Ladies and gentlemen, I give you DTC's version of Love-and-Warmth EastEnders and its cast ...
Didja spot the Mick? Didja spot the Alfie?
Tomorrow is the bumper day we've waited all year to view. Tomorrow, boys and girls, isCarterDay Christmas Day, 65 minutes pitted against Downton Abbey for the biggest, loudest, most sensational Christmas Day around Walford way since the Stax reveal, except now we're getting a BOGOF from the Carters - two for the price of one, when Mick finds out that Dean raped Linda and then finds out that Dean is his baby brother.
Take that, Corrie! (And just as there are seven shades of grey, there are also seven shades of sensationalism, all of which in some way we shall see exhibited tomorrow.
But tonight? Tonight was a filler, with a smidgeon of a clue inserted about a very important storyline, a milquetoast build-up for tomorrow, and a bit of love and warmth. I guess DTC has to show us that he can even do love and warmth better than Lorraine Newman.
Dean's Dilemma. I give credit where credit is due. When Dominic Treadwell-Collins does something well, he does it bloody brilliantly; and he's presented us with the portrait of a rapist which sets out to and succeeds in confusing and conflicting the viewer.
Precious few people could fail to feel a smidgeon of sympathy when Linda confronted Dean with the absolute reason why he had chosen to tell her family that she and Mick weren't married - because he, Dean, was alone and had no one.
This is Dean's ethos, and whilst the rape is entirely his fault, his view of his immediate world, is down to one thing and one thing only - his mother's perceived rejection.
Dean returns to Walford to find the mother who abandoned him, shacked up in the Vic, the premier power establishment on the Square, her name above the door and cosying up to relatives he hardly knew. She's doting on the man who appears to be his uncle. She's at home and comfortable with these people in a way she never was with him. Of course, he feels left out and isolated. And rejected. Again.
I often wonder if Dean's jealous of Mick and what he has is down to his feeling that if he had something similar, then perhaps Shirley would be with him instead of mooching off Mick. That he loves his mother there is no doubt, it's just that he feels she keeps walking away from him.
I had previously thought that Dean knew exactly what he'd done to Linda, and I'm still certain of it; but I think he's trying to convince himself that the sex was consensual as well as messing with Linda's mind about the rape. He's subtly intimating to her that because she didn't resist or put up a fight, and that she's said nothing to date about the rape to anyone (bar Stacey) that she tacitly consented to having sex with him.
Remembering Dean from his previous time on the Square and the problems he had relating to women before (and the ultimate trouble in which he found himself because of this), I can see why he would be delighted - and probably happy for the first time in his life - to have connected with Stacey; and I also feel that he knows exactly what Linda said to her which made her react to him in the way he has. Now, this time, because of Linda, he's known rejection again, and we're getting a pretty good idea of what rejection can do to Dean.
Dean's ultimatum to Linda made it abundantly clear that he knew exactly what had transpired between the two of them, and also that such a claim on Linda's part would be difficult to prove.
Stacey isn't budging, and that's good on her part, but her ultimate rejection has set Dean on a course of no return now, in relation to blowing asunder the fairytale relationship that is Mick and Linda.
Mr Pleasant.
That would be Mick, dontcha know? Mr Crowd-Pleaser, turning every potentially difficult situation into something positive. In reality, just like Dean, Mick is just an overgrown kid, who wants his mother, who's made a living out of playing house and who's gone from being a daddybaby to a babydaddy. Mick has never known adolescence; he's only known fatherhood.
The only difference between Mick and Dean is that Dean knows perfectly well who and what his mother is, and Mick doesn't have a clue. He thinks Mummy Dearest is a batty old lady suffering from Alzheimers who has been secreted away by evil Aunt Babe these past five years and then some. The boy wants his Ma, except his Ma happens to be Shirley, Queen of Scrotes, whom he thinks is his sister.
Once again, the writers have convoluted and constricted the reconstructed Carter timeline that they've twisted themselves again with the maths. Mick recalls pestering Shirley every year about writing letters to Father Christmas - except that, from the time he was a year old until he was five, Mick was in care, and when he got out of care, Shirley was married to Kevin and expecting Jimbo, unless Kevin and Shirley lived with the Carters.
Every year, Mick would wish for his mum to come home.
And now, after thirty-four years, she is! he exclaims.
Hang on a minute ... thirty-four years? Mick is thirty-eight, and it was made abundantly clear that Sylvie had long gone by the time Shirley tried to drown him, and he was still pretty much an infant then. So is Mick really saying that Sylvie left home when Mick was four? Er, wasn't he still in care during that time?
