I wanted to wait before blogging about the final two David episodes, which were full of surprises of one sort or another, to see how his departure would pan out.
It's mildly amusing to read the effusive praise people are giving the character of David Wicks - viewers who weren't even born when he stuck around for about three years in the 90s. Hearing them declaim him as iconic is hilarious, as David was never iconic during his original tenure; in fact, in the general scheme of things, David originally ranked behind the likes of Grant and Phil Mitchell, Ian Beale, Frank Butcher, Mark Fowler and Ricky Butcher.
He was important in establishing Bianca as a blooded Beale, in bringing Sam Mitchell back to Walford,and in Cindy Beale's exit line. After that, he was rather redundant and picked his moment to depart.
One thing for certain is that he and Carol were never the Frank-and-Pat of another generation, and he was never iconic.
The Heart Attack as a Comedy.
Of course, the entire episode was played against the backdrop of David's collapse and the fact that the one person who should have been made aware of that incident was nowhere about. Carol was taking and taking in an anger-pity tour of Walford, ending up in the park, but more of that later.
David collapsed with a heart attack, and it was a comedy of errors from then on out, starting with Liam discovering him. I know Liam is Son of Ricky and a dullard at the best of times, but come on! He was only listening to music on his telephone when he discovered his grandfather, in terrible distress. Now, common sense would tell you, whip out the phone and dial 999, then stay with your grandad, call the house in front of you to alert everyone and wait for the medical professionals to arrive.
Duuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhh! It's not rocket science.
But noooooooooooooooooooooo, in the words of he late great John Belushi, Liam runs inside to tell two of the biggest, dumbest twats imaginable about what happened to David - Bianca the Village Idiot and Nurse Honker, who run to his aid and do more harm than not.
Honker is supposed to be a nurse, when she can bother to go into work; so at least, she would have known to phone for an ambulance or, once she'd got him in her M-reg Fiat Punto, to phone ahead to the hospital, telling them she was accompanying a suspected myocardial infarction. Instead, she calls Carol, who can't be reached.
David's eye-glazing-over moment at that time held special significance.
A suspected heart attack is a serious thing, but when medical professionals discover that it's actually a cardiac embolism - a blood clot - that is, indeed, serious. Yet throughout the entire ordeal, Bianca and Honker were treating it as though it were a day out. David was strung out on morphine; that was his excuse.
We also find out that Honker actually works at Walford General and that since April, when NHS holiday year starts, Honker's managed to use up all 28 days of her annual leave. She'd lied to her nursing superior and taken a sickie, whilst studying an professional enhancement manual, which she reckoned she didn't need to read as Honker is wise and knows everything. Honker is also self-righteous and ugly too.
The trio are still playing it casually when David returns from having had an angioplasty, but blood clots aren't dispelled that quickly, and they were more interested in the "Sole Property of Mrs Wicks" posing pouch David happened to be wearing at the time of his crisis.
Enter the dragon.
It took a life-threatening experience to bring the truth out in David. Actually, it was Carol who was having the niggling doubts all along, and whilst David was trying to be good (as he said to Janine), Carol uses the oppportunity of a man recovering from a very recent heart attack and blood clot, having had a surgical procedure, to rant and rail at him in a hospital room, actually accusing him of having a heart attack in order to avoid the wedding, citing her moanings to him in the previous week about his diet. (Actually, both she and Bianca should be concerned about Morgan's diet. I recall an episode where he took a huge bowl of crisps to eat, and tonight, he'd have had all that cake, if he were allowed).
David's actual epiphany came when the worm finally turned, and he stood up to Carol's bullying and bad attitude, saying death would have been a relief from life with her. Welcome to the real world, David.
But everyone will know that David started emotionally distancing himself from Carol the moment it dawned on him that committing to her might mean the rest of his life, as she just might weather the storm of cancer. David doesn't do commitment, after all.
A Hattrick of Teenaged Bitchery.
Meanwhile, back at the house Janine Butcher owns ...
Please stop insulting the viewers' intelligence with the awfully precocious and self-aware Maisie Smith's puberty-enhanced imitation of a ten year-old. The actress turns 13 in the summer, but it's obvious by her curves and certainly by the too-revealing-for-an-underaged-actress frock she wore to the BSAs that puberty is in full swing at the moment. Ten years old, she ain't. Stop pushing jailbait on us.
