This could apply to Buster and Shirley ... but then it might also apply to the Carters.
I gave this episode a 7, for the little things, which managed to get squidgeoned into all things Carter. The only storyline in which this family isn't invested, thus far, is the Cotton storyline, but even so, Shirley played Rottweiler at Dot's door when word was first received that Nick had "died," and she was present when Shirley contacted Yvonne, so even there, there has been Carter involvement.
Tonight there was a hint that the Carters may be involved in the Lucy puzzle (or else they may be a red herring) and we got a hint of something we all knew - that Johnny is going to depart.
We got a hint of something else, also - arguably the worst-kept secret in soap history; but then, the Carters are so heavily touted that all their secrets and surprises become positively mundane, guessable and eminently predictable when revealed in whatever manner - in short, pedestrian.
The easiest way for me to précis this episode is to divide it up by Carters - and their knew satellite. A major family having its very own satellites. Whoda thunk that? Hasn't that happened before? (Pssst! BranningVille).
CarterTown I: Stan and the Court Jester. The always watchable Timothy West achieves the unthinkable - Stan's serious illness does what things like this sometimes do: it's forced that deplorable childwoman Tina the Court Jester to grow up. Yes, that's right, Tina. Life isn't all about you, your fecklessness, your dishonesty and your utter immaturity. You're now facing something most people do have to face - the death of your elderly parent.
I know Tina's been the closest to Stan and the only one of his progeny who hasn't turned against him. She may not love her daughter, but she does love her dad. She does what every one of us has done when faced with a parent diagnosed with terminal cancer - you try to keep them with you that much longer. If that means snatching away their cigarettes, you do. Stop them from eating greasy food, do that too. And force an appointment with their oncologist, so you can hear the actual prognosis and the heartbreaking confirmation from the patient, your parent, that they want no further treatment, that they've accepted their fate and are ready to meet their end.
Even then, you can't accept the inevitable, and so you clutch at straws, offering any and all answers to treatment. Tina and Tosh have serious relationship issues, and if anything good came from this episode tonight, it has to be that for probably the first time, I came close to liking Tina - because her situation with Stan resonated with my own experience with my mother back in the 1980s. Tina was so desperate to buy more time with Stan that she was offering any kind of financial help - money from Mick (without asking Mick) and, more importantly, the money she and Tosh had saved for the baby. For once, Tosh was shown to be self-serving and selfish, and, for me, this may have been a minor moment, but it was a defining moment in the Tosh-Tina dynamic.
Tosh has a bad relationship with her parents, yet she appears to have inherited the more controlling, uptight aspects her mother exhibited; and she's jealous that Tina has a positive relationship with her relatives. Neither woman should be a parent, but at least Tina recognises that she was never cut out to be a parent.
Tina is selfless enough to offer their savings in a last-ditch attempt to buy her more time with her dying father, but Tosh is so wrapped up in her obsession to have a baby. Were this Tosh's mother or father, she'd probably withold any sort of financial help for medical treatment even if more time meant some sort of emotional rapprochement with her parents. Tosh wants what she wants. For Tosh.
Not CarterTown: Cora and the Air Pollutant. The beautiful - yes, beautiful - Ann Mitchell continues to prove that less is more. Minimal scenes, minimal dialogue, but she stands head and shoulders above anyone else in the cast in conveying emotion through her facial expressions and eyes. She isn't being cruel to Stan, she's simply holding herself away from the situation, guarding her emotions with that hardcore shield that's as fragile as eggshells, holding at bay the memory of losing the man she loved to the same disease which is killing Stan.
The only downside to this beautiful performance is the presence of Dexter stinking up the screen. Johnny leaves, and we are left with this offensive racial stereotype. Whoever wrote this scrote should offer the sincerest apology publically to the Afro-Caribbean community for lumbering their representation with Dexter.
Worst line of the night:-
I'm 'ere to spend some time wiv mah best girl.
Ugh! Puh-LEEEEZE! Viewers, check your shoes - no, check your legs up to your knees, please, just to be sure they're not covered in bullshit.
CarterTown: Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye. Sweet Johnny is ... well, sweet, coming around to check on a battered Ben. (Ian could introduce a new sausage under that name at the chippie. Then Ben, like Johnny, would be a sausage too).
