Did you ever get the impression that DTC was designing the show for this sort of person?
Millennials, to whom the concept of history means nothing. Anything that happened before they were born or before they were cognizant enough to remember simply doesn't matter. And they are the demographic of viewer who makes up the entire EastEnders 2.0 crowd, the Messiah's kind of people,
They're the people who want Phil axed or Sharon or Ian Beale because they're bald or fat and the wrong side of forty or fat or simply a weaselly sort of man. They're the people who defend Ronnie or Stacey to the hilt, even to the point of making up excuses for them to commit murder. They believe in the great romance that isn't David and Carol. Try to tell them that this pair were only a teen-aged bunk-up in a bike shed, and they'll call you a liar, without showing proof to what they reckon is a lie. It doesn't matter that historically, neither Carol nor David were ever a centrally focused character on the show or that they were never really love's young (or middle-aged) dream, because they don't remember the original time that they were in the show, so whoever the EP is at the moment, in their mind, can do anything they want with these characters, and they'll buy it.
Like making Sharon Cora's daughter.
These are the people who started watching EastEnders in 2006. To these people, the age of Santer was the Golden Age, and DTC, the Messiah, brings that rebirth. These are people who loved the Brannings until they were overdosed on them, and now can't see the similarities or the warning signals to detract from their love of the equally increasing and dominating Carter clan.
And that's down to a lack of critical thinking ability. That deficit gives a sensationalist media plasterer like Dominic Treadwell-Collins creative leave to do what he wants, and the older viewer be damned.
Be warned. I'm old enough to remember a show as cutting edge as EastEnders who lost its brand in the new Millenium...
It Was Only a Matter of Time.
The real David Wicks stood up tonight, as did the real Carol.
These two deserve each other and every bad incumbent that might arise because of this association - and that includes their Village Idiot daughter and her godawful unlikeable brood of kids, with their dismal pouts, begging the viewer to think them sympathetic and cute.
They are a family of divas, where everything is done large - because that's what chavs do to exert their entitled existence.
I found it extremely ironic that Bianca chastised David for trying to make the big gesture as far as Carol is concerned, as everything about Carol in this storyline has been about the big, melodramatic gesture. The big secret, the big push-off, the big sulk, the big scene - every way Carol in which Carol has reacted in this situation has smacked of the big gesture. And, of course, everything she's said has meant the direct opposite.
I know Lindsey Coulson is a good actress, but - Lordy! - she ain't Greta Garbo (for you Millennials, Google her - pssssssssssssst, she's a real icon), and only Garbo's uttered the line I want to be alone more than Carol has said a line she didn't mean in this storyline.
Carol and David are two extremely selfish people. This cancer storyline has been all about each one of them, and for the wrong reasons. Carol might mouth platitudes about her daughters and her grandchildren, but throughout this storyline, I got and get the impression that Carol, like the other victim women dominant in the Harwood-Santer-Kirkwood-Newman-Treadwell-Collins EastEnders 2.0 era, secretly relishes this situation as a means for her to snipe and growl and generally be rude to people for no reason. She acted out and pleaded for "space" and "time alone" in such an increasingly strident voice because she knew that at the end of her hissy fit, her entire family would gather around to pet, coddle and spoil her with attention. And this is the woman who, effectively disowned her two daughters for upwards of a decade.
Her behaviour in tonight's episode was like that of a spoiled and petulant child. Crying over a man whom she knew to be feckless and irresponsible. Carol isn't in any way worried or concerned that he doesn't mention his son or hasn't seen him since anyone could remember, Were I involved with a man like that, no matter how long I had known him, I'd be worried that, if he could so callously walk away from his son like that, then he could so callously walk away from me or our children as well. After all, David has form.
I'm beginning to wonder if Carol, like Bianca, might be a tad emotionally retarded, because at times she behaves like a spoiled adolescent.
Although at the moment, he's taking a background role in this storyline (at least until Saint Stacey returns), Max, for me, is the star of this storyline. He's the adult in the room, offering practical support to Carol and being knocked back repeatedly because Carol wants David the Knob's knob or nothing; or lecturing David - and Max is a good decade younger than David - in the same way he might have gee'd Bradley up, on how to support Carol emotionally in this time.
