Bobby vs Denny, or The Psychopath vs the Spoiled Brat

I'm drawn to Digital Spy the way rubberneckers are drawn to car crashes, and I never cease to be amazed at the collective amount of stupidity found in one soap forum.

There's a discussion going on at the moment about Ian's ticking Sharon off about her son's behaviour. Was it hypocritical? Not half. Ian has about as much right to lecture someone else on their parenting techniques than the Pope has about giving birth control advice. 

Ian's been an abysmal parent.

Let's start by saying all of his children, including children he has raised, have been spoiled little oiks. Steven Beale was provided with the best of everything, but when he was forced to live in a cramped flat above the chippie, he resorted to hate mail, targeting people such as Ian's cousin Mark Fowler. When Pat discovered this and Ian and Laura confronted him about why he did it, he coldly remarked that he was just saying things he'd heard Ian say about the people he attacked.

Lucy has made a lifestyle about being disobedient and disrespectful to Ian. When she trashed the house whilst he was away once, she smacked him across the face when he told her off. Ian smacked her back ... and then apologised.

Lucy is dead, but in her short life, she showed no loyalty and wasn't above taking a grand from her best friend's father in exchange for sleeping with him. She was a cokehead, and her twin brother, Ian's son, was her dealer.

Peter wasn't only just a coke dealer. He was a snobby, entitled little prick who dealt in the Bank of Dad, and I'll bet Ian's subsidising this great New Zealand adventure which would never come about in real time.

And Bobby is a killer. 

More than that, he's a psychopath. He not only kept the letter Lucy had been writing at the time he whacked her on the head as she sat on the sofa, he kept the murder weapon (the jewelry box) and gave it to Beth. Just as a reminder of what happens to people who annoy Bobby by perceiving to upset the family routine.

Bobby was the unwanted son who didn't have the Cindy gene. Ian made it abundantly clear to him in the wake of Lucy's death that he wasn't Lucy. Well, now there's another member of the Beale dynamic who has the Cindy gene, and Ian seems to be spending an inordinate amount of time cooing and billing over her.

That must annoy Bobby.

Denny, on the other hand, was a posthumous child raised by his mother, who had no living blood relatives known to her. He's never had a male role model, and now he has an unlikely one in Phil Mitchell, who'll stoke the temper he inherited from his father and grandfather to the Mitchell advantage.

His bullying tendancy is an effort to get the right form of attention from Sharon. He wants structure and parameters. Sharon, on the other hand, is afraid of losing his love, the love of the only human being close to her by blood.

Denny might be a lot of things, but he's not a killer, and Ian's harbouring a killer under his roof.

The Phelps Episode Review:- Friday 27.03.2015

First of all, let me say that I am a big fan - a big big fan - of Sarah Phelps. So I watched this. Then I watched it again. Then I thought about it.

It was a very good episode, written by a writer who knows Old Walford, particularly Sharon, so well. However, I have to say, it wasn't the best thing Phelps has ever written for the show, and it wasn't the best that she's written for Sharon. 

I'm not about to give this episode a near-perfect rating because it was written by one of the best people ever to write for the programme. No one's perfect, and sometimes even the best at their trade make a faux pas.

As near as I could fathom this episode, it was all about two original characters from Old Walford, about to transition into a new phase of their lives.

Sharon. It was a bit much for Phil to remind Sharon that she's a bit long in the tooth for realising how the Mitchells operate. (If she's long in the tooth, Kathy - at sixty-five and formerly a bastion of judgemental high-mindedness - must be a tyrannosaurus rex). Sharon has every right to know where the hell her husband has been for a month with no word, leaving her to look after his businesses and the hangers-on populating his house, unquestioningly.

We're back now to Demon Denny, I see. 

The kid's a brat, but mostly he's a brat because he's never ever had a male role model whom he could emulate. Well, now he's got one who's message is that it's OK to fight at school as long as you win; but Denny, it seems, targets the younger, smaller children, which is the actions of a bully.

Walford is going to be a scary place when he and Bobby grow up.

Denny smacked Sharon. It's pretty much a Mitchell thing to smack your mother around. Both Phil and Grant weren't above smacking Peggy, and that behaviour was learned from Eric, who smacked her about a fair bit also. Sharon was right about Denny having the tempers of both Den and Dennis, but his temper is uncontrollable because he's never had anyone stop him and curb it before it became a way of behaviour for him.

What he's doing now and what he's always done is to attract attention. And this is where the hypocrisy of Ian's parental advice comes from - Sharon is an abysmal parent. She's right to admit that she is, that she's afraid of her son hating her and disrespecting her, and in this way, she mirrors Ian.

Every bad parental trait of which Ian accused Sharon can be laid right at Ian's feet. Ian never disciplined his children. He threw money at them to buy whatever they wanted in order to get for himself a peaceful life. In the early days, when he was between wives, Pauline and Pat did the heavy work with the kids, but they weren't their children. Later, when he was married to Jane, whenever he'd try to instil discipline, Lucy would openly mock him, whilst Jane and Christian, who'd never been parents would undermine him.

The Beale twins had a succession of stepmothers for whom they held decreasing amounts of respect. Denny's had successive father figures who never stuck around long. His mother is excessive with him because he is, truly, the only blood relative she has left in the world, and the same holds true for him - bar distant Vicki.

