Do you know why I gave this episode an 8 out of 10? Simply because of the divine Denise and Patrick. There were some very good bits and scenes in the piece, but there were also some extremely stupid bits, especially at the end. I guess the central theme throughout the episode was bad parenting.
We saw some pips. In the vernacular of internet slang ... SMDH.
Good Son Bad Son. Oh Mick, you silly, deluded man! When will you ever learn never ever to tell Shirley a secret? She may keep many of her own, many of which you have a right to know, but she's got a mouth like the Blackwall Tunnel (probably with breath to boot), and she can't help inadvertantly letting slip something she shouldn't have.
It's nice to know that some things don't change, and Shirley is one who doesn't. As well as Johnny being the only adult in the room as far as the Carters are concerned (and he's about to leave), Mick sometimes takes the occasional responsibility. You have to ask yourself who the older person here is, because there's Shirley, sulking like an adolescent and pissed that Mick grassed the deplorable Buster up to the authorities, effectively prohibiting Shirley, Buster and Dean from riding off into the sunset to play 'appy fairmlies. (Nice to know that Kevin has been so conveniently laid to rest as in "forgotten" in all this mess).
I must say, I'm Team Mick in this situation, especially regarding his remark about the way Buster played the room. Buster is just Derek without the Barnet and whistle, as Mick would say. I'm sure Max would say just that, had he seen him; and Shirley's idea of riding off into the sunset with a man on the run was puerile in the biggest sense of the word.
The next step in the procedure was Shirl to pull out the pity party piece. She can't stick around because she's now become, once again, a spare part - ne'mind Mick reminding her of the fact that, thanks to certain people in the community, Shirley actually has her freedom - why worry about getting banged up for perverting the course of justice for the sake of Buster? But poor, pitiful Shirl ... boohoo ... she can't stick around ... she's a spare part. Ne'mind, she's got her name above the door. Tina has Tosh, Mick has Linda, Phil has Sharon.
Seriously, are we supposed to feel sorry for this woman? No wonder Mick's so apt a passive aggressive bully. He must have learned this skill from Shirley, or else it's in his genes - speaking of jeans, Mick implores Shirley to stay. Seeing out Stan's last days doesn't move her - why should it, the way she's treated the old man? But finding out that Linda is pregnant hits the spot.
Now ... forgive me if I'm wrong, but didn't Linda swear Mick to secrecy about this pregnancy? And didn't Mick agree to tell no one, not even the kids - and, let's be fair, they have the right to be told first? Instead, Mick can't resist telling Shirley, just to keep her close by. Sorry, Mick, you've got a life partner and other children. Shirley is big enough to look after herself. In reality, she can't bear to stick around Walford and see Phil with Sharon - that's a coward for you. Let her go. She's ruined one business you've had, and she's just about rain havoc down upon your happiness now.
In case you didn't know, this is the way Shirley operates. Phil knows it, Sharon knows it and so does Ronnie - she comes in, makes a bloody shambles of a situation and then runs off, leaving someone else to pick up the mess. That coy, knowing little smile she gave you as she cooed that she wouldn't change nappies was sickening. I would hope Linda wouldn't let her within an inch of that child.
And, Shirley, Buster isn't Dean's "dad." He isn't even Mick's dad. He's the geezer who acted as sperm donor, resulting in two sons whom two other men raised as their own. Don't pull that daddy mess, and Dean should know better.
Speaking of Dean ...
I'm beginning to wonder if he isn't emotionally stunted in some way. He certainly is his mother's son, considering the way he spoke to Lola in the salon, and bravo Stacey, for putting him in his place. Stacey should take heed: when she warned Dean that if he didn't change his snide attitude, she'd ditch him, he professed that he couldn't care less. She should take him up on his word and ditch him. How dare him rebuke her for using that tone of voice in front of a client? He shouldn't have belittled Lola in front of the same client, and Lola reacted brilliantly, not being phased at all. That behaviour was typically in the Shirley mould. It would also do Stacey a world of good to realise that Dean was going to walk away from her - not only her, but his business, to go on the run with his feckless mother and the man who donated sperm to create him.
Prior to that, we had the irony of Shirley producing a Shirley-esque reaction and mode of behaviour in Dean: jealousy. After all this time, all it takes is Shirley bigging Mick (the secret son who's about to become a father) as the fount of all wisdom, for Dean to see black.
