The Worst of Times - Review:- 28.03.2014

If EastEnders were a Premiership football club, it would be hovering precariously just above the relegation zone. This week would have seen them score a 1-0 defeat of - oh, say Arsenal, only to fall at the final hurdle and have their arses wiped by Fulham.

It's the inconsistency, as well as the assembly line mentality. Yep, that's Janine done and dusted, and Stacey's away for six weeks or so, what's next? Oh yeah, kill Lucy.

The character of Lucy Beale has done jack shit on a stick insect for the past two years. I know that there are actors who've been cast who haven't had any previous professional experience (Jessie Wallace, the actress who plays Nikki Spraggan) or any real professional dramatic training (Danielle Harold, Lacey Turner), but mostly these characters, if they're worth their salt, absorb from the talent around them and actually improve to a certain degree.

This is exactly why the likes of the Moon Goons and David Witts failed epically. They were hired on the basis of their looks, with no professional experience, and didn't improve with time. And because of this, no matter how hard TPTB tried to accommodate them in their general scheme of things, they failed.

Remember Anthony Moon was supposed to be the smart brother? Yeah, sure.

Tyler went from ladies' man to a very embarrassing bad-tempered lout to the forced issue of him and Whitney being the next ingenue couple, and people hated that and him. And Whitney.

And who can forget that Joey and Lucy Beale were billed as this generation's Sharon and Grant, the next power couple on the Square. That failed. They tried the forbidden love with Lauren, and for Witts, that failed also.

As for Bywater, a catalogue model who clearly has eating issues because she looks like a reject from Auschwitz when she isn't looking like a spoiled and sullen child trying to grow up too quickly, the less said about her the better.

She's going. She's toast. Guess she'll have to move out of the flat she shares with that other eminent thespian and daughter of an embezzler ...

THE. WORST. ACTRESS. EVER. TO. APPEAR. IN. EASTENDERS.

EastEnders' biggest problems are its inconsistency, its weak writing room and the ego of its executive producer. Friday's episode showed all those loser traits. Friday night is a difficult nut to crack in SoapLand, and 6.6 million viewers isn't saying much at the end of what was touted as a big week.

Why this episode failed ...

Bar Wars.

I make no bones about the fact that I don't trust Dominic Treadwell-Collins as far as I can throw a stick, and I don't give a rat's arse how much he'll big up his intentions to restore Sharon to her so-called rightful glory days or how much he says she's his favourite character, that's bullshit.

If he meant what he said, then Sharon would be back in the Vic and Mick would be the older of the two younger Hanley brothers and her brother. Instead, we get the Carters, fronted by arguably the most divisive female character in the show's history, and we've got a man with whom Sharon's had a romantic entanglement on and off for the better part of twenty years, cosying up to that stinking old leather-skinned alcoholic fart on the sly.

We've got Sharon's new up-market establishment already primed to fail and fall alongside the Vic, especially with one of the Carters infiltrating the workforce there in order to sabotage the establishment. Hell, at this point in time, I believe Phil will even be in on the swindle also. Because of Shirley, you know.

And that sucks.

Of course, in this Bar Wars analogy, you know that the Carters will win, and that means Shirley. In DTC's very own Walford kingdom, Shirley is set to be Queen of the Square. She's already pushed Mick aside as head of his immediate family, she's got her name above the door of the Vic, she appropriated the position of guardian of Dot's grief, shared a scene with that other putrid piece of pseudo-omniscience, Jane, when she had nothing to do with her ever before, and now she's dictating the odds against Sharon.

Shirley is a drink-sodden, sour-faced, old scrote who needs her alcoholism addressed.

I hate was the previous two producers did to the character of Sharon, and I hate the fact that this one isn't doing much better.

Under Treadwell-Collins, Sharon is the sly bitch, who accidentally on purpose arranged for her bar staff interviews to be held in the Vic, right under Linda's jealous nose and rubbing her nose in it. She's also a snobby cow who looks down the clientele, many of whom she knew as children, and she's a bitch. Far be it ever for Linda to be identified as such, even though we know she's a homophobe and a racist.

But this is Treadwell-Collins's Walford, where no one and nothing existed pre-Shirley.

The only thing I can see happening for the good is Johnny Carter, the mole, bonding with Sharon and feeling guilty about fleecing her. (A re-hash of Alice spying on Janine for Michael?) Something will happen to Sharon's pub, and my bet is that Shirley will burn it down. She has form, having destroyed Mick's pub and Ian's restaurant, but that won't be Shirley's fault. Nothing ever is. Another entitled bitch.

And as much as I like Mick and Linda, their bedroom antics, grunting and giggling beneath the covers is yet another version of Kat and Alfie doing much the same thing. How long before Linda's telling people about Mick snoring and farting?

Jane the Ignorant Slut.

Or rather ...

Please, can someone kill her too? I want her to fall into a swamp-like cowpile someplace and disappear. The Wise Woman of Walford, with all the right words to say about everything, goes crying to Dot, someone with whom she shared scant screen-time in a previous existence, where this time she's told by Dot to "take charge" of Ian and show him who's in charge. Really, Dot? And you think Jane has more brains than any of Ian's previous wives? Jane's still hanging around Ian, and I find it difficult to believe that Dot would tell Jane to go in and lord it over the son, grandson and nephew of Dot's closest friends.

All of a sudden, we're supposed to believe Jane gained a myriad of business experience and gainful taste, playing sous-chef in a glorified pie-and-mash shop in a provincial British town, that her business plan and her ideas are far superior to Ian's and that she's suddenly become sexually desireable to three men. She is and always was a self-serving, smug, hypocritical, judgemental bitch, and I hope she buggers on out of Walford.

