I would have watched this Monday night, but I had (and still have) sciatica so bad I couldn't concentrate on anything, but I've just seen it, and - without a doubt, this was the best episode of EastEnders I've seen in recent years - possibly since the iconic (bad word, but intentional) "You're not my muvvah" episode.
Yes, better than the ueber-sensationalist Stax reveal, which, to my mind, was the beginning of Branningalia. Who knows if this is the proper beginning of Cartergalia? You know what? I don't care. There may be a tendancy to overexpose them, but the core elements of the family are good and played by strong actors. True, some aren't likeable, but then a lot of people aren't likeable. They have their flaws, and when I criticise the flaws of the ones I like, it's because I find them human and interesting.
Linda, Dean and the Family Dynamic. Tony Jordan couldn't have written a better episode, and I take my hat off to the brilliant continuity displayed, as well as the way TPTB have decided to present this very difficult subject.
Some people, with whom I've exchanged comments suggest that I'm blaming Shirley for what happened between Dean and Linda. I'm not, I can assure you. Dean is an adult and no parent has any sort of control over the actions pursued by their adult child. There comes a time when responsibilities for one's actions has to be assumed; but I do blame Shirley for a lot of Dean's issues - most notably, his problem with rejection, which has tumbled over into his relationships with women, in general.
Those who watched the programme during the years when Dean first appeared as an older adolescent, and calling himself Deano, will remember a couple of things, which were obliquely referenced in Monday's episode:-
- that until Jimbo died, Dean was known by his Christian name. After Jimbo's death, he added the "o" to the end and started calling himself "Deano" either in tribute or in a baleful attempt to become what Jimbo once was.
- that Dean had problems during his initial stint in relating to women, and a lot of those problems manifested themselves in rejection. Dean competed with Bradley for Stacey's affections. In the end, he stupidly tried to drug her in order to have sex with her, but that made her ill. Subsequently, she chose Bradley. He then tried to impress older girls - his step-sister Chelsea, Dawn Swann, Shabnam in her pole-dancing days - and all treated him with disdain.
During that era, Dean was the only one of the two Wicks children to bond with Shirley. Carly didn't want to know. He was always reaching out to Shirley. She would make an attempt to respond, sincere in her efforts, but something - usually a man - distracted her.
Some have mentioned the abandonment issues Janine Butcher had (and never relied on them to explain her behaviour), but Dean's issues are, to differentiate, to do with rejection, instead of abandonment. He perceives Shirley leaving him and his siblings as rejection; to hear him speak of Kevin in such warm terms in that episode - about how good a man he was and how loyal - only to end his appraisal by sadly admitting that, once again, he didn't belong to Kevin, tantamount to admitting that he didn't know where and to whom he belonged. He made that abundantly evident to Linda at the beginning of their talk, when she reiterated that he was part of their dynamic, that he belonged with them, with possibly the most chilling line of the episode:-
I'm not a part of this happy Carter group hug. I never have been.
He's not, indeed. In fact, he returned to find Shirley ensconced with a family of which he was a part, biologically, but whom he never knew. In fact, my only niggle with tonight's episode was Linda's remark about Kevin being a good bloke. Unless Kevin maintained contact with Shirley's family after she left, Shirley would have been long gone by the time Mick and Linda got together.
Dean's obviously suffered from what he perceives to be Shirley's rejection, but he had Kevin until Shirley - yes, Shirley again - revealed to him upon her return, that Kevin wasn't his father, and when Dean was in prison, Kevin died.
I don't think Dean was playing a role upstairs in the Vic during his initial talk with Linda. He was angry at Shirley leaving, rejecting him and not even responding to his confession that he loved her. To him, as an adult, that was the ultimate rejection. I think, originally, he was very honest, and just how much his mother's perceived rejection has bored into his soul over the years was evident in some of his remarks tonight and earlier.
As stated earlier, Dean had trouble relating to women of his own age demographic from the get-go. His warm relationship with Denise and with Pat signified his search for a maternal figure within a family dynamic where he felt at home. It's also been heavily implied that he was raped in prison - again, the victim of a sexual crime denoting power and control. The first thing he did when he was released was to find a prostitute - and make his mother pay for her services to him. Since then, we've heard him admit cutting a girlfriend's hair because she'd displeased him. We saw how he manipulated Lola into a subservient position at the Salon and how he manoeuvred Stacey into working a day without pay, simply because he had the power to do so. We also witnessed his reaction to Stacey turning the tables on him, simply by calling him "Deano" and also his overt reaction to Lauren when she rejected him. To Dean, that must have been the nadir of his being. He was right in assessing Lauren as a "kid".
