I waited to do this review for two reasons - first, because I wanted to see how EastEnders fared at the BSAs this year, and second, the entire episode annoyed me, even though it was, by and large, a good episode.
On the first note, EastEnders bombed. Again. They did bag an Off-Screen Lifetime Achievement Award, and the magnificent Maddie Hill, who playes Nancy Carter, the least-seen and most underused member of the clan, deservedly was named Best Newcomer; but anyone thinking the show would win anything more is frightfully deluded.
The show had an abysmal year, and even though WonderBoy has come in like the cavalry to the rescue ...
... it's early days yet, and some of his attempts at salvation have resulted in a distinctly dodgy smell ...
No, he's not the Messiah, and he is a very naughty boy for what transpired in Thursday's episode. It combined retconning and re-hashing in the worst way and for a cynical reason.
It's cynical enough that Hollyoaks, a teenaged wet dream filled with the wrong sort of fantasy, won Best Soap, when that show doesn't get a million viewers in a single setting, manages to find 3 million votes to secure it a major gong at the British soap Oscars; it would have been cynical beyond belief if Dame Lacey Turner and that eminent thespian, Danny Dyer, spiked gongs as Best Actress and Best Actor, when one of them spent a dire month running around with her face screwed up as though she'd encountered a ripe smell, and he hasn't been around long enough to be blamed for putting the smell about.
That doesn't mean, however, that Dominic Treadwell-Collins isn't the worst sort of cynic, as well as being an egotist and that he's determined to get what he wants from this programme, at the expense of a certain dynamic of viewer.
What we got served on Thursday was a load of retconned rehash in order to promote a marmite character whom he describes as iconic.
Most viewers got an overdose of Marmite.
The Hidden Child Meme.
The 90s saw the incessant meme of the long-lost mother. How many characters turned up whose mum had done a runner? Let's see ... Sarah and Tony Hills's mum came back and was about to marry Tiffany's dad, when Tiffany's long-lost mother turned up to stop the wedding because she was still married to him. Sandra di Marco turned up. Even the Irish Fowlers had a mother running rampant in London - Connor's wife and Mary's mother. Had they stuck around a bit longer, we'd surely have seen her.
Now we're stuck in another meme - the sibling mother. I didn't want to believe it, but from the first line of dialogue emanating from Shirley's mouth tonight, you knew what the denouement of this piece was always going to be. Every syllable of dialogue told, screamed at the audience what the inevitable outcome in the whole charade would be.
A surprise that wasn't a surprise.
Contrived.
Rather than the "sibling-mother," I'd call this the "hidden child" meme. I read a lot of Camilla Lackberg, who's sorta kinda like a 21st Century Agatha Christie, only Swedish. One of her books is entitled The Hidden Child, and it concerns the main character's mother carrying a secret of having had an illegitimate baby by a young Nazi years before her subsequent marriage. Her husband knew of the child, but not her two daughters, who found evidence of his existence long after her death and even traced the person to his adoptive home.
The story concerned the author's quest to speak with people who had been her mother's adolescent friends, and she was astounded to find that they knew of the pregnancy. The more people who know a secret results in the secret eventually coming out. The gist behind this discovery was a sad one - the main character came to understand the reason behind her mother's innate coldness and lack of affection: she couldn't love her subsequent children without thinking of the firstborn she gave up.
That was a believeable story, but somehow, this one rankles, not only me, but a lot of other viewers, judging by the reaction on various fora.
Nope, this could only be one thing ...
A sympathy-getter for a vile and unlikeable character.
Poor Shirl. She had a baby at fourteen. Like Punk Mary from the 1980s. Like Carol. Like Demi Miller. Like Kat. Like Cindy Williams Jnr. Poor Shirl. What's next? PND? Most likely, that's the sympathy card to be played to explain why she tried to drown Mick. Anything to get the audience to love and accept the chosen heroine.
