The Right Thing at the Wrong Time - Review:- 28.02.2014

I hate to start a blog this way, but this is to the person who anonymously left me a threat of slamming a brick in my face, please realise this - and this is not Dominic Treadwell-Collins making up the law to suit a storyline - any threat against a person or that person's property is against the law. Any threat of violence is against the law as well, whether in person or on the internet. Just for your information, I have alerted the police to the comments made on this blog, and whoever was clever enough to make that threat, which went directly into spam content to make tracking IP identities easier for the authorities, just might be having a visit from the bizzies shortly.

Did it make you feel big to threaten? Do you think it scared me? The obvious irony of this situation is that I am told that I am the one who intimidates. Some people really need to realise what intimidation, and reverse snobbism in defending those who intimidates, really means - and that goes for people who work for and in tandem with police authorities.

This hasn't been a very good week for EastEnders, although the cheeky, chirpy kid with a new toy, Dominic Treadwell-Collins, would never admit it. The prolonged return of the star of the show, Stacey Slater, has been one big epic fail. The ratings haven't moved one whit, no matter how hard DS's perennial cheerleader dan2008 or their resident court jester (hyuck hyuck) the insipidly stupid xTonix big it up. 

Last night's didn't even top 7 million, and it was still 2 million viewers off a very poor Coronation Street. Stacey's return didn't result in bums on seats. If anything, her return has been annoying to most people except the StaceyGirls, that select group of Millennial manbois, found in particular places over cyberspace who make it their life's aim to hide behind avatars of Lacey Turner as Stacey and passive-aggressively bully anyone offering criticism of the show, itself, its Messiah DTC or the Holy Self-Perpetuating Virgin Victim, Saint Stacey.

You know who you are, and you're free to say what you want, but others are not, no matter how much certain people might preach tolerance and freedom of speech, these people are always the first to deny it - most likely due to their own insecurities.

It's Yesterday Once More.

Felt like it, didn't it? Boy, I reckon all the StaceyBois and their DS cheerleader dancing.queen felt just like it was the good old days, which for them, would mean 2007. Apart from Alfie and Kat, almost everything was in place, the prime movers being Stacey and Max.

You see this was the the sole aim of this week. It was DTC's own personal media orgasm - to have the week culminate in Max and Stacey on screen together. a Stax supporter's wet dream.

But you know what this whole thing was? Rehash. Nothing but pure, unadulterated rehash. 

I'd known from the moment he hopped back into Elstree, that this manchild in the promised land had just the remit he wanted to turn back the hands of time. Characters returning, some with new heads and new personalities to match - cf: Shabnam the religious bigot - as well as familiar faces who existed prior to the watches of Kirkwood and Newman, are getting airtime in abundance now.

Yep, last night, we got yet another scene of Stacey weeping, her porcine little eyes looking all sad and worried, that grimace on her face which doubles for a worried, pained look as well as a smile and those demonic, flared nostrils. All that was missing was the yellow post-it pasted to her botoxed forehead proclaiming I am a victim. None of this is my fault. Love me.

I can say this now without impunity. Lacey Turner looks awful. She's lost so much weight that her face looks hazard and rather than looking like a young woman in her mid-twenties, she looks well past thirty, with bags under her eyes to boot. Gone are the chipmunk cheeks and also the bugs bunny front teeth. Well, at least she didn't have the same cosmetic dentist that poor Jasmine Banks had.

And once again, there was a contrived set-up for Alfie to be cast as the bad guy. 

But the focal point was the bedroom scene - actually a platonic reminiscence of all things past - between Max and Stacey in her old bedroom at the Slater Arms. This followed a ridiculously maudlin scene of Stacey being convinced that Luke had gone to the police to report her murder of Archie. (Jeez, does this mean she would have actually confessed? Because the only way Stacey can not actually be prosecuted for Archie's murder is if she confesses to the deed, herself). 

No such luck. An insistent banging at the door of the Slaters' convinces her and the ludicrously stupid Kat that the police are on the threshold, which prompts a craven bid by Treadwell-Collins and Co to get some pitiful sympathy for Stacey as she calls her five year-old-playing-a-three-year-old daughter into the foyer to tell her how much she loves her. Cue Hearts and Flowers ...

All that, for the entrance of Big Mo. (Hey, it's supposed to be an injection of comedy, dontcha know? Har-dee-har-har-har ... Well, Dominic laughed.)

But it's not long before the Big Max arrives, as Stacey scurries upstairs to cry some more, and Max forces himself past Kat, who's shown nothing since her return but concern for Stacey.

As Alfie told her in the kitchen, he's a mug, and he's been a mug for her from the getgo, but not anymore. He stayed up all night, worried about her, and when he hears what Janine's proposal was, he's adamantly against it - that Kat should lie and say that Alice killed Michael so Janine would walk free and Stacey could return to Walford as herself.

After Alfie reminded Kat that Janine had killed - well, technically, she was accused of killing - Michael, his cousin and Tommy's father, he lowered the double-edged sword of a comment that was intended to make sure Kat sat up and took notice ...

Nobody deserves to get away with murder, Kat.

No, they don't. Not Janine. Not Ronnie. Not whoever will kill Lucy Beale. And certainly not skank-arsed Stacey Slater.

But Kat doesn't see that, and she sneaks away, lying to Alfie yet again after swearing never to lie anymore, in order to give a false statement to the police about Alice murdering Michael.

Meanwhile, upstairs, we have a trip down the Stax Memory Lane ...

First, there was the ubiquitous mention of Bradley, who's become almost Christlike in Max's mind for having died for Stacey's mortal sin ...

Max misses Bradley. Bradley's death has left a void in Max's life. But he doesn't miss him as much as he loves Stacey, which was the purpose of this entire reminiscence. Max loves Stacey more than anything, which is why he goes about the goofy, dorky retcon of his romantic history since she left.

