I'm writing this, just voting in the poll, and not having read the previous comments by other people. Let me say it like New York, New York ... Eastenders: So good, I watched it twice tonight. Again.
And after the 25th Anniversary episode and the 30th Anniversary week, we can honestly say ...
The Brannings Always Fuck It Up. Remember this from five years ago?
That set the bar. Then last night, as the live duff-duff rang out, Max's lines were so muffled that people couldn't figure out if he said Lauren knows WHO killed Lucy or Lauren knows YOU killed Lucyto Abi; and tonight, when the Empress Tanya - just as shallow, just as self-obsessed and just as patronisingly condescending to her BFF Jane the Queen (who, suddenly, isn't so queenly anymore - appeared and gushed over how wonderful Jane looked and then made a bad joke, in what was a live segment, Jo Joyner, as Tanya, asked Jane ...
How's Adam?
Yes, really. Adam. Not Ian the character, but Adam. Talk about confusing actors with characters - this is confusing a character with the actor who played him.
Ladies and gentlemen, let us know designate every EastEnders' live broadcast muff a "Branning moment."
To her credit and to Laurie Brett's, they glossed over it like the professionals they are, but it was the stand-out faux pas of the week, and it will be remembered. Still and all, it's mete to think that it was Jo Joyner, the seasoned pro, whose nerves showed through tonight, whilst teenager Lorna Fitzgerald, in what was probably her first live performance in front of a camera, was pitch perfect.
But even with that mistake, I gave this episode a resounding ten, because things are getting interesting now ... and, no, Kathy Beale is not returning.
The Branning Conundrum. Now, at long last, we're beginning to find out what happened with Lucy that night. At least, we know what happened between her and Abi. For me, Lorna Fitzgerald stood out in this episode in her portrayal of Abi, but I'm a bit confused about the timescale of things here.
We, the viewers, knew that Abi knew about Max's affair with Lucy, because it was Abi who took the picture of the snog between Max and Lucy at the flats. Tonight we found out that Abi was angry after this and confronted Lucy. In fact, she slapped her, and it looks as though Lucy tore Abi's top.
Max certainly thinks Abi killed Lucy, for all he says he has her back in all of this - nice, that a father believes his child so much, and yet, he has the gall to entreat Lauren to trust him. So Max knew about Abi's argument with Lucy, which would explain the cryptic comment about Max's and Abi's little secret on Good Friday. OK, fine. I buy that, but I also remember Max's disclosure to Abi about Lucy falling in his office and Abi cleaning the carpet with bleach. Didn't Abi ask him, point-blank, then if he killed Lucy? Right - I don't want to think too much about that, because it will only confuse me.
In the middle of disconcerting Abi, Max suddenly realises that Lauren maybe went to the police, but he and Abi subsequently find that she's toddled off to the late-night abortion clinic to have a termination, and Max, none the wiser that his oldest daughter was pregnant, dashes after her.
(By the way, Tanya is ever the selfish one. You'd think since she hadn't seen her daughters for a fair while, she'd check in on them, instead of cosying down with Jane the Queen, yet she expected Abi to fall at her feet when she saw her at the wedding.)
These episodes have brought Jacqueline Jossa into her own, and I applaud her. The scenes with Jake Wood at the clinic were emotional and poignant, and served to remind the public about the events that occurred five years ago, and that brief moment when Lauren admitted that she'd forgotten about the anniversary of Bradley's death and apologised for that ommission was touching. (That's OK, Lauren. Max had to be reminded of it by Bradley's widow, Stacey). Nice continuity and an admission of his own mistake, by Max, that he'd convinced Bradley to manipulate Stacey into having an abortion, but in hindsight, Bradley would have been a great dad, and he may have been alive and with Stacey today.
The star of the piece, undoubtedly, was Abi, with a special mention to Tanya, who still is in love with Max, incidentally, no matter how much she might refer to him as "the bold ginger one." The first thing she asked of Abi was where Max was.
(Line of the night to Cora:- Oh, 'ere we go.)
The Tanya-Max dynamic will never change. Tanya's made aware of something, and Max, frantically, tries to concoct a lie on his feet. Catching the tail end of Max's sentence to Abi about being involved with something, Tanya is curious, and Max immediately contrives a lie about Abi being involved in a row with Lauren and Peter, but Abi refuses, for once, to be a daddy's girl. She tells the truth: Max thinks Abi murdered Lucy, and she goes even further. Abi hated Lucy so much, she wishes she had killed her. Oh, it's going to be interesting watching Tanya's reaction to Max having slept with Lucy Beale.