Hattrick ... Cindy the Unbearable. Tiffany the Unlikeable. And now Rebecca the Prig. I don't like Tiffany, but I didn't like her high-handed, condescending attitude. I have to check my e-mails. WTF? Who brings their laptop to a family gathering. Talk about Tiff being rude, and sniping at Morgan to turn his game off. She's as much a prig as Nurse Honker, and she's also the latest in what appears to be along line of younger hairy teenaged girls who look like boys in drag.
Only Connect.
This episode was worth the effort, if only for the beautiful park scene between Carol and Ian. Lindsey Coulson is brilliant as ever, and Adam Woodyatt rose to the occasion. Carol's worked for Ian for years, and she is involved with his brother, yet this end of the Beale spectrum is the side of the family Ian disdains - the chav side, the dodgy dealing side - so it was interesting, poignant and evocative to see Ian and Carol connect in a conversation that proved what long-term viewers have realised all along: that David and Ian were as alike as two peas in a pod.
Honestly, that was one of the best scenes I've ever witnessed in this programme, and without being blatant, showed totally the tragic flaw shared by the brothers from a different mother. Ian and David aren't so very different at all - they are vulnerable, weak and insecure mummy's boys, with a massive daddy issue thrown in for good measure. David got Pete's charm, Ian got his work ethic; but both are out to prove to their lost mothers that they've made something out of themselves. Their entire lives have been an act of arrogance, bravado and condescension - all the time chasing the mummy figure for comfort.
Now, they've been stripped bare. Ian's lost a child, and David's facing his mortality. I loved the way Ian and Carol linked up, naturally reaching out to each other through personal struggle. It made sense Carol opening up to David's brother, and I loved their exchanged remarks about neither had mentioned Lucy or breast cancer, each having navel-gazed for so long so recently about themselves, this is one of the few instances in recent times on this show where two characters have actually listened to what the other has said.
Ian's utter disbelief that David envied him, whilst Ian had always envied David ended up a revelation that both men grew up hating themselves.
Lovely, poignant scene.
And Christopher Reason is one of the few writers who actually gets Sharon right. It was good that he was chosen to write these two episodes, primarily featuring long-established characters. Sharon was back to her old self - the one DTC really doesn't want to feature because her inherent goodness detracts from the soulless mooching of his entitled heroine Shirley. Her scene with Ian and her concern about his prescription drugs for dulling the grief over Cindy was Sharon at her best.
The Bank of Phil.
As someone on an EastEnders' forum pointed out, it's strange that for Mick and Shirley, that Stan's so vile, but the money they demanded and took from him isn't.
Stan is EastEnders' gold. He's a master manipulator who knows exactly what a prize turd he's spawned in Shirley, and he's up for showing both Mick and Dean - especially Dean - what a piece of shit she is as a mother. He's contriving a situation wherein Shirley is forced to choose between children - a Solomon in reverse, forcing Shirley to reveal to Dean that the reason she left him and his siblings was that he was and could never be her precious Mick.
The entire Carter dynamic came out smelling fecal in this situation. Rather than allow Stan to call in his debt and pay him the money he loaned them, Shirley would rather see her son, Dean, in hock up to his eyeballs to Phil Mitchell. So Shirley decides to "call in some debts." In other words, she goes to the Bank of Phil.
That's right. Shirley still considers Phil to be her personal slush fund of hush money. That Phil Mitchell should smile and open his safe to her is yet another example of prime emasculation rampant at the moment on EastEnders.
Phil owes Shirley nothing. He did what he could to protect his son in the aftermath of Heather's killing. Was it right? Of course not, but Shirley had ample opportunity to reveal Phil's part in covering up the identity of Heather's killer, but she chose, instead, to protect Phil. She was offered a new start in life and a home with her daughter and grandson, but she chucked that aside to come back to the gutters of Walford, throw herself a pity party and obsess after Phil. She's tried on two occasions previously to blackmail money from him, the last lot being taken by Carl. Now, the moment Stan calls in the "loan" he made to his son, who thinks that this is money to which he is entitled and which Shirley thinks is hers by right and which both think is money owed them, in a cack-handed way of protecting the Crown Prince whilst providing for the Young Pretender, Shirley makes a beeline to Phil.
