A(nything) B(ut) G(ay).
The brother of the best Executive Producer of EastEnders once sang ...
Johnny Carter's singing loud and proud, but Mamma Linda ain't listening. In fact, she's covering her ears and saying I can't hear you I can't hear you lalalalalalalalalalalalalaaaaaaa...
Linda is a piece of work, and - apart from the fact that she's 90 per cent Angie-Lite, when she isn't being Peggy-Lite (and looking like a scrubbed-up Roxy) - I'm enjoying her. I don't think the show has ever had such a prize and open bigot amongst its characters since Dot Cotton emerged almost thirty years ago, quoting Scripture.
Linda is so desperate to believe that her son is straight that she would sacrifice anything if this were true. He's a university student (not that he ever goes and his uni is, magically, some mysterious institution within spitting distance of Walford. In fact, he's the first of his family to attend university, and he's studying law. He actually wants to be a lawyer - well, a solicitor by British terms, but it was Johnny who used the American terminology. Yet Linda was quite prepared to throw all the boy's ambitions to the wind, when he wound her up over dinner by spinning a yarn about Whitney being pregnant.
Linda really needs to get to know her clientele better, because if she did, she'd realise that as much as her sister-in-law is the Court Jester of Walford, Bianca is the Village Idiot. She grasped Bianca's inadvertant lie (and Bianca was quick to believe Whitney) that Whitney was fooling around with Johnny and got a pregnancy scare. Once Johnny twigged why Linda had concocted this get-to-know-you dinner for Whitney, consisting of processed microwaveable meals, he fed her fantasies to see just how far she was prepared to see him throw his ideals away.
In a New York minute, Linda was pissing her lycra panties, under her too-tight lycra minidress - and really, how many nineteen year-old boys would be happy to see their mothers swan around in tutus and micro minis like mutton dressed as lamb? - at the thought of Whitney being pregnant and presenting her with a grandchild, fathered by Johnny. In the next few seconds, she had advised and counselled him quitting university, throw his ambitions for a law career away, move his wife and child into the Vic with them and work behind the bar. After all, she had married young.
It was then that Johnny had proof positive of how desperate was Linda's hope that one of her children would not turn out to be gay. Mick had warned her that Johnny had admitted openly what his sexual preferences were. It wasn't a phase. It wasn't an experiment. He is attracted to his own sex. That also doesn't mean that he can't achieve a loving marriage or father children. He can.
Their vignette ended with Mick warning Linda that, unless she accepted their son for what he was, she risked pushing him away.
Linda's caught in a time warp, but I don't think it will be Johnny whom she pushes away. At the moment, Linda and Mick have a happy marriage, and we all know what happens to couples who arrive on the Square happily married now, don't we?
I like both the Carter parents and their children, and I think they are miles better away from the relative they were created for the purpose of enhancing (Shirley) as well as their feckless other Sugly Blister, Tina.
Leopards Never Changing Spots.
Will the real David Wicks please stand up? He's the one in the kitchen, sucking on Nikki Spraggan's face, and the only thing preventing him from a quickie on the table was a phone call from his grandson - Ricky Butcher's son - summoning him to the hospital to retrieve Granny Carol. Think of this - Ricky Butcher's stepbrother is also his father-in-law, which would make Janine both the children's aunt and great-aunt. Incest is best in Walford.
What's under David's skin isn't Granny Carol and her chicken skinned neck and bosoms, but the actual type of woman away from which he couldn't shy if he tried. - Cindy, Naomi, Sam Mitchell and now Nikki Spraggan. Naomi was Cindy, the way she'd look in her late forties or early fifties. (If you don't believe me, check out Cindy/Stella on Corrie). And Nikki is another Sam-type. In fact, for those Millennial souls who don't remember and aren't even remotely interested in knowing, David conducted a protracted affair with Sam Mitchell back in the Nineties before his infamous one with Cindy Beale.
It all started 19 years ago, on a trip to Spain - David, Ricky, Bianca, Steve Elliott and Phil and Grant Mitchell - and it ended with David and Sam being caught post-coital by her brothers, her ex-husband and David's daughter.
And back in Walford, it progressed to Ricky and David actually going on a double date, with their respective girlfriends.
In fact, the classic line came from Sam to Bianca:-
Just fink, Bi-yan-kur, if I marry David, I'll be your step-muvvah.
David's tastes haven't changed. Of course, he has a bond with Carol in the Village Idiot, but his taste hasn't changed, and he isn't ready to settle down with hot cocoa and slippers with Granny Carol, playing Grandad to a bunch of rude little chavs.