The scene where she stubbornly insisted on calling a cab and refusing his offer of accompanying her to the hospital showed both of the characters' immaturity. I don't know what Bianca meant by "little things," but how many times before has David cooked dinner for Carol and gotten nothing but a smug smile at her being the centre of attention?
Even more embarrassing was her performance at the hospital. FFS, it's a freaking blood test. OK, Carol asked about the procedures if the test proved she'd tested positive for the BRCA1 or 2 gene. That's normal, but FFS, the nurse told her that her children and grandchildren (never mentioning her brothers and sisters and their children) would have a 50 per cent chance of inheriting the gene. Even odds, but better than had it been above that. Still, that was enough to send Carol dramatically fleeing the move, needing another Garbo moment. It was obvious, the look backward she gave to the waiting room, and the way she was waiting expectantly outside, that she expected David to make another sweeping entrance just in time.
Bianca was wrong. Carol loves the attention of the big gesture.
Instead, it was Liam who showed. I'm sorry, I know James Forde is getting a lot of praise, when, in fact, he's a boring lug of an actor. The kid who plays TJ shows more promise. I get that they're trying to promote him as the "Everyman" his father was, but it would be nice if he or one of the others could give Ricky a mention now and then.
David Wicks, however, is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If Carol is using her illness as an excuse to act out and behave badly, then he's using and has used it in order to promote his own interests, both in business and in the Butcher-Beale-Jackson dynamic. Playing up the sympathy card of building the business for Carol's security got him a majority share of Max's business. Playing the dutiful spouse to Carol buys him the position of head of the family when she's too ill to function, as well as getting him a free roof over his head.
David simply doesn't do commitment, and in the grand gesture of the proposal, I think Max was right - David was secretly hoping Carol would say no, because then he could guilt-trip her into a manipulation, maybe not a marriage, but certainly a living arrangement, which he could abandon, without strings, whenever the going got tough. And it was patently clear he was and has always been attracted to Nikki Spraggan.
This is the man who slept with Sam Mitchell, after all, and then Cindy Beale. If Naomi, the squeeze with whom he arrived, resembled Cindy, than there's more than a smidgeon of Sam about Nikki. In short, Granny Carol, with her chicken skin neck and permanent scowl of displeasure, simply isn't David's type - Bianca or no Bianca.
David's lived in that house with Carol since September. That's the longest he's ever spent around her under one roof. Maybe the art of pleasing her whilst dealing with her perpetual mood swings,always to the sour-faced variety, have gotten up his infamous wick (pun intended) and now he's welcomed Nikki and invited her to climb aboard it, right in the bosom of Carol's kitchen.
Two observations - for a poor chav family, the Jacksons seem to have an expensive Italian coffee-maker and a wine rack stocked with wine. So much for poverty.
Leopards don't change their spots, and David will never do commitment. To settle this character down to cardigans, grandchildren, slippers and cosy cups of tea with Carol would rob this legacy character, this flawed man, of any edge remaining in his character. This is what indiscriminate retconning does.
How's this for a weird thought? One of Liam Butcher's grandfathers is the stepfather of his other one.
The Other Woman's Revenge.
I really like Nikki Spraggan. And I don't think she's a bitch. I thought it was appalling from the very beginning how both Bianca and Terry treated her, effectively wanting to cut her off from contact with her children. I want to know more about the consequences of her break-up with Terry, because her children obviously love the bones of her.
I hate the way Bianca is so uncouth and rude to her each time she sees her, and Nikki just treats her with cool aplomb. Terry must be a glutton for punishment to settle for a village idiot like Bianca, an emotional bully prone to violence.
Nikki knows David is attracted to her, and she knows exactly the type of man he is. This is payback for Bianca's outbursts and for Carol's unprovoked rudeness from last week, and it's totally in character for David to react the way he did.
I like her, and Bianca deserves everything that's coming her way.
And how much did I want to smack Terry, for suggesting that the mother of his children make herself scarce from her children.
Line of the night goes to the increasingly delightful Linda Carter:-
In the movies, the good guy always gets knocked back the first time ... of course, the bad guy always just gets knocked back.
The Rude Masoods, the Carters and Fatboy.