But one of the big questions of the night is this: Did Lauren go through with the abortion?
I couldn't help but think, as Peter went through his spiel about how, even though he and Lauren were young, they'd make good parents. Really, Peter? Two of the most self-absorbed and self-obsessed characters on the programme actually caring for a child?
It's obvious that Lauren's told Peter as much as she wants him to know - that Lucy was killed at home. I still think Lauren thinks Peter is the killer, which is why she's aborting their baby. She told him as much as she dared, hoping, perhaps, that he might own up to the crime, but the final scene was a bit of a stymier.
Is Peter in denial? Jane seemed awfully concerned and even more worried when she found out that Peter was absent from the wedding. I can't help but think that Lauren would stay with Peter and even keep the baby, if she thought that Jane or even Ian were guilty of the crime. Peter would be an innocent party, but she was so off with him, so honestly confused about her feelings and made an abrupt move last week to split with him, that I can't help but be convinced that she thinks the killer was Peter, with Jane covering for him.
The Mitchell Connection. No, Kathy is not coming back. This is all about Ben. And Lucy. Phil's "met someone" (no, not Kathy) who's told him "something". Ian's sussed that this "something" has to do with Lucy, and Phil's stentorian breathing as Ian surmised this, heaped truth upon Ian's assumption. Ben interrupted, and Phil's reaction to Ben's appearance - a long, paternal hug - should have given Ian a broad hint, had Ian been thinking straight, himself, that Ben had something serious to do with Lucy's demise.
This was Phil's mission: he had to tell Ian, Ben's brother, that he suspected his son had been involved, in some way, with Lucy's death. Knowing that, were the police to find this out, that Ben, on licence, would be returned to prison, he wanted to convince, to beg Ian to let him, effectively, send Ben into exile, never to return to Walford, hence the passport.
And, by the way, with Billy at the wedding, does that mean Peggy is still sitting in Phil's Range Rover? We-l-l-l-l!
Absolutely brilliant to see Sharon rising to the occasion and demanding some sort of truth from Phil about his absence of the past week or so. This is going to be interesting as well. I can't wait for him to find out that Ben, and not Sharon, lost The Arches.
The Ice Queen Cometh. Ronnie's awake, and I think she's more awake than either Roxy or Charlie realise. The brief look she gave Roxy was kinda hard, and I'd be worried, were I Ronnie or Charlie. They might be served up to Aleks for breakfast as this:-
The direction for this episode was so slick that, once Ian had wondered where Dot was in the live segment, it segued seamlessly into the scene at the hospital, where Dot had made a pilgrimage to confess her sins to Ronnie, and you can bet your bottom dollar that the Sleeping Beauty heard every word. Dot's confession was that she had killed Nick, which isn't technically true. She bought him a fix of heroin, and she wasn't to know the stuff was bad. Obviously, she is blaming herself, whilst comforting herself with the fact that she actually "left Nick to Jesus."
Charlie and Arthur are shocked to discover that Dot had been harbouring Nick next door, feeding him and keeping him warm, but they need to stop and think that Nick was Dot's son, whom she unconditionally loved, as any mother would, and Dot's soliloquy segued beautifully as a voiceover for the scene at the pub, which panned over various suspects - Ian and Cindy, Denise, Ben and Jay, the Cokers, Lee and Whitney. This was a sad, yet beautiful moment.
The Returnee. Here's the ubiquitous Carter connection. Linda is happy. It was nice to see her laughing at Jane's name at the ceremony and bantering with Whitney, subtly offering her a challenge in catching the bouquet. When Linda told Mick that if Ian could move on, so could she, you knew that something wicked, this way, was coming, especially with Shirley hugging the end of the bar, with Mick's permission to stay for just one drink.
Linda caught the bouquet. She more than caught it, she pushed Whitney out of the way for it, which was hilarious. I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed seeing Linda happy, and this situation with the Carters juxtaposed in antithesis to the Moon situation, with Kat's drunken display - heckling Jane at the wedding. That must have been a first - three women heckling the bride about having second thoughts, at a wedding - Kat, Donna and Kim - with even Masood joining in under his breath, in response to Zainab's remark. Ian Beale is not a well-liked man.
Kat was incredibly drunk. And loud. At last, Alfie was suitably annoyed, and his remark was apt after Stacey asked if he were giving up on Kat.
She's given up on herself!
