Trust and Obey - Review:- 04.03.2014

God aside, that's the ethos of EastEnders - trust and obey. The irony is that no one in the show either trusts or obeys. But the lowest common denominator of viewer - the type who insists on posting childish comments on the blog, including threats of violence and death against my family and me (which is against the law, by the way) - trusts and obeys the con artist in charge of this palaver.

P T Barnum was right. There's a sucker born every minute.

The Great Retcon Continues.

Christopher Reason wrote this episode tonight, a writer who's been with the programme since God was a boy, and he should know better. Yes, it featured three long-standing families on the Square, two of whom are blood-related; but he wasn't beyond retconning a situation that he knows damned well couldn't have existed and damned well didn't exist in two particular characters' pasts. 

In fact, he got so twisted in the continual retcon that engulfs the Branning/Jackson family that he actually went back to the future and told the truth for once.

Confusing?

Pay attention. It's all about the 90s, which the rude, foul-mouthed and eternally puerile Millennials absolutely hate.

This is David Beale Wicks:-

The trendy Shoreditch eatery where David took Carol used to be a teenage hang-out cafe in days of yore. In fact, Carol went into great detail about how she caught David kissing some girl whose surname was Dobson in the joint forty years ago.

Stop, stop, STOP all this fucking retconning!

Carol and David were barely into their teens when they bunked up behind the bike sheds at school. Whatever today's emotionally and intellectually immature fanboi/manbois might think, most fourteen year-old boys look like twelve year-olds, and most fourteen year-old girls who are interested in sexual activity don't look for it from fourteen year-old boys. If they hung about a cafe at all back in 1973, he was more than likely some spotty pre-pubescent loser sat in the corner nursing an orange squash.

So there the writing team goes, retconning a past for Carol and David that didn't exist past the one-off on the schoolgrounds that resulted in Bianca.

I hate this romcom played out against the OTT drama of a cancer storyline - original in its presentation, but badly researched and played out for the scare tactic that would never be the real recommendation of the National Health Service.

David doesn't have a clue in hell how to approach the fact that Carol carries the BRCA2 gene. Neither does Carol, because (and do I need to shout this?) even though she carries the gene and has breast cancer, her cancer hasn't spread to her lymph nodes or her second breast. WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?

I'll tell you. It means she has simple common-and-garden Grade II cancer. Serious? Yes, all cancer is serious; but terminal? No. Hardly. The procedure to follow is chemo, followed by a lumpectomy and excision of cancerous flesh around the tumour.

EVEN WITH THE BRCA2 GENE, THIS WOULD ONLY MEAN CLOSE FOLLOW-UPS REGARDING THE HEALTH OF THE SECOND BREAST AND THE OVARIES.

Get the picture? The NHS and NO medical profession would ever condone removal of healthy organs, even as a health precaution. The self-mutilating surgeries performed on such high-profiled people like Angelina Jolie were done electively and privately.

This is all incorporated into this storyline for one purpose and one purpose only - sensationalism. But then, that's a trademark of this producer, but his acolytes love it - especially because it's all about Carol, who's gone from being the distinctly bad-tempered background bitch of the 90s to being the equally bad-tempered, horny middle-aged selfish bint this time around.

When David remarked to Max how selfless Carol was, always putting others first, I wanted to puke. Selfless? Selfish is the better word. Throughout this whole ordeal, it's been hard to have any sympathy for this woman because she's played the diva card to perfection. Why is it in this particular soap opera, that anyone diagnosed with cancer immediately goes into self-pity overdrive, pushing people away and being even more of a general bitch than she usually is?

I don't know what David thought to prove by lying to Bianca and Honker, except that it, once again, contrived a situation whereby there will be great wailing and screaming and gnashing of teeth when the truth comes out.

The other big mistake Reason made occurred in the scene between Max and David, where David, for some reason (and I'll bet Reason is laughing himself silly over inserting a tip to the viewers from the 90s who still remember the truth of the situation) volunteered to tell Max of Carol's result and to advise him to have the test, himself.

David: Who'd have thought it, eh? It wasn't that long ago the Branning boys were beating me up and running me out of town.

FUCKING-A-BINGO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thank you, Christopher Reason. Anyone who watched the reveal, over twenty years ago, enacted in the launderette, between Carol, David, Pat and Pauline, which established the fact that David was Bianca's father, will remember this ...

That Carol's three older brothers beat Max up and effected Pat's departure from the area.

Got that? Carol's three older brothers. That would be Derek, Max and Jack.

But when Max turned up in 2006 and Jack in 2007, it was established that they were Carol's younger brothers. So much younger that, had they participated in beating up David at that time, they'd have each been gnawing at his ankles. In fact, it was re-established in 2011, that it was Derek who did the beating, because Max would have been six and Jack four.

Back to the future, with Mr Reason's clever tip-off to the long-term viewer that he remembers the truth as well. In the days before producers' egos got bigger than their brains, memories and appreciation of a show's history and heritage. It got past the production crew. 

Who's zooming whom?

EastEnd Hillbillies.

The more I see Honker, the more I'm beginning to detest her character. In her own way, she is as vile as Bianca. I thought the remark about Honker's "chesticles" and the tale of Pinky and Perky neither funny nor tasteful, especially since I recally Natalie Cassidy's much-publicised boob job back in 2005, and how she joined the bevy of pumped-up women, from Chrissie to Zoe and others, who paraded around the market in bleak midwinter, with their coats open and their cleavage growing goose-bumps in the cold.

