The long-awaited death episode. The reactions to one man's death and the dying of another. For all the casual critics of EastEnders as a proponent of misery, this episode certainly gave them ammunition.
Was it a good episode? It was watchable, most notably for the performances of Linda Henry, Danny Dyer and the subtleness of Lindsay Coulson, easily the best actress on the programme.
Yet it was also annoying. And frustrating. And it emphasised the fact that there are some supremely irritating actors who happen to play some supremely irritating characters.
Don't get me wrong, a lot of the episode was very effective and affecting, and for once the slipshod writing room had done their homework in the intricacies and detail of a terminal cancer patient's death; they even captured the most hateful and selfish aspect of Shriley's character and allowed us to see beneath the surface of that.
But it was an episode which I watched in a state of great perturbation.
It's ironic that The Death Episode concerned the two families who have dominated the horizon of the piece for the past four years, the latter dominating exclusively this past year. Yet it took a full three years' of continuous domination and unbridled growth - i.e., relatives and satellites coming out of the woodwork - for the Brannings to be so hated and reviled, and only one year for the Carters to achieve overkill.
It's not over for them yet.
Pray silence for the deceased ... both of'em. I really don't know whose relatives annoyed me more.
The Lesser of Two Deaths: Jim
It's life, Jim, but not as we know it ... It's worse than that, he's [i]dead[/i], Jim!
OK, OK, I know. John Bardon died a year ago, and Jim has been an off-screen presence since 2011. Since 2013, the Brannings have been dwindling down until they are a spent force. Now the mighty Pretender family foisted upon us by Bryan Kirkwood (after Kate Harwood and Diederick Santer began their expansion) as a possible replacement for Mitchell domination has been reduced to a shell of its former self - the original Branning, Carol, who's never really been a Branning at all (we've always known her as a Jackson); horny lounge lizard, Max; spoiled brat Abi, and the abysmal Sonia, her Fowler daughter and the weakest link either the Brannings, Butchers or Beales could achieve (Liam the Lug), and Whitney, who never knew Jim and, I daresay, never gave a rat's arse about him.
Jim is dead. Dead as a doornail, as Dickens said about Marley. Since he's lived off-screen for the past five years, meriting only a mention here and there from Dot, and an almighty blessing-out by her of her family's negligence of the old man, it behooved the show to kill his character off, off-screen.
It also behooved the show to use the death of this character, who graced our screen for the first eleven years of this century and who married one of the show's principal dame characters, a man who could claim relation/association by marriage to the likes of Pauline, Pat, Peggy, Patrick, the Beales, the Fowlers, the Butchers, the patriarch of the Branning family ... as a plot device for further enhancement of DTC's pet project family, the Carters.
As expected, Jim's off-screen death was a vehicle through which we could see the people who should be most affected by it - bar Dot - use it as an excuse to behave badly.
Yes, grief does strange things to people, but then some people's true natures come to the fore by things which are associated with death.
First, there's Carol, and Lindsay Coulson never gives short change. She's a whirling dervish, from rising early in the morning, to be surprised by the foul stench of Tina, who seems to have implanted herself into that dynamic (puke), when she mused about having to collect Jim's clothing from the care home as soon as he died, because there was a waiting list for his bed. (Harsh reality in 21st Century Britain, and kudos to the show for having the guts to proclaim that. This is the stuff of Julia Smith's EastEnders. It's little remarks such as this which give the show it's cutting edge, not overt sensationalism). Then she winds herself up like a spinning top, whipping about the kitchen, fixing breakfast for the waifs and strays who make up her family these days, and concerned only about breaking the news to Dot about Jim.
Sonia the Dumbass: Do you want me to ring the prison?
Carol: No. This is something I have to do face-to-face.
How interesting that Nurse Sonia should opt for the easy way out, initially, and fail to cut her mother some slack for being unable to face Dot later in the episode. Bitch.
Carol can be quietly broken, and it was the sight of the contents of Jim's old suitcase, which seemed to break her resolve. Once opened, she had to go through his clothes, under the guise of separating them into piles for the charity shop or the clothing bank, yet touching every single item, until she's stopped by the sight of Jim's familiar flat cap, and she's interrupted by Saint Sonia the Self-Righteous, who doesn't seem to equate Carol's sudden reluctance to face Dot with her mother's own grief and shock and the fact that once Carol admits to Dot that Jim has died, then he really and truly becomes dead. But for just now, Carol wants to be alone for a few more moments with what's left of her father - his familiar clothing.
Not Sonia the Self-Righteous ...
She storms off to the prison with a bee in her bonnet about how pathetic her mother is. (Christ, can you imagine that bitch as a nurse? She's a geriatric nurse as well. Poor elderly people!)
Later, when Her Royal Saintliness has returned, she publically upbraids Carol for actually going to work to do a shift in the cafe.
Ya can't be bovvered to visit Dot, but ya can come in'ere and serve bacon butties to strangers!