Ben's passed muster with Phil, by telling Phil that he'd got into a fight with Lee Carter, but had given as good as he got. (Liar, liar, pants on fire). Still, it got him kudos from Phil, but Johnny's there to check on Ben and to reassure him that - hey, it's ok to come out. Little does Sweet Johnny know that Ben's already come out; now he's trying to go back inside the closet. Whilst coming out to Mick might have been the best thing Johnny's ever done, coming out again to Phil might not be as nice; besides, Ben's got a girlfriend now, Abi, and he's taking her up West to see nothing less thanWicked.
You might say this is Ben's Defying Gravity moment ...
But what goes up, must come down.
At the end of all of this, meeting up with Lee at the Minute Mart, Johnny receives a text from Luca, and I imagine this will be the beginning of the end in Walford for Sweet Johnny. For the moment, at least.
CarterTown: Linda, Lee and Little Secrets. The entire aura of this episode was bathed in what was an awkward cross between a warm familial comedy-drama crossed with a poor attempt at gritty kitchen sink drama. Linda's told a little porky to absent Mick about where she'll be all day - up West getting his Christmas present (and there's irony in this, dontcha know?). We all know where Linda's bound - the the termination clinic, but not after she finds out from Nancy about Lee's horrific fight with Ben Mitchell. Nancy tells her that Lee frightened her - as if anything can frighten Nancy. Apparently, Lee got a funny look im his little porcine eyes and almost swung for Nancy.
The park scene between Nancy and Lee was quite effective, if only that it set up the definite possibility that Lee - were he so inclined - could definitely be Lucy's killer, especially the way he related the story about his time boxing in the army when he used the occasion to react overtly to a squaddie who'd been bantering adversely with him. It took four people to get him to stop punching out the other guy.
(Question: Please answer this - Is Lee still an active soldier? He intimated in an earlier episode that he was, and that the army was behind sending him on this skills course for plumbing. If that's so, why isn't he assigned to barracks? There are certainly barracks in London. Lee was a mines specialist - the Royal Artillery has a barracks in Romford, not a million miles away. The Signals Corp is in Bexleyheath. Apart from attending his course, which he rarely seems to do, he would have barracks duties as well.)
Linda thinks he gets his temper from his father, but Lee isn't sure. I'd say Linda's almost right on that one - considering the force with which Shirley's tried to kill various people, including Mick, Lee may have inherited some strain of mental illness from his grandmother/aunt. There was one eye-popping moment when Linda suggested Lee get counselling, something that simply isn't done in Walford, but as quickly as that moment came, it went. After all, Lee has Linda, Mick and Whitney, the girlfriend he never sees, to support him.
Because of all of this, Linda misses her termination appointment and is interrupted back at home by Mick, trying to re-schedule. There follows the ubiquitous "horny Mick" scene, thinking at first that Linda's cryptic phonecall had something to do with his Christmas surprise (ever the eternal child, as in all things Carter). Then there followed something which struck home with me about an item in the news just yesterday -
First, Mick not-so-subtly suggests that Linda give him a foretaste of his Christmas surprise, in the form of a bit of Afternoon Delight - in other words, nookie. Is there no time when Mick doesn't think of nookie? He wants it morning, noon and night - hence, why Linda is in doubt about the paternity of the child in question. As she left the room to see about Stan's (bun in the) oven chips, Mick sneaks a look at her phone, and that was the moment that reminded me of the current news item - the travel ban to Britain of the misogynist Julien Blanc. Mick certainly isn't a misogynist, but he does have a passive-aggressive streak, and one of Blanc's suggestions about how a man should "control" a woman is to make sure he surreptitiously checks her phone for last calls received or made and texts. Of course, in this instance Dean is trying to find out whom Linda rang about his Christmas surprise and finds it's a clinic.
Well, now ... there are a couple of Christmas surprises with which Linda could lumber Mick - she could tell him she was raped, or she can tell him that she's pregnant ... or she can tell him that she's pregnant, that she was raped and that she was getting an abortion because she didn't know whose baby she was carrying, his or the rapist's. One wonders what gift she'll give.