Shirley: I know going on the run would have been nice, but Mick was right when he sais that it wasn't the best idea.
Really, Shirley? You were buggering off anyway, without a thought of Dean and without Buster until Mick told you his secret. So much for your other son by Buster. And Dean is 26. Kevin is dead, but does his memory really mean that little to him? Does he have this harebrained, childish idea of running away with the mother who would abandon him at the drop of a hat with the man who impregnated her, living in a caravan, fishing in streams and eating ice creams? Does he not realise how quickly Buster would get bored with both of them? It's not enough, in an adult sense, to visit this man in prison and get to know him, as Mick suggested it. Even now, Shirley is wanting Dean to be a more intricate part of her readymade family, unbeknownst of the secret havoc Dean has wreaked, just like his mother. When Shirley almost told him about Linda, initially, giving everything Mick had on his plate as reason for Dean to stick around for moral support, you knew, you just knew that before the episode ended, Shirley would have told Dean, and tell him she did.
But even more ironically, who would have thought that it would be Denise, in one of the most genuinely poignant scenes of the episode, when Dean sought her out in the Minute Mart - Denise, who's emotionally crumbling, herself, from the strain of dealing with Patrick - who inadvertantly set Dean up to find out that which he shouldn't have. Denise understood Dean's feeling of isolation, of being on the periphery of a situation. She admitted that she missed Kim, and encouraged Dean to get to know that family and inadvertantly opened a can of worms.
Shirley couldn't keep it zipped, and Dean couldn't resist targeting Linda. Line of the night.
Congratulations.
The die is cast now. Dean knows, as much as Linda might deny it, that there's every possibilty that child could be his, and furthermore, he knows that Linda knows this as well. "Who's the Daddy" starts here.
The final thing to say about the Queen Shirley-centric episode was her encounter with Sharon. Shirley really is one of the vilest characters ever created for this show. As some characters develop upward, even the addition of a family to surround her, it's degenerated, rather than regenerated her. That's what happens with marmite characters. Were we supposed to think Sharon the bitch of the piece in this? Forgive me, if I'm wrong, but it was Shirley who slept with Sharon's fiancé and Shirley who would have revelled in Sharon's humiliation, in front of her small son. And it was Sharon who made it possible for Shirley to face her in the street just now. She really has no shame. Sharon was right to remind her that, were it not for her, Shirley would be in a prison cell someplace.
Actually, Shirley was wrong to think that Sharon did this entirely for Phil. Phil was a part of it, but Ronnie made her see sense in the presence of the gun. I'm glad Sharon got the last word with Shirley.
Poor Denise. Diane Parish played a blinder. She was the star of the show, as well as Rudolph Walker, who really could have been a stroke victim. From the initial scene, the viewer could see that caring for Patrick was beginning to wear on Denise, from the surreptitious way she gupled down those tablets followed by a swig of water, and the way she finished off the dregs of a glass of wine as she left for work. I'm surprised that she's left Patrick on his own whilst she works, but at least she opened up to Shabnam and told her about the difficulties she was having.
She's drinking heavily, and instead of what Shabnam suggested - that perhaps Patrick was lashing out at her in anger - there's a clear and present danger that Denise may do that to Patrick, from the remark she made to him about a child would be better to manage. Not only is she drinking heavily, she's pilfering drink from the shop.
It didn't help matters when Ian was earwigging her conversation with Shabnam and pithily offered her a muffin for free and some money to help out with Patrick. That's pure Ian. Tactless and guiltridden, and seeking to appease his conscience for the scurvy way he treated Denise, then trying to manipulate her into accepting his guilt money by telling her he cared for her.
She should have told him to stuff his money.
Brilliant performance.
Silly Cindy. This is another character, for whom, I gather, we're supposed to have sympathy. Forgive me if I don't. All the crocodile tears in the ocean from this silly little tart wouldn't evoke one bit of compassion for me. I feel sorry for the kid. Yes, Cindy, babies are hard work. You should have thought of that when you had unprotected sex with TJ and then decided to keep this child. Babies aren't dolls. They pee, poo and need changing. They need feeding, sometimes at night. They cry.