Yes, for Shirley, Phil is the bank of Walford. So Phil "loans" her the money. Is she so stupid not to realise that Phil now holds the strings on Dean's salon too? That he'll at least expect to be repaid from some of the proceeds of the Salon or the pub. He's fronted money from the Albert, and you can bet Sharon cuts a share of the profit his way. But will Phil waive that from the retconned and wizened "love of his life" Shirley? The more I see this crap panned out from such a divisive marmite character, who's totally vile and unlikeable - and remember, this is someone who thought she was entitled to vandalise and trash Ian Beale's restaurant because Ben was Ian's brother and she perceived Ian protecting him (when Ian was being bullied into doing so by her heartthrob Phil) - the more I want Sharon to leave, shoving Phil the stiff middle finger. Then we can set Johnny Carter and Ben up in The Albert and the Mitchell-Carter Empire can grow accordingly. Maybe they can even find a place for Lee at the Arches, when he eventually leaves the Army.
Of course, you realise that DTC is trying to create yet another "bruv" dynamic with Mick and Dean? This is highly reminiscent of the Steinbeck's book East of Eden. Instead of brothers united, we're going to have one broher racked with jealousy of another. And poor pitiful Shirley caught inbetween in an effort to make the public sympathise with her.
I hate how the Carters resent Dean and his relationship with Stan. It reveals their own hypocrisy. Dean may be receptive to Stan's ideas and aims because Stan has the money to invest in Dean's ambition, but this was the exact same reason Mick, Linda and everyone else played nicely to Stan. Keep him sweet and follow the money. Stan knows where Shirley's real feelings lie, and he's going to show her up for what she is regarding Dean. He really is the second-rate son, and now we know she left three young children and eventually rocked up with "the secret son", it makes that desertion deplorable. I hated how Mick played the moral high ground, insinuating that Dean should "thank" his grandfather for the loan. Did Mick or Shirley ever thank Stan? No. They continued to trash-talk him and treat him with spite. Mick even left him stranded in the street in his wheelchair.
This storyline is bringing out the worst in this family.
Dean and Linda ... watch this space.
Mrs Malaprop's Mystery.
Honey is back and used the first of many malapropisms tonight. But why is she here? Well, the air was blue with remarks about Billy spending as much quality time with the kids as possible and Billy and Honey remaining friends, coupled with that cryptic phonecall she made at the end.
Honey's not going to die, but she (and the kids) are going away.
Good episode.
It's mildly amusing to read the effusive praise people are giving the character of David Wicks - viewers who weren't even born when he stuck around for about three years in the 90s. Hearing them declaim him as iconic is hilarious, as David was never iconic during his original tenure; in fact, in the general scheme of things, David originally ranked behind the likes of Grant and Phil Mitchell, Ian Beale, Frank Butcher, Mark Fowler and Ricky Butcher.
He was important in establishing Bianca as a blooded Beale, in bringing Sam Mitchell back to Walford,and in Cindy Beale's exit line. After that, he was rather redundant and picked his moment to depart.
One thing for certain is that he and Carol were never the Frank-and-Pat of another generation, and he was never iconic.
The Heart Attack as a Comedy.
Of course, the entire episode was played against the backdrop of David's collapse and the fact that the one person who should have been made aware of that incident was nowhere about. Carol was taking and taking in an anger-pity tour of Walford, ending up in the park, but more of that later.
David collapsed with a heart attack, and it was a comedy of errors from then on out, starting with Liam discovering him. I know Liam is Son of Ricky and a dullard at the best of times, but come on! He was only listening to music on his telephone when he discovered his grandfather, in terrible distress. Now, common sense would tell you, whip out the phone and dial 999, then stay with your grandad, call the house in front of you to alert everyone and wait for the medical professionals to arrive.
Duuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhh! It's not rocket science.
But noooooooooooooooooooooo, in the words of he late great John Belushi, Liam runs inside to tell two of the biggest, dumbest twats imaginable about what happened to David - Bianca the Village Idiot and Nurse Honker, who run to his aid and do more harm than not.
Honker is supposed to be a nurse, when she can bother to go into work; so at least, she would have known to phone for an ambulance or, once she'd got him in her M-reg Fiat Punto, to phone ahead to the hospital, telling them she was accompanying a suspected myocardial infarction. Instead, she calls Carol, who can't be reached.
David's eye-glazing-over moment at that time held special significance.
A suspected heart attack is a serious thing, but when medical professionals discover that it's actually a cardiac embolism - a blood clot - that is, indeed, serious. Yet throughout the entire ordeal, Bianca and Honker were treating it as though it were a day out. David was strung out on morphine; that was his excuse.