CarterTown: Shirl on a Motorcycle.
They say the translation of this French title wasn't Girl on a Motorcycle, but rather, Naked under Leather. Now just picture Shirl and Buster/Andy.
This was another contrivance ... Mick and Dean hijacking the crusty old caravan thinking Shirley was inside, only to find they'd ferried an angry Buster/Andy back to Walford.
This set the scene for one of the worst-kept secrets and identities ever to be kept on the programme, it set the stage for Shirley's dramatic return to Walford, and it set the scene for Shirley to confront a sick and tired Stan. Of course, in the last, Linda Henry pulled a blinder, but I have no sympathy for Shirley. The dialogue with Stan was predictable.
Stan:- You're here then.
Shirley:- Just a flying visit. How long ya got?
Stan:- Well ... let's just make it a good Christmas. Won't you stay?
Shirley (wiping a tear):- I c-a-a-n't.
When we all know that she can and she will. She's the designated central character. If there were any doubt about that, it was reinforced by that ueber-dramatic entrance - the asexual figure in black riding the motorbike - is there nothing Shirley cannot do? Midwife a dog, after Googling the procedure, get the man she shot and his wife to lie through their teeth for her, ride a motorbike ... and how many times did we have to hear Mick say to Buster/Andy that ~ we all want Shirl here, we need her ~. Really, Mick?
One wonders at whom this storyline in particular was aimed. As the clues about Lucy's murderer have been few and oblique, Buster/Andy may as well have entered the Vic with a yellow Post-It on his bald head proclaiming I Am the Daddy of Mick and Dean (and Maybe Carly), it was that obvious.
If Mick is thick as pigshit about the identity of this Phil clone (not only does he look like Phil, he sounds like him - easy to see why Shirley converted herself into Phil's doormat), Dean has his number right away.
Alarm Bell One: Buster/Andy (and right away, Nancy surmises that Buster is a dog's name) says he's a friend of Shirley's. Dean rightly replies that Shirley has no mates.
Alarm Bell Two: Dean asks Buster/Andy how long he's known Shirley, and Buster disarmingly replies that he's known her for about 40 years, meaning since she was twelve. (No reaction from Mick, but plenty of suspicion from Dean).
Alarm Bell Three: Dean asks Buster/Andy if he knew Dean's father, Kevin Wicks. Buster/Andy does and says Kevin was a good man. (Well, he would say that about a man whom he'd compromised).
Alarm Bell Four: Dean asks Buster/Andy when the last time he saw Kevin, and Buster/Andy walks away. Dean persists and Buster/Andy admits it was at Carly's christening. (What? Could Buster/Andy be Carly's father as well?)
Alarm Bell Five: Stan, Tina and Babe arrive and see Buster/Andy, all of whom recognise him. There's then Stan's reaction to him and Buster/Andy's cryptic protest that he and Shirley were just kids.
Alarm Bell Six: Shirley's admonition to Nancy to keep Mick and Dean away from Buster/Andy.
Alarm Bell Seven: Shirley shits herself when she finds out Dean's been talking to Buster/Andy.
The duff-duff sees Dean accusing Shirley of refusing to introduce him to his father. OK, Buster could be Andy, but I thought Shirley told Phil that Andy had "gone away," although we know that Shirley is more than economical with the truth. It could be, and it probably is, that Buster is Andy and he's the father of Mick and also Dean and maybe Carly, that he and Shirley maintained a Frank-and-Pat situation, meeting and coupling from time to time. Maybe, like Frank, Buster, who may be Andy, was married and couldn't run away with Shirl - because I think if Buster, who may be Andy, were free, Shirl wouldn't have hesitated to dump Kevin and run away with him.
Or maybe Buster isn't Andy, but Buster and the father of Dean and not Mick.
He's one of the above, and all the secrets in all the world couldn't have pointed more firmly to the man who looks and sounds like Phil and who had a connection in the Square being none other than the first and most important Carter satellite to arrive on the scene. We all guessed who he was. The question now is, how many people will he bring with him as a new branch of the Carter associates? Because I'm certain Buster or Andy or whoever he is, has children. Someplace. Somewhere.