You ignorant asshat, haven't you studied the stages of grief? Some people channel their grief into activity, in order to grieve during a quiet time. Sonia loves to put the emotional boot into people who don't measure up to her high hypocritical standards. Were I Carol, I'd have belted her one across her vile gob.
It's this incident and Rebecca's innocent, overheard question about wondering whether Nana Carol actually liked Grandpa Jim, which sent Carol over the edge.
(Question: Rebecca is fourteen years old. Why the hell is she talking like an eight year-old? What the fuck is it with this show and child-women? The Carters have treated Linda like a child for most of her adult life. The result is that she delights in childish things - parties at the drop of a hat, being praised for doing something badly etc. Silly Tina dresses and acts like a five year-old. Nancy speaks in the singsong voice of a ten year-old, when she's twenty-one; and here we have someone who's supposed to be gifted and intelligent, asking the sort of question Amy Mitchell might ask as a norm.)
Carol storms around to Max, with a reminder of what Jim was before he alighted on the Square - he was a cantankerous, bigoted old wotsit. She had daily chores to do, and he held her to doing them, and when she got pregnant with her fourth child by as many men, Jim the racist proclaimed that she was the dirty slapper who got knocked up by a black man.
Wrong, Jim. Carol was the dirty slapper who got knocked up four times by as many men, a four-by-four.
Yes, this was the anger phase of grief, but Carol, being Carol and a Branning, which means being selfish, doesn't realise that the overgrown children in the household have followed her and now hear the worst about their grandfather.
Then, there's Max.
Why is it that, whenever Max is caught with his trousers down around his ankles and his back against the wall, the camera always manages to make him look like the iconic (in the US) character for whom he does a voiceover as the voice of GEICO Insurance, the Gecko:-
Max has spent all night exploring the hills and valleys of Karin Smart, who wants some more.
An aside on Denise Van Outen: I don't mind her. She's not a great actress, but she's the sort who could do well out of EastEnders, and she's certainly a better actress than Cassidy or the frightful woman who plays Pam Coker.
Of course, she's been primed by Phil Mitchell and knows exactly which button of Max's to push. As she admitted to Phil:- I quite fancy him.
So the scam is for Karin to sleep with Max, juice him up and sell him some dodgy motors - probably cut and shuts (Kevin Wicks redux?). Max pays her off in cash, she gives the cash to Phil, and Phil pays her a commission. Simples.
In the midst of this, we have a delightful, but brief scene with Sharon and Phil in the pub, where Phil shows Sharon the profits of greed. He's been selling some motores, he tells her, which aren't strictly kosher. I loved how prudent Sharon became when she thought it was Phil who was going to be offloading these dodgy items, but her face changed at once, to approving admiration when Phil assured her that it would be Max who'd be doing the selling for him. Now watch Max grass Phil up - or rather, watch Karin Smart grass him up.
Max's reaction to Jim's death is the biggest non-reaction of non-reactions. The only thing he offers to do is call April, Suzy and Jack (because, of course, none of them would ever come, even though we know Scott Maslen was asked). Max can't be bothered, either to see Dot or even go with Carol to view his father's body - or corpse, as they refer to it. Maybe they were afraid of that, or maybe that would have brought back memories to Max of having been nailed into a coffin all night, not once, but twice in his life.
With the Branning siblings - on National Siblings' Day, no less - it's every man for himself in promoting selfishness in order to allay grief.
And finally ... there's Sonia.
Sonia is the most annoying character on the show, and Natalie Cassidy is the most annoying actress. Tonight, when she visited Dot, we got yet another glimpse of her party piece when Dot was led into the room - the exaggeratedly sad eyes gazing, glazed over and pityingly into the distance, her mouth turned down in a little Pierrot moue and her expansive clasping of Dot to her as Dot twigged the meaning of the "important" visit.
Puke-a-flaming-buzzard.
Then the conversation with Dot, which took a decidedly weird turn on Sonia's self-righteous and judgemental part: as Dot reminisced about Jim, remembering that she'd taken photos to put up on the shelf for him and wondering about Carol collecting them, Sonia gets angry at her mother and berates her to Dot. Seriously, Sonia? Dot is a woman who has recently lost her son, and now she's lost her husband. She's seen her best friend, Pauline, die, and three of her grandsons.
Dot asks for the Vicar to visit her, reminds Sonia that she and Dot had the best of Jim and admonishes her not to be so hard on her mother, even included a note for Carol, imploring her to remember that Jim was, at least, her father.
I honestly didn't know how to take that - was Dot being facetious, judging by Sonia's smug smile, that because they saw the good side of Jim, that they could allow themselves a subtle dig at those who mourn him who may have suffered at his hand? In the same breath with reminding Sonia that Patrick needed to be told, as Patrick was Jim's best friend - the black man and the racist.
People evolve. Sonia regresses. Axe, please.
The Big D: Stan and All Things Carter.