This is mind-boggling and it's what happens when heretofore unmentioned relatives are tagged on. Timelines aren't thought out and people get caught out.
Anyhoo, Shirley's jealous. Aunt Babe is right about that. And try as they might, the writers cannot make Shirley sympathetic. They want to do so, and that doesn't mean Shirley's any less an interesting character ... she's simply not sympathetic or likeable. Maybe Sylvie summed her up most accurately, when she remarked about Shirley constantly having a sour face. The character veers from bitter vindictiveness to crass self-pity, masked by ugly bravado - if that sounds familiar, those characteristics could easily be applied to Kat Slater, another eternal victim who's never to be blamed for anything.
The first of the Carter secrets is out - the fact that Mick and Linda have been playing grown-up for the past 23 (or is it 22, once again, the writers have fucked up on the Carter siblings' ages) years.
Linda has the line of the night.
Of course, I'm angry! The kids were supposed to think we were married.
Really, Linda? Why? Isn't that sorta kinda hypocritical of you? And it's a situation you could have remedied at anytime during the past twenty-odd years, as it seems that Mick has asked you on several occasions and you've declined the honour. What better way to stop your children from being hailed as the bastards at a Peacock family reunion than by legalising your commonlaw status.
(Nancy, the new eternal child, revealed that Johnny was devastated to find out the news. That's right, in the cold dead of night, as Johnny wove his way through a gaggle of asylum seekers surrounding his Lambretta, ploughing his way toward Italy, he receives a phonecall from Nancy:- Johnny (boohoo), I gotta tellya, Mum'n Dad ... they ain't married).
Does Johnny turn around and return? Does he, bollocks.
Lee even wonders whether he's a Carter or a Peacock. (Lee, trust me, you are definitely a pea cock.)
I can't reiterate enough the varying degree of childishness prevalent in the Carter tribe, starting with Linda, whose childlike, romantic behaviour is enabled by Mick and the kids, all of whom she's mollycoddled to such a degree that they behave as if they are years younger than they really are. Linda believes in fairytales, and it was easy enough to concoct such a fairytale marriage on the back of Mick's true love, but you are left wondering why she wouldn't commit fully, when he was ready to do so on any number of occasions. Now, when she's carrying a child of whose paternity she's uncertain, she's willing to take the plunge and pretend again that this baby just might, just might be Mick's.
Why does this remind me of the Roxy-Sean fiasco, when Roxy convinced herself that Amy had to be, must be Sean's child?
In fact, Linda seems to think that if Dean just disappeared, the inconvenient and possible truth about her child might never be exposed, which is why she agrees to try to convince Stacey to forget she ever told her what Dean did, to leave her, Linda, to deal with the situation. Mind you, she doesn't actually tell Stacey to return to Dean -she just told Stacey to carry on as normal.
Then there's the regression of Nancy Carter.
What's happened to this formerly refreshing character? She was formerly a breath of fresh air, an ingenue whose head was firmly on her shoulders and not up the anal passage of self-obsession. Now, all we're getting is funny, little girl singsong voices and stereotypical tomboyish behaviour only manifested by twelve year-olds - she and Lee are like two ten year-olds grappling and teasing, and whenever the subject of romance is brought up, Nancy makes a gagging noise and sticks her tongue out. Not only is Tina an overgrown child, it looks as if Nancy is as well, and the charm is wearing thin.
Once again, I blame the parents. Mick is an affectionate father, but he treats his children as if they were ten years younger than they actually are.
Mr Pleasant's achieved his Christmas dream - the woman he believes is his mother is coming home, and he's decided to propose to the mother of his child.
He is about to be shat upon from a great height.
Childhood ends here and now tomorrow, kids. For everyone.
Community Service Announcement. Jane knows what side her bread is buttered on. The Beale sitcom was embarrassing - from the Beale Machine bedroom scene to the cheesy Newmanesque scene of Jane singing "All I Want for Christmas Is You" followed by a proposal on her knees to Ian. Gosh, that scene alone was emblematic of so many things that are creepy about this programme. In a proposal sequence, the person getting on their knees is usually the groom-to-be, begging for the acceptance of a female on a pedestal, who, afterward, will become his chattel? Does this role reversal mean that Jane is deferring to Ian's honour only to treat him as chattel afterward? She already treats his home and his businesses as if they are hers.
This coy romcom non-secret liaison, which the kids - including Cindy, who's very presence in that household offends me - suss almost immediately, followed by Alfie spreading the gossip and eventually talking Jane around to the feasibility of making her romantic association with Ian common knowledge was more than Newmanesque in its insipid nature. But it will be given a bye, because DTC approved it. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and even the brightest and the best drop a clanger.