And here's the newest meme - a carry-on from Newman's dynamic with Ava and Cora: the mother who gives up her firstborn child and is unable to love sufficiently her subsequent children. Now we have that with Shirley and her newfound baby boy. And Dean will end up the loser and all the more meaner for it.
Now here's the funny part of this - and it was the same with Cora. Prior to Newman's creation of Ava, we had absolutely no clue at all that the ASBO granny had had a biracial, illegitimate child years before. The summer before Ava, Cora spent living it up and drinking happily in the Vic. Then suddenly, there was the mention of Ava and Cora remarked how she "never stopped thinking of her," something we knew just wasn't true.
This is much the same with Shirley. She was a mother who walked away from her children, who cheated repeatedly on her husband, who treated her best friend, at times, like shite, a deeply unpleasant and rude person, but she never mentioned any other child other than Carly, Dean and James.
At least, with the Slater storyline, probably the only true iconic storyline of the current century, this was something that was established early on in the tenure of the characters, almost from the very beginning, even if it were another year before Zoe found out the truth about her parentage. Shirley has been a character on the programme for the better part of almost a decade - 8 years - and during that time, she's only ever obsessed (if you can call it that) about emotionally linking with Carly and Dean, her two surviving children. As late as Tuesday of last week, she was identifying herself as the mother of three children.
Granted, people have commented on the undue closeness between her and Mick, and I was truly hoping the show wouldn't go this way, because it seems like the re-hash of an old theme (You're not mah muvvah) in an effort to one-up that storyline in order to promote to the fore, the character which is a particular favourite of this EP.
There's a difference: People actually liked and identified with Kat ca 2001; either you like Shirley or you abhor her, and most people dislike the character.
The issue of Shirley's abandonment of her three children should have been addressed back in 2008, after Kevin's death and when Dean had been released from prison, but someone decided that the Wicks's kids were surplus to requirements and wanted to develop Shirley along the lines of a lone wolf peripheral character, mentoring Heather (when she wasn't treating her like shit) and drinking. Shirley's alcoholism is yet something else that needs addressing, but then ... the entire dynamic revolving around Shirley has been changed, hasn't it?
And with that, the entire Carter dynamic. And why? To establish a situation wherein Shirley's position becomes matriarchal. No longer is Linda the principal female in the Carter household. She now becomes the daughter-in-law. Not even second-in-command, but third since the appalling Tina moves up the rung by becoming Mick's aunt. Queen Shirley rules supreme now. She's the grandmother of Lee, Johnny and Nancy. She can undermine Linda's position all she wants now - it's her remit as Queen Bee.
Shirley is now in the prime position, as landlady of the Queen Vic (which is what her name above the door essentially means), to be what Dom-Dom wants her to be - the absolute mother of all matriarchs: a rich amalgamation of Pat (the wise counsellor), Pauline (whose family was better than anyone elses) and Peggy (giving her the right to bellow Get ourramah pub).
All along I said that the Carters were a smokescreen by which Shirley would become the star of the piece and the central figure in Dominic Treadwell-Collins's interpretation of EastEnders, and I don't think I'm wrong. This is insulting to the viewers' intelligence and it reeks of cynicism.
The one you feel tremendously sorry for is Dean, who's about to be shafted yet again. It's Mick who's the apple of Shirley's eye now, and Dean becomes secondary. You get the feeling that James. Carly and Dean were secondary to "the lost boy," and that's not only tragic, that's abhorrent. The Wicks kids were strictly second-best, because they weren't St Mick, the prodigal son. She walked away from them, abandoned them, because Mick was all-important.
And now Dean will become angrier. And meaner when he finds out. He'll become the loser brother, the afterthought in the shadow of the newly-found big bubba.
And it has to be Phil who knows the secret. Oh well, when TPTB get through demolishing Sharon's character, then Phil can couple with Shirley and unite the almighty Mitchells with the Carters to create a super-dynasty.