Denny doesn't hate Sharon. He wants the right sort of attention from her. He wants boundaries and guidelines and structure, and she's not giving him that; instead, she's giving him silly and expensive toys in an effort to buy his love. He just needs some quality time from her.

Ian accusing Sharon of being the problem about her son is himself projecting exactly what's gone wrong with his children in his own household. For all he bleats on about Lucy, he wasn't a successful father at all, and Jane has been no mother at all. What she has been, however, is an accomplice in the murder of Ian's child, the person who dumped Lucy's body into the boot of her car and dragged that body - anyone with any nous would know that Jane couldn't have carried Lucy that far onto the common - and left the body outside all night in the elements.

Yet Jane takes great pleasure in mincing about Denny's problems at school to Sharon from her high-handed pedestal. Firstly, how would Jane know about Denny's problems from the mothers at the schoolgate? Bobby the Basher, murderer is at Walford High. Denny is still at Walford Primary. At least, for one brief moment, they acknowledged the hypocrisy in their remarks. Jane realises that they are presenting themselves as "normal"; now it's Ian who's reciting the mantra over and over again.

We're normal. We ARE normal.

No, I'm sorry, you're not. You're anything but normal. You're covering for the fact that your youngest child wantonly killed Ian's daughter. Your wife kept that a secret from you for almost an entire year. You had sex on the very spot where your daughter was killed. You're reinforcing your psychopathic son's bad behaviour by telling him, repeatedly, that he didn't kill Lucy, when he knows damned well that he did.

Denny bit a child on the head. Bobby killed his sister.

Denny has the makings of a little thug. Bobby is a psychopath.

It's very typical of DTC's treatment of Sharon too, in this episode, that Sharon's story suddenly becomes all about Ian and his confliction about Cindy's decision to put Beth up for adoption, the return of Phil, and, ultimately, Kathy.

However, Sharon was extremely poignant in this episode. Never in her entire life has she ever felt so alone. Phil has swanned off, her birth mother died, and she's struggling to find her birth father who, according to old records, was trying to find her. As Ian willingly stepped back into the past in Thursday's episode, and did so again tonight, Sharon reaches out to find herself and wants to find that part that's missing in what she finds familiar from the past.

The first thing I noticed in Ian's first scene tonight was him moving the chair from the lounge portion of the room to just back of the dining room table. Of course, this is where first Lou, and then Pauline, would always sit. You could eye the window and the back gate from that position. Of course, Pauline's dining room and lounge were crammed into the space around the kitchen door in order to accommodate Lou in the front room (now the Beale lounge section). Ian was channeling his grandmother and his Auntie Pauline as familiar figures who - had they been alive - would have reached in and sorted the big mess at the Beales right now.

Am I wrong, or was Ian convinced that Cindy's wanting the baby adopted, at first, was the best measure? By the end of the episode and his interaction with Sharon, he'd changed his mind.

Sharon just wants to know who she is, but more important than that, she wants to belong to a dynamic. Den and Angie are dead. Dennis is dead. Phil, who's supposed to love her, treats her like a bastard at a family reunion, rounding on her and telling her to buck up or think about what she wants away from this set-up, then flouncing off to the lounge to play on a games console with his family, including her son. Sharon thinks her unknown gene pool can act as a calming deterrent for Denny's behaviour, but there is a thing called nurture vs nature.

Denny's temper may be inherited, but Sharon's nurtured it, just as Lucy (and Cindy) possess the Cindy gene, but Ian nurtured and will continue to nurture that as well - if not in Cindy, then in Beth.

The highlight of the episode was the eventual talk between Ian and Sharon about why she couldn't be his sibling, and every word Ian uttered, Phelps got 100% correct. First, there simply wouldn't have been a way Pete Beale could have cheated on his pregnant second wife, and even if he did, and Sharon was the eventual result of that cheating, there's no way Lou would have allowed Sharon to be adopted, much less to have been brought up across the road at the Vic with Den and Ange. 

Lou had given away a child, herself, as a young unmarried woman. She knew the score. If she'd had to have done so, she'd have taken Sharon and raised her, herself, or foisted Pete's handywork on himself and Kathy and - as Ian surmised - Kathy would have had to shut up and accept it. Or leave, herself.

However, by the end of that episode, I'd never seen Sharon so bereft and lonely and feeling isolated, even from her one blood relation.

However, there's always irony in that situation. "K", who's certainly Kathy called. I think Phil's absence had something to do with Gavin Sullivan or whatever he's calling himself now. They certainly wouldn't have Sharon go through a tale like this only to find a dead father. And it's too much of a genuine coincidence that Sharon's father was named Gavin, and another set of producers introduced the concept of Kathy having a husband named Gavin a decade later, for DTC not to milk this for the wonderful soap moment it will prove to be.

I think Phil knows that Kathy's Gavin is Sharon's birth father. (Psst! Billy knows too. He's the weak link; Sharon should exploit him).

And by the end of the episode in BealeLand, Ian's heeded Lou's own reaction and decided to keep baby Beth within the Beale fold ... except the obvious difference there is that Beth is no Beale nor any relation to a Beale. Sure, she's the twins' niece, but she's no relation of Ian's or Bobby's. Beth is the replacement daughter with the Cindy gene, an attribute commonly shared with Lucy. She's his opportunity not to fuck parenthood up this time around.