The fact that everyone and his dog in Walford was happy for the Beale reconciliation also rang untrue. Of course, Ian would garner immense sympathy for what he's suffered this year, but that doesn't mean that he's become a nicer person. If anything, both he and Peter Prick have used their grief as an excuse to behave abysmally, and Ian was never well-liked by the local yokels. He got a modicum of grudging respect for being Lou's grandson and Pete's son, but he was never loved.
The fact that Jane's craven proposal was made to an smarmily smug Ian in front of Denise, whom they both disrespected by their surreptitious bonk, was callous. And I thought Phil had resolved his differences with Ian. Why is he taunting and goading him again? And why are Sharon and Carol now background characters of the piece?
And there's the other rub ... Jane mentions in passing that she'd received "some presents from people for Beth" today. You what? First of all, I don't imagine there'd be a string of people queuing up to give presents to the child of another child whom they barely knew and who treated them all as if they were bad smells. Secondly, there would be few enough people that Jane would remember who gave Beth a present. This could be how the mystery package gets under the tree. On second hand, it could be a clever lie by Jane to explain how that package got under the tree. Remember Jane has hidden Lucy's phone and purse. Thirdly, maybe Ronnie planted it there surreptitiously when she was whingeing to Ian about helping her get rid of Nick. And Abi is babysitting Beth? Seriously? Abi has become the babysitter for that most entitled of children, Cindy Williams?
The Bitch. Shut up, Kat. Of course, Tommy's asking questions about his father, and kudos to Stacey for coming up with a suitable porky pie to save the child anxiety, something of which Kat never thought. So she's going to allow Alfie a time and place to see the children and pretend everything is hunky dory, then she's going to callously break Tommy's heart - all to assauge her own shitty ego.
Shut up, Kat. In case you haven't noticed, you're right back where you started. You've gone from squatting with Alfie to squatting with Stacey, who's jobless. Don't expect Dean to pay rent for you, and you're in competition with Kush and Donna the Poisoned Dwarf on the market, both of whom appear to have better stock than you. In short, you don't have a pot to piss in and neither does Stacey. Let's hope Tommy appreciates that inconvenient truth as well.
I really want the Moons to leave in 2015.
Now for the shit to hit the fan tomorrow. Let's hope it's a good one, as John Lennon said.
Merry Christmas.
Didja spot the Mick? Didja spot the Alfie?
Tomorrow is the bumper day we've waited all year to view. Tomorrow, boys and girls, is
Take that, Corrie! (And just as there are seven shades of grey, there are also seven shades of sensationalism, all of which in some way we shall see exhibited tomorrow.
But tonight? Tonight was a filler, with a smidgeon of a clue inserted about a very important storyline, a milquetoast build-up for tomorrow, and a bit of love and warmth. I guess DTC has to show us that he can even do love and warmth better than Lorraine Newman.
Dean's Dilemma. I give credit where credit is due. When Dominic Treadwell-Collins does something well, he does it bloody brilliantly; and he's presented us with the portrait of a rapist which sets out to and succeeds in confusing and conflicting the viewer.
Precious few people could fail to feel a smidgeon of sympathy when Linda confronted Dean with the absolute reason why he had chosen to tell her family that she and Mick weren't married - because he, Dean, was alone and had no one.
This is Dean's ethos, and whilst the rape is entirely his fault, his view of his immediate world, is down to one thing and one thing only - his mother's perceived rejection.
Dean returns to Walford to find the mother who abandoned him, shacked up in the Vic, the premier power establishment on the Square, her name above the door and cosying up to relatives he hardly knew. She's doting on the man who appears to be his uncle. She's at home and comfortable with these people in a way she never was with him. Of course, he feels left out and isolated. And rejected. Again.
I often wonder if Dean's jealous of Mick and what he has is down to his feeling that if he had something similar, then perhaps Shirley would be with him instead of mooching off Mick. That he loves his mother there is no doubt, it's just that he feels she keeps walking away from him.
I had previously thought that Dean knew exactly what he'd done to Linda, and I'm still certain of it; but I think he's trying to convince himself that the sex was consensual as well as messing with Linda's mind about the rape. He's subtly intimating to her that because she didn't resist or put up a fight, and that she's said nothing to date about the rape to anyone (bar Stacey) that she tacitly consented to having sex with him.