• Vanessa dumped him. (Wrong, he dumped her).
• Tanya dumped him (only when she found he was married).
• And Kirsty dumped him (finally true, but only after he dumped her.)

This was nothing more than a subtle nudge nudge wink wink to Stacey that he was now single, footloose and fancy free. In fact, Max has been doing some strange things by his own standards, ever since he found out Stacey was about.

Some of what he's done is long overdue and good - like kicking those doss house freeloaders, Cora the Bora and Dexter, out of the house. We got that warning the other day, with the state of the kitchen looking like a rancid bomb site. We got a hint of it the second day, when Max began to clean the place, himself; and we got the ultimatum, when he confronted Cora, after binning Dexter's rubbish, reminding her that she was no longer related to him, and Dexter never had been. He wanted them evicted by the end of the day.

One wonders if this would ever have come about, had Skanky Slater showed up. Probably not, but Max puts Stacey's brief bout of guilt to one side by assuring her that Bradley wanted to die for her. Bradley the Sin-Eater. Pardon me, but did he willingly jump to his death? And who could live with one person's assumed guilt as well as his death around their neck? Well, Stacey, obviously, because she was ready to land on her feet with Luke.

And now she has to leave again, this time to go to see Screaming Jean, which - again, doesn't make sense - because Jean is living with a retired member of the Metropolitan Police Force, and you can bet your bottom dollar that old Ollie won't take kindly to a murderer sleeping under his roof.

But here's the rub about why this episode showed the right thing at the wrong time - Jake Wood played a blinder last night. The old, complicated, nuanced Max Branning was back, even though he didn't surface until the very last scene.

DTC has ruined Kat and Alfie yet again, undoing all the work Lorraine Newman had done in repairing the couple from Bryan Kirkwood's nightmare, to make Kat not only unlikeable but supremely stupid once again.

Returning to the Square just in time to see Stacey leaving in a cab, she wails that she's made good her promise. She's confessed that she's seen Alice murder Michael.Now Janine will drop her charges, and poor pitiful Stacey can come home. For her. For Kat.

But then it's shoved in her face that this isn't just about Kat. It's about other factors as well, as - once again - Alfie is allowed temporary custody of his testicles in order to remind Kat that he now knows where he and their children stand in her pecking order. Stacey comes first, and he implores Max to say something, as she's just condemned Alice to a life behind bars.

But Max tells Kat she's done the right thing!

Eh?

Look, I'm no defender of Alice, and she's far from innocent in this as she did plot to kill Janine and to take her baby; plus she did stab Michael. But Max is putting a skank whore like Stacey in front of his family. Here's the man who was ready to walk out on his children in 2010 to be with Stacey, who's thrown his son's reputation away for this little whore, and who would do the same to either of his daughters. (Max was no less than honest in telling Stacey that he couldn't look after Lily, if she went to prison; he couldn't even look after his own children.) On the one side, you have Carol, cancer-ridden and fighting for Alice's freedom, and on the other, you have Max, willing to throw her under the bus for a real murderer.

Max is a dick, and so is Dominic Treadwell-Collins for pushing this tripe on the public at the public's remit. He'd do well to remember that most of the StaceyBois don't pay a licence fee; it's their parents.

MarketGate and Cindy the Greek.

When you faint, you fall whatever way you fall, and sometimes, it's not attractive. Cindy the Greek, the teenaged boy in drag, whose balls are in serious danger of dropping and who looks as though she could start shaving at any moment, lay gracefully on the floor, suffering from alcohol poisoning after six pints of lager.

Boo-hoo. She's got to go to Portugal with Nana Williams and Gina, who happen to be her legal guardians. Ian owes her nothing. She wormed her way into staying in the house and she's done nothing but abuse his hospitality, which entitles her to sympathy from the resident Court Jester, Tina - hardly, the role model to inspire something from teenaged pregnancy ...

It also proved a vehicle for involving Honker, who - I suppose - feels it her place to lecture Ian on his parenting abilities of a child who's no relation to him at all and for whom he bears no responsibility, based solely on the fact that Ian actually does consider Honker family, as she's married to his cousin.

But from the getgo, Honker is speaking to Ian as if he's a piece of dog doo on her shoe, which is the manner in which she treats her husband as well. 

It's obvious they're heading us in the direction of Honker and the increasingly annoying retard that is Tina becoming a lesbian couple, mindless of the fact that Honker was at her most self-righteous and deplorably unlikeable worst when she was involved in the lesbian affair with Gnomi. So I guess, she'll be found to carry the BRCA2 gene, get her wobbly bits whacked off and then take Tina as her bitch.

Oh, and I hated the tip to the past regarding Rebecca's adoption for two reasons - one, because there is no way in hell under British law that a birth parent can get an adopted child back, and second, it hinted broadly at the possible return of Zsa Zsa into the Carter mix. I'm tired of Tina proclaiming to the world that she was, at one and the same, a lesbian and a mother bad enough to leave her child on the Underground. And that was a hardy-har-har moment too.

And speaking of regression, Billy Mitchell's back stealing from someone who's given him a job - and that someone is the father of the boy who's his granddaughter's fella. Peter will be impressed when Billy gets caught. Again. And Ian is not as benevolent as Janine.

Tripey episode totally deserving of the low viewing figures it received. As for the StaceyBois objecting to the fact that not everyone is glad to see Stacey back, I say this:

Look at the viewing figures, sunshine. You might be part of a very small discussion forum which pays lip service to promoting discussion but who really promotes incessant passive aggressive bullying of anyone who disagrees with your thoughts, but people are voting with their remotes, and they are turning off. The world doesn't revolve around the sunlight you think is emanating from your entitled Millennial arses.