Yet in this episode, he was blatantly honest in his own assessment of how women couldn't be trusted. How they say one thing and do another - projecting his own experiences with Shirley - and then wailing about how he'd told Shirley of his love for her, how she'd almost been begging him for this, and now when she heard his true feelings, she cut him out of her life. What was very interesting about this rant was how Dean included Carly in his pejorative opinion of women in general, especially her naming her son James after their dead sibling, interpreting it as a way of trying to forget Jimbo and replace him with the more perfect James.
And amidst all of this is his own acumen and perspicacity about the fact that, for all Linda assures him that he is part of their family, when he admits what the audience has observed for so long - that Mick doesn't like him, and that if Dean weren't Shirley's son and Mick's nephew, Linda wouldn't have given him the time of day.
When Dean said he wanted to be wanted and belong to a family, I feel he was being honest.
But Dean is more like Shirley than he would care to admit, as evidenced by Nancy's interruption, asking Linda to find the juke box key and his witnessing of Linda's group hug with her children in the pub - for Linda is a parent, and like most normal parents, she puts her children's needs, however trivial, first. The scene which Dean witnessed in the pub furthere fueled his feelings of isolation.
The change from distraught to sinister in Dean was practically imperceptible - and significant was Nancy's remark, upon interrupting Dean and Linda, wondering if Dean were trying it on with Linda. Very significant.
When Linda returned upstairs, she made her feelings regarding Dean abundantly clear - she was sympathetic to his feelings, she mused about him being only a few years older than Lee, and Dean vocalised her sentiments - she felt maternal. First, there was the analogy with Lee, then what triggered the tragedy encapsulated within the episode, was the analogy with Johnny - the simple act of making hot chocolate for him, the way she would have done her own son.
The act of rape is a sexual crime of violence which is based on power and control. Dean's rape of Linda was nuanced on so many levels. First and foremost, it was the ultimate expression and warning to her not ever to include him in her idea of a child within her family - and in that respect, her candid remark to her kids downstairs about Dean seeming much younger than any of those three was way off base. Whereas the Carter siblings, despite Lee's time in Afghanistan, display a puerile innocence far younger than people their age normally are, Dean is years older than his chronological age, corrupt, dark and cynical beyond belief.
The rape was an act of supreme control, reinforced by the fact that Linda, shocked at the suddenness and intensity of the act, couldn't speak or utter a sound, something Dean interpreted as tacit acceptance. He did this, with the sound of what was Linda's and Mick's song in the background, because he could - the same reason he did what he did to Lola and to Stacey.
And on a weird third level, Dean genuinely believes he's done nothing more than have a secret tryst with his "uncle's" wife, whom he believed to be silent and willing - the weird and distinctly creepy kiss and caress he gave to Linda at the end of the act, coupled with his sinister promise to say nothing was evidence of that. Kudos to the show for its depiction of the awfulness of the act, simply by honing the camera on Linda's face at the beginning and at the end of the act, frozen in horror, and followed by her showering and washing her body in bleach, the feeling of dirtiness enveloping her.
There's terror to come, because Mick, in sympathy with Dean for yet another abandonment by Shirley, has welcomed him into the bosom of his family.
Saint Mick. So now we learn that Mick has a temper, that this easy-going demeanor is a facade. That doesn't surprise me, as he's spent most of the year in passive-aggressive mode with Linda, kowtowing and eggshell-walking around Shirley Queen of Scrotes, which is what he's doing in that episode. He can't get out of the Vic quick enough to find Shirley, who's out there "alone" and vulnerable, in his opinion. I don't know what he thought he'd do with Shirley had he brought her back. She'd shot a man, FFS.
