The One and Only - Review:- 14.03.2014

If there's ever EastEnders:The Musical, this would be Stacey's song:-

Because she is, you know - the one and only for the Messiah ...

(Yes, we know that too, but he doesn't) ... for DTC, Stacey is  the one and only. Ronnie will be toast in a year's time. There's no way anyone truly evil (sorry, fangirls, but Roswell Ronnie, the Botoxed Bitch is brown bread) would be allowed to stay on the show - and, bitches, please, shut up about Janine being evil. She's not. Shirley might feature prominently in Boy Wonder's plan, but he's a StaceyBoi at heart, hiding behind one of the many and varied Stacey avatars floating about.

The single biggest mistake to his ego this producer has done, at the expense of the licence payer and the reputation of what should be the foremost ensemble piece on television, is to bring this one trick pony of an actress, who'd run out of roles playing Stacey-Slater-by-Another-Name, so now she returns to haunt a show where she'll do much the same of what she did before only with people who have different names.

At least, cut the crap and stop having this snide little bitch walk around sad-eyed and with a face begging people to pity her. The eternal victim got old ages ago.

Stacey Stacey Stacey Stacey Stacey Stacey Stacey Stacey Stacey Stacey Stacey.

Tonight, courtesy of Katie-Fuckwit-I'll-Do-Anything-the-EP-Says-Awful-Writer-Douglas, we saw a vision of what DTC intends this show to be, and succinctly, that's Stacey. And if it's not Stacey, the storylines will concern Ronnie - and sometimes Shirley, but not as much, because ... well, because Shirley ain't no purdy woman. Shirley is more of the scrag end of a tough piece of meat topped by a bit of old rope.

Did anyone have a sense of déja vu, tonight? Feel like 2009 or 2010? When it wasn't about Stacey (who didn't appear until the very end and copped yet another duff-duff), it was about Roswell Ronnie.

Show-stopping, jaw-dropping, archtypically hypocritical line of the night goes to Kat, who seems to have taken leave of her senses ...

Stacey wants me to wifdraw me statement because she's doesn't want an innocent gel to go down fer murder.

Now that's downright interesting. How big of Stacey to be so concerned about the innocent cousin of the man she condemned to die branded as a murderer, when she isn't concerned at all about tarnishing Bradley's reputation.

But, we need to remember, it's what Bradley wanted. Like Jesus Christ, he died for Stacey's sins.

It's preposterous the sway this porcine-featured, feral-mouthed little chav holds over various people resident in the Square. Max is willing to see his son forever deemed a murderer; he's willing for his niece to spend years behind bars - not entirely innocent, mind you, but certainly innocent of killing a man. And Kat forgets all her promises she made to Alfie about never lying or having secrets, only to sneak around, plot with Max and commit perjury just to have that lying, entitled, little piece of shit back in Walford.

But the entire Stacey vignette tonight was covered in panic.

Panic! Panic! Panic! Panic! Panic!

Panic because the sow had disappeared. 

Interesting to note that she had a bust-up with Jean, arguing about wanting Kat to withdraw her statement. Allegedly, Saint Stacey wanted to do what was good and proper, and influence Kat into withdrawing her lie, whilst Jean - who lives with an ex-copper who is straight as die - wants Kat to lie for Stacey's freedom. It would be nice to know what Ollie, who always impressed me as being a man of strong moral principles, should think of this situation, much less of playing mein host to a cold-blooded murderer.

It's also no surprise that when Stacey ran off, she turned to the one person she could trust to act in her interests and favour without any qualms about going against his family's feelings or stitching up his niece or further stitching up his son's reputation.

Max.

Sound familiar? Max and Stacey in a hotel room - Max paying, of course. They share a kiss on Monday. Haven't we been here before? This is what I mean in that everything that's done with Skanky Slater this time around, will have been done before.

And how's this as food for thought? Carol is worried about Alice. David points out to her that Janine is family also, and so she is, being David's step-sister, the aunt to Bianca's children; but Janine, being Bradley's widow, is also family too.

