Tonight's episode was one of the many reasons why the programme is failing to get casual viewers back on a permanent basis.
Look at the writer.
Katie Douglas.
I thought she'd left. At least that was what everyone said last year. Even when one of her episodes cropped up in December, it was waved away with the excuse that it had been written months before she'd actually decided to leave.
Well, how many "months before" is "months before?" Because someone who is arguably the weakest writer to have penned an episode ever seems to be writing still for the show.
Don't get me wrong; the show had its moment. Its one moment, but that was hardly enough to sustain the rest of the episode, which veered crazily into the realms of fantasy.
Sort this shit out into some consistency. Either give us something for everyone and be consistently good; or appeal to the Millennials of typically lower intelligence and headuparseitis and be consistently latter-day Brookside.
But either way, get shot of Katie Douglas.
Carol the Unbearable.
Oh dear. Another cancer cold, I see. The lady with the obvious wig told the truth. Your hair falls out after the first treatment, especially with cytoxin, which is the common chemo drug for breast cancer. It falls out in clumps. Yes, we've seen Carol's thin, but what make-up have done is just ask the actress to go several days without washing her hair. Greasy hair sticks to the skull and looks thinner, and Lindsey Coulson has fine hair anyway.
And Carol is eating. And drinking alcohol. Not only are you not supposed to drink alcohol with cytoxin in your bloodstream, you certainly don't feel like wolfing down toast and marmalade, nor do you feel like running - shit, you can hardly walk for the nausea, the weakness, the puking and the diarrhea.
Instead, we're treated to Carol the Branning Bully, dashing over to the car lot to make sure Max is going to court to support poor, innocent Alice - you know, the one who plotted to murder Janine and take her child, the one who assaulted Michael - and wave her second-hand engagement ring in his face. Then she stopped by her sprint through the market to passive-aggressively bully Tamwar into coming to court, again to support poor, innocent Alice - you know, the one who used him like a tool and shat on him from a great height in order to be with that scrote pyschopath Michael Moon?
Why should Tamwar even want to help Alice, considering the way she treated him? He doesn't owe her the skin off his arse. To Tamwar, however, goes the highest accolade and line of the night for what he said to Carol the Cancer-Ridden Bully:-
Leave. Me. Alone.
It's easy to see where Bianca gets her immaturity and her attitude from; but that's not all.
I know what Kat has done is wrong, and I'm the last one to want to see Skanky Slater team up with Slut Slutter again, but (a) Alice isn't innocent and (b) what the fuck does Carol think she's achieving by body-slamming Kat and body-slamming her in the belly area, where she's carrying her twins. This is a pregnant woman she's assaulting, and when Bianca turns out to be the voice of reason in that vignette, you know something is seriously wrong.
Look, I understand from whence Bianca's coming. She barely knew Joey and Alice as relatives, the way Dot barely knows the stranger who's shown up at her door claiming to be a grandson. These people were strangers, and Bianca owes them nothing. She's reasonable enough to hold Kat's friendship as more important than someone related by blood whom she barely knew. In fact, by saying that the problem is one between Carol and Bianca, she's literally saying that Alice should be left to her own devices. Or maybe she's just mature enough - hard to believe, I know - to remember that Janine is also her relation, the aunt of her children and the woman who made it possible for Bianca to remain in her home.
Consider this: Miss Morality Carol knew perfectly well that David came about his windfall as a result of blackmailing Janine. She listened to the tape, and handed it to Joey. Further, she heard David confess how he came by the money and said that it was wrong at the time, that she wanted no part of it. She's canny enough to know that blackmail is a crime, and if she didn't want anything to do with the profits of crime, then why didn't she add to the police's information by saying David had blackmailed Janine?
I'll tell you why. Her saying that exonerates Janine and incriminates David and leaves poor pitiful bitch Alice to rot. So Carol is just as big a moral hypocrite. Imagine her reaction when she finds out that Max condoned Kat's lie to get Stacey off the hook. That's probably what prompted her reaction to David telling the truth on the witness stand. Because that's what he did.