Some months ago, she's telling the Beale kids, including her son, that she's no longer a part of their family dynamic, and that they should be turning to Denise, and now she's undermining Denise. As for her son, she seems to revel in the title of "mother" with precious little of the responsibility, but then, this is the woman, who stood by goggle-eyed as a four-year-old demolished the house with a bottle of ketchup.

The idea that this bovine, self-righteous bitch has single-handedly returned to Walford to right the world's wrongs and to be ravished by three different men, is a joke; but again, this is Treadwell-Collins, who does nothing by half and who seems incapable, in some instances of showing that characters bear elements of light and dark, some of which show grey at times.

Jane was always a greedy, snobby bitch who wasn't really above conniving with Ian to cheat Sharon out of the pub she inherited from her father's death. She wasn't above cheating on Ian as well.

Jane is still treating Ian as if he were a recalcitrant adolescent, and we're being asked to believe that these two people love each other? Ian admitted as much to his gay punter that, whilst he was fond of Jane, he didn't love her. He even told Glenda Mitchell that Jane wasn't up to much, and Jane, herself, wept and wailed and bared her soul to a roomful of women, including Glenda, Ian's niece and the woman to whom he's currently engaged about how awful a man and a husband Ian was.

Send this bitch to the abbotoir.

Mutton Dressed as Lamb ... or Roxy and Tina.

Roxy and Tina, grow the fuck up. There's nothing more pathetic than two women in their late thirties acting and dressing like children. Woxy wants a birfday par'hy to celebrate the fact that she doesn't look thirty-six. She wants to stay out and drink all night long, especially since Jack, in some unseen place close enough to Walford, has Amy for the night. She's forgotten that she'll be hungover tomorrow morning when Jack returns Amy, so the psychopath will have to step in and cream her knickers at the prospect of playing Mommy.

Last night, Roxy looked like mutton dressed as lamb, and Tina looked like a New Age version of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane. It amazes me how their families mollycoddle both of them, as if they were children, themselves. Ronnie uses a creepy-sounding babytalk voice to speak to Roxy, as if Roxy were child-like, and Mick does the same thing with Tina.

Seriously, are both these women retarded?

Roxy reckons she's thirty-six and has nothing to show for her life, so that's how much she rates her daughter. Tina thinks more of her hard-to-get Kelly Holmes clone girlfriend than she does helping out her family.

Even more bizarre is the fact that both these childwomen live with and are in thrall emotionally and psychologically to an older sister. Really, how many siblings in their thirties, forties and fifties still live together?

Albert Square, the land of perpetual childhood.

So the Bitchell Blisters walk into an empty Vic that's soon filled up with extras we've never seen, and Aleks, who's clearly interested in Woxy enough to put his hand on her waist, which doesn't please Wonnie, who's jealous, more of the fact that someone's touching up her "her" property than by the fact that Woxy's got a fella and Wonnie's without. Aleks's life card just got marked, but he doesn't know it. I reckon the three isolated men in the programme now are being lined up as Ronnie-fodder - one as a victim (Jake), one as a culprit (Aleks) and one who'll discover exactly what she's been up to (Charlie, or whoever he is). I noticed neither Phil, Sharon nor Jay put in an appearance at Woxy's party. That's certainly telling.

Kill Beale and The Gurning Girl.

So now the storyline about the atrocious Lucy Beale's death has begun in earnest, and the line-up of potential killers is forming. Last night we were presented with Billy Mitchell. Tonight, three more suspects entered the frame - Jake Stone, Max and Lauren Branning.

Lucy is so incredibly rude, and Lauren is so incredibly thick, I can only imagine the writing room has been told to dispense with Lauren's one brain cell, because certainly Abi, who's barely seen these days, wouldn't stand by and allow a mate to speak to her father like that and in her father's home as well. And Max should have called her out on her insouciance, as well as Lauren being well aware that Max was too concerned about more important matters than how Lauren looked for a joke of an interview. His mind is on Stacey (still), but also Bradley, in the wake of Nick's death, and the fact that he's being tested for the BRCA2 gene - something which might hit Lauren for six if she tests positive for it.

And they can talk to Max like a piece of shit one instant and ask him for a grand the next is simply gobsmacking. Especially Lucy's remark about a father not wanting to invest in his daughter's business. Well, I didn't notice Ian giving Lucy any money. The throwaway line of Cross my heart and hope to die was too obvious to the point of cheesiness. We know she's going to die; in fact, we can't wait. Because the other obvious thing is that the delayed identity of the killer will be the clincher for this storyline. The big questions for tonight are: what did Lucy "do" to get Max to contribute a grand to her business venture, and who was sending her the text message about Lauren not needing to know?

Jake Stone, chef, is now also a webpage designer, and Lucy's association with him is irking Lauren. Why? He's no longer married, and if Lucy wants to link up with a perv who fancies very young women who look younger, that's not her problem anymore, unless she's jealous. Jake Stone is a red herring, but someone posited to me today the real possibility of Max being the killer, but in an accidental way and not realising he'd done that. Or even if he did, Max is the type who'd let that sort of incident eat away at his soul. He couldn't look at Ian, having lost a child, himself; although the way Lucy's panning out, whoever does kill her deserves to be given the Freedom of Walford for freeing the show of such an awful character.

Was there anything I did like? Yes, Mick's trip to check on Stan and finding the intruder who whacked him. I'm betting Mr Hoodie is the second fleeting sighting of Dean, and so we have yet another long hello. Bet Dean won't get as many duff-duffs as Stacey did though. Still, can't be long. EastEnders, you blew it with this episode.