Since he and the Court Jester sussed that Babe had pulled a disappearing act, they figured Shirley would be with Babe. I actually thought that Babe lived in a flat, but it appears she either lives in a ground-floor one (whereas before she appeared to be living in an upstairs flat on a rundown council estate) or a terraced house. Of course, you knew that Shirley was hiding someplace, but those scenes with Babe were amazing in what they revealed in a minimalist capacity:-
- that Shirley has form for going off, that when she doesn't want to be found, she won't be found. No surprise there. She disappeared from sight when she walked away from her kids and also when she walked out of Mick's life fourteen years before.
- that Mick and Tina have no guile when it comes to anything Babe says.
- and that something is seriously not right with Sylvie, whom it seems Babe has dispatched to someone else for care, if the telephone call about someone "getting confused" in the evening. Dementia? Alzheimer's? What? That reinforces my belief that Sylvie has been with Babe all these years and that Babe manipulated her into leaving the Carter home.
Instead of checking in with his partner and children, Mick sees fit to give his feckless childwoman sister a word of wisdom, assessing that she doesn't want a child and reminding her of what happened with Zsa Zsa. (What happened with Zsa Zsa? Zsa Zsa had the uncommon good sense to realise her mother was a loser and brought herself up).
Mick's devotion to Shirley cost Linda dearly.
Our Shirl. I don't like Babe, but what an interesting character! She blithely lied to Shirley, and how stupid are the Carter siblings. Instead of looking around Babe's gaff, Mick and Tina took her word and a motherly hug. Shirley, hiding in what appeared to be the back garden, simply heard the knock on the door and took Babe's word that it was the police, looking for Shirley in connection with the shooting of Phil.
For once Shirley is thinking, not of herself, but of Dean - well, Dean and Mick - and wanting to spend one more night with her sons, if only to tell them the truth - presumably about herself and their relationship, and that's when we learn from Babe that Mick will probably kick off with his violent temper. Well, we know that Mick's temper will be used in another way, and that it will be Dean, as well, who'll feel even more of a rejection when he finds out who Mick really is.
The absolute wonder of the episode was the faith Dean, Tina and Shirley put in Babe - it's the blind faith of a child, and I think Babe got Sylvie out of the way, conveniently, in order that she might move into the motherly role. Significant detail, which was lost on Shirley - the two tins of sweets Babe had, which Shirley recognised as being the sort of sweets Sylvie kept. Hmmmmm ...
Babe is the sinister one to watch.
Brilliant episode. Absolutely brilliant.
Yes, better than the ueber-sensationalist Stax reveal, which, to my mind, was the beginning of Branningalia. Who knows if this is the proper beginning of Cartergalia? You know what? I don't care. There may be a tendancy to overexpose them, but the core elements of the family are good and played by strong actors. True, some aren't likeable, but then a lot of people aren't likeable. They have their flaws, and when I criticise the flaws of the ones I like, it's because I find them human and interesting.
Linda, Dean and the Family Dynamic. Tony Jordan couldn't have written a better episode, and I take my hat off to the brilliant continuity displayed, as well as the way TPTB have decided to present this very difficult subject.
Some people, with whom I've exchanged comments suggest that I'm blaming Shirley for what happened between Dean and Linda. I'm not, I can assure you. Dean is an adult and no parent has any sort of control over the actions pursued by their adult child. There comes a time when responsibilities for one's actions has to be assumed; but I do blame Shirley for a lot of Dean's issues - most notably, his problem with rejection, which has tumbled over into his relationships with women, in general.
Those who watched the programme during the years when Dean first appeared as an older adolescent, and calling himself Deano, will remember a couple of things, which were obliquely referenced in Monday's episode:-
- that until Jimbo died, Dean was known by his Christian name. After Jimbo's death, he added the "o" to the end and started calling himself "Deano" either in tribute or in a baleful attempt to become what Jimbo once was.
- that Dean had problems during his initial stint in relating to women, and a lot of those problems manifested themselves in rejection. Dean competed with Bradley for Stacey's affections. In the end, he stupidly tried to drug her in order to have sex with her, but that made her ill. Subsequently, she chose Bradley. He then tried to impress older girls - his step-sister Chelsea, Dawn Swann, Shabnam in her pole-dancing days - and all treated him with disdain.
During that era, Dean was the only one of the two Wicks children to bond with Shirley. Carly didn't want to know. He was always reaching out to Shirley. She would make an attempt to respond, sincere in her efforts, but something - usually a man - distracted her.