Remembering Dean from his previous time on the Square and the problems he had relating to women before (and the ultimate trouble in which he found himself because of this), I can see why he would be delighted - and probably happy for the first time in his life - to have connected with Stacey; and I also feel that he knows exactly what Linda said to her which made her react to him in the way he has. Now, this time, because of Linda, he's known rejection again, and we're getting a pretty good idea of what rejection can do to Dean.
Dean's ultimatum to Linda made it abundantly clear that he knew exactly what had transpired between the two of them, and also that such a claim on Linda's part would be difficult to prove.
Stacey isn't budging, and that's good on her part, but her ultimate rejection has set Dean on a course of no return now, in relation to blowing asunder the fairytale relationship that is Mick and Linda.
Mr Pleasant.
That would be Mick, dontcha know? Mr Crowd-Pleaser, turning every potentially difficult situation into something positive. In reality, just like Dean, Mick is just an overgrown kid, who wants his mother, who's made a living out of playing house and who's gone from being a daddybaby to a babydaddy. Mick has never known adolescence; he's only known fatherhood.
The only difference between Mick and Dean is that Dean knows perfectly well who and what his mother is, and Mick doesn't have a clue. He thinks Mummy Dearest is a batty old lady suffering from Alzheimers who has been secreted away by evil Aunt Babe these past five years and then some. The boy wants his Ma, except his Ma happens to be Shirley, Queen of Scrotes, whom he thinks is his sister.
Once again, the writers have convoluted and constricted the reconstructed Carter timeline that they've twisted themselves again with the maths. Mick recalls pestering Shirley every year about writing letters to Father Christmas - except that, from the time he was a year old until he was five, Mick was in care, and when he got out of care, Shirley was married to Kevin and expecting Jimbo, unless Kevin and Shirley lived with the Carters.
Every year, Mick would wish for his mum to come home.
And now, after thirty-four years, she is! he exclaims.
Hang on a minute ... thirty-four years? Mick is thirty-eight, and it was made abundantly clear that Sylvie had long gone by the time Shirley tried to drown him, and he was still pretty much an infant then. So is Mick really saying that Sylvie left home when Mick was four? Er, wasn't he still in care during that time?
This is mind-boggling and it's what happens when heretofore unmentioned relatives are tagged on. Timelines aren't thought out and people get caught out.
Anyhoo, Shirley's jealous. Aunt Babe is right about that. And try as they might, the writers cannot make Shirley sympathetic. They want to do so, and that doesn't mean Shirley's any less an interesting character ... she's simply not sympathetic or likeable. Maybe Sylvie summed her up most accurately, when she remarked about Shirley constantly having a sour face. The character veers from bitter vindictiveness to crass self-pity, masked by ugly bravado - if that sounds familiar, those characteristics could easily be applied to Kat Slater, another eternal victim who's never to be blamed for anything.
The first of the Carter secrets is out - the fact that Mick and Linda have been playing grown-up for the past 23 (or is it 22, once again, the writers have fucked up on the Carter siblings' ages) years.
Linda has the line of the night.
Of course, I'm angry! The kids were supposed to think we were married.
Really, Linda? Why? Isn't that sorta kinda hypocritical of you? And it's a situation you could have remedied at anytime during the past twenty-odd years, as it seems that Mick has asked you on several occasions and you've declined the honour. What better way to stop your children from being hailed as the bastards at a Peacock family reunion than by legalising your commonlaw status.
(Nancy, the new eternal child, revealed that Johnny was devastated to find out the news. That's right, in the cold dead of night, as Johnny wove his way through a gaggle of asylum seekers surrounding his Lambretta, ploughing his way toward Italy, he receives a phonecall from Nancy:- Johnny (boohoo), I gotta tellya, Mum'n Dad ... they ain't married).
Does Johnny turn around and return? Does he, bollocks.
Lee even wonders whether he's a Carter or a Peacock. (Lee, trust me, you are definitely a pea cock.)
I can't reiterate enough the varying degree of childishness prevalent in the Carter tribe, starting with Linda, whose childlike, romantic behaviour is enabled by Mick and the kids, all of whom she's mollycoddled to such a degree that they behave as if they are years younger than they really are. Linda believes in fairytales, and it was easy enough to concoct such a fairytale marriage on the back of Mick's true love, but you are left wondering why she wouldn't commit fully, when he was ready to do so on any number of occasions. Now, when she's carrying a child of whose paternity she's uncertain, she's willing to take the plunge and pretend again that this baby just might, just might be Mick's.
Why does this remind me of the Roxy-Sean fiasco, when Roxy convinced herself that Amy had to be, must be Sean's child?
