What a way to come crashing down to reality. Nothing from nothing left nothing this week. Going against the grain, I gave this episode a six out of ten, its saving grace being Stacey. I know there are bigger fish to fry coming up, but until that time, what we're seeing on the screen is one big zilch.
I can admit something now that I've been thinking for a long time. I no longer care for Kat. That horse bolted ages ago, and this is just the latest in a series of repetitive storylines offering a different angle on the old dirty girl theme. I don't give a rat's arse about Kim and her mystery man Mr Mephistopheles or whoever the hell the latest devil incarnate is. He'll be connected in some way, not only to her, but also to Phil, Gavin, Kathy, Ronnie and probably Buster Bloodvessel who'll slither under the door of the Vic sometime later this month.
And Roxy and Charlie? Haven't we been there and done that before? Except the only person left to tell the tale is Roxy. For Sean, read Aleks, a more namby-pamby version, and for Jack, read Charlie, who looks as though he needs a hot bath and a scrub down with some carbolic soap. I can't wait to hear Ineta tell Amy she was conceived with weak sperm.
Time for Her to Fly.
It's obvious that this was filmed during the period when Steve McFadden, Shane Richie and Samantha Womack were on panto break. Any hint of a Social Services visit, and Alfie would be right around 91a in a flash - and I'm still figuring out how Stacey, Kat and Big Mo can afford the rent on what appears to be a tardis flat. There's Kat and her three boys, Stacey and Lily and Big Mo. I guess Kat must bunk down with the twins and Tommy, Stacey and Lily must share and Big Mo has her own room.
Anyway Linda ensures that the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry by ringing to tell Social Services that they shouldn't really go around to Kat's house because she accidentally left her phone on the night before. In doing this, she's unwittingly fanagled into giving Kat's name and address and the reason behind why she made the call.
Duhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
Anyway, it's a day for such a refined lady as Kat to receive visitors. She starts off by sending Zoe a text message and signing it "Mum."
Yes, I know Kat is Zoe's mother, but even to the day she left Walford, Zoe never referred to Kat as "Mum." Kat was always Kat. When I saw this, the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. (Please, God, no! Please, no more Slater returns! They were the direst of families!)
The first guest isn't Social Services, as Kat thinks. He's a private investigator, acting for several women who say they were assaulted, as children, by Harry Slater in the 1980s. I appreciate that this is EastEnders', and by extension, the BBC's attempt to make right the wrong the BBC did by harbouring such paedophiles as Saville, Stuart Hall and Rolf Harris, amongst others, but it strikes me as a little bit crass and cashing in on the infamy that erupted a couple of years ago, even if it is revisiting Kat's childhood trauma for the umpteenth time.
Look, I appreciate that she was a victim of childhood sexual abuse - as were Ronnie and Whitney. (Albert Square doesn't do things by half - count the abuse victims, the murderers and the substance abuse victims living on the Square, and you'll see that many in those three categories overlap). But how many times do we have to have this past rammed down our throats as a pisspoor way of forcing us to feel sympathy for a character whose sympathy account ran dry in 2010 and was only half in credit before DTC drained it again?
I appreciate that no amount of money will wash clean what was done to Kat, but then again, Kat has three young children, she has a business, and when her husband is offering her money to sustainhis children, she refuses it, and then puts about the tale that she is too proud even to ask him to help. Is she even on benefits? (This is an avenue down which EastEnders has always feared to tread - is Dominic Treadwell-Collins, perhaps, a closet Tory?) Will we be getting yet another storyline of a single mother forced to feed her brood on dog's food? How long before we hear the fated line ~'Owmahgonnafeedmahkids?~
Did this private investigator want to offer Kat the chance of gaining compensation from whom, exactly? Harry's estate? Kat's already been offered money from that. Did someone pursuing a claim want Kat for a witness statement? I'm uncertain about this, but to me, this was only yet another plot device to illustrate Kat's confliction about her past, and to try to elicit ever-decreasing sympathy for this spent character from viewers. (Succinctly put: Same shit, different day, variations on an increasingly boring and repetitive theme).
There followed a visit by a proper social worker - not your Trish Barnes variety (EastEnders has, at least, learned something). Nope, this was an altogether more sympathetic social worker - a friend of nosey Pam's, no less (who used to buy their loyalty and friendship with bicuits).
Linda, meanwhile, literally cacks herself when she learns that Social Services, are, indeed, visiting Kat, and for a short period 91A George Street becomes as busy as the Blackwall Tunnel. The worst Linda does is expose the fact that Kat had been lying all along to the social worker, especially about her drinking proclivity and how many times she'd done that. As I'm confused about what day this is supposed to be in Albert Square, it wasn't that long ago that Kat was stonking drunk during the Beale wedding and afterward at the abortive reception - so drunk, that Stacey and Martin had to physically carry her home from drinking on Arthur's bench.