Some have mentioned the abandonment issues Janine Butcher had (and never relied on them to explain her behaviour), but Dean's issues are, to differentiate, to do with rejection, instead of abandonment. He perceives Shirley leaving him and his siblings as rejection; to hear him speak of Kevin in such warm terms in that episode - about how good a man he was and how loyal - only to end his appraisal by sadly admitting that, once again, he didn't belong to Kevin, tantamount to admitting that he didn't know where and to whom he belonged. He made that abundantly evident to Linda at the beginning of their talk, when she reiterated that he was part of their dynamic, that he belonged with them, with possibly the most chilling line of the episode:-
I'm not a part of this happy Carter group hug. I never have been.
He's not, indeed. In fact, he returned to find Shirley ensconced with a family of which he was a part, biologically, but whom he never knew. In fact, my only niggle with tonight's episode was Linda's remark about Kevin being a good bloke. Unless Kevin maintained contact with Shirley's family after she left, Shirley would have been long gone by the time Mick and Linda got together.
Dean's obviously suffered from what he perceives to be Shirley's rejection, but he had Kevin until Shirley - yes, Shirley again - revealed to him upon her return, that Kevin wasn't his father, and when Dean was in prison, Kevin died.
I don't think Dean was playing a role upstairs in the Vic during his initial talk with Linda. He was angry at Shirley leaving, rejecting him and not even responding to his confession that he loved her. To him, as an adult, that was the ultimate rejection. I think, originally, he was very honest, and just how much his mother's perceived rejection has bored into his soul over the years was evident in some of his remarks tonight and earlier.
As stated earlier, Dean had trouble relating to women of his own age demographic from the get-go. His warm relationship with Denise and with Pat signified his search for a maternal figure within a family dynamic where he felt at home. It's also been heavily implied that he was raped in prison - again, the victim of a sexual crime denoting power and control. The first thing he did when he was released was to find a prostitute - and make his mother pay for her services to him. Since then, we've heard him admit cutting a girlfriend's hair because she'd displeased him. We saw how he manipulated Lola into a subservient position at the Salon and how he manoeuvred Stacey into working a day without pay, simply because he had the power to do so. We also witnessed his reaction to Stacey turning the tables on him, simply by calling him "Deano" and also his overt reaction to Lauren when she rejected him. To Dean, that must have been the nadir of his being. He was right in assessing Lauren as a "kid".
Yet in this episode, he was blatantly honest in his own assessment of how women couldn't be trusted. How they say one thing and do another - projecting his own experiences with Shirley - and then wailing about how he'd told Shirley of his love for her, how she'd almost been begging him for this, and now when she heard his true feelings, she cut him out of her life. What was very interesting about this rant was how Dean included Carly in his pejorative opinion of women in general, especially her naming her son James after their dead sibling, interpreting it as a way of trying to forget Jimbo and replace him with the more perfect James.
And amidst all of this is his own acumen and perspicacity about the fact that, for all Linda assures him that he is part of their family, when he admits what the audience has observed for so long - that Mick doesn't like him, and that if Dean weren't Shirley's son and Mick's nephew, Linda wouldn't have given him the time of day.
When Dean said he wanted to be wanted and belong to a family, I feel he was being honest.
But Dean is more like Shirley than he would care to admit, as evidenced by Nancy's interruption, asking Linda to find the juke box key and his witnessing of Linda's group hug with her children in the pub - for Linda is a parent, and like most normal parents, she puts her children's needs, however trivial, first. The scene which Dean witnessed in the pub furthere fueled his feelings of isolation.
The change from distraught to sinister in Dean was practically imperceptible - and significant was Nancy's remark, upon interrupting Dean and Linda, wondering if Dean were trying it on with Linda. Very significant.
When Linda returned upstairs, she made her feelings regarding Dean abundantly clear - she was sympathetic to his feelings, she mused about him being only a few years older than Lee, and Dean vocalised her sentiments - she felt maternal. First, there was the analogy with Lee, then what triggered the tragedy encapsulated within the episode, was the analogy with Johnny - the simple act of making hot chocolate for him, the way she would have done her own son.