False Equvalency - Thursday 27.03.2014

Such as there is a ying, so there must be a yang. When it's the best of times, so it can also be the worst of times. Thus it was in last night's double bill. It wasn't enough for TPTB to give us a brilliant episode, they had to follow it up with a stinker as well ...

Mary, Queen of Scots's motto was In my end is my beginning, and thus it was for last night's EastEnders. It seemed to be the end of a lot of things, or the beginning of the end to some. It was the end of Nick ... or was it? Or was it the end of Nick as we knew him? It certainly was the beginning of the end for Lucy Beale, and it may be the end of poor Cora.

There certainly were and are some things about the show I wish were ending - I wish Shirley would keel over in the gutter and choke to death on her own vomit. I wish Stacey would rot in prison, and I wish Charlie Cotton were a real copper who finds out Ronnie is a murderer and turns her in. But who am I kidding? I live in the real world.

Old Walford/New Walford

So what was good about last night's double bill? Well, plenty, but most of it was found in the first episode, because the second stank quite a bit.

I'm loathe to say it, because I still don't trust that self-serving, arrogant little twerp of a manchild as far as I could throw a stick when it comes to Sharon, but he seems to have settled her down as a character, At least, he understands that Sharon works best with characters with whom she is familiar - Dot, Phil, Ian.

But what I don't understand is why DTC has Phil still buzzing around that stinking old scrag-end of meat, Shirley. Well, I do understand. WonderBoy can't leave well enough alone. He promises to bring Sharon back to her old-time glory by giving her a bar (called "The Albert" and situated at the opposite end of the Square from "The Vic" - geddit?), yet he seems to be symbolically positioning her yuppie facility in direct opposition to The Vic, her original home and now the domain of wannabe Queen Shirley, with Phil as the sought-after prize pig in the middle.

Symbolically speaking, I get it that Sharon, the Square's original Princess, is supposed to represent "New Walford" (chocked full of yuppies and middle class professionals - which means psychopaths and lunatics), whilst Shirley, the face of East End bullyboi misery, fronts the working class (meaning "good") Vic, Old Walford. And between the two, they fight for Phil Mitchell, the symbolic soul of Walford.

I'm a long-term viewer, who's always appreciated Sharon's interaction with the Mitchell family, especially Phil Mitchell, but I think Egoboy is on a hiding to nothing with this one. He's let his massive ego get in the way of putting Sharon and Phil together at last, because his personal favourite Shirley will get short shrift. And so we have the Great Treadwell-Collins retcon of a backstory that, surprisingly, Bryan Kirkwood got right.

Kirkwood kowtowed to the fanboi element and coupled Phil with Shirley, after Santer understood that the only way Phil could ever bring himself to sleep with Shirley was to get drunk. Once Kirkwood got them together, Shirley brought out the worst in Phil. She encouraged his worst behaviour, urged him to engage in criminal activity and was behind Phil's pushing drugs at the R and R. 

However, it was during this liaison that Phil categorically established two factual truths:-

• That had Sharon been with him, he'd have never have had an addiction problem.
• That whilst he couldn't promise fidelity to Shirley, he wouldn't think of being unfaithful to Sharon.

Yet here we have Phil cosying up to Shirley at Nick's funeral, holding her hand and reminiscing about Heather. For Shirley, this is the final insult to Heather's memory. Once again, Shirley drops Heather for a man, this time the man who helped conceal Heather's murderer, but then Shirley never was about anyone but Shirley.

And here we have Phil smiling and lying to Sharon about the circumstances around his "comforting" of Shirley. Even worse, was Shirley appropriating Dot's grief as her own, appointing herself as the rottweiler guardian of Dot's honour, refusing Sharon entrance to the home to offer comfort to a woman Sharon had known all her life, a woman who was a close personal friend of her parents. And who is Shirley to shout the odds against Ian Beale's cribbed speech at Nick's funeral? Shirley never knew Nick Cotton, and apart from Heather's close relationship with Dot, Shirley never gave Dot the time of day.

So I'm sick of seeing this producer's pet pig pushed to the forefront of the programme and turned into its heroine. She isn't. She simply isn't. She's just a bitter and twisted old with of a lush who's abandoned her kids, who has no morals and who is the worst type of stinking alcoholic - a self-pitying one.

Mick Carter, a brilliant new character, doesn't deserve such a skank of a sister, whose sole purpose in that family dynamic is to undermine the position held by his wife.

Psycho?

I'm not certain if there's a scam going on in this escapade with Nick, but I'm certain he's not dead. Someone suggested to me that maybe Nick actually wasn't in on this scheme, that maybe he was under police protection, perhaps in Witness Protection, and for that reason, his death had to be faked. This begs the question: Who is "Charlie Cotton?" Well, I don't think he's Charlie or Dot's grandson, but he may be a policeman.

The wad of money "Charlie" handed over to an increasingly nervous Les Coker, followed by the two-worded "It's done" message to someone on the other end of a cellphone made it obvious that Nick was to be thought dead for some reason, but even more intriguing was the incipient connection between "Charlie" and Walford's own resident lady killer, Ronnie Mitchell, who's another one of many who has latched onto Dot's grief as a substitute for her own. Ronnie's grief is all about Danielle, who's about to regain life in a creepy way. 

But wait! There's more ... Stacey managed to pervade that episode, without even being there. The mere mention of her name and of Ronnie's visit to her by Roxy and Max's cack-handed questioning of Ronnie, are just two of a myriad of ways of shoe-horning her into a storyline with which she isn't even connected. I suppose we'll have weekly mentions of visits by Kat and Mo until she's back on the Square properly. Just so we won't forget, you know.