The Masoods are carrying this programme at the moment, and tonight's epistle of the continued freefall descent of Masood into his own personal hell is holding my interest. At last Nitin Ganatra, one of the most underrated actors in the show, is being given something into which he could sink his teeth.
The Carters played a background role in this tonight, and for the first time, I actually liked Nancy. I like and prefer her dynamic and her friendship with Tamwar to the annoying little toxic gnat that is Dexter. Oddly enough, I was pleased that Tamwar took Nancy's offer of friendship on board and turned to her instead of the largely non-existent B and B these days, for a place to pass the night. And I liked the way Mick and Linda made him feel at home and wanted, insisting that he stay for breakfast and purporting to believe Nancy's story about Tamwar being smacked by kids.
It was good too that she accompanied him home to confront Masood.
On the other hand, I'm sympathetic to Masood's plight as well. His entire world crashed inward on him during the past year, and the straw that broke the camel's back was Carol's callous dumping of him.
The hero of the piece was Arthur, yet again, and if he continues down this route, then maybe there was some wisdom in DTC's keeping his character within the fold. Arthur is Tamwar's friend, and he sacrificed his reputation for that friendship, but it irks him that Masood is so cowardly and complacent to allow Arthur to be branded a thief.
Tamwar is an intelligent guy. I'm surprised it didn't twig with him after Masood confessed to the theft of the market money, especially after coming clean and defending Tamwar to the hilt against the theft charges, that Masood just might have taken Tamwar's uni money.
As the drink takes hold of Masood, the self-pitying rationalisation takes hold of him, as he doused Tamwar with whiskey and reminded him that he paid for everything for Tamwar his whole life, which entitled him to take and gamble the uni money.
It was mine to take.
Still, even though Tamwar has thrown Masood out, he still somehow expects him to pay the mortgage. WTF?
I also liked the way Nancy and Mick kept a surreptitious eye on Masood's behaviour towards Tamwar. Nancy's intuition that Masood had smacked Tamwar wasn't wrong.
This was a good episode.
Millennials, to whom the concept of history means nothing. Anything that happened before they were born or before they were cognizant enough to remember simply doesn't matter. And they are the demographic of viewer who makes up the entire EastEnders 2.0 crowd, the Messiah's kind of people,
They're the people who want Phil axed or Sharon or Ian Beale because they're bald or fat and the wrong side of forty or fat or simply a weaselly sort of man. They're the people who defend Ronnie or Stacey to the hilt, even to the point of making up excuses for them to commit murder. They believe in the great romance that isn't David and Carol. Try to tell them that this pair were only a teen-aged bunk-up in a bike shed, and they'll call you a liar, without showing proof to what they reckon is a lie. It doesn't matter that historically, neither Carol nor David were ever a centrally focused character on the show or that they were never really love's young (or middle-aged) dream, because they don't remember the original time that they were in the show, so whoever the EP is at the moment, in their mind, can do anything they want with these characters, and they'll buy it.
Like making Sharon Cora's daughter.
These are the people who started watching EastEnders in 2006. To these people, the age of Santer was the Golden Age, and DTC, the Messiah, brings that rebirth. These are people who loved the Brannings until they were overdosed on them, and now can't see the similarities or the warning signals to detract from their love of the equally increasing and dominating Carter clan.
And that's down to a lack of critical thinking ability. That deficit gives a sensationalist media plasterer like Dominic Treadwell-Collins creative leave to do what he wants, and the older viewer be damned.
Be warned. I'm old enough to remember a show as cutting edge as EastEnders who lost its brand in the new Millenium...
It Was Only a Matter of Time.
The real David Wicks stood up tonight, as did the real Carol.
These two deserve each other and every bad incumbent that might arise because of this association - and that includes their Village Idiot daughter and her godawful unlikeable brood of kids, with their dismal pouts, begging the viewer to think them sympathetic and cute.
They are a family of divas, where everything is done large - because that's what chavs do to exert their entitled existence.
I found it extremely ironic that Bianca chastised David for trying to make the big gesture as far as Carol is concerned, as everything about Carol in this storyline has been about the big, melodramatic gesture. The big secret, the big push-off, the big sulk, the big scene - every way Carol in which Carol has reacted in this situation has smacked of the big gesture. And, of course, everything she's said has meant the direct opposite.