He knew he had to say that he'd asked Janine for money because the brief would have brought up the fact that he seemed to have availed himself of some sort of fortune in order to become a man of property overnight. They'd certainly know about that. In a pinch, Janine could have told them about her plans to buy the Vic, Phil's price increase and even got Phil subpaoena'd to attest to the fact. Phil has no axe to grind with Janine; he'd have told the truth about Janine selling off assets in order to buy the property, and then the finger would have been pointed to David for taking those assets.
Finally, it's odd, but what he said at the end of his testimony was actually true. He wanted to scare Janine. He intimated that as she was being led away, under arrest. He shouted out that it wasn't he who had done that.
In other words, Carol got pissed off at David for telling the truth - rather, she wanted David to lie in order to get Janine imprisoned, totally ignoring everything Alice did in the bargain. Too bad Jasmyn Banks was too busy getting fitted with Hollywood veneers to put in an appearance. I'd have loved to see her shit herself when confronted with what she did in the dock.
Basically, Carol's pissed that someone's on hand to lie for Janine, but no one's there to lie for Alice. Even Joey didn't show up.
And, please, Honker ... just go. Munter you are and munter you shall remain. Natalie Cassidy is a shite actress, and now that she's got a regular income off the remit of the licence fee payer, she's putting on weight again, if the roll of fat protruding over the top of her trousers was anything to go buy.
The Fabulous Beale Boys.
Everything that was bad about this episode was redeemed in that one scene at the cemetary and the church between Ian and David.
Forget getting Simon and David together, this is the sibling relationship that counts. To watch twenty years of enmity disappear in a matter of minutes during a brief reminiscence of their father was a thing of subtle beauty. At last, David and Ian are able to joke gently about the Cindy affair, and it bears wondering, something both were thinking, if the two would have got along had they both been a part of Pete's life. Ian really connected with David the moment he told him how he had to fight Pete against Pete's ambition for him to be a barrow boy, which resonated with David in his run-ins with Pat.
When David told Ian that he'd always admired him for putting his family first and when he encouraged him in his business ventures, it was the most honest thing David has said since his return. He's more honest with his brother than he's ever been with Carol, but then Ian's more honest with his brother than he's ever been with Denise ... or even Jane the Cow this time around.
That was a beautiful scene. Somewhere, Lou is smiling.
Pick a Blister, Watch Her Bleed.
The worst part about tonight's episode was anything to do with the Blisters. Now that Roswell Ronnie ...
... has appropriated Lola as her latest blonde toy who has a baby for her to fantasise about, we can watch Roswell Ronnie talk baby talk to two grown women in an attempt to infantalise them.
I can never look at either Ronnie or Roxy again after that attempt by Ronnie on Tuesday night to booze up Roxy and snog her full-on. I've always said that the Mitchell Sisters should go out on the storyline of Ronnie, who's clearly sexually obsessed with Roxy, committing that ultimate act of control and raping Roxy, only for Roxy to kill her.
That would get rid of them both.
Roxy's happy because Ronnie Dearest is buying Roxy a new toy - Janine's house; and she proves how entitled she is by making a tasteless joke to Lola about Michael bleeding all over the kitchen. Does she know that Carl's blood is ground into the wood grain of Terry's kitchen floor? His DNA, and Ronnie's, is all over that place.
So now Nora's sussed the big lie, she sends Adam around to put the mockers on the situation.
The kidnap scene was laughable. Honestly, it was more amateur than the punch thrown between Liam and TJ last week. It was done almost in slow motion. No grabbing at the man, Ronnie banging weakly on the window of the SUV and dumbarse Roxy just standing with her mouth agape and never thinking of taking the registration. They were too engrossed in gazing at their lesbian-incest love nest to think about a child belonging to a lesser Mitchell.
What an embarassment of bitches!
The Queen of the Square.
Just seeing Janine tonight made me realise how much I'm going to miss her. She didn't utter a word, but her face was just a myriad of expression, which showed you, at once, her confidence masking her vulnerability, coupled with her abject contempt of Caroj,who's the world's worst ingrate for everything Janine has done for her family.
The show will miss Charlie Brooks immensely. But don't worry, Skanky Slater has run away from Creepy Jean (probably because Creepy Jean is living with the Old Bill) and is on her way to Walford, bearing her eternal victim face. At least the StaceyBois will be pleased.
Yuck.
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