Still, if "Charlie" sticks around and starts hanging about with Roxy, things are going to be interesting, in terms of the sort of secret she's hiding.

Why  Buy the Cow When You Can Get the Milk for Free?...

Please, spare us any more of Saint Jane, the sacred cow ...

Since this sanctimonious bitch has interloped back to Walford, she's one step short of being Mother FuckingTheresa. She rights the wrongs of the Beale family - a family she'd disowned a few weeks prior to this return; she appears to have earned a million quid cooking pie and mash in a provincial Welsh restaurant and now wants to open a high-sodium fast food junk joint as Ian's partner, whilst treating Ian as if he were an incompetent, recalcitrant schoolboy to whom she metes unrequested and very negative criticism.

Now she steps right into the uncomfortable breach at a funeral, asks for a Bible and gives an appropriate reading, then takes it upon herself to march over to Dot's and apologise on behalf of her inadequate ex-husband, who clearly didn't think enough of the task at hand to say something original about Dot's son. Even Dot, herself, acknowledged that Ian and Sharon were small children when Nick was a much older young boy and didn't really know him until he'd gone bad.

She's already dick-teasing Masood, and I gather she'll be having Ian and Max lusting after her cowhide before long. I wish she would sink into some shitty cowpire somewhere.

Team Killer.

As tonight probably began the end of Lucy Beale in earnest, I found myself on Team Killer. Really, apart from Shirley, who isn't going to die, has there ever been a more unlikeable, spoiled, entitled and arrogant little bitch in the entire programme? Melissa Suffield played the cold, hard-faced cow, but she was watchable. This girl is not only one of the weakest actresses on the show, like Louisa Lytton, she's younger than the character she plays, and she not only looks it, she acts it.

"Rude" isn't the word to describe her - who would stand by and let someone remark to your father, "What do you know?" Yet Lauren the dim, who can't seem to co-ordinate washing cars, stood by and allowed that insult to stand. She was rude to Billy, who - surprisingly - was offering her practical help and advice. She worked for Janine a total of about five months, and usually was sent out to fetch coffee, yet she knows all the inside-outs of property letting. I also hated the way she and Lauren sniggled and laughed at Billy and his job at the chipshop. It wasn't so long ago that Lucy wasn't above working there, herself. She's as much a cheat as her father is, and therein was the third piece of rudeness, both to and about Ian.

This abysmal character can't die quick enough. I only hope whoever kills her smacks her silly.

The Good Bits?

I liked the subtleties involved in both episodes, especially centering on the number of people who've actually lost loved ones in that episode. I could easily and early recognise Max's and Patrick's reluctance to attend the funeral. I was surprised at Sonia's shallowness regarding Max's decision not to go. Carol was sick in bed, but Carol has also buried a child, and so has Max, but Sonia the Self-Righteous was too high-minded to see that, and it I actually loved the moment Patrick shared with Dexter (Dexter!) about what a liar, a thief and a cause for concern to him Paul was, but how he loved Paul more than life itself,and during the pseudo wake, Patrick instantly said that the first thing he wanted after hearing of Paul's death was to hear Paul's voice.

The other class act in that wake scene - which really bordered on the cheesy - was Sharon. Shirley can bleat until the cows come home about Heather, whom she only remembers when it suits her, but Sharon chooses not to talk about the people in Walford whom she's lost - her parents, and her last husband. Even now, she finds it difficult to speak of Dennis, except to say he was a good man. Well, there are those of us who know that Dennis was a murderer, who was redeemed by Sharon's love and who paid for his murder with his life.

Is this really the end of Cora? Once again, I thought Patrick was initially abrupt with her when she wanted to accompany him to pay her respects to Dot. I do understand that she was feeling a connection, which she was trying to get across to Charlie on the doorstep and failing. Rainie was her Nick. She'd go for months never hearing from her and suddenly she'd turn up. OK, Cora certainly has drink issues of her own, but the tale of Nick and his woes hit home with her, and her inability to articulate this grieving for Rainie, who isn't dead, but who's made it abundantly clear that she cannot trust herself not to drink around her mother, resulted only in her seeking solace in her usual comfort - the bottle. I can understand Patrick's frustration with her state, but Patrick likes a tipple, himself, and if Rainie were Cora's Nick, she was also her Paul. I know Donald Duck will throw a duck fit, but I feel very sorry for Cora.

And I was surprised how much I missed the Carters - that's "Carters" as in Mick, Linda and Johnny. Once again, Linda is extremely interesting in her conflicting prejudices, eyeing Johnny bantering with a man whom she took to be gay.I loved Mick's intervention with Johnny in the pub kitchen and their subtle recognition that Linda's not the most mature person when it comes to certain things. I never thought Danny Dyer's character would be close to my favourite male character, but his understated presence is a welcome change. I do hope there's not an affair with Stacey looming on the horizon.

My verdict: The first episode was better than the second, and I'm not sure what DTC is up to with Sharon and Phil, but these two episodes were reasonably enjoyable, with a good blend of old and new characters.

Body of Evidence - Review: - 25.03.2014

Or rather ... crime and punishment, because there seems to be a lot of crime - potential, committed, confessed and undetected - floating about the Square at the moment, and it seems that soon the place will be awash with bodies, the first of whom came home tonight.

The Green Green Grass of Money Something Home ...

There's something different about Dot's front room - Nick's back. Well, something purporting to be Nick is in a coffin in that front room.

There's something not quite right about this storyline, which is crying out that Nick isn't dead. I don't believe "Charlie Cotton" is who he says he is either - not Dot's grandson nor a police officer. Many of the residents of the Square - those who bothered to visit Dot to offer their condolences - are suspicious of him as well, specifically Ian and Cora.

