Someone pointed out today that EastEnders must be closing in on Coronation Street, because the Monday night figures between the 7:30 showing of Corrie and the 8:00 run of EastEnders showed almost the equivalent number of viewers, as well as the 8:30 showing of Corrie.
Someone reckoned that this proved how bad Corrie was becoming. Well, no. Rather, it proves how much EastEnders is improving, because this isn't something new. This is the way Monday nights used to be - with EastEnders sandwiched between two showings of Corrie, you naturally switched from Corrie to EastEnders and back again ... because both were equally watchable.
That's called history, Millennials. It didn't just happen in your time.
Mother? Not Mother.
There are con artists ...
... and then, there's what we saw last night. More than the insipid goings-on in the wake of the killing of a walking skeleton, the mystery that is Not-Charlie Cotton intrigues me more. As another viewer of long-standing observed to me earlier today, one can't imagine DTC allowing two storylines as potentially gripping as the Skeletor killing and Not-Charlie Cotton to run side by side, in the event that the Cotton bit outshone Lucy's lashing.
So, it stands to reason that the two are intertwined - not that that's obvious to the viewer now. It's patently not obvious to the Millennial viewers who are incapable either of critical thought or respect for history, but the two will come together to reveal who quashed the stick insect who loped about Walford and treated people like shit.
So Dot has now found out by taking the mountain to Mohammed in the form of a tupperware dish of stew, that Not-Charlie Cotton is most definitely not Charlie Cotton and indubitably not DC Charlie Cotton.
I'll say this - one thing Not-Charlie Cotton is and that's someone who's always prepared. I wonder if this psychopath were ever a Boy Scout, because I thought the action which took place after Dot confronted Not-Charlie with her discovery was a cleverly thought-out contingency plan.
Not-Charlie must have got the measure of Dot pretty quickly to know that at some point, she'd go digging for information of some sort. His protestations of authenticity were full of holes - from the story that he was so deeply imbedded in undercover work that his colleagues had to deny all knowledge of him (WTF?) to suddenly suggesting Dot call his superior,a feat that didn't add up, especially since the local copshop were, effectively, supposed to be in denial about his existence.
And, of course, that led him to discover he'd "lost" his mobile, which Dot had conveniently stolen.
Not-Charlie is not stupid. He wanted Dot to find the phone because he wanted her doubts to be calmed by the only person whom Dot would believe - Not-Charlie's not mother.
But before that, instead of discussing her dilemma with an old friend, tried and true, she had to discuss her fears and apprehensions with .... (fanfare)
... the Queen of the Scrotes, herself ... Shirley.
Not Sharon. Shirley.
Sharon's suspicions would be immediately aroused. She'd call in Phil, and together, they'd give Not-Charlie the real third degree, but Queen Shirley has to play the analyst and go along with Dot's plan of calling Mummy. As someone who isn't a Shirley fan and who resented the way she assumed guard of Dot's house in the wake of Nick's "death," trying to deny Sharon the chance of comforting a true old friend, this was yet another contrivance of DTC and evidence of his ego in trying to push his Scrote Queen to the fore.
The other positive in this storyline was the appearance of Mrs Doyle, herself, as Yvonne Not-Cotton, Nick's mysterious first wife, who married him right out of Borstal, because she thought he looked like Joe Strummer.
Well, that's obvious lie number one. Poor Mrs Doyle. Gwaaaaan, it can't have been easy for her, sandwiched between the two billowing smokestacks known as Dot and Shirley, but I didn't think Not-Charlie's reaction at seeing Mummy Dearest there was very convincing at all, and their scene together as they left Dot's house proved that this was a planned occurrence.
And herein lies the next big mystery.
Yvonne Not-Cotton remarked upon the strong "family resemblance." I don't think she meant Not-Charlie and Nick, more I think she meant Dot and Nick, but that doesn't necessarily mean she knew or had seen Nick. The line of the night was Not-Charlie's response to this observation:-
He'll never hurt you again.
Also, I don't think the "he" in Charlie's sentence applied to Nick. If DTC has killed Nick off-screen, that would be as big a faux pas as Kirkwood made in killing off Pat, and you'd think the show would have learned its lesson in killing original characters off-screen with the flack they took for killing off Kathy Beale. The "he" is someone else, but who? The body in the coffin, obviously, but who is it?
