Funny Valentines - Review:- 14.02.2014

A lot of the fanbois and cheerleaders - really, Millennials - hate the fact that I nitpick the Messiah's professional shortcomings as an Executive Producer. I'm entitled to do so. Unlike most of the snipe-filled, foul-mouthed Millennials, I pay a licence fee. That stealth tax which I am obliged to pay, funds DTC's over-inflated salary, pays for his First Class air travel to storylining conferences and is about to pay part of the £15 million make-over of Albert Square.

I will call tripe when I see it, irregardless of who the Executive Producer might be at the time. I just find it hilarious, that the bill of goods we've been offered this week, had Newman been at the helm, would have been pilloried, yet it receives the highest praise imaginable because EgoBoy's name is on the masthead.

One of the biggest problems I have with this overgrown manchild is his tendancy to over-egg a situation. It's never enough for someone to cut his finger - he's got to bleed to death. This was blatantly in evidence in Friday's episode, but was really on offer the whole week.

The entire week has been a paean of mediocrity, planned so in order to make the long-awaited return of Stacey Slater the featured phenomenon. Instead of one entry episode, she got a fanfare lasting four episodes ...

The entire week has been a recipe in over-egging. And the first thing over-egged in Friday's episode was the fact that it was Valentine's Day. The first four scenes of the episode were dedicated to reminding people that this was Valentine's Day, and on Valentine's Day, you give cards and presents to the one you love and they reciprocate.

This is dumbed-down EastEnders. But then we know DTC aims at people who are easy enough to please, as long as things go their way. Once they don't ...

Millennial EastEnders. Made for the mindless and those incapable of critical thinking.

Creepy Kat.

EastEnders has an inadvertant penchant for establishing creepy situations that they don't mean to be creepy, but which, when aired, have a habit of turning viewers' collective stomachs. 

This dates back to 1995, when a nubile, teenaged Bianca, on holiday in Spain, asked he very young, early thirtyish father, David Wicks, to rub sunscreen on her back, and then proceed to pout prettily because she couldn't be seen out and about with him. Then Sharon suffered the same, in 2003-04. Not only did she end up sleeping with and marrying her brother ...

... she also had an incredibly sexually-charged scene with Den, where he removed glass from her foot and later told Dennis that Sharon was only with he adopted brother because she couldn't be with her old man. (And, sorry, Shannisites, but that clip alone proves that Dennis was never "the love of Sharon's life". Tom was. And before that, it was Grant. In truth, whomever Sharon was with for any length of time became the love of her life, so maybe there's truth in Phil being that man).

Then, of course, we had Phil sleeping with his aunt by marriage and those kissing cousins, Joey and Lauren.

In this episode, it was Kat's turn to creep us out.

Of course, the entire ethos of Kat has now become a plot device for the return of the star of the show.

In a week's time, Kat has become obsessed with Stacey, to the point that she's distracted about her work and livelihood, and indifferent to her husband, who's supposed to be - yes, wait for it - the love of her life. It's Valentine's Day, and not only has she not been bothered to get Alfie anything for Valentine's Day, she's not interested at all in what he's got her, nor does she want to meet up with him later to celebrate. Instead, she's off in a welter of lies about meeting a supplier, and the mysterious keys, which Alfie finds are explained away in another tissue of lies about them being spare keys to the Butcher house in the event that Kat has to help out with the kids because of Carol's illness. So yet another person is using Carol's illness to further their own agenda.

But Alfie has been there and done that before, and he knows Kat has form. It's only natural, as well, that he should suspect Max, the way she's been sneaking about, whispering with him of late.

But Kat's off to her new life as cleaner to Jenny SMIF, whom we all know to be the star of the show. And here's where the creep factor comes in.

Kat's alone in the flat, and instead of cleaning, she walks about, gazing at the numerous pictures of Stacey on the walls and shelves, and all the time, her face bears this post-coital orgasmic smile, the sort of which she used to wake up next to Alfie with. It was the sort of smile a person would give to the picture of a lover, It was as if Kat were in love with Stacey and the entire week before had been dedicated to finding and renewing that love.

Or maybe this was DTC projecting. Or maybe this was his subtle passive-aggressive hint that we were only always ever to feel this way about the return of "our girl."

An unexpected appearance by the real cleaner - yet again, an Eastern European (does DTC in his leafy Islington existence realise that Eastern Europeans do do things other than work as builders, cleaners and bum-wipers? I think not. Yet another offensive racial and cultural stereotype.) - is brushed away, and then the boyfriend returns - yep, to fix a special Valentine's Day lunch for Jenny Smif.

Now we get some background to Stacey's new life, and this is, again, entering into the realms of total unreality, pandering to the dumbest end of viewers who aren't capable of thinking that this whole backstory of Stacey's life outside Walford.