Of all the episodes aired since WonderBoy took over the reins ...

this particular storyline, more than any other, captured the real, established and traditional ethos of EastEnders. Yes, I know it will probably end up in being yet another scam on Dot, although someone suggested today that maybe Nick doesn't know about what's going on, maybe "Charlie" really is a policeman, and maybe this is an elaborate scam to establish Nick within Witness Protection or something.

But by the clever use of characters with whom Dot was established from yore, combined with newer characters who've had a part in her recent life, Daran Little (who really should write more EastEnders' episodes) gave us a beautifully crafted vignette that could rival Coronation Street for its pathos and its humour.

Before I go further, however, I want to take to task that epitome of Millenial arrogance and entitlement on Digital Spy forum, Hit'Em Up in Style, he/she (I have a feeling he's a fanboi), who expounds his own self-important opinion as fact, when he confidently states that Sharon and Ian's association with Dot is a total retcon and wonders why the Brannings aren't abundant around Dot's household in this time of grief.

Sit down, H-E-U-i-S, and listen to history.

Truth is, Dot wasn't always a sympathetic character. Originally, she was a Bible-thumping Christian, judgemental, hypochondriacal and an inveterate gossip. She turned a blind eye to Nick's reputation in the Square and blamed the other residents for the bad impression he made. Her closest associations in the Square were Lou and Ethel, two women who were, in reality, old enough to have been mothers to Dot, who was a middled-aged woman in her forties when she first appeared. Pauline avoided her like the plague. Pete Beale felt sorry for her. Of course, the likes of Sharon, Michelle and Ian had little to do with her. They were teenagers, roughly the same ages as TJ, Liam and the odious Cindy the Greek.

For a long time after Dot married Jim, the "Branning" to whom she was closest, was Sonia; and Ian and Sharon started to appreciate Dot, as a link to people from their past who was no longer with them (Pete, Angie) during the early part of the Noughties in this century; but by then, both she and Ian were adults well into their thirties. From time to time, Dot helped Ian with his children. She was a friend to Dennis and supported Sharon when she was grieving, first Angie, and then Dennis, himself - but the fact remains that Ian and Sharon share a rich history with Dot, via Ian's relations (Pete, Kathy, Lou, Pauline and Arthur) and through Sharon's (Den and Ange, Dennis).

During the Nineties, Dot and Carol were not on the Square at the same time - indeed, Carol replaced Dot at the launderette, after Dot left to live with Nick, Zoe and Ashley. The first of Jim's children she met and knew was Max; but of all of Jim's relations, she was and is closest to Sonia, Abi, Jack, Bradley and Derek - and two of those are dead and one has gone. She imbibed Jim's disapproval of Max, which was later enhanced by his association with Stacey; but for the most part, Max and Tanya used Dot as a ready-made babysitter whilst they whored around. Carol and her children were never close to Dot, and Derek's children never acknowledged her.

Thus, the absence of Honker and Abi the Dough-Faced Girl in this incidence, can be attributed to Carol's cancer and A-Levels.

So put that in your bong, Hit'Em Up, and choke on it.

The intriguing part of this situation is the obvious connivance between "Charlie" and Les Coker, who's edgy about his reputation and about whatever is in that coffin.

Yes, there was a continuity error in Dot's apocryphal story about Nick, Ethel and the children's harvest festival during the Sixties, when Dot referenced Ethel's dog, Willy, barking at a bird on a woman's hat. Willie died in 1989, so he'd have to have been one of the oldest dogs in Britain, but I can forgive Daran Little this, after the sadly hilarious scene when Ian accidentally knocked the coffin, causing it to fall and expose someone's dead arm.

I like Ian's scepticism, and I like Cora's covert scepticism even more - the scene where Ian was apologising to "Charlie" on Dot's doorstep, with Cora hovering in the extreme background, distinctly smelling a rat.

I have to praise DTC for one thing, and that's his development of Cora's character. Just as Bryan Kirkwood "got" Janine, DTC "gets" Cora. Gone is Newman's brittle, mean-spirited, drunken, old lag, whom Newman couldn't even milk sympathy for in Cora's single most defining backstory - the abandonment of her bi-racial child for adoption.

Under DTC's hand, we see Cora as the lonely woman that she is, who hides her pain and her suffering and sorrow under a veil of whiskey in an attempt to appear tough and hard-nailed. She's lost her child, her husband died in horrific circumstances as a young man, and she's seen her daughters, both with drink issues, break up marriages and descend into a morass of heroin addiction. She is homeless and living on the charity of Patrick Trueman. Yes, I know she treated Dot's hospitality appallingly, almost losing her her home, but if DTC is willing to forget the hatchet job Newman did to Sharon's character, I can cut him some slack for bringing Cora and Dot together.

And Sharon looked fabulous.

The Magnificent Obsession.

Well, everyone's had a stab at it, and now it's poor pitiful Stacey's turn to have "Hearts and Flowers" as her theme song.

Stacey's in prison, and Ronnie wants to help her. Natural sort of thing to do, one murderer helping out another. One wonders why Ronnie didn't reach out and help Janine, but then one remembers that Janine killed in self-defence. Neither Ronnie nor Skanky did. In fact, they attacked from behind. Pretty cowardly.

Ronnie's going through a "God" complex, which is part of a psychopath's nature, thinking oneself superior to others. In fact, she pronounces as fact that Stacey has "paid her dues" for having killed Archie. Really, Roswell? How, exactly, has Stacey paid her dues? Granted, she's lived happily for the past couple of years under a new identity with a well-off banker boyfriend. Bradley probably crossed her mind from time to time, but nothing to bother her too much; yet being back in Walford, seeing Bradley's sister, feeling the reluctant forgiveness of Roxy, made her realise the hell to which she's condemned Bradley's memory.