Here's something to ponder: When Shirley first rocked up in Walford, she had a locket which bore baby pictures of her three Wicks children. There was never any hint, not a soupcon of another child. Not even a passing oblique reference.
And here's another thing to ponder: In Dean's conversation with Phil, he referenced having tried to look for Shirley at the time of James Wicks's death. Dean would have been a schoolboy, and as was proven, neither Dean nor Carly had any idea of what Shirley was like or what she even looked like. They didn't even recognise her. So Dean saying that was yet another retconned fact - retcon, retcon, retcon ... all to make Shirley more sympathetic, when the only thing that screams out the screen is her obvious and overplayed self-pity.
I can't believe that she didn't tell Kevin this safe-guarded secret, which makes her disregard for her "original" three children all the more heartless, because she abandoned them to go back to Number One.
I hope Dean gives her hell.
This is DTC's jump-the-shark moment.
Not even the fanbois are cheering.
I Want Sharon to Go.
I love Sharon to bits, but I want to see her go. After she recovers from her attack, I want to see her shove the stiff middle finger right up Phil's nose and walk away from the Square forever. That way, Phil can couple with fag-breathed Shirley, Ben can canoodle with Johnny with the pair of them running The Albert, and the Carter-Mitchell conundrum can rule the Square. With more Carters on the way, it's obvious that they are the new Brannings, and the show will shortly be inundated with them.
I expect Stacey to be united with Dean, and Whitney to pair up with Lee. Nancy may be destined for Tamwar. They'll infiltrate every fibre of the programme to a degree that will border on incestuous.
I'm just sad to admit that I want an original and really iconic character, Sharon, to call it a day and go. For all DTC's blather about Sharon being his favourite character, his two predecessors fucked her up and over, and his nose is so far up Shirley's rank arse that he can't be bothered to see that she's written properly. She should leave with her dignity intact. Between him, Kirkwood and Newman, we have an entire generation of cack-minded Millennials hating a much-loved character.
Once again, TPTB attempt to present Sharon as the bitch in the ointment as opposed to poor, pitiful Shirley. This regime, with their total lack of understanding of Sharon, forget that Sharon has one relative in the entire world: her son. And she is all the boy has. Forget Sharon's birth family. Unless one of her two brothers or her sister show up, seeking to establish contact with her, she has no one but the child.
TPTB's attempt to show Sharon in a bad light, compared to poor, pitiful Shirley, forget that Sharon was the rejected child, adopted by a couple who hated each other whilst adoring her. She was the buffer in a warzone and had to suffer her father impregnating her best friend, which was yet another form of rejection. Then when she found her birth mother, she was rejected again. Both her father and her husband were murdered. She was morally thrown under the bus by the Mitchells, but she rose above it.
As much as Shirley, Sharon is the mistress of her own fate, but she's never wallowed in self-pity. If Sharon's only ever attained financial and personal success "on her back" as the vile, stinking drunk on the sofa told her, at least she's never emotionally blackmailed anyone or stolen from people or deliberately set fires which caused other people ruin. She's given back with interest.
Shirley's remark about Phil not loving Sharon? Well, according to EastEnders' history, that's not true, but since this version of EastEnders is written for and probably by Millennials, history is bunk. Maybe Millennial Phil doesn't love Sharon, who, in the Millennial mind, is a Class A Bitch, but Sharon took that remark and handed Shirley her arse. Far more important than Shirley or Phil or anyone or even Sharon herself, her son was her focus. She loved him beyond all others.
Shirley made a vile remark about Sharon achieving everything she has, professionally, on her back. Whilst not entirely true, Sharon did come by her businesses through her association with men. The Mitchell brothers bought the Vic for Sharon, and she was the landlady. Later when she returned, she bought the Vic in 2001, with the help of Steve Owen, and later inherited it from her father. On all of the three previous occasions, she either signed over the tenancy to a Mitchell or she sold or gave it back to them. Whatever Shirley's achieved as a gift from Phil, she's managed to run it into the ground.