And Kat calls Alfie a loser? Really, Kat? Alfie's taken more of your shit than most men would have done. He's made one mistake, and it's a serious one, but I'm looking at the Moon marriage, and I see more than one loser, and Kat's scars are as visible as Tamwar's. Not.
But Kat's cackling and barfing brought Mick to the window, where he caught sight of the "surprise" returnee.
Dean.
Kat's remark about the Slater/Moon house being symbolic of her - a big, black empty shell, inspires an idea in Stacey, one for which she needs the combined strengths of Kush and Martin.
Martin's foreshadowing remark ... I've pulled. Do I detect a Slater-Fowler Christmas wedding? But before that, an iconic moment is about to be re-created.
The Beastly Beales. Well, I suppose there's a murderer amongst them, and DTC cleverly employed some standard EastEnders tropes tonight, specifically, Jane ringing someone cryptically, with Les being shown in the next scene, phone in hand. She rand Masood, of course, her loyal lapdog worhipper, with instructions that Bobby the Beaver (aside: weird, reading the A A Milne Winnie-the-Pooh poem at a wedding; I know the line was "me and Pooh", but considering that the "me" was Ian, I envisaged the line to read "there was just we two, me and poo because there's been a lot of shit in Ian's life) was to stay at Masood's. No asking Masood, just ordering, like a mem sahib.
And I couldn't help but notice Denise's look of utter disgust as Ian gave his smarmy speech about what a wonderful woman Jane was.
So everyone's suspecting everyone else, and suddenly Cindy is giving sloe-eyed looks of fear and suspicion all around. If the killer turns out to be Cindy, that would be the single most underwhelming outcome ever, because she's a recent and new player, not very likeable, in whom the public have invested very little.
Jane's called Ian home and dispatched Bobby, to confront him with what Lauren's written on the card. Is she about to confess or does she suspect Ian? Peter rushes in, declaring that Lauren knows that Lucy was killed in the Beale's house, and suspecting that the killer was either Ian or Jane. Jane was worried, initially, about Peter's sudden absence.
Is Peter in denial? He looked pretty scared at what he thought Lauren was about to say? Is Jane the killer or is she covering something up? Is silly Cindy the killer? I would say that Jane moved the body, but is she covering for Cindy or Peter? Or Ian? Ian got the duff-duff. Does that eliminate him from the suspect list or does it mean he's blocked out what he did to his daughter?
All will be revealed tomorrow night, yet there also remains another burning question: Does Sonia get her head shoved in the cake tomorrow night?
And after the 25th Anniversary episode and the 30th Anniversary week, we can honestly say ...
The Brannings Always Fuck It Up. Remember this from five years ago?
That set the bar. Then last night, as the live duff-duff rang out, Max's lines were so muffled that people couldn't figure out if he said Lauren knows WHO killed Lucy or Lauren knows YOU killed Lucyto Abi; and tonight, when the Empress Tanya - just as shallow, just as self-obsessed and just as patronisingly condescending to her BFF Jane the Queen (who, suddenly, isn't so queenly anymore - appeared and gushed over how wonderful Jane looked and then made a bad joke, in what was a live segment, Jo Joyner, as Tanya, asked Jane ...
How's Adam?
Yes, really. Adam. Not Ian the character, but Adam. Talk about confusing actors with characters - this is confusing a character with the actor who played him.
Ladies and gentlemen, let us know designate every EastEnders' live broadcast muff a "Branning moment."
To her credit and to Laurie Brett's, they glossed over it like the professionals they are, but it was the stand-out faux pas of the week, and it will be remembered. Still and all, it's mete to think that it was Jo Joyner, the seasoned pro, whose nerves showed through tonight, whilst teenager Lorna Fitzgerald, in what was probably her first live performance in front of a camera, was pitch perfect.
But even with that mistake, I gave this episode a resounding ten, because things are getting interesting now ... and, no, Kathy Beale is not returning.
The Branning Conundrum. Now, at long last, we're beginning to find out what happened with Lucy that night. At least, we know what happened between her and Abi. For me, Lorna Fitzgerald stood out in this episode in her portrayal of Abi, but I'm a bit confused about the timescale of things here.
We, the viewers, knew that Abi knew about Max's affair with Lucy, because it was Abi who took the picture of the snog between Max and Lucy at the flats. Tonight we found out that Abi was angry after this and confronted Lucy. In fact, she slapped her, and it looks as though Lucy tore Abi's top.