This is a salutory lesson that Cindy misses school. Of course, she would. Her contemporaries are studying for GCSEs and thinking of jobs and university. She's thinking about changing nappies. This is it, but she doesn't stint on taking advantage of Ian's good humour (and the fact that her daughter bears the Cindy gene) in getting him to look after the baby. When she opens up to Liam about her difficulties and Ian offers compassion, the first reaction she has is to lean in for a kiss. Kudos to Liam for fending her off. He's right. Her head is all over the place, and the next thing Liam might be facing is another teenaged union of taking on Cindy and her child, only for TJ or some other hunk with ripped abs to come along and turn her head.
I'm wondering if Cindy's talk about waking up in the morning and finding that she has a daughter like a bad dream, even questioning her love for her child is foreshadowing? She spoke about walking away from the baby. I wonder if that's a possibility in the future. Hell, I'll bet it is, leaving Ian and supercilious Jane to have the baby of their dreams ... with the Cindy gene.
That wouldn't surprise me.
Comic Relief. Masood and Kush. Both deserve better. When did Masood morph into Alfie?
Two Bad Brothers and a Bad Mother. The other interesting scene of the night occurred between Ian and Ben at the cafe. I would suspect that Ben is the latest red herring in the Who Killed Lucy, considering what Ben knows about what's buried in the allotment (in Patrick's particular allotment, to be precise), and the sneaky way he insinuated the question about the authorities being any close to finding Lucy's killer. I can't see Ben being re-introduced just to be revealed as Lucy's killer, but I am interested in knowing how he came about her purse and phone.
And Jane is back, looking for Bobby. Bobby is missing. Bobby is eleven years old. I bloody ask you ... who would put an eleven year-old, on his own, on a train from Birmingham to London, on the child's say-so that he'd been e-mailing and in contact with his father? A mother without one modicum of common sense, that's who. Didn't Jane ever think to follow up Bobby's word with a phone call to Ian, confirming that the visit was OK before Bobby's journey? And in this day and age, who would trust sending a young child like that on his own on an inner-city train to London? Is she sane?
Obviously not, considering she entered Ian's home by the backdoor (after repeatedly calling his phone, which he'd left behind and put on vibrate), with the same look on her face that she had the day Bobby demolished the house, at the age of four, with a bottle of ketchup.
Ian should sue for full custody.
We saw some pips. In the vernacular of internet slang ... SMDH.
Good Son Bad Son. Oh Mick, you silly, deluded man! When will you ever learn never ever to tell Shirley a secret? She may keep many of her own, many of which you have a right to know, but she's got a mouth like the Blackwall Tunnel (probably with breath to boot), and she can't help inadvertantly letting slip something she shouldn't have.
It's nice to know that some things don't change, and Shirley is one who doesn't. As well as Johnny being the only adult in the room as far as the Carters are concerned (and he's about to leave), Mick sometimes takes the occasional responsibility. You have to ask yourself who the older person here is, because there's Shirley, sulking like an adolescent and pissed that Mick grassed the deplorable Buster up to the authorities, effectively prohibiting Shirley, Buster and Dean from riding off into the sunset to play 'appy fairmlies. (Nice to know that Kevin has been so conveniently laid to rest as in "forgotten" in all this mess).
I must say, I'm Team Mick in this situation, especially regarding his remark about the way Buster played the room. Buster is just Derek without the Barnet and whistle, as Mick would say. I'm sure Max would say just that, had he seen him; and Shirley's idea of riding off into the sunset with a man on the run was puerile in the biggest sense of the word.
The next step in the procedure was Shirl to pull out the pity party piece. She can't stick around because she's now become, once again, a spare part - ne'mind Mick reminding her of the fact that, thanks to certain people in the community, Shirley actually has her freedom - why worry about getting banged up for perverting the course of justice for the sake of Buster? But poor, pitiful Shirl ... boohoo ... she can't stick around ... she's a spare part. Ne'mind, she's got her name above the door. Tina has Tosh, Mick has Linda, Phil has Sharon.
Seriously, are we supposed to feel sorry for this woman? No wonder Mick's so apt a passive aggressive bully. He must have learned this skill from Shirley, or else it's in his genes - speaking of jeans, Mick implores Shirley to stay. Seeing out Stan's last days doesn't move her - why should it, the way she's treated the old man? But finding out that Linda is pregnant hits the spot.