Go figure.

Her Way or The Highway.

Here's a song for Carol. It's appropriate.

I'm actually waiting for Carol to turn into the Incredible Hulk ...

Chemo patients have to take steroids during their course of treatment, in order to keep their body bulk up. I guess Carol's been chomping away, because her natural aggression is worse than ever before.

I've never been a Carol fan, and I'm hard put to see why any man would want to spend any length of time with such a miserable, mean-spirited, tyrannical old boot as she. The most profound thing to come out of this particular storyline is Bianca acknowledging that Carol is where Bianca's bad attitude, rudeness, immaturity and selfishness comes from.

And, please ... let's get this myth of Carol's selflessness out of the way. Carol, like all of the Brannings, is one of the most selfish, self-obsessed characters on the show. She hides behind the self-sacrificing earth madonna figure to manipulate and bully anyone who doesn't see things the way Carol sees them, and she's got enough of the diva in her to foist herself into the centre the situation. This cancer storyline has featured Carol, but in the wrong way. As much as she's pushed attention away from her, she's relished it, all the same; and she's only worried about her daughters' test results in the way it might reflect back to her.

As one commentator on a forum remarked, Carol was more animated and interested in David's engagement ring, really, than she was Alice's fate. Because all Carol did about Alice was run around, bully people and mouth off. She didn't challenge Kat's statement, by going to the police and questioning it, alerting Alice's defence to this new witness statement. All she did was run about the Square, flap her arms and squeal Alice Alice Alice.

It's going to be interesting to see her reaction - and Bianca's because she genuinely believes Kat (but then Bianca's the Village Idiot) ...

... to the fact that Max stood in the kitchen and told a bald-faced lie - albeit laced with more than a few home truths.

Bianca believes Kat's story about going to look for Michael and glancing through Janine's kitchen window, saw Alice kill Michael. Max backs Kat's story also, even though he knows she's lying, and he backs the lie too. But only Max is so nuanced that he can take an obvious lying situation and make a home truth of it.

Because while it's true that Alice is family, as Max remarks, two years ago, they didn't even know she existed. She's someone who's related to them by blood, whom they still don't know. Apart from a few murmurs of sympathy, Carol did fuck all to comfort and sustain Alice in the wake of Derek's death. It's also clear that Bianca values her friendship with Kat more than she values her family ties to Alice. Oh well, you can't choose your relatives, as they say.

What amazes me more than anything is how David can love such a miserable old scrote as Carol and why he stays around her when she treats him like shit. Carol has never once stopped to think that David has kin in Walford that have absolutely nothing at all to do with the Brannings. He's Ian's brother and Janine is his stepsister.

I thought it was absolutely mete that he remind Carol of this tonight - after having spoken with his brother, he came to his senses and realised that Janine was the product of her upbringing - a vulnerable and messed-up kid. After such honesty with Ian the day before, he's brutally honest with Carol now - although I was hard-pressed to hear him admit that he felt bad about blackmailing Janine (remember it was Carol, who was adamant that she wouldn't touch that money, when she's done nothing but since) and to  hear him admit that this whole venture was only to scare and humiliate her for refusing to loan him money.

That encounter between Carol and David was one of two good scenes in this woefully inadequate episode, which stank of Stacey. It showed how hopelessly intolerant and narrow-minded Carol was. I was hoping, when David identified Janine as family, he would have gone one step further and reminded Carol that not only was his brother Ian, the uncle of Bianca and the great-uncle to her childred, but that Janine, was also Bianca's children's aunt and Janine was the sole reason Carol and Bianca were able to remain in Pat's house.

And speaking of Pat, Carol proved how much she wrongly read Pat's character. David hit the nail on the head when he said Pat would have moved heaven and earth to keep Janine out of prison (and nothing would have pleased Pat more than to stitch up one of Derek Branning's brats).