Max certainly thinks Abi killed Lucy, for all he says he has her back in all of this - nice, that a father believes his child so much, and yet, he has the gall to entreat Lauren to trust him. So Max knew about Abi's argument with Lucy, which would explain the cryptic comment about Max's and Abi's little secret on Good Friday. OK, fine. I buy that, but I also remember Max's disclosure to Abi about Lucy falling in his office and Abi cleaning the carpet with bleach. Didn't Abi ask him, point-blank, then if he killed Lucy? Right - I don't want to think too much about that, because it will only confuse me.
In the middle of disconcerting Abi, Max suddenly realises that Lauren maybe went to the police, but he and Abi subsequently find that she's toddled off to the late-night abortion clinic to have a termination, and Max, none the wiser that his oldest daughter was pregnant, dashes after her.
(By the way, Tanya is ever the selfish one. You'd think since she hadn't seen her daughters for a fair while, she'd check in on them, instead of cosying down with Jane the Queen, yet she expected Abi to fall at her feet when she saw her at the wedding.)
These episodes have brought Jacqueline Jossa into her own, and I applaud her. The scenes with Jake Wood at the clinic were emotional and poignant, and served to remind the public about the events that occurred five years ago, and that brief moment when Lauren admitted that she'd forgotten about the anniversary of Bradley's death and apologised for that ommission was touching. (That's OK, Lauren. Max had to be reminded of it by Bradley's widow, Stacey). Nice continuity and an admission of his own mistake, by Max, that he'd convinced Bradley to manipulate Stacey into having an abortion, but in hindsight, Bradley would have been a great dad, and he may have been alive and with Stacey today.
The star of the piece, undoubtedly, was Abi, with a special mention to Tanya, who still is in love with Max, incidentally, no matter how much she might refer to him as "the bold ginger one." The first thing she asked of Abi was where Max was.
(Line of the night to Cora:- Oh, 'ere we go.)
The Tanya-Max dynamic will never change. Tanya's made aware of something, and Max, frantically, tries to concoct a lie on his feet. Catching the tail end of Max's sentence to Abi about being involved with something, Tanya is curious, and Max immediately contrives a lie about Abi being involved in a row with Lauren and Peter, but Abi refuses, for once, to be a daddy's girl. She tells the truth: Max thinks Abi murdered Lucy, and she goes even further. Abi hated Lucy so much, she wishes she had killed her. Oh, it's going to be interesting watching Tanya's reaction to Max having slept with Lucy Beale.
But one of the big questions of the night is this: Did Lauren go through with the abortion?
I couldn't help but think, as Peter went through his spiel about how, even though he and Lauren were young, they'd make good parents. Really, Peter? Two of the most self-absorbed and self-obsessed characters on the programme actually caring for a child?
It's obvious that Lauren's told Peter as much as she wants him to know - that Lucy was killed at home. I still think Lauren thinks Peter is the killer, which is why she's aborting their baby. She told him as much as she dared, hoping, perhaps, that he might own up to the crime, but the final scene was a bit of a stymier.
Is Peter in denial? Jane seemed awfully concerned and even more worried when she found out that Peter was absent from the wedding. I can't help but think that Lauren would stay with Peter and even keep the baby, if she thought that Jane or even Ian were guilty of the crime. Peter would be an innocent party, but she was so off with him, so honestly confused about her feelings and made an abrupt move last week to split with him, that I can't help but be convinced that she thinks the killer was Peter, with Jane covering for him.
The Mitchell Connection. No, Kathy is not coming back. This is all about Ben. And Lucy. Phil's "met someone" (no, not Kathy) who's told him "something". Ian's sussed that this "something" has to do with Lucy, and Phil's stentorian breathing as Ian surmised this, heaped truth upon Ian's assumption. Ben interrupted, and Phil's reaction to Ben's appearance - a long, paternal hug - should have given Ian a broad hint, had Ian been thinking straight, himself, that Ben had something serious to do with Lucy's demise.
This was Phil's mission: he had to tell Ian, Ben's brother, that he suspected his son had been involved, in some way, with Lucy's death. Knowing that, were the police to find this out, that Ben, on licence, would be returned to prison, he wanted to convince, to beg Ian to let him, effectively, send Ben into exile, never to return to Walford, hence the passport.
And, by the way, with Billy at the wedding, does that mean Peggy is still sitting in Phil's Range Rover? We-l-l-l-l!