MummyMan.
Now that Jane's knocked Ian back, all of a sudden he's clinging to Denise for sweet life.
He loves her?
Denise should know better.
And here's another lying weasel - all those words of love he had for Denise in that episode. How she's always been there during this crisis, how she's been a rock, yadda yadda ... does he think Denise is a fool? Ian was saying the exact opposite about Denise to Jane. In fact, Ian tells Jane he loves her, Jane recoils and within the next hour, he's telling Denise he loves her - after weeks and months of pushing her away and treating her like "the help."
Denise knows the score, yet even through all this, she is compassionate enough to worry about Ian. With her gone, all Ian wants to do is wallow in self-pity. He doesn't want Bobby back, masking this behind Bobby being better off with Jane. The truth is that Bobby doesn't carry the Cindy gene. Peter does, but Peter isn't a female carrier of the gene. One wonders how Ian would have responded had Peter suggested bringing Cindy Williams back to Walford. I doubt Ian would have refused that.
CindyBoy Williams? As soon as she's sixteen in November, it wouldn't surprise me if Ian's shagging her. People forget that Ian likes young flesh too.
The Man of Constant Sorrow.
Max is another wallowing in self-pity, who's awfully sorry that he got caught doing what he did. I know that both Max and Lucy were single and consenting adults, but Max is such a watchable smarmer, I almost gagged a maggot when Lauren clocked that he only put money into their business for Lucy's sake and not hers. Her disgust at Max's lie to the contrary was palpable. However, if she's disgusted at Max's behaviour - having sex with a woman he'd watched grow from a child, surely Peter can apprise her of the fact that Ian has done precisely the same ... with Janine.
Speaking of the Butcher-Beale-Jackson clan, the shit's about to hit the fan once more.
Good episode but for the wrong reasons. And the thought of Shirley as the star of the show fills my mouth with bile.
On the first note, EastEnders bombed. Again. They did bag an Off-Screen Lifetime Achievement Award, and the magnificent Maddie Hill, who playes Nancy Carter, the least-seen and most underused member of the clan, deservedly was named Best Newcomer; but anyone thinking the show would win anything more is frightfully deluded.
The show had an abysmal year, and even though WonderBoy has come in like the cavalry to the rescue ...
No, he's not the Messiah, and he is a very naughty boy for what transpired in Thursday's episode. It combined retconning and re-hashing in the worst way and for a cynical reason.
It's cynical enough that Hollyoaks, a teenaged wet dream filled with the wrong sort of fantasy, won Best Soap, when that show doesn't get a million viewers in a single setting, manages to find 3 million votes to secure it a major gong at the British soap Oscars; it would have been cynical beyond belief if Dame Lacey Turner and that eminent thespian, Danny Dyer, spiked gongs as Best Actress and Best Actor, when one of them spent a dire month running around with her face screwed up as though she'd encountered a ripe smell, and he hasn't been around long enough to be blamed for putting the smell about.
That doesn't mean, however, that Dominic Treadwell-Collins isn't the worst sort of cynic, as well as being an egotist and that he's determined to get what he wants from this programme, at the expense of a certain dynamic of viewer.
What we got served on Thursday was a load of retconned rehash in order to promote a marmite character whom he describes as iconic.
Most viewers got an overdose of Marmite.
The Hidden Child Meme.
The 90s saw the incessant meme of the long-lost mother. How many characters turned up whose mum had done a runner? Let's see ... Sarah and Tony Hills's mum came back and was about to marry Tiffany's dad, when Tiffany's long-lost mother turned up to stop the wedding because she was still married to him. Sandra di Marco turned up. Even the Irish Fowlers had a mother running rampant in London - Connor's wife and Mary's mother. Had they stuck around a bit longer, we'd surely have seen her.