We also find out that Honker actually works at Walford General and that since April, when NHS holiday year starts, Honker's managed to use up all 28 days of her annual leave. She'd lied to her nursing superior and taken a sickie, whilst studying an professional enhancement manual, which she reckoned she didn't need to read as Honker is wise and knows everything. Honker is also self-righteous and ugly too.
The trio are still playing it casually when David returns from having had an angioplasty, but blood clots aren't dispelled that quickly, and they were more interested in the "Sole Property of Mrs Wicks" posing pouch David happened to be wearing at the time of his crisis.
Enter the dragon.
It took a life-threatening experience to bring the truth out in David. Actually, it was Carol who was having the niggling doubts all along, and whilst David was trying to be good (as he said to Janine), Carol uses the oppportunity of a man recovering from a very recent heart attack and blood clot, having had a surgical procedure, to rant and rail at him in a hospital room, actually accusing him of having a heart attack in order to avoid the wedding, citing her moanings to him in the previous week about his diet. (Actually, both she and Bianca should be concerned about Morgan's diet. I recall an episode where he took a huge bowl of crisps to eat, and tonight, he'd have had all that cake, if he were allowed).
David's actual epiphany came when the worm finally turned, and he stood up to Carol's bullying and bad attitude, saying death would have been a relief from life with her. Welcome to the real world, David.
But everyone will know that David started emotionally distancing himself from Carol the moment it dawned on him that committing to her might mean the rest of his life, as she just might weather the storm of cancer. David doesn't do commitment, after all.
A Hattrick of Teenaged Bitchery.
Please stop insulting the viewers' intelligence with the awfully precocious and self-aware Maisie Smith's puberty-enhanced imitation of a ten year-old. The actress turns 13 in the summer, but it's obvious by her curves and certainly by the too-revealing-for-an-underaged-actress frock she wore to the BSAs that puberty is in full swing at the moment. Ten years old, she ain't. Stop pushing jailbait on us.
Hattrick ... Cindy the Unbearable. Tiffany the Unlikeable. And now Rebecca the Prig. I don't like Tiffany, but I didn't like her high-handed, condescending attitude. I have to check my e-mails. WTF? Who brings their laptop to a family gathering. Talk about Tiff being rude, and sniping at Morgan to turn his game off. She's as much a prig as Nurse Honker, and she's also the latest in what appears to be along line of younger hairy teenaged girls who look like boys in drag.
Only Connect.
This episode was worth the effort, if only for the beautiful park scene between Carol and Ian. Lindsey Coulson is brilliant as ever, and Adam Woodyatt rose to the occasion. Carol's worked for Ian for years, and she is involved with his brother, yet this end of the Beale spectrum is the side of the family Ian disdains - the chav side, the dodgy dealing side - so it was interesting, poignant and evocative to see Ian and Carol connect in a conversation that proved what long-term viewers have realised all along: that David and Ian were as alike as two peas in a pod.
Honestly, that was one of the best scenes I've ever witnessed in this programme, and without being blatant, showed totally the tragic flaw shared by the brothers from a different mother. Ian and David aren't so very different at all - they are vulnerable, weak and insecure mummy's boys, with a massive daddy issue thrown in for good measure. David got Pete's charm, Ian got his work ethic; but both are out to prove to their lost mothers that they've made something out of themselves. Their entire lives have been an act of arrogance, bravado and condescension - all the time chasing the mummy figure for comfort.
Now, they've been stripped bare. Ian's lost a child, and David's facing his mortality. I loved the way Ian and Carol linked up, naturally reaching out to each other through personal struggle. It made sense Carol opening up to David's brother, and I loved their exchanged remarks about neither had mentioned Lucy or breast cancer, each having navel-gazed for so long so recently about themselves, this is one of the few instances in recent times on this show where two characters have actually listened to what the other has said.
Ian's utter disbelief that David envied him, whilst Ian had always envied David ended up a revelation that both men grew up hating themselves.
Lovely, poignant scene.
And Christopher Reason is one of the few writers who actually gets Sharon right. It was good that he was chosen to write these two episodes, primarily featuring long-established characters. Sharon was back to her old self - the one DTC really doesn't want to feature because her inherent goodness detracts from the soulless mooching of his entitled heroine Shirley. Her scene with Ian and her concern about his prescription drugs for dulling the grief over Cindy was Sharon at her best.
