It's the beginning of the World Cup. Then in the next few weeks, there'll be Wimbledon, followed by the Commonwealth Games for two weeks. A summer of sport, spectacle and altered schedules is never good for the soap world, especially EastEnders, a programme which is still fragile enough to suffer the most.
ITV smells blood, so it pits its own soaps against it on at least two occasions during the football month. There's already been one such bloodletting, and EastEnders came out on the losing end against Emmerdale.
Viewers and fanbois should stop making excuses for this producer and demand more quality, better writing, less re-hash, retconning and force-feeding of unpopular characters. It's all very well and good adapting a socialist approach and saying everyone will have their moment in the sun, but anticipating a summer dominated by such unpalatable characters as Tina, Tosh and Co will induce many more wary viewers to turn off.
Message to Dom ... This week sucked, and we shouldn't have to tell you why.
The Myth and Ballad of Sharon and Phil.
Phil was always the more intelligent brother, and if he used his bald noggin, he'd think back to he time over 20 years ago, when he and Grant gifted Sharon with the Vic. Sharon proceeded to throw her very being into making the pub a success. So much so, that this was one of the primary causes of trouble between her and Grant, She did the same when she returned in 2000 and when she bought Angie's Den in 2002.
Sharon gets given a business, she makes that business pay dividends.
Now, think about Sharon gifting the Vic to Peggy, and think how obsessed with the Vic Peggy became. In fact, Phil accused her of thinking only about the Vic as he dropped a lighted match onto the whiskey-sodden floor.
When Phil gifted Shirley with, first, a snack van and then the caff, she ran them both into the ground.
Yeah, we get it. We're supposed to be Team Shirley who's suddenly forgotten how Phil and the unwilling Jay betrayed her confidence in the wake of Heather's death. She's being presented as the positive face of Walford now, an amalgamation of Pat, Peggy and Pauline all in one.
I have to wonder what sort of trust Sharon places in Johnny, who can't even seem to be able to take a booking without having Sharon there either to calm him down or hold his hand.
The writing is still bad for Sharon, and I've got an uneasy feeling that "her" big storyline will be a plot device to unite Phil with Shirley Queen of Scrotes as well as being the catalyst for another story concerning the Carters.
Parent Trap.
Certain people have no business in the company of children at all - Shirley, Ronnie, Roxy, Tina and Tosh spring to mind. Not only are Tina and Tosh planning a family, we get to hear about some of the mishmash known as "upbringing" that Zsa Zsa had with Tina - like sleeping in a top bureau drawer instead of a bed, the bottom drawer being a place for the matching princess outfits for both her and her mother.
So Tina had money for princess outfits, but nothing with which to buy a crib for her daughter? According to her, they did make trips to the Social, but did Social Services know about how much Tina was off her head with booze and drugs and Zsa Zsa left to fend for herself? She allegedly couldn't cope and was just a kid. Well, cop this -- I know EastEnders isn't all that good with maths, but Tina is forty. Zsa Zsa is the same age as the Beale twins - twenty. So at the age when Tina had Zsa Zsa, Bianca was already a mother, Shirley was married to Kevin and James was beginning to walk. Kathy Beale was seeing Ian through the terrible twos.
She was not a kid, and if she couldn't cope, where were the likes of Shirley and Babe?
Something isn't adding up here. Moving the goalposts again?
Roswell Ronnie's back - the first appearance since the last time we saw her on Good Friday, the night Lucy Beale died. There's significance in this, but the way Ronnie talks to Roxy is nothing short of skin-crawlingly creepy. The show is rather top-heavy with child-women at the moment. All we need now is for Kim to rock up, and we have a hattrick.
Neither Tina nor Tosh should ever be allowed to parent children. Tosh, along with Ian Beale, his departed brother, and Shirley Queen of Scrotes all confirm that Mummy Issues is this producer's pet peeve. Tosh's control freak mother enters her spirit every time she attempts to play babysitter to Amy (and this Amy's forte is screaming). Tina on the other hand plays with Amy as if she, herself, were also an undisciplined kid. Stuffing a kid with cake and ice cream and then letting them run rampant is a surefire recipe for puke on the floor, but then Tina would know all about that.
I am seriously beginning to wonder if Tina isn't retarded.
She's So Horny ...
Max told a lie. What else is new? Because he was so strident with his lie, his mother-in-law told the police. Max's ascertions that he saw Lucy and a sober Jake emerge from the mysterious taxi. Max's motive? He thinks that his dippy daughter's epiphany about speaking too soon to the police about an innocent man means that Jake and Lauren might just get back together.
Max overreacts in typical Max fashion and lies in order to safeguard his child, which brings the police back into his life again.
But it's the police who have a weak spot.
They're still as inept as they always were, and in many ways, I'd love to see Marsden pursuing this, with the dogged determination that was her party piece. Instead, why are these Hollyoaks rejects posing and pawing and asking the same questions over and over. Even Ian doesn't give a rat's arse that Jake is innocent. Just lock him away and hope that the killer keeps a low profile and that he or she isn't someone the Beales know.
Nope, with this interlude in the murder mystery, we have a re-hash of Phil and Kate.
Hmmmm .... bald-headed man with a whispery voice, tangentially involved with a murder investigation, gets cosy with a female police officer assigned to the case, who's suddenly developed feelings for the man in question.
I wonder if Emma Summerhayes does nails?
Viewers spotted what appeared to be a spark between Max and Miss Po-Face from the get-go. I didn't,and I'm wondering if TPTB picked up on forum blarney and planned accordingly.
In less time than it takes for an erection, we have Summerhayes turning into a wimp before our very eyes, drinking whiskey with Max on duty, whining about how the Lucy case is making her cry, bleating on about her failed engagement and then - Bob's your uncle - she's going to bed with Max.
This is not a honeytrap, which would be highly illegal by police standards. But Max is savvy enough to be attracted to this vulnerable woman and knows that if they sleep together, she is forever compromised in her pursuit of him as either a suspect or a witness in Lucy's case. But as we all know, most women who associate romantically with Max Branning end up being destroyed in some way by him - Rachel, Tanya, Stacey, Vanessa, Kirsty - Tanya and Stacey appear to have survived, but Tanya had to leave Walford and Max, and Stacey had to grow up.
Max is horny, but so is PC Summerhayes. And stupid. Infinitely stupid.
Final Observation: The closest thing the show has now to an Alpha Male is Aleks. But the "guilt" expressed in this episode has nothing to do with Lucy Beale.
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