Two Thirds of the Trinity - Review:- 24.02.2014

No, he's not the Messiah, but it's not far off surmising that, in the warmest cockles of his heart, he thinks he is, wherever EastEnders is concerned. Bryan Kirkwood wanted to "sex up" EastEnders. DTC talks about EastEnders "getting its balls back", but the irony there is, the people on the show who should be exuding testosterone are not the men.

In fact, the writing room at EastEnders hates men - and Alpha males - so much that I'm sure they'd like to dispense with most of the male characters, bar sweet Johnny Carter, Patrick and maybe David as long as he played Grandad, and let the loud, gobby, man-dependent women who present themselves as strong, get on with dildoes and each other. 

This anti-male phenomenon is stretching across the three main soaps. It's now infiltrating Emmerdale, Cain Dingle and James Barton, in another age the sort of Alpha male who could front a soap, are being led a dance by their short and curlies by high-powered farmer-businesswoman Moira. Eric Pollard forgives an infidelity in his wife which threatened to bring the HIV virus into his household, yet she's holding the moral high ground because he slept with her sister.

Now, in EastEnders, we're hearing about how Phil is going to fear Ronnie; Shirley is calling the shots in the Carter family and we're now all expected to worship at the altar of Saint Stacey.

Last night's episode was a mélange of odd snippets, with the central piece of the whole shabang being the overt presentation of Stacey as what she's always been - the eternal victim - the poor, pitiful, homeless girl, complete with waif, being rejected by a member of her family, yet ultimately forgiven by one she'd wronged, who even in the end accepted all the blame, herself.

Oh, and we even had a pantomime villain. Janine, in a return appearance, all but twirled her Simon Legree moustache.

It was an exercise in sheer, utter, melodramatic tripe from Pete Lawson, a writer who should know better. It was the total inverse of a Catholic morality play.

Mater Dei Deano.

What's EastEnders these days without the ubiquitous Carter scene? Even when they aren't featured, they're right there in the background, serving pints and breeding dogs for money.

But they only lurch to the forefront when Mother Shirley, the new-found matriarch, who destroyed her brother's livelihood fifteen years ago and who subsequently stole from him, then walked all over those balls of whom DTC places so much emphasis (because Danny Dyer is the only male whose character remotely still possesses testicles) and emotionally blackmailed him into giving her a share of the Vic and making her landlady.

Poor Linda! As much as she would like to believe that this is her pub and that she's the landlady, she's not; and when she realises as much, it will be too late. She'll be out on her ear. At every turn, Shirley's trying to undermine her judgement and play the kids and Mick against her.

Last night, the Carters began the show, with Shirley snarling and sniping and being generally more miserable and bitter than usual because she'd been told that Dean was staying with Stan. She didn't "ask Stan nicely" so she didn't get Dean's address, which is just as well, because he was standing behind Stan.

She is yet another classic example of the childishly stupid female character viewers are constantly being asked to admire. Does she want to see her son or not? Obviously not, because her pride is miles bigger than any affection she might hold for Dean - oh, because Dean's supposed to love his mother unconditionally, even though she walked out on him when he was a baby and didn't see him again until he was eighteen years old.

And they we have the first of our morality play motifs ... the love of family ... in a lesson given by the family Court Jester, Tina. Yea, even a fool shall speak wisdom ...

We're treated to Tina preaching the importance of having loved ones around you and how being there with Mick and the kids - oh, and Linda, too, as an afterthought - has made her realise the importance of family ... not that she thinks that much of her own child, mind you.

Later, at the cafe, Sonia, who seems to spend more time working at the cafe than in her career as a nurse, and Tina discuss family some more.

Tina tells Sonia that Shirley "raised" her and Mick. Now, either Tina's lying or Pete Lawson didn't do his continuity research. Shirley did not raise Tina and Mick. Babe did. When their mother absconded, Shirley was a very young adolescent, and the children were put into care. Some years later, they were returned to Stan, and by that time, Babe had moved in and took over raising them. Where was Shirley? Married to Kevin and having children, which she didn't even attempt to raise.

Shirley bring up kids? To quote another Sonia from another age, she couldn't even bring up phlegm.

Sonia was another beatified character last night, and she's in danger of turning into Sonia the self-righteous martyr, who advises Tina that one might never know what will happen in life, so one should treasure one's loved ones - which is the perfect introduction for the impending introduction of Tina's ex-girlfriend Tosh, whom she trots off to find. As Tosh is of a violent bend, the stage is set for lezbo Sonia to re-appear, in her most unlikeable form - a self-perpetuating martyr in love with an appalling child-woman. Oh well, at least it provides a link between the Carters, the Jacksons, the Brannings and - indirectly - the Beales.