For Stacey, this act of expatiating her guilt is all about Bradley, something Ronnie can't understand - probably because Bradley is a man; for Roxy, Ronnie's obsession with getting Stacey out of prison is all about Ronnie; but Stacey hits the nail on the head - Ronnie's obsession with Stacey is all about Danielle.

Because Stacey was Danielle's friend, by befriending and protecting Stacey, Ronnie's got yet another connection with Danielle, which Stacey identifies and throws back in her face.

Watch this space. The Danielle obsession isn't over yet.

Why Buy the Cow When You Can Get the Milk for Free?

Masood kisses a cow.

One of the best episodes.

Confession,Penance, Redemption - Review: 24.03.2014

Here's the first award for EastEnders under Dominic Treadwell-Collins ... Ladies and gentlemen, I give you EastEnders, recipient of The Great Red Herring Award for presenting the public with so many obviously false clues ...

We're being promised a build-up, the likes of which we've never seen before, in the run-up to Lucy Beale's death. But will the public, apart from the fanbois, really care? Lucy, for all she is an important third, maybe fourth, generation legacy character (Lou-Pete-Ian-Lucy), is and always has been one of the most unlikeable young people on the show. People wanted to smack the shit out of Melissa Suffield's Lucy; viewers want to stuff roast chicken legs into the continuously opened gob of the underfed and distinctly undertalented Hetti Bywater.


Now we're being presented with the first red herring in this situation - Jamie Lomas's contract isn't being renewed. I'll wager Lomas has known this for quite awhile, or rather, he sniffed it out - otherwise, he wouldn't have made such a big hint remark at the NTA awards, about hoping for his contract to be extended beyond its summer deadline.


Jake is leaving, and suddenly, he's going to develop an interest in Lucy. WTF? My guess is that Jake will leave in a box, courtesy of Ronnie, because of an entanglement with Roxy, after having been entangled with Lucy, and for awhile, people will believe Jake was responsible for Lucy's death - in a way people believed (until Monday night) - that dead Bradley was responsible for Archie's demise.


It ain't necessarily so, fanbois ... as the song says ...

The Sacriment of Confession.

Before the usual suspects crawl from the woodwork and start hurling abuse, let me say that Monday's episode was a particularly good and watchable one, even though it was mainly Stacey-centric, and as you know, I'm no fan of Stacey's.

This episode was awash with confessions or allusions to confessions - Kat and Alfie, Max and Stacey, Stacey and Roxy, Stacey and Mick - all leading up to the grande finale, of course. Since many of these border over into the sacriment of penance, I'll only concentrate on Kat and Alfie here for the moment.

The "dark secret", which turned out to be nothing, and its resolution turned out to be more than nothing. It turned out to be a joke.

Kat's "confessed" to committing perjury, she informs Saint Stacey of the Furrowed Brow and Flared Nostrils that Janine has dropped all charges and Stacey is now free to return to Walford. However, the price to be paid will be Kat returning to court to be tried for perjury. Of course, she reckons she'll get no more than a slap on the wrist. I'll bet. The last thing you'll see around April time is the shocked look on Kat's face as she's led from the courtroom to the cells to begin rehearsals for her West End play to serve a few months inside.

Of course, Alfie has a confession, himself, to make, and the off-hand and rushed way it was treated and resolved, gives the astute viewer the definite idea that Wonderboy DTC doesn't rated either Kat or Alfie as all that important in the general scope of characters. Alfie ... Billy ... Terry Spraggan ... nice guys, who'll always finish last.

But what skewed this morality tale was not Kat's instant forgiveness and the Moons' promise to each other to have no more secrets, it was the fact that both completely disregarded the fact that Alfie had scammed an innocent woman out of a lot of money, and she exacted revenge by taking the Moons' means of earning a living - so they're back to Square One, instead of Albert Square. In fact, they're back to diddly-squat if Kat's business sense is anything by which to judge the couple. I mean, Kat, Stacey and Bianca selling dingy, damp tat being made wet in the rain and making a living wage between the three?

I doubt - in fact, I hope - that the Moons enter into more self-serving scams and that Alfie gets a job in the bookies; but I have a curious feeling that this was DTC's way of backburnering the Moons into what he conceives to be their "place."

We'll see ...

The Sacrifice of Penance.

OK, so if this were a Friends episode, it would be entitled "The One Where Stacey Does Penance." Because that's what she does.

And as watchable as this was, this whole Stacey ordeal was one piece of cack-handed tripe. First, DTC must have been aware that there was a rather loud and rather intelligent contingent of viewers who, for some weird reason, don't particularly like to see a character walk free from what was a cold-blooded murder. I mean, who was more popular than Dennis Rickman as a character, and he killed Jack Dalton, a bad man? And Dennis paid for that with his life.

DTC knew that somehow, Stacey would need to acknowledge responsibility for her crime, something she'd never done, and something she probably never would have done, had Kat not spied her on a London street. Nope, Stacey was that entitled, that she'd have happily lived out the rest of her life as Jenny, with Luke and Lily, the five year-old three year-old who looks uncannily like the very first actress to have played Janine.

Even though she didn't intend on doing it, even though Kat was deluded and desperate enough to tell Stacey that she'd "done nothing wrong," the truth was ... that Stacey had done something wrong. Even though the increasingly insane Ronnie told Stacey that she had "paid her dues," she hadn't. More than anything, this act of confession and penance was done to clear Bradley's name. Coming back to Walford was something Stacey didn't want to do, because she knew that the past would rear its head and bite her skinny arse. She'd be forced to see Bradley on every street corner, forced to walk past the place he fell to his death, forced to deal with his sisters and Archie Mitchell's one unforgiving daughter.