This is a more sympathetic breed of social worker, who's understanding of Kat's dilemma, and Kat draws superficial strength from the visit and a cursory talk with Linda and resolves to save all her pennies in a glass jar in order to be able to go and visit Zoe. It's only then that Big Mo informs Stacey that Zoe doesn't ever want to see or have anything to do with Kat again.
I know that Stacey aptly used to describe Zoe as being up herself, but why this sudden change of attitude? (And, please ... no sudden appearance by Zoe Slater. Ever.)
The Teddy Bear's (with Moobs) Picnic.
Following the advice of Kat the Relationship Counsellor (who later laughed behind herr back and called her a "stuck-up cow"), Linda decides to "talk" to Mick.
As far as "talk" is concerned for Linda, when it comes to Mick, "talk" means "sex." So she asks her freshly-showered, hirsute and moobed partner to come back to bed. They get so far into a snog before Linda pulls away.
Once again, when talking to Kat the Relationship Counsellor (who has such a brilliant track record), Linda voices the desire to get things back to the way they were before the past year transpired. Or at least before sex got into the frame of things. For Linda, that means going back to when she was about twelve years old, because not long after that, she and Mick started having child sex.
So what does Linda do? Something that Mick and her family have been encouraging her to do since God was a boy - go back to her childhood and re-create the first child date she and Mick had - with cheesy snacks and fizzy drinks in the park to commemorate the first time - Mick's words - that he "tongued" Linda.
Such an event is never without an element of charm.
Linda's reluctance to engage in sexual activity is understanding. She is, after all, a victim of rape. Mick is treating her with kid gloves, but I'm finding this saintly, patient image of Mick as The Patient Griselda curiously at odds with the doubtful countenance he showed at the scan the other day. I'm wondering about the paternity of this baby and how it's going to affect Mick if it turns out that he isn't the child's father?
Speaking of babies ...
Lady Madonna Not.
Kim's not hung over at all, but her baby will be if she's fed that milk Kim had expressed at the crack of dawn. A nursing child eats and drinks what you've eaten and drunk via your breast milk, so the doctor better keep an eye on Pearl doesn't have alcohol poisoning.
Kim freaks out when she returns to the neonatal ICU to find a teddy bear and balloon left over Pearl's incubator, only to find out from Patrick that Denise left that as a surprise.
Kim has a secret to tell Patrick. Poor Patrick, he's still lumbered with everyone's secrets, but that goes with the territory of being a patriarch.
Stacey Saves the Day. There she is, our girl, who isn't above going back to work at Blades because she can't get a job anyplace else, and she needs to look after her daughter. Linda assures her that it's OK for Stacey to go back to Blades. After all, Dean isn't there. No, Stacey says, but Shirley is her boss. Wow, since when did such a businessphobe like Shirley become such an executive?
.
Yet Another Roxy Triangle. What a mess. Roxy's attracted to CharlieBoy - it must be his smell, his unkempt appearance and his greasy skin. I have a strange feeling that CharlieBoy is attracted to Roxy too, and he's using his son as an excuse to get to see her. Roxy knows her own boundaries, if she doesn't know anything else; but here we're treated to a new and unfamiliar incarnation of Aleks.
He's suddenly become a bluff, Teutonic, hail-fellow-well-met sexist, blustering about getting CharlieBoy over for a lads' bonding night whilst Roxy does the done female thing and babysits Matthew. In fact, Aleks brusquely informs Roxy of the evening plans: he and Charlie - his "bro" - would be bonding over beer and men's flicks, whilst Roxy does the girl thing of looking after the baby.
When did Aleks get a personality transplant? More importantly, what's happened to all the children of Walford? We haven't seen Denny in donkey's years, even in the dead of night when Sharon traipses Jay, Abi and Ben off for a night on the tiles at the Vic and no one at home to care for unseen Denny. Now, we have Aleks and Charlie "bonding" in one room, whilst Roxy babysits an infant in the other. Where's Amy? Where's Ineta?
Of course Charlie arrives early enough for him and Roxy to share a brief moment when Roxy informs him that she has feelings for him, a moment long enough for them to sit side-by-side on the sofa with their hands touching before Aleks, the self-appointed entertainment master, blunders in with DVDs for CharlieBoy and orders for Roxy. And, of course, we're seeing now why Roxy is attracted to the ball-less, gormless CharlieBoy.
Someone's going to end up dead ... (sigh) we've seen it all before.
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