This mystery is at the other end of the Lucy scale.
I gave this episode a 7, for the little things, which managed to get squidgeoned into all things Carter. The only storyline in which this family isn't invested, thus far, is the Cotton storyline, but even so, Shirley played Rottweiler at Dot's door when word was first received that Nick had "died," and she was present when Shirley contacted Yvonne, so even there, there has been Carter involvement.
Tonight there was a hint that the Carters may be involved in the Lucy puzzle (or else they may be a red herring) and we got a hint of something we all knew - that Johnny is going to depart.
We got a hint of something else, also - arguably the worst-kept secret in soap history; but then, the Carters are so heavily touted that all their secrets and surprises become positively mundane, guessable and eminently predictable when revealed in whatever manner - in short, pedestrian.
The easiest way for me to précis this episode is to divide it up by Carters - and their knew satellite. A major family having its very own satellites. Whoda thunk that? Hasn't that happened before? (Pssst! BranningVille).
CarterTown I: Stan and the Court Jester. The always watchable Timothy West achieves the unthinkable - Stan's serious illness does what things like this sometimes do: it's forced that deplorable childwoman Tina the Court Jester to grow up. Yes, that's right, Tina. Life isn't all about you, your fecklessness, your dishonesty and your utter immaturity. You're now facing something most people do have to face - the death of your elderly parent.
I know Tina's been the closest to Stan and the only one of his progeny who hasn't turned against him. She may not love her daughter, but she does love her dad. She does what every one of us has done when faced with a parent diagnosed with terminal cancer - you try to keep them with you that much longer. If that means snatching away their cigarettes, you do. Stop them from eating greasy food, do that too. And force an appointment with their oncologist, so you can hear the actual prognosis and the heartbreaking confirmation from the patient, your parent, that they want no further treatment, that they've accepted their fate and are ready to meet their end.
Even then, you can't accept the inevitable, and so you clutch at straws, offering any and all answers to treatment. Tina and Tosh have serious relationship issues, and if anything good came from this episode tonight, it has to be that for probably the first time, I came close to liking Tina - because her situation with Stan resonated with my own experience with my mother back in the 1980s. Tina was so desperate to buy more time with Stan that she was offering any kind of financial help - money from Mick (without asking Mick) and, more importantly, the money she and Tosh had saved for the baby. For once, Tosh was shown to be self-serving and selfish, and, for me, this may have been a minor moment, but it was a defining moment in the Tosh-Tina dynamic.
Tosh has a bad relationship with her parents, yet she appears to have inherited the more controlling, uptight aspects her mother exhibited; and she's jealous that Tina has a positive relationship with her relatives. Neither woman should be a parent, but at least Tina recognises that she was never cut out to be a parent.
Tina is selfless enough to offer their savings in a last-ditch attempt to buy her more time with her dying father, but Tosh is so wrapped up in her obsession to have a baby. Were this Tosh's mother or father, she'd probably withold any sort of financial help for medical treatment even if more time meant some sort of emotional rapprochement with her parents. Tosh wants what she wants. For Tosh.
Not CarterTown: Cora and the Air Pollutant. The beautiful - yes, beautiful - Ann Mitchell continues to prove that less is more. Minimal scenes, minimal dialogue, but she stands head and shoulders above anyone else in the cast in conveying emotion through her facial expressions and eyes. She isn't being cruel to Stan, she's simply holding herself away from the situation, guarding her emotions with that hardcore shield that's as fragile as eggshells, holding at bay the memory of losing the man she loved to the same disease which is killing Stan.
The only downside to this beautiful performance is the presence of Dexter stinking up the screen. Johnny leaves, and we are left with this offensive racial stereotype. Whoever wrote this scrote should offer the sincerest apology publically to the Afro-Caribbean community for lumbering their representation with Dexter.
Worst line of the night:-
I'm 'ere to spend some time wiv mah best girl.
Ugh! Puh-LEEEEZE! Viewers, check your shoes - no, check your legs up to your knees, please, just to be sure they're not covered in bullshit.
CarterTown: Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye. Sweet Johnny is ... well, sweet, coming around to check on a battered Ben. (Ian could introduce a new sausage under that name at the chippie. Then Ben, like Johnny, would be a sausage too).