He has no right to that child, and neither does Jane. They should honour Cindy's wishes. There's a psychopath in the house who might not be able to tolerate a favoured child again.

Martin. There's a saying where I come from about certain people who are generous to a fault: They'd rather give up their arseholes to someone in need, and shit through their ribs. 

That's Alfie.

Haters gonna hate him, so suck it up.

One thing Alfie does have in abundance is compassion, and he's concerned about Martin's plight.

I'm not sure whether I like Donna's direct approach, which was pretty brutal, telling him to man up over the loss of Sonia, railing at him about looking sad and dejected and not even rating a pity snog; but Martin struck a chord with Alfie when he told the truth about what happened.

One thing's weird, however. Sonia allegedly owned half the house they had, which means her name was on the mortgage, which means her wages were part and parcel of the calculation to advance funds to buy the house. I can see her not being aware of the repossession if Martin never bothered to show her correspondence addressed to her in relation to that, but when Sonia walked away from Martin - and she knew they were on precarious ground last year, because she mentioned to Carol that they were struggling with the mortgage - that she never paid her share towards the house. She left him high and dry.

Oh, and Saint Sonia has been officially deemed a lesbian because Donna the Vile has labelled her so.

Well, it wasn't rocket science to ascertain that Alfie was going to insist that Martin take over the stall he originally fronted. I guess that means Alfie will go back to sweeping the streets until he wins the Lottery. 

So another piece of Old Walford, Martin, comes home full circle, but this time as a man, struggling, amidst losing his home and his livelihood and being betrayed by his bitch of a wife, to keep his daughter's love and his own self-respect.

Stacey's just up the road.

A very good and very emotive episode, but Phelps has done better. No one writes Sharon like Sarah Phelps, and I hope this episode isn't just a one-off from her. 

Rattle Rattle Rattle Here Come the Cattle: Jane's Back- Review:- Thursday 26.03.2015

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm ... how very ironic that the writer of tonight's episode was named Gavin, of all things.

Excellent episode tonight, the only thing spoiling it being Jane the Queen stinking up the place.

The Evil Stepmother. The Wicked Queen. The Cow. The Old Trout.

All of the above are infinitely too good for that flab, bone and hank of hair known as Jane the Queen. This is Cindy's story, and yet the underlying manipulator throughout is Jane.

Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, and Cindy is a loose cannon that Jane will most definitely have to keep close to home and contain. Cindy knows Jane's biggest, darkest and grubbiest secret, and Cindy out of sight and away from Walford might just prove to be Jane's undoing.

I'm not a fan of Cindy's at all, but I felt immensely for her in the past two episodes. At the end of the day, she's just a kid, and that's really what tonight's theme throughout was all about - kids, children, and parents of all sorts. We saw a feckless mother step up to the plate for a child who wasn't hers, we saw a grown woman trying desperately to find her birth parent, and we saw a very young mum open up to another young woman who connected very strongly in the panic moment Cindy endured when she walked away from Beth, because Shabnam shared that same secret.

Cindy is totally overwhelmed by the prospect of motherhood. She decided to have her baby on a whim, and now she's confronted with the realities of bringing up a baby and how that can curtail the natural growing up process of a young person. She spoke a volume of truth tonight when she said she wanted what was best for Beth and also what was best for her, and that very well might mean putting the child up for adoption.

No one's thought to tell Cindy that she needs to relax more around Beth, because babies sense strain and tension and they react in kind. Shabnam was able to calm the child down, simply by treating her in a relaxed manner - totally different to the way she reacted months ago around the Moon twins. Maybe having shared that secret with Stacey helped her own assessment of her past actions. She certainly didn't judge Cindy's actions, and I like how they bonded over Beth's predicament.

Cindy was very articulate in expressing her concerns to Shabnam, and she brought the nail down accurately on the head of the Beales when she spoke about how they'd gone on and on at her over the past months, telling her what she should be feeling and how she should be acting and responding to Beth. They constantly railed at her about this, yet more times than not, stepped in to do the heavy lifting with the kid at a moment's notice, not even thinking that Cindy might be having problems relating to motherhood so young when all of her friends were still at school.

The child's been away from her for a month. She's bonded with Jane and Ian, yet they shove a fretting baby on a nervous, overwrought and overwhelmed young mum, with the suggestion that she take the baby out for a walk. This, after having undermined all of her efforts at parenting since they returned.

I actually found Jane quite sinister tonight, especially when Cindy had no recourse but to ring her and tell her about Beth's disappearance. (Anyone could fathom all along that Liam happened along and found the child). The way Jane stood over Cindy in the kitchen, her hands clamped down on firmly on Cindy's shoulders in a domineering, prepossessing way, leaning over her in the subtle passive-aggressive manner and purring:-

You do trust me, don't you?

It was almost hypnotic the way she said that; then, just for good measure and in an even more threatening way ...

You know, Cindy, that I'll have to tell Ian about this.

So many ways to keep Cindy under her thumb and onside in order to hide Jane's filthy little secret.