I'm glad she was made to feel uneasy. She deserved it. 

And so TPTB, on a PR drive to make Stacey likeable once more (and, face it, her return has been a wash-out), spend an entire episode turning her from victim into saintly martyr - first, after cowardly hiding from Bianca's gobby rant, she endeavours to make Bianca see why Kat told the lie she did. (One niggling part of this Kat-Stacey shit was Kat refusing to "allow" Stacey even to consider living with Jean in Brighton. Why ever not? Jean is her mother, and they are close. All well and good that Jean "has Ollie," but Stacey is her daughter, and the sprog is her granddaughter, and Jean has been low on family since Stacey left. 

Next, she made things abundantly clear to Max - and to Max is awarded the line of the night, after warning Jake Stone off Lauren:- 

Sometimes a person gets in your head and you can't get'em out.

That's the problem with Max re Stacey, but I don't believe Stacey when she says that the tie that binds the two of them is really Bradley. For Max, it's not. Max is governed by lust for Stacey, and something that he imagines is love. When she's around, every other woman takes second place. She's moved on, but I was intrigued by the two brief scenes she had with Mick tonight, because I don't think Stacey's finished with married men. For Bradley, read "Dean," and for Stax, read "Stick."

Finally, not only does she admit responsibility for Archie's death to Roxy, and receives a reluctant approbation from the daughter who loved Archie, she then effects a public penance and confession, calling the police and confessing to the crime at that moment.

Of course, Turner is going away to film six weeks of "Stacey Slater Goes Large in Afghanistan" "Our Girl."

She won't be missed. Well, not by me.

Mea culpa. Mea culpa.

The Creep Factor.




Jake was creepy enough when he had his stubble, needed a bath and had his tongue literally lolling out of his mouth for Lauren, a teenaged girl who looked even younger than her nineteen years. Now, we're asked to believe that both he and Aleks are attracted to the mumbling, anorexic mouth-breather known as Lucy Beale. Lucy looks like  a child dressed in grown-up clothing, but watching Aleks and Jake leer after Lucy's emaciated arse and bony legs wasn't only unreal, it was disgusting. It was like two pervs gawping after a child playing grown-up.

And through it all, Lucy comported herself like the spoiled and sulled child she usually is - mumbling her lines petulantly, looking at everything, including sly looks at herself in the camera, except her co-star. To think that Jake would even think about consorting with not one, but two girls only slightly older than his daughter confirms that he's a dirty old man. Maybe that's why Ronnie will kill him. At least, that's what I think. We'll see. But he's the first red herring in Lucy's impending death.

The Sins of Pride and Arrogance.

Out of pride does come a modicum of truth. Full credit to Shabbitch for saying what everyone else, including Jane the Cow ...

isn't saying about Alice. Forget all this bullshit about "innocent Alice, the nice girl," Alice did stab a man, she did conspire to kill a woman and take her child - and Tamwar's grieving her? He's grieving someone who treated him, essentially, like a cold turd. And Mas still describes Alice as a nice girl? Myra Hindley's neighbours said the same thing about her.

Shabnam certainly is MiniZainab, thinking that the way to Tamwar's happiness is a nice lunch, but nooooooooooo .....

Here we have Jane, the Wise Woman of Walford, the Sacred Cow plopped amongst a household of Muslims, who knows exactly what Tamwar needs - tickets to a stand-up comedy night. And Shabnam's efforts go unnoticed and unappreciated.

I'm not a fan of Shabnam, but I'm even less a fan of the smug, bovine woman full of her own self-importance and quick to make a judgement on a life she voluntarily left behind. 

I want to see Shabnam nut her one in her big fat face.

Good episode.

The Queen of the Night Departs - Review 20.03.2014

And thus she departs ...

Arguably, the most complicated, most nuanced character in the history of the show, and  a brilliant legacy character as well - daughter of Frank Butcher, step-daughter of Pat and Peggy, step-sister to David Wicks and Phil Mitchell. 

Janine is no more. She's gone. And what's more the pity is that the majority of people have watched this show, either from 2000 or from 2006, and they only buy into the myth of "evil" Janine. It's always amazing to find out how many numpties think of Janine as a multiple murderer, which is one thing that she's now.

Barry?

That was an accident, pure and simple. Barry got into Janine's space and she pushed him away. He lost his balance and fell down the mountainside. By the time she got to him, as callous as she seemed, he was dead within minutes, and no ambulance could have saved him.

David, the elderly Jewish man she was about to marry? The guy was sick when she got involved with him. If you want to blame anyone for shocking him into an early grave, blame Ricky and Pat.

Danielle? Come on. She did the show a favour with that drip, who stood there like a deer mesmerised by the headlights of a car, with ample time to move.

In actual fact, we know she only killed once, and that was in self-defence, against a psychopath who was totally out to kill her. And yet, there still exist some people incapable of critical thought who maintain that Janine "drove" Michael to do what he did.

Luddites, psychopaths are born, not made.

As sad as I am to see Charlie Brooks leave the show, because she's the best actress by miles, and sadder yet because I have a feeling that she won't be returning, I'm glad she left before WonderBoy got his seedy little tentacles into her and returned her to grifting pantomime status she held under his tenure and that of his master Santer. Still, he did get his oar in in the final scene and try to make his mark. For that insult, I give him this song ...

The Departure of the Queen of Sheba.