Speaking if which, it's getting increasingly difficult to believe Tiffany and Rosie Spraggan are the same age. Both are supposed to be ten, but Maisie Smith is almost three years older than that with puberty full-on. She's EastEnders' Ches-neh - a natural and attractive child actor, who's morphed into a plain-faced adolescent. TPTB are compensating for this by writing Tiffany as being even younger than she is - naming a plant and talking about it in terms only a much-younger child would use.
Bianca made a face of disgust at the fact that Nikki bought Rosie shoes with adult heels, when we've seen Tiffany sat at the kitchen table on a regular basis, applying make-up prior to leaving for junior school. Rosie didn't even want the heels, but Tiffany is ready to apply the slap and wear earrings. Last year, she was even talking about wanting to "be with" Bobby Beale. Who's being sexualised more? No wonder some of the clueless numpties on Digital Spy were speculating about Tiffany getting pregnant.
As for Morgan, do his real-life parents realise how serious juvenile obesity and Type 2 diabetes is?
That David is clearly attracted to Nikki is a given, and she senses it. I like Nikki,and I don't see her as a soap bitch. I think she's a lonely woman who misses her children. I think she's treated appallingly by Terry, who's under the sway of Bianca, and who is using passive-aggressive bullying tactics to try and drive Nikki from Walford and away from her children, because this is the way Bianca wants it.
Terry is suspicious of David, especially after seeing Nikki leaving the Butcher-Beale-Jackson home - not, I think, because of anything in the past with Nikki straying, but because I think, deep down, he feels what she's suffering because of him. Don't forget that Nikki told Bianca that she kicked Terry out. Judging from Nikki's behaviour around Terry Tuesday night, she still has feelings for him, and she misses her family, but Terry's having none of that. Instead, she feels David is attracted to her and she's pursuing that, asking for and receiving a substitute for affection, the usual substitute for affection.
And once again, how rude was Bianca? She may not like Nikki,but she has to respect the fact that Nikki is the mother of Terry's children. What if Ricky returned with a wife, intent on taking his children away from Bianca? There'd be hell to pay.
She wasn't content to make snarky asides about why Nikki was still there (and in front of Nikki's daughter), she had to comment on her gift to the child and sit at the table during dinner, making shitty remarks to everything Nikki said.
I was seriously glad Nikki offered David an escape clause, with no strings. If I were David, I'd want to escape from not only Bianca, but Carol as well.
Speaking of Carol, if anyone has any doubts as to Bianca's immaturity, look no further than Carol. Once again, we were treated to a diva performance of puerility. Sulking by pointedly sitting in the backseat when David, surprisingly, arrived to take her home from her blood test, the best was yet to come.
David made a point of telling her he was OK with Carol's refusal to his proposal, unaware that this reaction would rile her even more. Because Carol was ready to run to David the previous night and reconsider. So now, it's his non-chalant reaction to her refusal that gives her ammunition. It's this incident that causes her to give him an instant course in parenting, reminding him that she's never run from adversity, unlike David.
Really, Carol? It seems to me that you've done nothing but run from this situation - run off in the middle of the night to Sonia, running out dramatically on her blood test, running away from seeing her consultant. Basically, using her medical condition as an excuse to enhance her usual rudeness and bitter attitude.
I was glad a drunken Masood told her to her face how bitter she was and how she loved to include everyone around her in her bad attitude, and this was observed of her before she even knew she had cancer. This has been Carol's modus operandi from the get-go. When things go her way, she's happy and everyone has to smile with her. But when things are adverse, everyone suffers with Carol.
I find no sympathy for her at all.
Mas in a Mood.
Masood is not only having a midlife crisis - his wife left him (well, Masood told her to leave), his youngest son left him (well, he was only three and his mother took him), his oldest son has gone (after having received a few good and needed home truths from Masood) and now, his 4 x 4 girlfriend has dumped him for her feckless teenage fuck from thirty-odd years ago.
Add to that, he's taken to drink, screwed up his job, stolen from his son and his son's employer, and been thrown out of his home by his son. Who else to come to the rescue, but the show's second biggest racist and bigot - Shabnam.
Shabnam's answer is to force Mas down onto that prayer mat and pray to Allah.
This house used to be filled with Allah and the Koran, Shabham says, patronisingly.
Yeah, love, and you used to drink and do a mean pole dance. Give over.
Good episode.
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