Absolutely brilliant to see Sharon rising to the occasion and demanding some sort of truth from Phil about his absence of the past week or so. This is going to be interesting as well. I can't wait for him to find out that Ben, and not Sharon, lost The Arches.
The Ice Queen Cometh. Ronnie's awake, and I think she's more awake than either Roxy or Charlie realise. The brief look she gave Roxy was kinda hard, and I'd be worried, were I Ronnie or Charlie. They might be served up to Aleks for breakfast as this:-
The direction for this episode was so slick that, once Ian had wondered where Dot was in the live segment, it segued seamlessly into the scene at the hospital, where Dot had made a pilgrimage to confess her sins to Ronnie, and you can bet your bottom dollar that the Sleeping Beauty heard every word. Dot's confession was that she had killed Nick, which isn't technically true. She bought him a fix of heroin, and she wasn't to know the stuff was bad. Obviously, she is blaming herself, whilst comforting herself with the fact that she actually "left Nick to Jesus."
Charlie and Arthur are shocked to discover that Dot had been harbouring Nick next door, feeding him and keeping him warm, but they need to stop and think that Nick was Dot's son, whom she unconditionally loved, as any mother would, and Dot's soliloquy segued beautifully as a voiceover for the scene at the pub, which panned over various suspects - Ian and Cindy, Denise, Ben and Jay, the Cokers, Lee and Whitney. This was a sad, yet beautiful moment.
The Returnee. Here's the ubiquitous Carter connection. Linda is happy. It was nice to see her laughing at Jane's name at the ceremony and bantering with Whitney, subtly offering her a challenge in catching the bouquet. When Linda told Mick that if Ian could move on, so could she, you knew that something wicked, this way, was coming, especially with Shirley hugging the end of the bar, with Mick's permission to stay for just one drink.
Linda caught the bouquet. She more than caught it, she pushed Whitney out of the way for it, which was hilarious. I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed seeing Linda happy, and this situation with the Carters juxtaposed in antithesis to the Moon situation, with Kat's drunken display - heckling Jane at the wedding. That must have been a first - three women heckling the bride about having second thoughts, at a wedding - Kat, Donna and Kim - with even Masood joining in under his breath, in response to Zainab's remark. Ian Beale is not a well-liked man.
Kat was incredibly drunk. And loud. At last, Alfie was suitably annoyed, and his remark was apt after Stacey asked if he were giving up on Kat.
She's given up on herself!
And Kat calls Alfie a loser? Really, Kat? Alfie's taken more of your shit than most men would have done. He's made one mistake, and it's a serious one, but I'm looking at the Moon marriage, and I see more than one loser, and Kat's scars are as visible as Tamwar's. Not.
But Kat's cackling and barfing brought Mick to the window, where he caught sight of the "surprise" returnee.
Dean.
Kat's remark about the Slater/Moon house being symbolic of her - a big, black empty shell, inspires an idea in Stacey, one for which she needs the combined strengths of Kush and Martin.
Martin's foreshadowing remark ... I've pulled. Do I detect a Slater-Fowler Christmas wedding? But before that, an iconic moment is about to be re-created.
The Beastly Beales. Well, I suppose there's a murderer amongst them, and DTC cleverly employed some standard EastEnders tropes tonight, specifically, Jane ringing someone cryptically, with Les being shown in the next scene, phone in hand. She rand Masood, of course, her loyal l
And I couldn't help but notice Denise's look of utter disgust as Ian gave his smarmy speech about what a wonderful woman Jane was.
So everyone's suspecting everyone else, and suddenly Cindy is giving sloe-eyed looks of fear and suspicion all around. If the killer turns out to be Cindy, that would be the single most underwhelming outcome ever, because she's a recent and new player, not very likeable, in whom the public have invested very little.
Jane's called Ian home and dispatched Bobby, to confront him with what Lauren's written on the card. Is she about to confess or does she suspect Ian? Peter rushes in, declaring that Lauren knows that Lucy was killed in the Beale's house, and suspecting that the killer was either Ian or Jane. Jane was worried, initially, about Peter's sudden absence.
Is Peter in denial? He looked pretty scared at what he thought Lauren was about to say? Is Jane the killer or is she covering something up? Is silly Cindy the killer? I would say that Jane moved the body, but is she covering for Cindy or Peter? Or Ian? Ian got the duff-duff. Does that eliminate him from the suspect list or does it mean he's blocked out what he did to his daughter?
All will be revealed tomorrow night, yet there also remains another burning question: Does Sonia get her head shoved in the cake tomorrow night?
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