Jane is such an abject, selfish bitch, even moreso now that she's secure in her control of Ian. In her own mind, the roles have reversed from a decade ago. It's Jane, she thinks, who calls the shots in the Beale household now, with Ian the obvious weak link. Jane strides around that house as if she owns it. Whilst Ian is off on a mission to find out about Dot, Jane's at home, cleaning up the mess that is Cindy and her attitude toward Beth. What's so disgusting about Jane is the casual, off-handed way shestill takes advantage of Masood. I don't know what's worse - the way she uses him as a lackey or the way he tries to stick his nose up her fat arse given the slightest opportunity.

If you need a place to go when Hurricane Ian lands, there's always mine. I'm cooking, and there's plenty to go around.

This is Masood coming onto someone who is a newly-married wife and mother, herself; and without as much as asking permission, Jane tells Cindy she needs to get out of the house - but not to a place where she might be able to walk off and abandon the baby - instead, she dumps her and Beth at Masood's house, not even caring that he has guests. 

The irony is that in leaving Cindy with Masood, she never imagined that Shabnam would prove an apt listening post and a pillar of advice - admitting to Cindy that not every woman is meant to be a mother, that Cindy needs to do, not only what is best for Beth, but what is best for herself, and - poignantly - telling her that she did nothing wrong in walking away because Beth was still safe and sound. This is the first sound advice the kid has received, considering she's got Jane and Ian harping from one side, lecturing her about what she's supposed to do and then doing it for her in order to undermine her, and Liam the Lug coming at her from the other side, telling her what a "natural" mother she is. She isn't. Again, she's just a kid, and he's seeing her that way because he sees the pair of them playing house with Beth. Cindy didn't even think enough of Liam to thank him for finding the baby.

Jane got the surprise of her life, in attempting to play "good cop" and promising not to tell Ian, when Cindy tells her she wants to put Beth up for adoption.

Her Heart Belongs to Daddy.

The search for the mystery father goes on, and now Dot's brought into it. So consumed is Sharon in trying to find her mystery dad, allegedly from Walford, that she treats as insignificant a summons from Denny's school for a meeting. Ian's desperate to see Dot and plays on the heartstrings. Sharon and Ian are all Dot has now, and Linda thinks perhaps Dot might remember or recognise something that might lead Sharon to her father.

Who put that atrocious red wig on June Brown? I know Dot won't be looking her best, on the medical wing of the prison, but the wig really was a bad one. Dot's still the martyr. 

I killed my son. I deserve to be punished.

Although Ian and Sharon are concerned about Dot, Dot's concerned about Sharon, because she senses something's wrong. Alas, Dot doesn't remember any Gavin. And then we get a long foreshadowing moment about how Lou and Ethel, being gossips, would have known something. Or Arthur and Pauline. Or Pete and Kath ... all gone. (But not all gone).

Just because Dot doesn't remember or know any Gavin doesn't mean that Gavin was using a fake name. Walford isn't a small place, and maybe Gavin's people were the sort Dot, in those days. would have known or even known about. Gavin's people may have been the sort who only showed up at the pub to wheel and deal with Den.

Ian is floundering. He's still reeling from what he learned on his wedding day, and he's clearly hiding his discomfort from Jane by doing what a lot of people do when they are in crisis mode - retreat, in his mind, to a time when things seemed safe. Sharon's quest to find her birth father and establishing that he was part and parcel of Walford gives Ian a chance to do just that - retreat to the past. He offers to delve through a plethora of old pictures from Pete's past to see if, somehow, they might connect a name on a letter - Gavin - with a face in a picture that they wouldn't recognise. 

Hell, it was Ian's attempt to retreat to a safer place - a place before Cindy and the Cindy Gene and Jane were ever thought about. Jane, entering the house when Ian was in full flow of looking at the pictures with Sharon, was more than miffed that Ian paid her scant attention, even when she suggested that she was having dinner with Masood. The only thing that sparks an interest in Sharon is seeing Ian's baby picture and thinking he looked like her as a baby. (Pardon me, but I thought Sharon was fostered and adopted as a toddler and not a small baby. How would Den and Angie have any such early baby pics?) The resemblance, obviously a passing one, leads Sharon to think that Pete might be her father, and she wants a DNA test to prove that she and Ian are brothers. In her way of thinking, that would explain the secrecy surrounding the adoption.

It's poppycock, of course, and Sharon is wrong. Pete Beale would no more have cheated on a pregnant Kathy than he would anyone. Pete had been married to a cheater previously - Pat. Pete didn't cheat. Besides, Carol Stretton was fourteen years old. Pete wouldn't do jailbait.

This is red herring territory.

Roxy's Trump. I love Roxy Mitchell. She's a flakey girl with a big heart who doesn't learn from her mistakes. I've especially liked the bonding scenes with her and Aleks's daughter Ineta. Ineta's feeling lonely, missing her mum and adjusting to life in a new country with a new stepmum. Roxy's a loving, but neglectful and selfish mother. When Roxy is told by Ineta that she's being bullied by a girl at school with a scary mother, when she's told about the girl grabbing her and holding her until Ineta smacked her in the mouth, Roxy tells her she did the right thing - although it really wasn't nice to hit people.

Then, leaving the house, when they run into the chav that is the Scary Mother, Roxy decks the woman and wins Ineta's admiration.

What a shame she slept with Charlie.

Nice Guys Finish Last. Suck it up, Alfie-haters. Alfie suspect and later learns that Martin has lost everything and is living in his van. All of a sudden the fruit and veg stall handed Alfie by Ian doesn't seem right. You know, you just know that Alfie is going to hand what could be his livelihood back to Martin. It's a family business, after all.