Now we're stuck in another meme - the sibling mother. I didn't want to believe it, but from the first line of dialogue emanating from Shirley's mouth tonight, you knew what the denouement of this piece was always going to be. Every syllable of dialogue told, screamed at the audience what the inevitable outcome in the whole charade would be.
A surprise that wasn't a surprise.
Contrived.
Rather than the "sibling-mother," I'd call this the "hidden child" meme. I read a lot of Camilla Lackberg, who's sorta kinda like a 21st Century Agatha Christie, only Swedish. One of her books is entitled The Hidden Child, and it concerns the main character's mother carrying a secret of having had an illegitimate baby by a young Nazi years before her subsequent marriage. Her husband knew of the child, but not her two daughters, who found evidence of his existence long after her death and even traced the person to his adoptive home.
The story concerned the author's quest to speak with people who had been her mother's adolescent friends, and she was astounded to find that they knew of the pregnancy. The more people who know a secret results in the secret eventually coming out. The gist behind this discovery was a sad one - the main character came to understand the reason behind her mother's innate coldness and lack of affection: she couldn't love her subsequent children without thinking of the firstborn she gave up.
That was a believeable story, but somehow, this one rankles, not only me, but a lot of other viewers, judging by the reaction on various fora.
Nope, this could only be one thing ...
A sympathy-getter for a vile and unlikeable character.
Poor Shirl. She had a baby at fourteen. Like Punk Mary from the 1980s. Like Carol. Like Demi Miller. Like Kat. Like Cindy Williams Jnr. Poor Shirl. What's next? PND? Most likely, that's the sympathy card to be played to explain why she tried to drown Mick. Anything to get the audience to love and accept the chosen heroine.
And here's the newest meme - a carry-on from Newman's dynamic with Ava and Cora: the mother who gives up her firstborn child and is unable to love sufficiently her subsequent children. Now we have that with Shirley and her newfound baby boy. And Dean will end up the loser and all the more meaner for it.
Now here's the funny part of this - and it was the same with Cora. Prior to Newman's creation of Ava, we had absolutely no clue at all that the ASBO granny had had a biracial, illegitimate child years before. The summer before Ava, Cora spent living it up and drinking happily in the Vic. Then suddenly, there was the mention of Ava and Cora remarked how she "never stopped thinking of her," something we knew just wasn't true.
This is much the same with Shirley. She was a mother who walked away from her children, who cheated repeatedly on her husband, who treated her best friend, at times, like shite, a deeply unpleasant and rude person, but she never mentioned any other child other than Carly, Dean and James.
At least, with the Slater storyline, probably the only true iconic storyline of the current century, this was something that was established early on in the tenure of the characters, almost from the very beginning, even if it were another year before Zoe found out the truth about her parentage. Shirley has been a character on the programme for the better part of almost a decade - 8 years - and during that time, she's only ever obsessed (if you can call it that) about emotionally linking with Carly and Dean, her two surviving children. As late as Tuesday of last week, she was identifying herself as the mother of three children.
Granted, people have commented on the undue closeness between her and Mick, and I was truly hoping the show wouldn't go this way, because it seems like the re-hash of an old theme (You're not mah muvvah) in an effort to one-up that storyline in order to promote to the fore, the character which is a particular favourite of this EP.
There's a difference: People actually liked and identified with Kat ca 2001; either you like Shirley or you abhor her, and most people dislike the character.
The issue of Shirley's abandonment of her three children should have been addressed back in 2008, after Kevin's death and when Dean had been released from prison, but someone decided that the Wicks's kids were surplus to requirements and wanted to develop Shirley along the lines of a lone wolf peripheral character, mentoring Heather (when she wasn't treating her like shit) and drinking. Shirley's alcoholism is yet something else that needs addressing, but then ... the entire dynamic revolving around Shirley has been changed, hasn't it?