• Apparently, they met in Mexico, where he was on holiday and she was working. Well, we know that Stacey left Walford on her own passport, a British one, which begs the first question of how, exactly, she could get work in Mexico. She doesn't speak the language, and if she worked at the upper end of the holiday resorts, the sort some investment banker would frequent, then those sorts of establishments could only hire foreigners whose countries are part of the NAFTA agreement - and that ain't Britain.
• She travelled back to Britain with the boyfriend, again, presumably on her original passport. If you live with someone and you have no secrets, there does come a time when your partner sorta kinda hafta look at your partner's passport, whereupon the boyfriend would see that he wasn't living with Jenny Smif, but Stacey Slater or Branning or whatever.
• Stacey had got a job at a posh salon as a colourist. Qualifications, please? Also, National Insurance Number, identification via that or birth certificate and bank account details. Shit, you'd need to prove who you are even if you're on a joint bank account, which means all of this doesn't add up.

Either the boyfriend is stupid, the salon is stupid, or DTC thinks the public is stupid, because this isn't fantasy fiction, this is stuff that's supposed to be based on fact. At least when Sam Mitchell returned the last time, she did so on a falsified passport.

This is shot so full of sensationalist holes, it's borderline bullshit, as much as the boyfriend's Beckamesque body art tattooes the length of both of his arms. Investment banks might allow oikers amongst their ranks, but they wouldn't be allowed to show body art like that.

And, of course, we got the ubiquitous scene of Kat fleeing the scene after being rumbled, only to pass the star, herself, returning home. Cue camera to hone in on the porcine features of Lacey Turner.

Turner, it has to be said, has not aged well in the four months she's been gone. She's twenty-six, but looks gone thirty now, especially with the bags under her eyes and her sagging features. The flared-nosed porcine nostrils are the same.

(Don't ever call Sharon "Miss Piggy" whilst Stacey's on screen. She's the original Petunia Pig.)

Oh yes, all this happened after Kat lied to Max about the voice on the phone not being Stacey. Seems she's full of lies, is Kat.

London Derriére.

Well, this was the end of Danny Pennant, such as it was. Not only was this one of the worst vignettes in recent times, more than highlighting the departure of a character played by a well-known television actor, who was wasted because TPTB had no time to develop his character, it also highlighted the weakness of Hetti Bywater as an actress.

Bywater was a catalogue model with no drama training or experience, when she was hired (for her looks) to play NuLucy. As a background figure with little dialogue, she was fine, but Lucy is not destined to stand around in the background as an important legacy character. When she had to step up and front a major storyline, she couldn't handle it. She mumbled her lines, always with a penchant for looking at the floor when delivering her lines and the awful habit of employing the opened-mouth pout. She looked like a mouth-breather.

It's a sad reality that, after two years, her acting hasn't improved one whit. She's been atrocious in the last two episodes to the point that it was embarrassing to watch her. At any other time in the show, a performer this bad would simply not be allowed to remain in such a major  part, yet it's Gary Lucy, an experienced actor, who leaves, and Bywater, who remains.

And here's another unrealistic departure, with Danny Pennant leaving with only the clothes on his back and a fistful of money to go where? Who knows? And without Lucy calling the police to report a crime of embezzlement.

The Secret Valentine.

Shabnam continues to stink up the place with an even worse imitation of Zainab as a bigot. Once again, ever continuing the unrealistic thread, we have Fatboy, fresh from his furtive kiss with Denise and hot on the dumping by Poopy, offering up secret valentines to a woman who treats him like a piece of shit. Why? To show that he cares.

Instead of being flattered or touched by his concern, Shabnam takes the bigot road and tells hi she could never consider liking him because he isn't a Muslim. Fair dos to DTC for showing that racism and bigotry isn't exclusive to the domain of white privilege, but not at the expense of the recasting of a character who isn't remotely like the original character we met in 2007.

Another epic fail.

Lying Valentine.

Did I just hear that right? Did Denise just tell a bold-faced lie to Ian about her furtive kiss with Fatboy? And did she also just brand the daughter of her best friend as a liar?

And haven't we been there, done that, read the book, seen the movie and bought the teeshirt with Ian numerous times before, most lately with Jane ca 2007?

And don't you think that Ian, after so many lies being told by so many wives, is clued into the fact that Denise is telling a porker. More than anything, her constant touching of his arm, and her subsequent vocal assertions of love would indicate to Ian that Shabnam wasn't mistaken in what she heard and which bore no resemblance to anything Denise said as an explanation.

She doesn't love Ian. He doesn't love her. Yet he now knows that she doesn't love him and, to an extent, that she's been unfaithful. They deserve each other, because Denise is now with Ian for the same reason Jane was with him - out of guilt, concern for his youngest child and for financial security.

The Valentine Extra.

I applaud the show when it does that added extra scene to show contemporay events - such as the World Cup edition 1998 or the Wimbledon and Royal Wedding scenes as they occurred, or even when Brookside added the scene about Princess Diana's death in 1997.

It was ambitious and au courant to add a scene acknowledging the atrocious weather and the two months of flooding we've endured, especially in the Thames Valley ... but it was a stupid move.

Why?

Because of this ...

Minutes before that scene, we saw Lucy Beale throw Danny Pennant's money out into a street that was bone dry. There was no rain to be had. When Mick Carter made his remark about building an ark and looked out a rain-pelted window, remarking further that the weather didn't look like letting up, not five minutes later, he sent his wife out to put a sign up advertising Valentines' specials at lunch. That sign would never have survived the sort of rain and gales he described, and besides, Linda trotted off without a brolly.

Bad continuity. Bad episode. Bad week.