Honourable Mention. Kush trying to do "honourable" by Masood, who knows very well that Kush allowed him to win. And there, on prominent display in the Minute Mart is the Lottery Scratchcard display, and Billy mentioning his luck tonight. 

Trust me. It's Alfie who wins, and Kathy's husband, Gavin, is Sharon's father.

DTC's Sharon Review:- Tuesday 24.03.2015

That's more like it, but then Sharon Marshall always does write a good episode. Being an ardent fan and viewer of the show as well, she understands the characters and their circumstances and knows how to write for them. 

It's obvious what the themes were in tonight's episode, but there was one big niggle which jarred against me. You'll see what it was.

Oh, and I must mention that there was plenty of subtle foreshadowing tonight too. Such a difference from the past month.

Theme I: Nature vs Nurture

My Sharona.

Right, niggle bits first.

All of a sudden, under this EP's regime Kevin Wicks becomes "Kevin" to the boy he raised as his son, and Dean's sperm donor becomes "dad." Tonight, the absolutely unthinkable happened. Sharon referred to Carol Stretton Hanley as "Mum." She said it. I was too late with Mum.

Throughout the episode, she referred to her parents as "Den" and "Angie." She's looking for the person to whom she refers as her real dad. Sharon should speak to Liam Butcher. He got it right tonight. Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings.

Her parents, her real mum and dad were and are Den and Angie. They chose her, loved her, raised her. They made her what she is today; however, as the spouse of an adoptee, I can totally understand Sharon's rationale behind searching for her birth roots. She has always been known as Sharon Watts. "Sharon Stretton" was a name on a birth certificate. She's never known that person or the people responsible for her being. But to listen to Sharon refer to her parents by their names and to hear her refer to Carol Stretton Hanley, who rejected her when Sharon sought her, as "Mum", cut to the quick.

I actually thought Sharon Marshall, the above aside, wrote that portion of the episode quite cleverly. I could hear the frantic background titter of anyone who doesn't suspect that Sharon's birth father will turn out to be Kathy's husband, when no mention was made of his name and when Sharon's birth certificate was shown to list her father as "unknown." 

Here's the law: Carol Stretton was an unmarried girl of fourteen when she gave birth. The only way an unmarried couple can have the baby's father's name listed on the birth certificate is if the man/boy in question is present when the birth is registered or gives a written and sworn affidavit of approval to have his name included on the certificate. Other than that, I'm afraid, it's "Father Unknown." But then, well into the episode, there was the fateful scene of Sharon going through the letters Carol had left her and telling Linda that her father's name was Gavin. The letters were all signed "Gavin," and obviously didn't list a return address.

For the sake of continuity and for all Sharon said that Carol and Gavin were in a relationship, I hope it's remembered that Carol was fourteen when Sharon was born, and that she told Sharon in 1990, that Gavin was sixteen when Sharon was born. Anyone showing up older than 62 or 63 as Gavin is a paedophile. End of.

The circumstances of Sharon's adoption was interesting - how she was fostered first by Den and Angie, and then she was adopted by them, specifically at Den's request. Privately, and with the proviso that no one should ever know of this. So it's obvious that Den knew Sharon's father, and it was implied that Sharon's birth father didn't know that Den had adopted her. As Sharon assessed, it looked as though Den was protecting the person in question; however, one has to realise that "Gavin" should be about eight years younger than Den - in other words, not his immediate contemporary; but he could be the younger brother of a contemporary, and maybe Den was protecting Sharon from the family in question.

Linda fed Sharon's imagination by reckoning that Sharon's birth father used a false name, causing Sharon to believe that perhaps Den was her biological parent, which would make her guilty of proper full-on incest with fey Dennis. I think Linda's foreshadowed something. Once again, it's important to note that neither Sharon's Gavin nor Kathy's Gavin have ever had their surname(s) uttered on screen; so Linda could be onto something. If, perchance, this Gavin has the surname of "Sullivan", then could that not be an alias for "Vinnicombe?"

Just saying.

So now we know that Sharon's birth father was from Walford, that he was well familiar with the Vic. Please remember that, before we saw them on screen, we never knew that Mo Harris or Jonnie Allen had strong roots in Walford.

Tonight we saw the inexorable Denny for the first time since Boxing Day. He's obviously missing Phil, his role model, and he's also obviously learned the way a Mitchell man should behave around their mothers. He's sullen and rude, telling Sharon pointedly to "shut up." He's sulking out for a games console, which Sharon is keeping from his greedy little grasp, but Denny is quick to tell her that Phil would get if for him. There's Phil again - buying up sons to weigh against the one who's a disappointment to him.

There's a twist to the tale of Sharon's search. All I will say is that her father is not Pete Beale, and I'm still saying that "Gavin" is Kathy's husband. And Sharon's father. Only DTC would take a random name of two off-screen characters and make lemonade for two of the show's iconic, original female leads.

BabyMamma.

For just a brief moment tonight, I actually felt sorry for Cindy. She punched above her weight, fooled around with sex with TJ and ended up up the duff. She then decided to have the baby, because the child would have been something which would have been entirely hers; yet she never stopped to think about what caring for a baby would actually entail, and how, at sixteen, you cease to become a teenager like everyone else and become a mum.