I wanted to give this a 9 or a 10, but I couldn't, simply because this Executive Producer, who was part of the team who turned Janine into a panto bitch, cheated her out of a moment of telling a few much-needed home truths to the chav contingent who inhabit the home she owns and in which she allows them to remain at a fraction of the cost of London rent of a house of that type. In fact, had Janine not bought that house and paid off Pat's debts, Carol, Bianca and her brats would have found themselves in a high-rise on a sink estate.

Some of the home truths she could have thrown back in Carol's sourpussed, self-righteous face? The fact that she bullied Janine's brother completely out of Walford, isolating her at a vulnerable time of her life, when she was in the early stages of pregnancy and grieving Pat. Both Carol and Bianca have never once shown proper gratitude for what Janine did for them. They were often late with the rent, never had a good word to say to her and were overtly rude. Bianca knew Janine as a child and a young adolescent. When Janine returned to Walford in 2000, Bianca was gone and she didn't see Janine again until 2008; from then on, she did everything in her power to turn Ricky against his sister.

As for sitting in judgement of Janine, who the feck are these people? Ian wasn't too good to sleep with her on two occasions; he was unfaithful to Jane on a further occasion. Jane slept with Ian when her first husband lay dying. She then slept with Grant Mitchell whilst with Ian and attempted to seduce Masood. Carol is a bad-tempered bully at the best of times, and when any of her brood or family go against her way, it's the highway for them. At the moment, David's in that situation, for having told the truth. She wanted him to lie in order for Janine to be imprisoned; she was rightly offended at Kat's lie, but she gets the royal hump with David because he tells the truth.

A cat has better morals than Carol.

Both Bianca and Sonia have cheated on their respective husbands, but assume the moral high ground when anyone tries the same against him. Sonia has done nothing but speak to Ian and David as though they were shite since her return, when both these men are not only blood relatives of her sister, they are also the only extended paternal family her daughter has.

And as for the pity party being thrown for poor, innocent Alice, consider this: Alice conspired to commit murder. That little crime, in and of itself, carries a life sentence. And it's been conveniently forgotten also, that Alice plotted with Michael to kidnap Scarlett. That both those crimes, to which Alice confessed, have been blithely thrown out the window in order to give the local yokels the chance to take a pop at Janine was nothing less than a disgrace to the character, the history of the show and her legacy. Granted, most viewers who have watched the show since 2000, know only the cartoon grifter Evil Janine, just as they know Philth the Thug, but anyone who watched before that, watched Janine grow up or Phil when he was the restraining influence on a PTSD Grant, would see why they've turned into the characters they are today. They'd recognise Janine's abandonment issues and her trust issues. Everything about her confession in court as well as that godawful scene in the Vic, the ambiguous final scene where we're left uncertain as to whether or not she'll go to Paris to fetch Scarlett and the appalling fact that she didn't receive Julia's Theme at the end is insulting to the character and the actress. And for anyone who says that she didn't get that theme because she may be back, I point you in the direction of the fragrant hypocrite Jane, who's returned innumerable times since receiving her goodbye theme in March 2011.

What did save this episode and what was poignant was Janine's reconciliation with David. The line of the night goes to him, when Janine asked him why he did what he did for her.

Because you're my sister.

That line and the fact that Janine recognises David for the bounder that he is, his silent acknowledgement that he finds playing paterfamilias more than difficult, and the final farewell of the Butcher children, who still love Janine, was worth more than the insult of the previous scenes. Especially touching was Liam's farewell. It's a shame this show has whitewashed Ricky out of existence, but it's nice to know that Terry is a nice person who sees good in everyone.

David should dump Carol. She'll take his money to pay for her private treatment, but it didn't mean a rat's arse to her that Janine pointed this out to her. That's how entitled she is. And after all of that, she left David with the money. She is a far, far bigger and better person than any of that chav lot who mouth off and mouth breath. I was hoping she would throw her drink in Carol's face.

Another Fine Mess for the Moons.

So that was Alfie's "dark secret"? Is anyone surprised? The Moons are all con artists who fail inevitably, but he'd better be looking for other employment at the moment because the way things are going with Kat, she'll be away for a few months for having perjured herself. And did I not hear anything about Janine withdrawing her charges against Stacey? She left forthwith, so presumably our girl is still wanted.

If this is the best TPTB can come up with for Alfie and for Kat, perhaps it's time they left the show now. We were led to believe that Alfie had "done something bad." To me, that usually means a robbery or smuggled some drugs or something of that sort. It shows you the sort to which TPTB are pitching that show when all they could think of was Alfie marrying someone on the side or having and affair. Proof positive that the people watching the show today and even those writing for it do not know the characters.

The actress who played Nicole will ostensibly sell the burger van, as she can't take it all the way back to Australia with her, but the character was one-dimensional, badly written and badly portrayed. It was obvious from the getgo that this was only going to be a five-minute storyline. What's puzzling me even more is that in the past two episodes, the bookies have figured in background shots on the show. I can't think of a better place for Alfie to work than at a betting shop. But since Sharon's forgotten she owns that, that's a non-starter.

The highlight of that dire storyline was the look Alfie shot poor pitiful Skanky as she sat, practicing her worried look, in the Moons' front room. Kat risked her freedom for that. Oh, well, it looks as though "I'm'avin' twins" is this year's "I'm a dirty girl."
This was a good episode. It was watchable, but it was annoying, because it proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that this EP still does not understand the nuanced character Janine is, but I suppose his motto is "Keep It Simple _________".

I'll miss Charlie Brooks, and I don't expect she'll be back, at least for a long time, if ever; and the show will suffer from her absence.