Ben's passed muster with Phil, by telling Phil that he'd got into a fight with Lee Carter, but had given as good as he got. (Liar, liar, pants on fire). Still, it got him kudos from Phil, but Johnny's there to check on Ben and to reassure him that - hey, it's ok to come out. Little does Sweet Johnny know that Ben's already come out; now he's trying to go back inside the closet. Whilst coming out to Mick might have been the best thing Johnny's ever done, coming out again to Phil might not be as nice; besides, Ben's got a girlfriend now, Abi, and he's taking her up West to see nothing less thanWicked.
You might say this is Ben's Defying Gravity moment ...
But what goes up, must come down.
At the end of all of this, meeting up with Lee at the Minute Mart, Johnny receives a text from Luca, and I imagine this will be the beginning of the end in Walford for Sweet Johnny. For the moment, at least.
CarterTown: Linda, Lee and Little Secrets. The entire aura of this episode was bathed in what was an awkward cross between a warm familial comedy-drama crossed with a poor attempt at gritty kitchen sink drama. Linda's told a little porky to absent Mick about where she'll be all day - up West getting his Christmas present (and there's irony in this, dontcha know?). We all know where Linda's bound - the the termination clinic, but not after she finds out from Nancy about Lee's horrific fight with Ben Mitchell. Nancy tells her that Lee frightened her - as if anything can frighten Nancy. Apparently, Lee got a funny look im his little porcine eyes and almost swung for Nancy.
The park scene between Nancy and Lee was quite effective, if only that it set up the definite possibility that Lee - were he so inclined - could definitely be Lucy's killer, especially the way he related the story about his time boxing in the army when he used the occasion to react overtly to a squaddie who'd been bantering adversely with him. It took four people to get him to stop punching out the other guy.
(Question: Please answer this - Is Lee still an active soldier? He intimated in an earlier episode that he was, and that the army was behind sending him on this skills course for plumbing. If that's so, why isn't he assigned to barracks? There are certainly barracks in London. Lee was a mines specialist - the Royal Artillery has a barracks in Romford, not a million miles away. The Signals Corp is in Bexleyheath. Apart from attending his course, which he rarely seems to do, he would have barracks duties as well.)
Linda thinks he gets his temper from his father, but Lee isn't sure. I'd say Linda's almost right on that one - considering the force with which Shirley's tried to kill various people, including Mick, Lee may have inherited some strain of mental illness from his grandmother/aunt. There was one eye-popping moment when Linda suggested Lee get counselling, something that simply isn't done in Walford, but as quickly as that moment came, it went. After all, Lee has Linda, Mick and Whitney, the girlfriend he never sees, to support him.
Because of all of this, Linda misses her termination appointment and is interrupted back at home by Mick, trying to re-schedule. There follows the ubiquitous "horny Mick" scene, thinking at first that Linda's cryptic phonecall had something to do with his Christmas surprise (ever the eternal child, as in all things Carter). Then there followed something which struck home with me about an item in the news just yesterday -
First, Mick not-so-subtly suggests that Linda give him a foretaste of his Christmas surprise, in the form of a bit of Afternoon Delight - in other words, nookie. Is there no time when Mick doesn't think of nookie? He wants it morning, noon and night - hence, why Linda is in doubt about the paternity of the child in question. As she left the room to see about Stan's (bun in the) oven chips, Mick sneaks a look at her phone, and that was the moment that reminded me of the current news item - the travel ban to Britain of the misogynist Julien Blanc. Mick certainly isn't a misogynist, but he does have a passive-aggressive streak, and one of Blanc's suggestions about how a man should "control" a woman is to make sure he surreptitiously checks her phone for last calls received or made and texts. Of course, in this instance Dean is trying to find out whom Linda rang about his Christmas surprise and finds it's a clinic.
Well, now ... there are a couple of Christmas surprises with which Linda could lumber Mick - she could tell him she was raped, or she can tell him that she's pregnant ... or she can tell him that she's pregnant, that she was raped and that she was getting an abortion because she didn't know whose baby she was carrying, his or the rapist's. One wonders what gift she'll give.