Cindy now realises she wants to be a kid. She wants to go to school and maybe even do something educationally or professionally with her life. She's confilcted because when the Beales took Beth away for a month, Cindy didn't miss her at all. Now they're back, and Jane the Queen has coldly and arrogantly stepped into the fray and is now doing everything for Beth that Cindy should be doing.

And how to undermine a young mum as a person ... Beth cries. Ian smugly admits that "they" had got her sleeping all night during the holiday. Cindy goes out to buy nappies and returns to find Jane feeding and cooing with Beth. When Cindy remarked that she wanted to feed Beth, she's told by Ian to get dressed and go to school. Ian would take the child to nursery and Jane would be there in the afternoon. When Cindy complains that Beth doesn't remember her, Jane briskly poo-poohs the idea. Jane the Queen will spend the afternoon with Beth. Cindy is ordered to school. Why? Because - hurrah hurrah - the school authority is on the Beales' collective arses because of the unauthorised absence of Bobby Beale from school for the past month. Not even Jane the Queen could convince the authorities that the blameless Beales should be exempt from a fine.

I realised tonight, in the wake of Lucy's death, how vile the Beales actually are - Ian hugging that odious, murder accomplice, Jane, and then dashing off in hot pursuit of Cindy for taking her child from nursery - a nursery place for which Ian is quick to remind Cindy that he provides the fees. They pursued her, harassing her into the public, haranguing her for what they perceived to be her selfishness. She is selfish. And unlikeable. And cold. But she certainly didn't deserve the screechmatch that she got from Ian and Jane the Queen, who is all of a sudden, an expert parent.

The most pukeworthingly hateful moment of the episode came when Ian and Jane gave themselves a collective pat on the back for being what they consider to be good parents - just loving your children and being there for them constitutes that - as well as hiding their crimes and misdemeanors. It seems that Peter and Lauren, who - apart from the money with which their parents provided them - don't really have a pot in which to piss, have now managed to find a flat in New Zealand. I suppose New Zealand has a shortage of entitled pricks who sell fruit and vegetables and surf for a living and pregnant layabouts looking to spit out an achorbaby.

The Beales are amongst some of the worst parents on the Square.

I truly think Cindy loves her child, but I don't think she's mature enough or prepared to be a parent. She is simply too young. She was always going to fob the baby off on Ian and Jane, and I think she's ashamed of the fact that she didn't miss the responsibility when the child was away. I also think that she's extremely nervous around the baby - thanks all the moreso to that bovine bitch Jane. A baby can pick up on a mother's anxieties and that makes the child anxious too, which is probably why Beth is fretful around Cindy. Also at seven months, she could be teething.

I know Cindy's thinking about having the baby adopted. She's seen how quickly a child so young can forget her mother, and she figures that having her adopted would be the best thing for all concerned. Liam, who looks more and more like a cheap, greased spiv, reminded me a lot of Robbie Jackson, who strove against Sonia's having Rebecca adopted. He's ready to be a parent, but I think Cindy is worldly-wise enough to know that she's too young for settling down, especially the way she blew Liam's suggestion that he quit school and they pair up to raise Beth.

He was, however, prescient in his remark tonight about blood relations and non-blood relations - about how a parent not related to a child by blood could be just as loving and just as effective as someone who was blood kin. Had he thought about it more in depth, he could have drawn upon his own family's experience - Ricky assuming the role of father to Morgan or Pat mothering Frank's children. Or Bianca and Whitney. He was brilliantly articulate about that point, but it referred more to the situation which Sharon was experiencing than anything happening with Cindy and her child.

On the one side, she has Liam pressuring her into keeping the baby, being a mother to the child, telling her that she really wanted the baby because that's all he understands and never fathoming her doubts; on the other side, she has the Beales, preaching and harping at her to spend time with the baby, yet snatching the child from her in order to undermine her abilities and sticking their oar in to remind her how selfish she is and how she's only under the Beale roof as a favour.

Jane seriously wants to open her beady eyes and think about what Cindy knows about her and what she could do to her if Jane continues being Queen Bitch that she is.

No wonder the kid is down on confidence. Even when the Beales suggested Cindy take Beth for a walk, Jane was right there snivelling and offering to come along. 

Cindy walks away from a crying Beth in the park.

I guess the gist here is for Jane and Ian to adopt Beth, but we need to remember that Beth has the much-vaunted Cindy gene, something which Bobby doesn't possess and Ian is aware of that. Remember Ian's remark You're not Lucy?

One Cindy-gened baby, one budding psychopath and a clueless, deluded bitch of a mother who'll cover for him, and you have disaster.

Run, Cindy, run! And take Beth with you. In fact, run to the nearest police station and shop Jane's fat arse.

Theme II:Not Men at Work.

Another Bitch, Another De-Balled Man. Please, God, show Stacey the way to Martin. There was nothing more foul than the putrid Sonia sneaking out of the Vic after a night carpet-munching with Tina and looking like the cat that ate the canary. That's right. The first night she had Rebecca back, she spent with Tina. Let Nana Carol, fresh from having cancer and in the middle of the menopause, deal with a teenaged girl going to school.

She's so happy, she even tells Martin they can work together on this, even though she hasn't told Rebecca about Tina yet. I hope Rebecca decks her. It's funny how when Sonia smiles, she still looks like she can't decide whether it's time to shit or get off the pot.