Et in Arcadia Ego or Brideshead Demisted.

After much speculation about her unannounced and lengthy disappearance, the viewers are allowed a glimpse, via pre-recorded webcam footage, of Kim - who met a man in a kebab shop, spent Christmas in Magaluf with him and is now someplace on a cruise.

All of this, of course, is to belatedly explain that Tameka Empson was on maternity leave, and if you don't blink on her webcam chat, you can just about glimpse the baby bump.

Kim's news, to a dumbfounded Denise and an equally gobsmacked Patrick, is that she's married Mr KebabShop. At least, that's the gist of her Skype call as she does most of the talking to Denise, Ian and Patrick. Her main message is that she's actually beaten Denise to the altar, and at first, I thought Denise was jealous and taken aback by this. 

But she's not.

You see - and this is actually rather clever - it weaves in an element of permanence in Denise's mind about her relationship with Ian. When a visiting Peter remarks about going "home" (to Billy's flat, Ian scoffs behind his back to Denise, remarking that half of Peter's belongings are still in his room upstairs. Why? Because, according to Ian, deep down Peter knows this thing with Lola isn't going to last, and he's keeping his own room as a "bolt hole."

When news of Kim's marriage and duties on his own at the B and B become too much for Patrick, he tells Denise he's closing the B and B ... wait a moment. Can he do that? I seem to recall that the B and B is actually owned by Kim. She bought and developed the business, Kimberley's Palace, with a pay-out from her ex. She bought the adjacent property and added it to the Truman house (which used to be a B and B) and founded the business. Later, after the fire, Zainab gave her the inheritance she got from Yusef to re-develop the business.

So how can Patrick "close" the B and B? Presumably any hotelier licence is held by Kim, so she's the signatory on all business cheques. Once again, a lazy writer manages to push shabby,inaccurate and totally impossible detail past an audience, who's caught up in adjusting reality to fit the appropriate storyline to the point that they actually challenge anyone who disputes the feasibility of such happenings in the show. On the one hand, they defend beyond the point of verbal bullying, that such a circumstance could happen, and when presented with facts showing how impossible such a situation is, they either call the challenger a coward or they shrug their shoulders and say, "It's only a soap."

Yes (and I'm pointing at the Taliban-esque bully Enders89), but this show was founded and grounded on reality, and the shit that's been being dished since the rising of Dead Den a decade ago would make Julia Smith and Tony Holland puke in their graves.

Meanwhile, it seems that all isn't bucolic in Mitchell Minor Arcadia - the flat where Peter lives with Billy, Lola and Lexi - except now, Billy has suddenly remembered that he has two other young children, Janet and William, and has had them spending a few days. Peter is getting fed up with being crowded out, and in another morality play motif, he convinces Ian to be charitable and give Billy a job at the chippie - purely for selfish interests, of course, as he wants to get a leg over Lola.

It was nice to see the seldom-seen Mitchell kids again.

Ego Te Absolvo ... Not.

If there had to be a high point of this low lifed episode, it occurred, as always, with the re-appearance of Janine, who always lifts whatever scene or episode in which she appears.

However, it was obvious from the getgo that this is Dominic Treadwell-Collins's version of Janine, and that is pure pantomime. Here we had Janine the Villain, evil Janine, to whom most Millennials subscribe - after all, it's so easy to see people as simplistically good or bad, and besides, remember evil Janine, kicked that empty pram over.

On the other hand, this was yet another ludicrous motif - first of all, that Kat could obtain a visiting order to see Janine was totally unbelieveable. As a member of the family of the deceased victim, Michael Moon, and the mother of one of his children, as well as his housemate, she wouldn't be allowed within shouting distance of Janine. On another tack, Janine has a charge outstanding against Stacey, and she is a witness to that prosecution. Kat's contact with her could be rightly interpreted as knobbling a witness (as was what Joey did) and illegal.

Why Kat thought she was special enough to convince Janine to drop charges against Stacey, I don't know. Maybe her ego matches the Messiah's - after all, she's the Mother Teresa of Albert Square. As well, the police still hold Janine's statement. Even if she drops the charges, it's up to the CPS to decide whether or not to proceed, and Stacey was seeing to flee the country. And what was this shit about her and Janine having some sort of "bond" based on the fact that Michael's sperm resulted in both their children.