I seem to recall several people remarking that Honker post-boob job bore an uncanny resemblance to Big Brother's first transgender housemate, Nadia.

Another thing which surprised me was that Honker, who's supposed to be an educated and intelligent health professional, chose to trough up processed chicken nuggets to the horde of urchins around the Butcher-Jackson-Beale table, including her own illegally-obtained daughter, at Bianca's request.

I appreciate that Bianca is the Village Idiot in all this, but Honker, who appeared to be feeding her ill-gotten sprog responsibly when we last saw her, has now begun to worship at the altar of chavdom.

You couldn't help but feel sorry for Lola, whom Bianca deftly got out of paying for babysitting the skiving plain-faced Ches-neh Tiff, who was reduced to nicking nappies from the market. Why didn't she just ask Peter to help out? Why approach Jay? Or is the Peter-Lola association another one DTC wants to phase out because it isn't his creation nor are the characters his babies?

In watching all this interaction between Ian and the Butchers, after Ian's surmised that Liam just might be the father of little ladyboy Hairy Cindy the Greek's child, I couldn't help but thinking that Ian had best hope this not to be. Why? Because Cindy the Greek is no relation to Ian. He has no responsibility on this entitled and spoiled child who's imposed himself herself on his family. But if Liam were the father, then the child becomes blood of Ian's blood - his great-niece or nephew and the great-great granchild of Pete Beale.

If I felt anything, I felt sadness tonight for TJ, who appears to be a serious student, showing his father his paper with a high grade, and telling Terry that his teacher thought TJ had a good shot at A-Levels and university. It was also telling that TJ wanted Terry to tell Nikki, his mum, but not Bianca; TJ is astute enough to know Bianca's ignorance would have no appreciation for his academic achievement, and the kid, himself, knows that such ambition is all for nought with the ticking time bomb sat across the Square. 

I'll bet that hairy little bitch does a runner and leaves him with the baby. I'd like to see that, because it would mean seeing less of a pointless character.

Still, the other good thing to come from this incident, was Sharon and Ian talking, Ian confiding in Sharon about Cindy's pregnancy, and Sharon talking to Ian, to a certain degree, about her problems with Phil. 

I'm not sure what she was saying, though, when she referenced Arthur and Pauline being unable to turf Michelle out when she got pregnant, in comparison to how she keeps going back to Phil and then comparing the two with Ian's circumstances with Cindy. The most truthful remark came from Ian when he told Sharon that having Cindy the Greek around was just another painful reminder of her mother.

Ian should just call Social Services and leave her to it.

The Bitchell Blisters.

Right, so now we know about Phil's feelings toward Sharon. Neither one trusts the other, and if Phil thought about it, and maybe he did, he'd realise that Sharon's mistrust of him goes right back to the wake of Sharongate, when Phil threw her under the proverbial bus for casting the blame on her for their affair. And he doesn't trust her, not because of the latest scam, but because he knows, from what she ultimately pulled with Grant, that she's capable of unpredictability.

He also knows that she has a high moral code, and, as he admitted, like Pat and Peggy, she's one of a handful of people who could and will stand up to him and dish him his own shit back. In short, he respects  her. That's why he backs her up in her request that Ronnie leave the house.

And that's down to Phil's own interests too. As he said tonight, the moment a body pops up and presents itself at Phil's door, she's on her own. As well, he hates people who rip him off. He does things. Sharon tried to rip him off, and he coerced her into signing a joint contract. He knows Ronnie ripped him off by stealing the money he got from the sale of the Vic and buying the gym; Phil is also astute enough to know that Ronnie is fronting this one out. From Roxy's tales of her behaviour in Eye-BEE-fer, he knows she's putting up a front.

(Put a blonde wig on it and what do you have?)

Phil's worried about his own hide, because Ronnie left a clever trail right to his door - the phone, the car which would have had a logbook issued to the Arches, Phil's DNA all over the bag containing the money, as well as Carl's blood. And even though Ronnie says there's no body, there is. It's rotting in the boot of a half-crushed car, and it won't take long for flies and bodily fluids and a noticeable stench to make itself known. Anyway, she's spooked about the phone and spooked enough that Sharon knows.

The other interesting worm to turn is Roxy, whose conversation with Jay on the swings at the playground was highly symbolic. Roxy has been treated like a child all her life, not because, as some sage soul purporting to be a psychologist on a well-known bullypen suggested, Ronnie loves Roxy. Ronnie is a psychopath. Psychopaths love only themselves. They do, however, obsess about other people - as Michael obsessed about Scarlett, so Ronnie obsesses about controlling Roxy, keeping her childlike and dependent on her.

But Roxy's beginning to twig Ronnie's game and wants her independence - as far as buying back Janine's house, which used to be Archie's.

NuAmy talks. Please, can we have the old one back?This one reminds me of a brat version of the awful kid who fronted Little House on the Prairie.

A mini version of the awful Melissa Gilbert.

Would you all shut up, I'm trying to watch television!

Well, at least she's Roxy's daughter.

I'll stake a guess and say that Ronnie will leave Walford before Sharon and in a box.