Martin spent the majority of the episode trying to avoid suggestions that Rebecca come to visit or that Kush comes around his house for a few beers. Martin has no home and no job. We know that Ian's looking for someone to front the fruit and veg stall, and since it's a family stall, it should be family. I wanted to throttle Fatboy for mincing about Martin losing his wife to another woman. Fatboy lost his balls to a can of tuna in Dot's refrigerator.

Back to the Future with the Moons. So Kat does still care about Alfie, especially when he hands over his wages he got from working a bar up West. Now, he's reduced to sweeping the market, which in reality, wouldn't be a badly paid job. Arthur Fowler, Robbie Jackson and Gus did much the same and all managed to live prett well, considering. We had a soupcon of foreshadowing when Alfie noticed the scratchcards in the Minute Mart. He refused to buy one, but I think that means that in the future he will. Watch this space for the millionaire Moons.

Ian offers him the fruit and veg stall, but I suppose when Alfie finds out about Martin's circumstance, he hands the reins over to Martin.

Mo keeps Kat's secret money - so secret that not even Kat knows about it - in her mattress. As you do.

Honourable Mentions. Kristian Kiehling must have injured his arm in real life. I like Roxy Mitchell, and I think she'll do really well by Ineta now that she knows what her problem is. I just hate the fact she's cheated on Aleks. 

The kids were all back tonight - well, Amy, Ineta and Denny were.

Masood's hypocrisy knows no bounds. He lectures Kush about Shabnam's standing in the Muslim community and he can't keep away from the bookies.

Good episode. More from Miss Marshall, please.

Slappable Faces - Review:- Monday 23.03.2015

There were so many of them - Sonia, Tina, Cindy, Pam ... the list goes on. Oh, dear ... I forgot the most slappable face of all ... Jane.

Apart from the return of the Beales, including the murderer and his accomplice, this episode had nothing to offer.

Slappable Faces: The Sitting in Judgement Part.

Martin was right: Sonia didn't deny having an affair with Tina, because that's exactly what she was doing the entire time she was in Walford, ostensibly for Carol's illness - sneaking about, getting drunk and snogging Tina.

What's amazing about all of this is Carol's non-reaction. Fair enough, the sexuality of your child isn't important as long as your child is happy in his or her skin; but Carol should have been concerned at what Sonia was up to behind Martin's back. In the scene where Carol and Martin talked, sitting on Arthur's bench, Carol was quick to point out all of Martin's faults, including his affair, without so much as alluding to anything that could have been Sonia's fault.

Sonia was unfaithful to Martin way long before Martin was unfaithful to her. Remember Naomi? (I see Sonia's finally discovered how to pronounce her name, after repeatedly referring to her as "Gnomi" back in 2006.) Sonia walked away from Martin and Rebecca on that instance, and - as Martin admitted tonight - Pauline was right all along about Sonia. 

There was more trash-mouthing of Martin tonight.

Do you think HE's told Rebecca?

HE'd better not have told Rebecca or HE'll answer to me. (Really, Tina? Who the hell are you?)

I've got to get back there before HE tells her.

He, he, he ... spoken with the certainty that Martin was nothing less than a monster. He, himself, described himself in simple terms - he's just a man who wanted a wife and the sort of life and family his parents had; instead, he saw himself as being so boring he turned his wife lesbian.

If we're also going for infidelity on Sonia's part, since she's returned to Walford, she's done no less than try to snog Kush, and she's slept with Fatboy. Compared to Sonia, Martin's been an angel.

Sonia's the biggest kind of coward, and she's all over the place at the moment. She emotionally blackmailed Rebecca into giving up music school, promising the girl that her presence would mean the success of her parents' marriage; the next thing she's doing is trying to move in on Kush and sleeping with Fatboy, all the while buzzing around Tina.

Then there's the question of Tina, herself. Tina's never put anyone's needs before her own, including those of her own daughter, who won't touch her with a barge pole for fear of getting some bad disease, like the clap or something; so she's less than understanding about Sonia wanting to put her daughter's concerns before her own. The truth of the matter is that Sonia is still the biggest sort of coward in coming out of the closet. Still, lesbian or not, when she eventually begs the Court Jester for crumbs from her table, she should take heed of one thing - Tina is one of the last women on that Square with whom I'd want my child associated. She's feckless, dishonest, amoral, a liar, a cheater and a thief. When Tina and Sonia first got together, not only was Sonia still married to Martin, but Tina was in a relationship with Tosh. If Tina will cheat on one partner, she'll cheat on another.

Sonia is one of the most judgemental, self-righteous and annoying characters on the show, played by a woefully inept actress. Natalie Cassidy's emotive acting comes across with a face which looks as though she's in the continuous throes of constipation. She's bad on her own, she's vile with Tina. Tina's selfishness is as bad as Sonia, but in a different way. It meant nothing to her that Sonia's revelation of her new relationship just might have repercussions for her daughter. Tina simply kept screwing up her petulant faux-childlike face and repeating ~But you said but you said but you said ~.

Tina and Sonia deserve each other, and they should leave Walford together and forever.