Now ... forgive me if I'm wrong, but didn't Linda swear Mick to secrecy about this pregnancy? And didn't Mick agree to tell no one, not even the kids - and, let's be fair, they have the right to be told first? Instead, Mick can't resist telling Shirley, just to keep her close by. Sorry, Mick, you've got a life partner and other children. Shirley is big enough to look after herself. In reality, she can't bear to stick around Walford and see Phil with Sharon - that's a coward for you. Let her go. She's ruined one business you've had, and she's just about rain havoc down upon your happiness now.
In case you didn't know, this is the way Shirley operates. Phil knows it, Sharon knows it and so does Ronnie - she comes in, makes a bloody shambles of a situation and then runs off, leaving someone else to pick up the mess. That coy, knowing little smile she gave you as she cooed that she wouldn't change nappies was sickening. I would hope Linda wouldn't let her within an inch of that child.
And, Shirley, Buster isn't Dean's "dad." He isn't even Mick's dad. He's the geezer who acted as sperm donor, resulting in two sons whom two other men raised as their own. Don't pull that daddy mess, and Dean should know better.
Speaking of Dean ...
I'm beginning to wonder if he isn't emotionally stunted in some way. He certainly is his mother's son, considering the way he spoke to Lola in the salon, and bravo Stacey, for putting him in his place. Stacey should take heed: when she warned Dean that if he didn't change his snide attitude, she'd ditch him, he professed that he couldn't care less. She should take him up on his word and ditch him. How dare him rebuke her for using that tone of voice in front of a client? He shouldn't have belittled Lola in front of the same client, and Lola reacted brilliantly, not being phased at all. That behaviour was typically in the Shirley mould. It would also do Stacey a world of good to realise that Dean was going to walk away from her - not only her, but his business, to go on the run with his feckless mother and the man who donated sperm to create him.
Prior to that, we had the irony of Shirley producing a Shirley-esque reaction and mode of behaviour in Dean: jealousy. After all this time, all it takes is Shirley bigging Mick (the secret son who's about to become a father) as the fount of all wisdom, for Dean to see black.
Shirley: I know going on the run would have been nice, but Mick was right when he sais that it wasn't the best idea.
Really, Shirley? You were buggering off anyway, without a thought of Dean and without Buster until Mick told you his secret. So much for your other son by Buster. And Dean is 26. Kevin is dead, but does his memory really mean that little to him? Does he have this harebrained, childish idea of running away with the mother who would abandon him at the drop of a hat with the man who impregnated her, living in a caravan, fishing in streams and eating ice creams? Does he not realise how quickly Buster would get bored with both of them? It's not enough, in an adult sense, to visit this man in prison and get to know him, as Mick suggested it. Even now, Shirley is wanting Dean to be a more intricate part of her readymade family, unbeknownst of the secret havoc Dean has wreaked, just like his mother. When Shirley almost told him about Linda, initially, giving everything Mick had on his plate as reason for Dean to stick around for moral support, you knew, you just knew that before the episode ended, Shirley would have told Dean, and tell him she did.
But even more ironically, who would have thought that it would be Denise, in one of the most genuinely poignant scenes of the episode, when Dean sought her out in the Minute Mart - Denise, who's emotionally crumbling, herself, from the strain of dealing with Patrick - who inadvertantly set Dean up to find out that which he shouldn't have. Denise understood Dean's feeling of isolation, of being on the periphery of a situation. She admitted that she missed Kim, and encouraged Dean to get to know that family and inadvertantly opened a can of worms.
Shirley couldn't keep it zipped, and Dean couldn't resist targeting Linda. Line of the night.
Congratulations.
The die is cast now. Dean knows, as much as Linda might deny it, that there's every possibilty that child could be his, and furthermore, he knows that Linda knows this as well. "Who's the Daddy" starts here.
The final thing to say about the Queen Shirley-centric episode was her encounter with Sharon. Shirley really is one of the vilest characters ever created for this show. As some characters develop upward, even the addition of a family to surround her, it's degenerated, rather than regenerated her. That's what happens with marmite characters. Were we supposed to think Sharon the bitch of the piece in this? Forgive me, if I'm wrong, but it was Shirley who slept with Sharon's fiancé and Shirley who would have revelled in Sharon's humiliation, in front of her small son. And it was Sharon who made it possible for Shirley to face her in the street just now. She really has no shame. Sharon was right to remind her that, were it not for her, Shirley would be in a prison cell someplace.