There was never any attempt, apart from initially, to establish the fact that Tommy was Scarlett's brother. The children spent very little time together and barely knew each other.

In point of fact, Kat's yet another character who's regressed mightily under the watch of DTC, especially with the arrival of Saint Stacey. A distance cousin, with whom she spent little time until she returned in 2010 and spent Stacey's last few months, slapping their way around the Square and with Kat encouraging Stacey to break up yet another marriage, Kat has done nothing but wail and obsess about Stacey being her "fairmly" for the past two weeks. She's lied to Alfie, indeed she thinks almost nothing of him, so great is her lust  to get Stacey back to where Kat thinks she belongs.

Stacey's the family that Kat wants? What about her father, her grandmother, her three sisters, or her daughter, who has yet to meet her younger brother? What about her husband?

And Janine becomes DTC's ususal panto snake-in-the-grass, hissing her lines and seeing through Kat's lies to announce that she would think about  dropping charges ... if Stacey asks her to do so, face-to-face.

Now, if the producer really wanted to see justice done on the show, the way it's supposed to be done, he'd have had Janine lure Stacey to the prison, and then scream out loud that the woman who'd stabbed her had weaseled her way inside. Stacey is arrested - job jobbed.

But this is all a vehicle to promote the cult of St Stacey the Eternal Victim, and to emphasise the the evil that lies within the panto soul of Janine, the kicker-over of empty prams.

Shit, this is the stuff of mentally challenged children.

Mea Culpa Mea Culpa Mea Maxima Culpa.

Oh, please ... yes, I know professional Millennial bully Enders89, hates that phrase because (stamping his spoiled, little designer-clad foot), it's so dismissive, but I am dismissing this piss poor overt attempt to thrust a skanky homewrecker and murderer, some porcine little slut who's not above having sex with someone else's husband on the bonnet of a car, whilst her baby daughter sleeps on the backseat.

Horror upon horror was heaped upon poor Stacey in this episode, and quite honestly, I'm bored with watching Lacey Turner run around manically with her little piggy eyes squinched up and her nostrils flared in a bad imitation of a professional eternal victim awash with fear.

Alfie was perfectly within his right to ask her to leave. Even if Kat's priorities aren't her husband and children, Alfie's priorities are his pregnant wife, the children she's carrying and his son. Harbouring a wanted fugitive would have severe repercussions for his family and the children. I'm surprised Kat isn't thinking of that.

Add to this, a sick child and Stacey frantically darting about trying to find medicine. Oh, and Dot is still so damned trusting, after her robbery at Christmas that she still leaves a spare key under the front door mat? Especially with it known that Dot is away?

But this was all yet another contrived incident in order to get Stacey and Lauren together, but for a completely different reason.

We've had the ubiquitous Lauren-Makes-a-Discovery scene. But people now have to remember that a lot of water has passed under the bridge with Lauren since Stacey left. I was all for her epiphany moment, when she managed to break up Jake's marriage, and realised that she was really just as bad as her mother, Tanya, another teenaged homewrecker, and Stacey, the perpetrator of Stax. Yet, at the time, if you recall, Lauren admitted that she was, deplorably, just like Max.

If there were any redeemable part of this entire debacle, it was Cora plying Stacey with some much-valued home truths about what she'd done.

But Lauren ... Lauren not only asked fucking Stacey's forgiveness, blythely and briefly mentioning Archie's murder along the way, she actually assumed the blame for everything that had happened to Stacey since Stax.

If Lauren had kept the secret of Stax, Bradley might be alive and with Stacey today. Of course, that would have been Stacey's dirty little secret too, and Callum Monks would have still been hanging around. And then she honours Stacey by saying she now knows that Bradley assuming the guilt of a murderer and taking that to his grave, is what he wanted - this after Stacey lies and tells her she thinks of Bradley every day. Yeah, sure, whilst spending Luke's money and looking after Ryan's child. 

So it's OK now for Lauren to sacrifice her brother's good reputation and have him branded a murderer beyond the grave? Perhaps someone should ask Abi her opinion? Even better, perhaps someone should ask Bradley's mother, Rachel?

Without a doubt, that was morally the lowest and most craven point of DTC's tenure, an open and appalling plea to viewers that Saint Stacey is the victim for whom we all should show our fullest support. After all, she gets the gongs. It was positively depraved and done for no reason whatsover other than to showcase the EP's favourite star and as a tip to his own ego and cleverness.

And still, the ratings hover a million behind Coronation Street and haven't touched 8 million.