Mark me, these are all loose ends about to be tied: Carl, Carl's profession, Carl's death, Stacey's key, the body in the coffin, Lucy's cocaine addiction ... all will be tied up at the end, and all are concerned with Lucy's death. And her killer is the one person in the programme on the Square the night Lucy was killed whom we haven't seen at all since then.
Think about it.
An Innocent Man.
Any episode which features Lauren in any way is on a hiding to nothing. She is the natural successor to Bianca in screeching. So much for Lauren's business venture and keeping LB Lettings up and running. All she seemed to do today was hang around the caff, bop about the Square and speak in cryptic riddles, when she wasn't screeching.
Just when you think the Walford police have turned a corner ... they haven't. Police don't usually arrest on the say-so of one person. But it seems that the Walford copshop did. They arrested Phil on Ben's sayso regarding Stella, and the police had determined Stella committed suicide and exonerated Phil of all responsibility years before. What could Lauren have possibly said to the police to make them arrest Jake? For an arrest to be made, there has to be some sort of incriminating evidence. DNA, for example.
One of the first tests forensics would have done on Lucy's body would be to take vaginal samples. The first thing they would have wanted to eliminate is whether or not she'd been raped. They'd have checked for bruising on the inner thighs or the pelvic area. They'd have checked under her fingernails, in the event she'd scratched and fought before she died. And they would have tested any seminal fluid found in her vagina. Lee Carter offered a DNA sample, and the police must know from that that she had had sex with him not 24 hours before she died.
Jake told Lauren what he remembered - that he'd shown up at the cafe and found Lucy, that she saw he was drunk and binned him off in an unlicenced taxi, driven by a dark man with the tattoo of a woman's name on the back of his neck. Well, despite the high-necked shirts and collars on Charlie tonight, I couldn't spy a tattoo, unless it was further down on the nape of his neck.
Some Millennials are confused by the story of Jake Stone's arrest. Let me explain it to them in simplistic terms that the might understand.
Lauren didn't present the police with any new evidence. She simply told them what Jake told her, which was obviously not what he'd told the police the week before. You see, the policeman Lauren stopped outside the copshop succinctly told her that they'd questioned the e-mail man the week before and were convinced he had nothing to do with the murder. Jake, himself, told Lauren he'd been questioned and had convinced the police of his innocence. (He is innocent, by the way).
But Jake told Lauren that he thought he was meeting her; instead, Lucy showed up. Jake's e-mail was to Lauren, not Lucy, so maybe, maybe Lucy was showing up there to meet someone else for a different purpose. Anyway, Jake told Lauren that he was drunk when he arrived, so drunk that Lucy arranged and paid for a taxi to take him back to the Square, where she left him. And she was alive.
The police arrived at Jake's flat, not to arrest him, but to question him regarding information Lauren had told them. They arrested him when they found an earring belonging to Lucy and traces of her blood on the kitchen skirting board.
Now, consider this: Lucy had been to Jake's flat before, when he was finishing the website for her. We saw that episode and that scene. The earring could have been lost then. But, even more sinisterly, suppose Lucy were actually killed at Jake's flat and Jake was too drunk to realise what had happened?
Jake and Aleks lived in the flat at that time, and the night Lucy was killed, Aleks was with Roxy all night. Roxy verified that to Lauren. Maybe Lauren was waiting for someone else, who arrived to find her with a drunken Jake.
Now think back to the incongruent scene where Ronnie came to the Vic looking for Phil, exchanged cryptic pick-up banter with Not-Charlie, flashed him a smile and he followed her out.
Cloak-and-dagger stuff, yes, but definitely a sign that something was on, and a surefire alibi if anyone came asking them about Lucy Beale, in the wake of a murder that probably wasn't planned, but came as the result of some other incident getting out of control.
Watch this space.
The Prat of Albert Square.