I know many people are having a hard time adjusting to James Bye as Martin Fowler, but I felt he came into his own tonight, as the last bastion of an established family who finds himself terribly alone. One of the most poignant and sad scenes was at the end of the programme, with Sonia's blithe assessment that Martin would "be all right," not knowing that he's lost his business and the family home.

Think back to about the middle of last year, when Sonia mentioned to Carol that she and Martin were having mortgage troubles. This was right about the time she got suspended for having too much time off work. I would imagine Sonia's wage was much higher than Martin's, and with her leaving home, it never occurred to her to continue to pay her share of the mortgage in order to provide a secure home for her daughter. Or even to contribute to her support.

I'm not surprised, however, that Martin's become yet another loser of a weak Walford male with the man-haters in the writing room.

Slappable Facer: The Irony of the Moment.

Oh, my godfathers! An evening of girl talk and gossip and a bit of Donna's backstory, courtesy of Claudette and nosy Pam. Easily ascertained that Pam was the social worker who placed Donna with foster mother Claudette, and - Pam being Pam - she stuck around and maintained contact enough so that Les could get a whiff of Claudette. And the rest, they say, is history.

So we know now that Donna has "brothers", that she's desperate for a man, just like most of the other single females in Walford. Gotta have that man or else life isn't worth it. But between the two older women, they translated Donna's story - which Donna, rightly, said was no story at all - into two men - pardon, boys - fighting over Donna. 

In the end, when Fatboy came around with Donna's present, she took it and ungratefully told him to leave.

There were a couple of moments of irony in that piece, which were supposed to make us do a bit of the nudge-nudge-wink-wink - Pam admiring Claudette's necklace, which Claudette said she'd had a long time; the cosy walk back to the Cokers' flat, arm and arm, when Pam casually remarks that Les was just mentioning Claudette the other day.

This is supposed to be clever? 

It isn't, mostly because I don't give two hoots about Pam or Claudette's fanagling with Les behind her back, or really, Donna, whom we know really likes Fatboy, no matter how much she might turn her nose up at the naff gift he gave her.

That entire vignette was to set up a bit of Donna's backstory, and to juxtapose Claudette against the unknowing Pam.

Nothing happening here. Move on.

Slappable Faces: The Mother and Child Non-Reunion.

I feel vindicated. I had a feeling all along that Cindy didn't really give a rat's arse about the consequence of her one-off with TJ, something she now views as the biggest mistake in her life. Hey, you play with fire, you get burned. It's a bit too late now to wish your baby away.

In one of the more interesting dichotomies on the programme tonight, we had Martin, sitting on Arthur's bench, telling Carol that all he wanted in life was to have a wife who loved him and a family; then, sat on the Beale sofa, we have Liam professing literally the same thing to Cindy. Liam wants a family; Cindy wants to have fun. What she doesn't want is a baby. She hasn't even missed the child and doesn't really know if she loves her.

Listening to Rebecca talk about how her mother gave her up for adoption originally sparks a thought in Cindy's one braincell. 

The character is another unlikeable sort on the show - smart-mouthed and too posh to be set well within the Beale fold,and cold enough that she can sit on the sofa where Lucy met her end without feeling cold chills down her back.

Surprising her at the end of the evening is the return of the most slappable face of all, Jane Beale, still pulling Ian's puppet strings. Bobby the Basher is ordered to bed, Cindy reluctantly takes Beth, and Ian is the only person in that dynamic, who's upset by looking at the space on the floor where Lucy lay dead, until Jane the Queen tells him everything is OK "because we've talked about this."

Jane's idea is to move house, but Ian's staying put. That's it Ian, make the bitch suffer.

Kathy, come home. Faces are waiting to be smacked.

Slappable Faces: Bubblegum Love.

Shabnam's anthem to Kush:-

Now this was interesting ... to a point. Listening to Kush's painful tale of his brief marriage was heartbreaking, especially his admission of feeling culpable regarding his wife's sudden death and how he behaved in reaction to that, sleeping with woman after woman and drinking to excess, until he moved away from his parents' home, moved to Walford and met Shabnam.

I could totally buy that. He's still in love with his wife and still grieving her, and it would take a tremendously strong woman to live with a man with his marriage date to his late first wife tattooed across his massive muscled shoulder.

Any woman with any nous would respect Kush's feelings and recognise that he's still grieving his wife, but that, in meeting a woman who connects with him in a way more important than just the physical way, he would want to take this relationship slowly, day by day even, until he's sure of something more permanent. Instead, Shabnam's social gaucherie immediately latches onto his thinking her different from the other women and suggests marriage again.

She doesn't understand that, although Kush really likes her, his feelings are too raw for Safira, and a marriage too soon after her death would negate and cast into doubt any feelings he may have had for her. Shabnam would be marrying a man and living with the ghost of his first wife.

Such intensity sends Kush scurrying. So Shabnam decides to bring the mountain to Mohammed, to use a bad pun.

Now, all of a sudden, she's backtracking? She admits she loves him, but doesn't really have to have marriage. So ... is this a situation of why-buy-the-cow-when-you-can-get-the-milk-for-free? This would explain Masood's reluctance when Shabnam announced that they were on again as a couple, but Masood can't say anything, because he's gambling big stakes, by the looks of that wad of cash, and that's also something a good Muslim wouldn't do.

I like Kush. He's arguably one of the best new characters DTC has introduced. Such a shame he's got messed up in this weird storyline.

Meh once again.