I know Lindsey Coulson is a good actress, but - Lordy! - she ain't Greta Garbo (for you Millennials, Google her - pssssssssssssst, she's a real icon), and only Garbo's uttered the line I want to be alone more than Carol has said a line she didn't mean in this storyline.
Carol and David are two extremely selfish people. This cancer storyline has been all about each one of them, and for the wrong reasons. Carol might mouth platitudes about her daughters and her grandchildren, but throughout this storyline, I got and get the impression that Carol, like the other victim women dominant in the Harwood-Santer-Kirkwood-Newman-Treadwell-Collins EastEnders 2.0 era, secretly relishes this situation as a means for her to snipe and growl and generally be rude to people for no reason. She acted out and pleaded for "space" and "time alone" in such an increasingly strident voice because she knew that at the end of her hissy fit, her entire family would gather around to pet, coddle and spoil her with attention. And this is the woman who, effectively disowned her two daughters for upwards of a decade.
Her behaviour in tonight's episode was like that of a spoiled and petulant child. Crying over a man whom she knew to be feckless and irresponsible. Carol isn't in any way worried or concerned that he doesn't mention his son or hasn't seen him since anyone could remember, Were I involved with a man like that, no matter how long I had known him, I'd be worried that, if he could so callously walk away from his son like that, then he could so callously walk away from me or our children as well. After all, David has form.
I'm beginning to wonder if Carol, like Bianca, might be a tad emotionally retarded, because at times she behaves like a spoiled adolescent.
Although at the moment, he's taking a background role in this storyline (at least until Saint Stacey returns), Max, for me, is the star of this storyline. He's the adult in the room, offering practical support to Carol and being knocked back repeatedly because Carol wants David the Knob's knob or nothing; or lecturing David - and Max is a good decade younger than David - in the same way he might have gee'd Bradley up, on how to support Carol emotionally in this time.
The scene where she stubbornly insisted on calling a cab and refusing his offer of accompanying her to the hospital showed both of the characters' immaturity. I don't know what Bianca meant by "little things," but how many times before has David cooked dinner for Carol and gotten nothing but a smug smile at her being the centre of attention?
Even more embarrassing was her performance at the hospital. FFS, it's a freaking blood test. OK, Carol asked about the procedures if the test proved she'd tested positive for the BRCA1 or 2 gene. That's normal, but FFS, the nurse told her that her children and grandchildren (never mentioning her brothers and sisters and their children) would have a 50 per cent chance of inheriting the gene. Even odds, but better than had it been above that. Still, that was enough to send Carol dramatically fleeing the move, needing another Garbo moment. It was obvious, the look backward she gave to the waiting room, and the way she was waiting expectantly outside, that she expected David to make another sweeping entrance just in time.
Bianca was wrong. Carol loves the attention of the big gesture.
Instead, it was Liam who showed. I'm sorry, I know James Forde is getting a lot of praise, when, in fact, he's a boring lug of an actor. The kid who plays TJ shows more promise. I get that they're trying to promote him as the "Everyman" his father was, but it would be nice if he or one of the others could give Ricky a mention now and then.
David Wicks, however, is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If Carol is using her illness as an excuse to act out and behave badly, then he's using and has used it in order to promote his own interests, both in business and in the Butcher-Beale-Jackson dynamic. Playing up the sympathy card of building the business for Carol's security got him a majority share of Max's business. Playing the dutiful spouse to Carol buys him the position of head of the family when she's too ill to function, as well as getting him a free roof over his head.
David simply doesn't do commitment, and in the grand gesture of the proposal, I think Max was right - David was secretly hoping Carol would say no, because then he could guilt-trip her into a manipulation, maybe not a marriage, but certainly a living arrangement, which he could abandon, without strings, whenever the going got tough. And it was patently clear he was and has always been attracted to Nikki Spraggan.
This is the man who slept with Sam Mitchell, after all, and then Cindy Beale. If Naomi, the squeeze with whom he arrived, resembled Cindy, than there's more than a smidgeon of Sam about Nikki. In short, Granny Carol, with her chicken skin neck and permanent scowl of displeasure, simply isn't David's type - Bianca or no Bianca.