I still feel desperately sorry for Lola. She's young, she loves Peter, and I do believe she meant well and that she meant for her reminiscences about Lucy to be positive. She could have done otherwise, if you recall Lucy was responsible for a pregnant Lola being tagged by the police. Like Denise, she can never do anything right now for the Beale men because she's surplus to their requirements. And they'll use their grief to say things they wouldn't have the courage to say at any other time.
I know Peter's hurting and mourning his sister, but I have scant sympathy for him at all. Or Ian, considering that I remember Ian lying about Lucy having cancer in order to keep Mel in an engagement from which she was desperately trying to extricate herself.
As unfortunate as Lola is, Lauren is much more stupid. Peter was wishing her dead to her face last week, and apologising for it this week - but this is the way Lauren has seemed to affect people all her life. He was actually spot on in accusing her of making Lucy's death all about herself, and she was. But to use Lucy's death as a means of callously wishing death on another person is simply ignorant and cruel. And the audacity of Peter thinking that a simple apology would wipe the slate clean because Lauren is that much of a better person than Lola shows his privilege and arrogance.
He could walk away from the Square tomorrow and take Lauren with him, and I wouldn't care.
Other Observations:
I do like the combination of Cora and Stan, but what the hell has happened to Patrick? I've never known him to be so miserable and judgemental, considering the way he used to enjoy packing the booze away. He's not been averse to trashing Max's house of a weekend with Cora, and he and Cora one time gave an underaged Abi enough booze to cause her to puke up all over Tanya's rug.
David is trying too hard. That much is obvious. And he underestimates Nikki. I think he's using all his strength to try to be good, pandering to Carol's love of materialism, but sooner rather than later, he'll succumb to Nikki - or he won't, and Liam will embellish upon what he saw and Carol will throw the usual hissyfit and throw him out.
Kat and Tina will cover the stall? Well, Tina seemed to be lurking about the flat wondering who the owner of a cat stud earring could be (did Lucy have such earrings?), and that would mean Kat was on the stall. That's Kat, who's about five months pregnant with twins, standing around on the market on her feet all day whilst Bianca browses through Stratford or the West End.
And when does Sonia work? She's a nurse, and they do shift work, but she never seems to see or refer to her silent daughter. The only thing she seems to do is moan about her tits, moan about Martin, moan about "Mummy" and be rude to David.
Watchable episode, but less of the Lauren factor, please.
Someone reckoned that this proved how bad Corrie was becoming. Well, no. Rather, it proves how much EastEnders is improving, because this isn't something new. This is the way Monday nights used to be - with EastEnders sandwiched between two showings of Corrie, you naturally switched from Corrie to EastEnders and back again ... because both were equally watchable.
That's called history, Millennials. It didn't just happen in your time.
Mother? Not Mother.
There are con artists ...
... and then, there's what we saw last night. More than the insipid goings-on in the wake of the killing of a walking skeleton, the mystery that is Not-Charlie Cotton intrigues me more. As another viewer of long-standing observed to me earlier today, one can't imagine DTC allowing two storylines as potentially gripping as the Skeletor killing and Not-Charlie Cotton to run side by side, in the event that the Cotton bit outshone Lucy's lashing.
So, it stands to reason that the two are intertwined - not that that's obvious to the viewer now. It's patently not obvious to the Millennial viewers who are incapable either of critical thought or respect for history, but the two will come together to reveal who quashed the stick insect who loped about Walford and treated people like shit.
So Dot has now found out by taking the mountain to Mohammed in the form of a tupperware dish of stew, that Not-Charlie Cotton is most definitely not Charlie Cotton and indubitably not DC Charlie Cotton.
I'll say this - one thing Not-Charlie Cotton is and that's someone who's always prepared. I wonder if this psychopath were ever a Boy Scout, because I thought the action which took place after Dot confronted Not-Charlie with her discovery was a cleverly thought-out contingency plan.
Not-Charlie must have got the measure of Dot pretty quickly to know that at some point, she'd go digging for information of some sort. His protestations of authenticity were full of holes - from the story that he was so deeply imbedded in undercover work that his colleagues had to deny all knowledge of him (WTF?) to suddenly suggesting Dot call his superior,a feat that didn't add up, especially since the local copshop were, effectively, supposed to be in denial about his existence.
And, of course, that led him to discover he'd "lost" his mobile, which Dot had conveniently stolen.
