemo would come after as a precautionary measure. Oh, DO get cancer right, EastEnders!
But the big question is will Nikki and David have a third-rate romance with oodles of low-rent rendezvous?
Is the Pope Catholic?
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