David's lived in that house with Carol since September. That's the longest he's ever spent around her under one roof. Maybe the art of pleasing her whilst dealing with her perpetual mood swings,always to the sour-faced variety, have gotten up his infamous wick (pun intended) and now he's welcomed Nikki and invited her to climb aboard it, right in the bosom of Carol's kitchen.
Two observations - for a poor chav family, the Jacksons seem to have an expensive Italian coffee-maker and a wine rack stocked with wine. So much for poverty.
Leopards don't change their spots, and David will never do commitment. To settle this character down to cardigans, grandchildren, slippers and cosy cups of tea with Carol would rob this legacy character, this flawed man, of any edge remaining in his character. This is what indiscriminate retconning does.
How's this for a weird thought? One of Liam Butcher's grandfathers is the stepfather of his other one.
The Other Woman's Revenge.
I hate the way Bianca is so uncouth and rude to her each time she sees her, and Nikki just treats her with cool aplomb. Terry must be a glutton for punishment to settle for a village idiot like Bianca, an emotional bully prone to violence.
Nikki knows David is attracted to her, and she knows exactly the type of man he is. This is payback for Bianca's outbursts and for Carol's unprovoked rudeness from last week, and it's totally in character for David to react the way he did.
I like her, and Bianca deserves everything that's coming her way.
And how much did I want to smack Terry, for suggesting that the mother of his children make herself scarce from her children.
Line of the night goes to the increasingly delightful Linda Carter:-
In the movies, the good guy always gets knocked back the first time ... of course, the bad guy always just gets knocked back.
The Rude Masoods, the Carters and Fatboy.
The Masoods are carrying this programme at the moment, and tonight's epistle of the continued freefall descent of Masood into his own personal hell is holding my interest. At last Nitin Ganatra, one of the most underrated actors in the show, is being given something into which he could sink his teeth.
The Carters played a background role in this tonight, and for the first time, I actually liked Nancy. I like and prefer her dynamic and her friendship with Tamwar to the annoying little toxic gnat that is Dexter. Oddly enough, I was pleased that Tamwar took Nancy's offer of friendship on board and turned to her instead of the largely non-existent B and B these days, for a place to pass the night. And I liked the way Mick and Linda made him feel at home and wanted, insisting that he stay for breakfast and purporting to believe Nancy's story about Tamwar being smacked by kids.
It was good too that she accompanied him home to confront Masood.
On the other hand, I'm sympathetic to Masood's plight as well. His entire world crashed inward on him during the past year, and the straw that broke the camel's back was Carol's callous dumping of him.
The hero of the piece was Arthur, yet again, and if he continues down this route, then maybe there was some wisdom in DTC's keeping his character within the fold. Arthur is Tamwar's friend, and he sacrificed his reputation for that friendship, but it irks him that Masood is so cowardly and complacent to allow Arthur to be branded a thief.
Tamwar is an intelligent guy. I'm surprised it didn't twig with him after Masood confessed to the theft of the market money, especially after coming clean and defending Tamwar to the hilt against the theft charges, that Masood just might have taken Tamwar's uni money.
As the drink takes hold of Masood, the self-pitying rationalisation takes hold of him, as he doused Tamwar with whiskey and reminded him that he paid for everything for Tamwar his whole life, which entitled him to take and gamble the uni money.
It was mine to take.
Still, even though Tamwar has thrown Masood out, he still somehow expects him to pay the mortgage. WTF?
I also liked the way Nancy and Mick kept a surreptitious eye on Masood's behaviour towards Tamwar. Nancy's intuition that Masood had smacked Tamwar wasn't wrong.
This was a good episode.
FATBOY = GRASS
ReplyDeleteFATBOY = DIRTY FILTHY SNITCH
Hopefully this is the start of the real David Wicks, instead of that benevolent grandfather figure they were trying to foist on us. It seems the Beale Boys have a fetish for women who look like Mandy. Ian with the actual Mandy and now David with Nikki.
ReplyDeleteYou're right about "Zara Phillips" being so much better around Tamwar. Let's just hope they don't go down some crass My Fair Lady route, with Tam trying to get Zara to talk "real proper" (i.e. using her actual voice).