And with that, the entire Carter dynamic. And why? To establish a situation wherein Shirley's position becomes matriarchal. No longer is Linda the principal female in the Carter household. She now becomes the daughter-in-law. Not even second-in-command, but third since the appalling Tina moves up the rung by becoming Mick's aunt. Queen Shirley rules supreme now. She's the grandmother of Lee, Johnny and Nancy. She can undermine Linda's position all she wants now - it's her remit as Queen Bee.
Shirley is now in the prime position, as landlady of the Queen Vic (which is what her name above the door essentially means), to be what Dom-Dom wants her to be - the absolute mother of all matriarchs: a rich amalgamation of Pat (the wise counsellor), Pauline (whose family was better than anyone elses) and Peggy (giving her the right to bellow Get ourramah pub).
All along I said that the Carters were a smokescreen by which Shirley would become the star of the piece and the central figure in Dominic Treadwell-Collins's interpretation of EastEnders, and I don't think I'm wrong. This is insulting to the viewers' intelligence and it reeks of cynicism.
The one you feel tremendously sorry for is Dean, who's about to be shafted yet again. It's Mick who's the apple of Shirley's eye now, and Dean becomes secondary. You get the feeling that James. Carly and Dean were secondary to "the lost boy," and that's not only tragic, that's abhorrent. The Wicks kids were strictly second-best, because they weren't St Mick, the prodigal son. She walked away from them, abandoned them, because Mick was all-important.
And now Dean will become angrier. And meaner when he finds out. He'll become the loser brother, the afterthought in the shadow of the newly-found big bubba.
And it has to be Phil who knows the secret. Oh well, when TPTB get through demolishing Sharon's character, then Phil can couple with Shirley and unite the almighty Mitchells with the Carters to create a super-dynasty.
Here's something to ponder: When Shirley first rocked up in Walford, she had a locket which bore baby pictures of her three Wicks children. There was never any hint, not a soupcon of another child. Not even a passing oblique reference.
And here's another thing to ponder: In Dean's conversation with Phil, he referenced having tried to look for Shirley at the time of James Wicks's death. Dean would have been a schoolboy, and as was proven, neither Dean nor Carly had any idea of what Shirley was like or what she even looked like. They didn't even recognise her. So Dean saying that was yet another retconned fact - retcon, retcon, retcon ... all to make Shirley more sympathetic, when the only thing that screams out the screen is her obvious and overplayed self-pity.
I can't believe that she didn't tell Kevin this safe-guarded secret, which makes her disregard for her "original" three children all the more heartless, because she abandoned them to go back to Number One.
I hope Dean gives her hell.
This is DTC's jump-the-shark moment.
Not even the fanbois are cheering.
I Want Sharon to Go.
I love Sharon to bits, but I want to see her go. After she recovers from her attack, I want to see her shove the stiff middle finger right up Phil's nose and walk away from the Square forever. That way, Phil can couple with fag-breathed Shirley, Ben can canoodle with Johnny with the pair of them running The Albert, and the Carter-Mitchell conundrum can rule the Square. With more Carters on the way, it's obvious that they are the new Brannings, and the show will shortly be inundated with them.
I expect Stacey to be united with Dean, and Whitney to pair up with Lee. Nancy may be destined for Tamwar. They'll infiltrate every fibre of the programme to a degree that will border on incestuous.
I'm just sad to admit that I want an original and really iconic character, Sharon, to call it a day and go. For all DTC's blather about Sharon being his favourite character, his two predecessors fucked her up and over, and his nose is so far up Shirley's rank arse that he can't be bothered to see that she's written properly. She should leave with her dignity intact. Between him, Kirkwood and Newman, we have an entire generation of cack-minded Millennials hating a much-loved character.
Once again, TPTB attempt to present Sharon as the bitch in the ointment as opposed to poor, pitiful Shirley. This regime, with their total lack of understanding of Sharon, forget that Sharon has one relative in the entire world: her son. And she is all the boy has. Forget Sharon's birth family. Unless one of her two brothers or her sister show up, seeking to establish contact with her, she has no one but the child.