Not-Charlie is not stupid. He wanted Dot to find the phone because he wanted her doubts to be calmed by the only person whom Dot would believe - Not-Charlie's not mother.
But before that, instead of discussing her dilemma with an old friend, tried and true, she had to discuss her fears and apprehensions with .... (fanfare)
... the Queen of the Scrotes, herself ... Shirley.
Not Sharon. Shirley.
Sharon's suspicions would be immediately aroused. She'd call in Phil, and together, they'd give Not-Charlie the real third degree, but Queen Shirley has to play the analyst and go along with Dot's plan of calling Mummy. As someone who isn't a Shirley fan and who resented the way she assumed guard of Dot's house in the wake of Nick's "death," trying to deny Sharon the chance of comforting a true old friend, this was yet another contrivance of DTC and evidence of his ego in trying to push his Scrote Queen to the fore.
The other positive in this storyline was the appearance of Mrs Doyle, herself, as Yvonne Not-Cotton, Nick's mysterious first wife, who married him right out of Borstal, because she thought he looked like Joe Strummer.
Well, that's obvious lie number one. Poor Mrs Doyle. Gwaaaaan, it can't have been easy for her, sandwiched between the two billowing smokestacks known as Dot and Shirley, but I didn't think Not-Charlie's reaction at seeing Mummy Dearest there was very convincing at all, and their scene together as they left Dot's house proved that this was a planned occurrence.
And herein lies the next big mystery.
Yvonne Not-Cotton remarked upon the strong "family resemblance." I don't think she meant Not-Charlie and Nick, more I think she meant Dot and Nick, but that doesn't necessarily mean she knew or had seen Nick. The line of the night was Not-Charlie's response to this observation:-
He'll never hurt you again.
Also, I don't think the "he" in Charlie's sentence applied to Nick. If DTC has killed Nick off-screen, that would be as big a faux pas as Kirkwood made in killing off Pat, and you'd think the show would have learned its lesson in killing original characters off-screen with the flack they took for killing off Kathy Beale. The "he" is someone else, but who? The body in the coffin, obviously, but who is it?
Mark me, these are all loose ends about to be tied: Carl, Carl's profession, Carl's death, Stacey's key, the body in the coffin, Lucy's cocaine addiction ... all will be tied up at the end, and all are concerned with Lucy's death. And her killer is the one person in the programme on the Square the night Lucy was killed whom we haven't seen at all since then.
Think about it.
An Innocent Man.
Any episode which features Lauren in any way is on a hiding to nothing. She is the natural successor to Bianca in screeching. So much for Lauren's business venture and keeping LB Lettings up and running. All she seemed to do today was hang around the caff, bop about the Square and speak in cryptic riddles, when she wasn't screeching.
Just when you think the Walford police have turned a corner ... they haven't. Police don't usually arrest on the say-so of one person. But it seems that the Walford copshop did. They arrested Phil on Ben's sayso regarding Stella, and the police had determined Stella committed suicide and exonerated Phil of all responsibility years before. What could Lauren have possibly said to the police to make them arrest Jake? For an arrest to be made, there has to be some sort of incriminating evidence. DNA, for example.
One of the first tests forensics would have done on Lucy's body would be to take vaginal samples. The first thing they would have wanted to eliminate is whether or not she'd been raped. They'd have checked for bruising on the inner thighs or the pelvic area. They'd have checked under her fingernails, in the event she'd scratched and fought before she died. And they would have tested any seminal fluid found in her vagina. Lee Carter offered a DNA sample, and the police must know from that that she had had sex with him not 24 hours before she died.
Jake told Lauren what he remembered - that he'd shown up at the cafe and found Lucy, that she saw he was drunk and binned him off in an unlicenced taxi, driven by a dark man with the tattoo of a woman's name on the back of his neck. Well, despite the high-necked shirts and collars on Charlie tonight, I couldn't spy a tattoo, unless it was further down on the nape of his neck.
Some Millennials are confused by the story of Jake Stone's arrest. Let me explain it to them in simplistic terms that the might understand.