In fact, Linda seems to think that if Dean just disappeared, the inconvenient and possible truth about her child might never be exposed, which is why she agrees to try to convince Stacey to forget she ever told her what Dean did, to leave her, Linda, to deal with the situation. Mind you, she doesn't actually tell Stacey to return to Dean -she just told Stacey to carry on as normal.
Then there's the regression of Nancy Carter.
What's happened to this formerly refreshing character? She was formerly a breath of fresh air, an ingenue whose head was firmly on her shoulders and not up the anal passage of self-obsession. Now, all we're getting is funny, little girl singsong voices and stereotypical tomboyish behaviour only manifested by twelve year-olds - she and Lee are like two ten year-olds grappling and teasing, and whenever the subject of romance is brought up, Nancy makes a gagging noise and sticks her tongue out. Not only is Tina an overgrown child, it looks as if Nancy is as well, and the charm is wearing thin.
Once again, I blame the parents. Mick is an affectionate father, but he treats his children as if they were ten years younger than they actually are.
Mr Pleasant's achieved his Christmas dream - the woman he believes is his mother is coming home, and he's decided to propose to the mother of his child.
He is about to be shat upon from a great height.
Childhood ends here and now tomorrow, kids. For everyone.
Community Service Announcement. Jane knows what side her bread is buttered on. The Beale sitcom was embarrassing - from the Beale Machine bedroom scene to the cheesy Newmanesque scene of Jane singing "All I Want for Christmas Is You" followed by a proposal on her knees to Ian. Gosh, that scene alone was emblematic of so many things that are creepy about this programme. In a proposal sequence, the person getting on their knees is usually the groom-to-be, begging for the acceptance of a female on a pedestal, who, afterward, will become his chattel? Does this role reversal mean that Jane is deferring to Ian's honour only to treat him as chattel afterward? She already treats his home and his businesses as if they are hers.
This coy romcom non-secret liaison, which the kids - including Cindy, who's very presence in that household offends me - suss almost immediately, followed by Alfie spreading the gossip and eventually talking Jane around to the feasibility of making her romantic association with Ian common knowledge was more than Newmanesque in its insipid nature. But it will be given a bye, because DTC approved it. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and even the brightest and the best drop a clanger.
The fact that everyone and his dog in Walford was happy for the Beale reconciliation also rang untrue. Of course, Ian would garner immense sympathy for what he's suffered this year, but that doesn't mean that he's become a nicer person. If anything, both he and Peter Prick have used their grief as an excuse to behave abysmally, and Ian was never well-liked by the local yokels. He got a modicum of grudging respect for being Lou's grandson and Pete's son, but he was never loved.
The fact that Jane's craven proposal was made to an smarmily smug Ian in front of Denise, whom they both disrespected by their surreptitious bonk, was callous. And I thought Phil had resolved his differences with Ian. Why is he taunting and goading him again? And why are Sharon and Carol now background characters of the piece?
And there's the other rub ... Jane mentions in passing that she'd received "some presents from people for Beth" today. You what? First of all, I don't imagine there'd be a string of people queuing up to give presents to the child of another child whom they barely knew and who treated them all as if they were bad smells. Secondly, there would be few enough people that Jane would remember who gave Beth a present. This could be how the mystery package gets under the tree. On second hand, it could be a clever lie by Jane to explain how that package got under the tree. Remember Jane has hidden Lucy's phone and purse. Thirdly, maybe Ronnie planted it there surreptitiously when she was whingeing to Ian about helping her get rid of Nick. And Abi is babysitting Beth? Seriously? Abi has become the babysitter for that most entitled of children, Cindy Williams?
The Bitch. Shut up, Kat. Of course, Tommy's asking questions about his father, and kudos to Stacey for coming up with a suitable porky pie to save the child anxiety, something of which Kat never thought. So she's going to allow Alfie a time and place to see the children and pretend everything is hunky dory, then she's going to callously break Tommy's heart - all to assauge her own shitty ego.
Shut up, Kat. In case you haven't noticed, you're right back where you started. You've gone from squatting with Alfie to squatting with Stacey, who's jobless. Don't expect Dean to pay rent for you, and you're in competition with Kush and Donna the Poisoned Dwarf on the market, both of whom appear to have better stock than you. In short, you don't have a pot to piss in and neither does Stacey. Let's hope Tommy appreciates that inconvenient truth as well.
I really want the Moons to leave in 2015.
Now for the shit to hit the fan tomorrow. Let's hope it's a good one, as John Lennon said.
Merry Christmas.
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