TPTB's attempt to show Sharon in a bad light, compared to poor, pitiful Shirley, forget that Sharon was the rejected child, adopted by a couple who hated each other whilst adoring her. She was the buffer in a warzone and had to suffer her father impregnating her best friend, which was yet another form of rejection. Then when she found her birth mother, she was rejected again. Both her father and her husband were murdered. She was morally thrown under the bus by the Mitchells, but she rose above it.
As much as Shirley, Sharon is the mistress of her own fate, but she's never wallowed in self-pity. If Sharon's only ever attained financial and personal success "on her back" as the vile, stinking drunk on the sofa told her, at least she's never emotionally blackmailed anyone or stolen from people or deliberately set fires which caused other people ruin. She's given back with interest.
Shirley's remark about Phil not loving Sharon? Well, according to EastEnders' history, that's not true, but since this version of EastEnders is written for and probably by Millennials, history is bunk. Maybe Millennial Phil doesn't love Sharon, who, in the Millennial mind, is a Class A Bitch, but Sharon took that remark and handed Shirley her arse. Far more important than Shirley or Phil or anyone or even Sharon herself, her son was her focus. She loved him beyond all others.
Shirley made a vile remark about Sharon achieving everything she has, professionally, on her back. Whilst not entirely true, Sharon did come by her businesses through her association with men. The Mitchell brothers bought the Vic for Sharon, and she was the landlady. Later when she returned, she bought the Vic in 2001, with the help of Steve Owen, and later inherited it from her father. On all of the three previous occasions, she either signed over the tenancy to a Mitchell or she sold or gave it back to them. Whatever Shirley's achieved as a gift from Phil, she's managed to run it into the ground.
MummyMan.
Now that Jane's knocked Ian back, all of a sudden he's clinging to Denise for sweet life.
He loves her?
Denise should know better.
And here's another lying weasel - all those words of love he had for Denise in that episode. How she's always been there during this crisis, how she's been a rock, yadda yadda ... does he think Denise is a fool? Ian was saying the exact opposite about Denise to Jane. In fact, Ian tells Jane he loves her, Jane recoils and within the next hour, he's telling Denise he loves her - after weeks and months of pushing her away and treating her like "the help."
Denise knows the score, yet even through all this, she is compassionate enough to worry about Ian. With her gone, all Ian wants to do is wallow in self-pity. He doesn't want Bobby back, masking this behind Bobby being better off with Jane. The truth is that Bobby doesn't carry the Cindy gene. Peter does, but Peter isn't a female carrier of the gene. One wonders how Ian would have responded had Peter suggested bringing Cindy Williams back to Walford. I doubt Ian would have refused that.
CindyBoy Williams? As soon as she's sixteen in November, it wouldn't surprise me if Ian's shagging her. People forget that Ian likes young flesh too.
The Man of Constant Sorrow.
Max is another wallowing in self-pity, who's awfully sorry that he got caught doing what he did. I know that both Max and Lucy were single and consenting adults, but Max is such a watchable smarmer, I almost gagged a maggot when Lauren clocked that he only put money into their business for Lucy's sake and not hers. Her disgust at Max's lie to the contrary was palpable. However, if she's disgusted at Max's behaviour - having sex with a woman he'd watched grow from a child, surely Peter can apprise her of the fact that Ian has done precisely the same ... with Janine.
Speaking of the Butcher-Beale-Jackson clan, the shit's about to hit the fan once more.
Good episode but for the wrong reasons. And the thought of Shirley as the star of the show fills my mouth with bile.
DTC never said Sharon was his favourite character, that was Dierdrick Santer.
ReplyDeleteWhen DTC said he was bringing Sharon back "old style" it was in response to Santer begging for Sharon to be given something to do.
DTC's favourites are actually Dot, Pat and Peggy.
http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/media/s2/eastenders/news/a77057/all-about-eastenders-dominic-treadwell-collins.html#~oFqsIPfiJseFzH