Lauren didn't present the police with any new evidence. She simply told them what Jake told her, which was obviously not what he'd told the police the week before. You see, the policeman Lauren stopped outside the copshop succinctly told her that they'd questioned the e-mail man the week before and were convinced he had nothing to do with the murder. Jake, himself, told Lauren he'd been questioned and had convinced the police of his innocence. (He is innocent, by the way).
But Jake told Lauren that he thought he was meeting her; instead, Lucy showed up. Jake's e-mail was to Lauren, not Lucy, so maybe, maybe Lucy was showing up there to meet someone else for a different purpose. Anyway, Jake told Lauren that he was drunk when he arrived, so drunk that Lucy arranged and paid for a taxi to take him back to the Square, where she left him. And she was alive.
The police arrived at Jake's flat, not to arrest him, but to question him regarding information Lauren had told them. They arrested him when they found an earring belonging to Lucy and traces of her blood on the kitchen skirting board.
Now, consider this: Lucy had been to Jake's flat before, when he was finishing the website for her. We saw that episode and that scene. The earring could have been lost then. But, even more sinisterly, suppose Lucy were actually killed at Jake's flat and Jake was too drunk to realise what had happened?
Jake and Aleks lived in the flat at that time, and the night Lucy was killed, Aleks was with Roxy all night. Roxy verified that to Lauren. Maybe Lauren was waiting for someone else, who arrived to find her with a drunken Jake.
Now think back to the incongruent scene where Ronnie came to the Vic looking for Phil, exchanged cryptic pick-up banter with Not-Charlie, flashed him a smile and he followed her out.
Cloak-and-dagger stuff, yes, but definitely a sign that something was on, and a surefire alibi if anyone came asking them about Lucy Beale, in the wake of a murder that probably wasn't planned, but came as the result of some other incident getting out of control.
Watch this space.
The Prat of Albert Square.
I still feel desperately sorry for Lola. She's young, she loves Peter, and I do believe she meant well and that she meant for her reminiscences about Lucy to be positive. She could have done otherwise, if you recall Lucy was responsible for a pregnant Lola being tagged by the police. Like Denise, she can never do anything right now for the Beale men because she's surplus to their requirements. And they'll use their grief to say things they wouldn't have the courage to say at any other time.
I know Peter's hurting and mourning his sister, but I have scant sympathy for him at all. Or Ian, considering that I remember Ian lying about Lucy having cancer in order to keep Mel in an engagement from which she was desperately trying to extricate herself.
As unfortunate as Lola is, Lauren is much more stupid. Peter was wishing her dead to her face last week, and apologising for it this week - but this is the way Lauren has seemed to affect people all her life. He was actually spot on in accusing her of making Lucy's death all about herself, and she was. But to use Lucy's death as a means of callously wishing death on another person is simply ignorant and cruel. And the audacity of Peter thinking that a simple apology would wipe the slate clean because Lauren is that much of a better person than Lola shows his privilege and arrogance.
He could walk away from the Square tomorrow and take Lauren with him, and I wouldn't care.
Other Observations:
I do like the combination of Cora and Stan, but what the hell has happened to Patrick? I've never known him to be so miserable and judgemental, considering the way he used to enjoy packing the booze away. He's not been averse to trashing Max's house of a weekend with Cora, and he and Cora one time gave an underaged Abi enough booze to cause her to puke up all over Tanya's rug.
David is trying too hard. That much is obvious. And he underestimates Nikki. I think he's using all his strength to try to be good, pandering to Carol's love of materialism, but sooner rather than later, he'll succumb to Nikki - or he won't, and Liam will embellish upon what he saw and Carol will throw the usual hissyfit and throw him out.
Kat and Tina will cover the stall? Well, Tina seemed to be lurking about the flat wondering who the owner of a cat stud earring could be (did Lucy have such earrings?), and that would mean Kat was on the stall. That's Kat, who's about five months pregnant with twins, standing around on the market on her feet all day whilst Bianca browses through Stratford or the West End.
And when does Sonia work? She's a nurse, and they do shift work, but she never seems to see or refer to her silent daughter. The only thing she seems to do is moan about her tits, moan about Martin, moan about "Mummy" and be rude to David.
Watchable episode, but less of the Lauren factor, please.
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