The Bank of Phil.
As someone on an EastEnders' forum pointed out, it's strange that for Mick and Shirley, that Stan's so vile, but the money they demanded and took from him isn't.
Stan is EastEnders' gold. He's a master manipulator who knows exactly what a prize turd he's spawned in Shirley, and he's up for showing both Mick and Dean - especially Dean - what a piece of shit she is as a mother. He's contriving a situation wherein Shirley is forced to choose between children - a Solomon in reverse, forcing Shirley to reveal to Dean that the reason she left him and his siblings was that he was and could never be her precious Mick.
The entire Carter dynamic came out smelling fecal in this situation. Rather than allow Stan to call in his debt and pay him the money he loaned them, Shirley would rather see her son, Dean, in hock up to his eyeballs to Phil Mitchell. So Shirley decides to "call in some debts." In other words, she goes to the Bank of Phil.
That's right. Shirley still considers Phil to be her personal slush fund of hush money. That Phil Mitchell should smile and open his safe to her is yet another example of prime emasculation rampant at the moment on EastEnders.
Phil owes Shirley nothing. He did what he could to protect his son in the aftermath of Heather's killing. Was it right? Of course not, but Shirley had ample opportunity to reveal Phil's part in covering up the identity of Heather's killer, but she chose, instead, to protect Phil. She was offered a new start in life and a home with her daughter and grandson, but she chucked that aside to come back to the gutters of Walford, throw herself a pity party and obsess after Phil. She's tried on two occasions previously to blackmail money from him, the last lot being taken by Carl. Now, the moment Stan calls in the "loan" he made to his son, who thinks that this is money to which he is entitled and which Shirley thinks is hers by right and which both think is money owed them, in a cack-handed way of protecting the Crown Prince whilst providing for the Young Pretender, Shirley makes a beeline to Phil.
Yes, for Shirley, Phil is the bank of Walford. So Phil "loans" her the money. Is she so stupid not to realise that Phil now holds the strings on Dean's salon too? That he'll at least expect to be repaid from some of the proceeds of the Salon or the pub. He's fronted money from the Albert, and you can bet Sharon cuts a share of the profit his way. But will Phil waive that from the retconned and wizened "love of his life" Shirley? The more I see this crap panned out from such a divisive marmite character, who's totally vile and unlikeable - and remember, this is someone who thought she was entitled to vandalise and trash Ian Beale's restaurant because Ben was Ian's brother and she perceived Ian protecting him (when Ian was being bullied into doing so by her heartthrob Phil) - the more I want Sharon to leave, shoving Phil the stiff middle finger. Then we can set Johnny Carter and Ben up in The Albert and the Mitchell-Carter Empire can grow accordingly. Maybe they can even find a place for Lee at the Arches, when he eventually leaves the Army.
Of course, you realise that DTC is trying to create yet another "bruv" dynamic with Mick and Dean? This is highly reminiscent of the Steinbeck's book East of Eden. Instead of brothers united, we're going to have one broher racked with jealousy of another. And poor pitiful Shirley caught inbetween in an effort to make the public sympathise with her.
I hate how the Carters resent Dean and his relationship with Stan. It reveals their own hypocrisy. Dean may be receptive to Stan's ideas and aims because Stan has the money to invest in Dean's ambition, but this was the exact same reason Mick, Linda and everyone else played nicely to Stan. Keep him sweet and follow the money. Stan knows where Shirley's real feelings lie, and he's going to show her up for what she is regarding Dean. He really is the second-rate son, and now we know she left three young children and eventually rocked up with "the secret son", it makes that desertion deplorable. I hated how Mick played the moral high ground, insinuating that Dean should "thank" his grandfather for the loan. Did Mick or Shirley ever thank Stan? No. They continued to trash-talk him and treat him with spite. Mick even left him stranded in the street in his wheelchair.
This storyline is bringing out the worst in this family.
Dean and Linda ... watch this space.
Mrs Malaprop's Mystery.
Honey is back and used the first of many malapropisms tonight. But why is she here? Well, the air was blue with remarks about Billy spending as much quality time with the kids as possible and Billy and Honey remaining friends, coupled with that cryptic phonecall she made at the end.
Honey's not going to die, but she (and the kids) are going away.
Good episode.
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