The act of rape is a sexual crime of violence which is based on power and control. Dean's rape of Linda was nuanced on so many levels. First and foremost, it was the ultimate expression and warning to her not ever to include him in her idea of a child within her family - and in that respect, her candid remark to her kids downstairs about Dean seeming much younger than any of those three was way off base. Whereas the Carter siblings, despite Lee's time in Afghanistan, display a puerile innocence far younger than people their age normally are, Dean is years older than his chronological age, corrupt, dark and cynical beyond belief.
The rape was an act of supreme control, reinforced by the fact that Linda, shocked at the suddenness and intensity of the act, couldn't speak or utter a sound, something Dean interpreted as tacit acceptance. He did this, with the sound of what was Linda's and Mick's song in the background, because he could - the same reason he did what he did to Lola and to Stacey.
And on a weird third level, Dean genuinely believes he's done nothing more than have a secret tryst with his "uncle's" wife, whom he believed to be silent and willing - the weird and distinctly creepy kiss and caress he gave to Linda at the end of the act, coupled with his sinister promise to say nothing was evidence of that. Kudos to the show for its depiction of the awfulness of the act, simply by honing the camera on Linda's face at the beginning and at the end of the act, frozen in horror, and followed by her showering and washing her body in bleach, the feeling of dirtiness enveloping her.
There's terror to come, because Mick, in sympathy with Dean for yet another abandonment by Shirley, has welcomed him into the bosom of his family.
Saint Mick. So now we learn that Mick has a temper, that this easy-going demeanor is a facade. That doesn't surprise me, as he's spent most of the year in passive-aggressive mode with Linda, kowtowing and eggshell-walking around Shirley Queen of Scrotes, which is what he's doing in that episode. He can't get out of the Vic quick enough to find Shirley, who's out there "alone" and vulnerable, in his opinion. I don't know what he thought he'd do with Shirley had he brought her back. She'd shot a man, FFS.
Since he and the Court Jester sussed that Babe had pulled a disappearing act, they figured Shirley would be with Babe. I actually thought that Babe lived in a flat, but it appears she either lives in a ground-floor one (whereas before she appeared to be living in an upstairs flat on a rundown council estate) or a terraced house. Of course, you knew that Shirley was hiding someplace, but those scenes with Babe were amazing in what they revealed in a minimalist capacity:-
- that Shirley has form for going off, that when she doesn't want to be found, she won't be found. No surprise there. She disappeared from sight when she walked away from her kids and also when she walked out of Mick's life fourteen years before.
- that Mick and Tina have no guile when it comes to anything Babe says.
- and that something is seriously not right with Sylvie, whom it seems Babe has dispatched to someone else for care, if the telephone call about someone "getting confused" in the evening. Dementia? Alzheimer's? What? That reinforces my belief that Sylvie has been with Babe all these years and that Babe manipulated her into leaving the Carter home.
Instead of checking in with his partner and children, Mick sees fit to give his feckless childwoman sister a word of wisdom, assessing that she doesn't want a child and reminding her of what happened with Zsa Zsa. (What happened with Zsa Zsa? Zsa Zsa had the uncommon good sense to realise her mother was a loser and brought herself up).
Mick's devotion to Shirley cost Linda dearly.
Our Shirl. I don't like Babe, but what an interesting character! She blithely lied to Shirley, and how stupid are the Carter siblings. Instead of looking around Babe's gaff, Mick and Tina took her word and a motherly hug. Shirley, hiding in what appeared to be the back garden, simply heard the knock on the door and took Babe's word that it was the police, looking for Shirley in connection with the shooting of Phil.
For once Shirley is thinking, not of herself, but of Dean - well, Dean and Mick - and wanting to spend one more night with her sons, if only to tell them the truth - presumably about herself and their relationship, and that's when we learn from Babe that Mick will probably kick off with his violent temper. Well, we know that Mick's temper will be used in another way, and that it will be Dean, as well, who'll feel even more of a rejection when he finds out who Mick really is.
The absolute wonder of the episode was the faith Dean, Tina and Shirley put in Babe - it's the blind faith of a child, and I think Babe got Sylvie out of the way, conveniently, in order that she might move into the motherly role. Significant detail, which was lost on Shirley - the two tins of sweets Babe had, which Shirley recognised as being the sort of sweets Sylvie kept. Hmmmmm ...
Babe is the sinister one to watch.
Brilliant episode. Absolutely brilliant.
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