Actually, Shirley was wrong to think that Sharon did this entirely for Phil. Phil was a part of it, but Ronnie made her see sense in the presence of the gun. I'm glad Sharon got the last word with Shirley.
Poor Denise. Diane Parish played a blinder. She was the star of the show, as well as Rudolph Walker, who really could have been a stroke victim. From the initial scene, the viewer could see that caring for Patrick was beginning to wear on Denise, from the surreptitious way she gupled down those tablets followed by a swig of water, and the way she finished off the dregs of a glass of wine as she left for work. I'm surprised that she's left Patrick on his own whilst she works, but at least she opened up to Shabnam and told her about the difficulties she was having.
She's drinking heavily, and instead of what Shabnam suggested - that perhaps Patrick was lashing out at her in anger - there's a clear and present danger that Denise may do that to Patrick, from the remark she made to him about a child would be better to manage. Not only is she drinking heavily, she's pilfering drink from the shop.
It didn't help matters when Ian was earwigging her conversation with Shabnam and pithily offered her a muffin for free and some money to help out with Patrick. That's pure Ian. Tactless and guiltridden, and seeking to appease his conscience for the scurvy way he treated Denise, then trying to manipulate her into accepting his guilt money by telling her he cared for her.
She should have told him to stuff his money.
Brilliant performance.
Silly Cindy. This is another character, for whom, I gather, we're supposed to have sympathy. Forgive me if I don't. All the crocodile tears in the ocean from this silly little tart wouldn't evoke one bit of compassion for me. I feel sorry for the kid. Yes, Cindy, babies are hard work. You should have thought of that when you had unprotected sex with TJ and then decided to keep this child. Babies aren't dolls. They pee, poo and need changing. They need feeding, sometimes at night. They cry.
This is a salutory lesson that Cindy misses school. Of course, she would. Her contemporaries are studying for GCSEs and thinking of jobs and university. She's thinking about changing nappies. This is it, but she doesn't stint on taking advantage of Ian's good humour (and the fact that her daughter bears the Cindy gene) in getting him to look after the baby. When she opens up to Liam about her difficulties and Ian offers compassion, the first reaction she has is to lean in for a kiss. Kudos to Liam for fending her off. He's right. Her head is all over the place, and the next thing Liam might be facing is another teenaged union of taking on Cindy and her child, only for TJ or some other hunk with ripped abs to come along and turn her head.
I'm wondering if Cindy's talk about waking up in the morning and finding that she has a daughter like a bad dream, even questioning her love for her child is foreshadowing? She spoke about walking away from the baby. I wonder if that's a possibility in the future. Hell, I'll bet it is, leaving Ian and supercilious Jane to have the baby of their dreams ... with the Cindy gene.
That wouldn't surprise me.
Comic Relief. Masood and Kush. Both deserve better. When did Masood morph into Alfie?
Two Bad Brothers and a Bad Mother. The other interesting scene of the night occurred between Ian and Ben at the cafe. I would suspect that Ben is the latest red herring in the Who Killed Lucy, considering what Ben knows about what's buried in the allotment (in Patrick's particular allotment, to be precise), and the sneaky way he insinuated the question about the authorities being any close to finding Lucy's killer. I can't see Ben being re-introduced just to be revealed as Lucy's killer, but I am interested in knowing how he came about her purse and phone.
And Jane is back, looking for Bobby. Bobby is missing. Bobby is eleven years old. I bloody ask you ... who would put an eleven year-old, on his own, on a train from Birmingham to London, on the child's say-so that he'd been e-mailing and in contact with his father? A mother without one modicum of common sense, that's who. Didn't Jane ever think to follow up Bobby's word with a phone call to Ian, confirming that the visit was OK before Bobby's journey? And in this day and age, who would trust sending a young child like that on his own on an inner-city train to London? Is she sane?
Obviously not, considering she entered Ian's home by the backdoor (after repeatedly calling his phone, which he'd left behind and put on vibrate), with the same look on her face that she had the day Bobby demolished the house, at the age of four, with a bottle of ketchup.
Ian should sue for full custody.
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