The removal of her engagement ring signified how much of a tool Carol is. She wants David on her terms, and she wants him to revolve, like a satellite of worship, around her self-centred sun.

Who Dat?

OK, here's what I don't believe:-

• that Charlie Cotton is Dot's grandson
• that he's a policeman
• that Nick is dead

I also don't get why everyone is going on and on about Dot being without family, when the Brannings dote on her. Abi is certainly closer to her than she is to Cora. Max was always visiting her in hospital, and she was certainly close to Jack.

It's so obvious that this is a scam, and she's given him all the ammunition he needs by despatching him to Dartford to pick up the "death certificate," which will no doubt be a scam.

The Nick-or-Nick-Satellite-Scams-Dot storyline is so re-hashed, it doesn't interest me. Nor does the musical comedy Brummie who plays "Charlie."

Cow and Gate.

Jane gets more annoying each day. She's clearly using Masood and sending out all sorts of wrong signals to him, whilst interfering in Ian's everyday life. I feel sorry for Denise, and I feel sorry for Ian, being talked into turning Scarlett's into an up-market version of McKlunky's complete with him commanding the kitchen decked out in a "Kiss the Chef" comedy hat.

So Ian neglected to procure Jake's set of keys when he left. And once again, the competition between Jane and Ian for the prize of most benevolent hypocrite, begins again. It wasn't enough for Jane to condescend to offer Jake money for a hostel - money he's most likely to spend on booze - Ian has to offer him his sofa in his home.

Turning back the hands of time is one thing, so now we have 2008 once again. Jane's getting back with Ian, Denise will turn miserable again, and Jake is a piss poor Jase, who'll get involved with Roxy and end up, dying with his cojones stuffed down his throat.

The Twisted Sister.

The actual star of the show tonight was not Roswell Ronnie or Skanky Slutter, but Phil Mitchell.

Steve McFadden was at his best. Sam Womack, on the other hand, was distinctly flat and off-key. Not only was the kidnapping amateurish (the only praise it's getting is from the one brain-celled numpties on Facebook), but the aftermath showed quite clearly how patently stupid the Bitchell Blisters are.

I have a question:- How on earth did Adam get Ronnie's cellphone number? Phil was pretty lackadaisical in offering benign support to Ronnie before - after all, she promised  him that she was going to run the gym and repay the money she stole from him; but now her misdeed has landed squarely on Phil's doorstep.

Her killing of Carl resulted in the kidnap of Lexi, and although the discovery and the turn-over of the child was pretty lame, you have to wonder if this really is the last you'll see of Adam and Nora. I hope not. Nora is a hard piece of work, and I'll bet she could put the mockers on Roswell. True, Carl wasn't perfect, and she thought him weak, but he was  her son, and she will surmise, as Phil stated, that Ronnie's revelation that Carl was dead would meant that Ronnie killed him, or at least, knew who did. As his mother, she'll want closure, meaning a body in a coffin of some sort. This isn't the last we'll see of them.

The best scene of the night was that between Ronnie and Phil at the Arches. If anyone ever thinks that Phil Mitchell would do murder, here's your proof that he wouldn't. He used the same words with Ronnie that he used with Ben ...

You crossed the line.

Except with Ben, when the boy begged for Phil's help, after Phil reminded him that he'd get tried and convicted as an adult, he chose to do what he thought any father would do - any skewed father, that is - and hide Ben's guilt.

Ronnie doesn't ask, she expects that Phil will protect her because she's family, but tonight Phil made it abundantly clear that if this crime crops up on his doorstep, she's on her own. It's owt to do with him. He sees through Ronnie's front and has done all along. She's veering out of control.

And now we have Aleks entering into the frame, offering his services for sorting out whatever "man trouble" Ronnie has. Well, we all know what will happen there. Isolated character. No family on the Square. Aleks is brown bread. Ronnie won't kill him, but she'll still be responsibe for his eventual death.

I wonder if she'll kill Lucy?