CarterTown: Shirl on a Motorcycle.
They say the translation of this French title wasn't Girl on a Motorcycle, but rather, Naked under Leather. Now just picture Shirl and Buster/Andy.
This was another contrivance ... Mick and Dean hijacking the crusty old caravan thinking Shirley was inside, only to find they'd ferried an angry Buster/Andy back to Walford.
This set the scene for one of the worst-kept secrets and identities ever to be kept on the programme, it set the stage for Shirley's dramatic return to Walford, and it set the scene for Shirley to confront a sick and tired Stan. Of course, in the last, Linda Henry pulled a blinder, but I have no sympathy for Shirley. The dialogue with Stan was predictable.
Stan:- You're here then.
Shirley:- Just a flying visit. How long ya got?
Stan:- Well ... let's just make it a good Christmas. Won't you stay?
Shirley (wiping a tear):- I c-a-a-n't.
When we all know that she can and she will. She's the designated central character. If there were any doubt about that, it was reinforced by that ueber-dramatic entrance - the asexual figure in black riding the motorbike - is there nothing Shirley cannot do? Midwife a dog, after Googling the procedure, get the man she shot and his wife to lie through their teeth for her, ride a motorbike ... and how many times did we have to hear Mick say to Buster/Andy that ~ we all want Shirl here, we need her ~. Really, Mick?
One wonders at whom this storyline in particular was aimed. As the clues about Lucy's murderer have been few and oblique, Buster/Andy may as well have entered the Vic with a yellow Post-It on his bald head proclaiming I Am the Daddy of Mick and Dean (and Maybe Carly), it was that obvious.
If Mick is thick as pigshit about the identity of this Phil clone (not only does he look like Phil, he sounds like him - easy to see why Shirley converted herself into Phil's doormat), Dean has his number right away.
Alarm Bell One: Buster/Andy (and right away, Nancy surmises that Buster is a dog's name) says he's a friend of Shirley's. Dean rightly replies that Shirley has no mates.
Alarm Bell Two: Dean asks Buster/Andy how long he's known Shirley, and Buster disarmingly replies that he's known her for about 40 years, meaning since she was twelve. (No reaction from Mick, but plenty of suspicion from Dean).
Alarm Bell Three: Dean asks Buster/Andy if he knew Dean's father, Kevin Wicks. Buster/Andy does and says Kevin was a good man. (Well, he would say that about a man whom he'd compromised).
Alarm Bell Four: Dean asks Buster/Andy when the last time he saw Kevin, and Buster/Andy walks away. Dean persists and Buster/Andy admits it was at Carly's christening. (What? Could Buster/Andy be Carly's father as well?)
Alarm Bell Five: Stan, Tina and Babe arrive and see Buster/Andy, all of whom recognise him. There's then Stan's reaction to him and Buster/Andy's cryptic protest that he and Shirley were just kids.
Alarm Bell Six: Shirley's admonition to Nancy to keep Mick and Dean away from Buster/Andy.
Alarm Bell Seven: Shirley shits herself when she finds out Dean's been talking to Buster/Andy.
The duff-duff sees Dean accusing Shirley of refusing to introduce him to his father. OK, Buster could be Andy, but I thought Shirley told Phil that Andy had "gone away," although we know that Shirley is more than economical with the truth. It could be, and it probably is, that Buster is Andy and he's the father of Mick and also Dean and maybe Carly, that he and Shirley maintained a Frank-and-Pat situation, meeting and coupling from time to time. Maybe, like Frank, Buster, who may be Andy, was married and couldn't run away with Shirl - because I think if Buster, who may be Andy, were free, Shirl wouldn't have hesitated to dump Kevin and run away with him.
Or maybe Buster isn't Andy, but Buster and the father of Dean and not Mick.
He's one of the above, and all the secrets in all the world couldn't have pointed more firmly to the man who looks and sounds like Phil and who had a connection in the Square being none other than the first and most important Carter satellite to arrive on the scene. We all guessed who he was. The question now is, how many people will he bring with him as a new branch of the Carter associates? Because I'm certain Buster or Andy or whoever he is, has children. Someplace. Somewhere.
This mystery is at the other end of the Lucy scale.
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