Goodbye Old Shirl
I'm leaving the Square
But there'll still be
Enough of you there.
There's Linda and Nancy
And Buster the Scrote
There's Dean out a-rapin'
And makin' some notes
There's Lee in the Army
And Johnny away
Sylvie a-rantin'
And Babe holding sway
So while you're a-drinking
And Mick's looking sick
I'm off out of Walford
Back to the Old Vic ... Shakespeare, that is ... bit of Othello, bit o'King Lear.
Stan certainly got the big send-off. I mean big send-off. Well, he's the big star, isn't he? So that means and merits that Stan, a character of whom we've only had one year's exposure, gets The Big Goodbye - full-on Tony Bennett singing "Fly Me to the Moon," big deathbed scene with all of his children and a deliberately underplayed in the only way such a stage-trained thespian as Timothy West could do ... with Shirley at his side, of course. This was always going to be contrived to have Shirly, DTC's muse and Stan's recalcitrant daughter, at his side as he popped his clogs.
Whatever.
Yes, it was affecting, and - my God! - EastEnders certainly did their homework regarding a terminal patient's last days, starting with terminal agitation - the way a dying patient may get restless and incoherent during his last days or hours.
There was a great interplay of gallows' humour from the beginning of Stan's story tonight, with Shirley hearing "hurts ... more" and ordering Cora off to find a doctor, only to have Mick arrive, spend some time with him and determine that Stan actually said "Hurst ... Moore ... Brooking" the Holy Trinity of West Ham players. Stan was preparing himself to meet his maker ... and Bobby Moore.
There was also a great and ultimate conflict between Mick and Shirley, almost for the soul of Stan. I'm glad that Mick stuck to his guns of declaring Stan his father, but Shirley, as fascinating as she was to watch tonight, was shown at her worst.
This is really odd, because we know DTC wants the audience to like her, want to watch her and root for her, but a large part of people, now, don't.
Yes, she's nuanced. Yes, she's a complicated character; but she's simply not a character who's easy to like, and - at the same time - she's not a character you like to dislike, something that would make her watchable.
She's simply despicable. It's not enough that she's sided with her rapist son and openly declared Mick's life partner a liar for stating the bleeding obvious - that Dean raped her. Now, at Stan's deathbed, everything suddenly becomes all about Shirley.
Mick wants to remain with his dying father. He recognises Stan's shortcomings as a father, but he wants to revert to a time where he was known as "Stan's boy", buoyed on by the fact that Stan called out for him and recognised him. Shirley soon shot that down, harshly issuing a verbal smack to Mick by saying that Stan was drugged up to his eyeballs and didn't know what he was saying. Jealousy much, Shirley? Of your son?
When Mick articulates his desire to retreat to a happier time with Stan, being known as his son and always considering himself as Stan's son, Shirley attacks him again. That's right - over the deathbed of her father, she attacks Mick in the usual way?
You wanna be known as Stan and Sylvie's son? WhaddaboutME?
Kudos to Mick for his reply: It's not always about you, Shirl.
From a brilliant home truth, however, we go directly into a moment of maudlin, the gist of which reminded me of another moment of maudlin from years gone by, which led, incidentally, to a great jumping of the shark ...
Yes, Stan's sudden compos mentis moment where he joined the hands of Mick and Shirley, and strugglingly, reminded them of how much they needed each other; and as this entire storyline and the rape is, ultimately, all about Mick and Shirley, a boy and his mum. Mick misses Shirley. Shirley misses Mick. Yet, the mind game objective is cruel: Who has the right to be with Stan at the moment of his slipping this mortal coil?
Once again, Shirley uses the moment to her own advantage, subtly and deftly muscling Mick aside to assert her place. Mick refuses to be ordered home. He simply wants the right to be with his dad.
Mick: That's my dad dying in there.
Shirley: No, Mick. That's MY dad dying in there.
The inference was there, and rank was pulled at, quite possibly, the worst time in Mick's life. As I watched that, I was silently willing Mick to turn heel and go back into Stan's room, grow some balls and turf her out. But no. He didn't. He did what he always does when Shirley cracks the whip. He left. Disowned as Stan's son by Shirley at the moment when he needed Stan's acceptance and blessing.
Shirley was determined that it was she, and only she, to be with Stan at the end. Cora and the increasingly annoying Tina, whose silly little girl act grates on my nerves, were sent home. She's always talking and acting like a pathetically bewildered little girl lost during times of crisis when she's really a fortysomething woman. The family, when they learned of this from Mick, was right to take offence.
Stan's final moments are spent with Shirley reminsicing about something, again, incongruous - Mick as a small child, dressed in a cowboy suit and acting like John Wayne. Once again, Mick spent four years in care - from the time he was about one year old until he was five. By the time he'd returned home full-time, Shirley was married to Kevin and expecting Jimbo. Where the hell did the cowboy story come from? Then, there was Stan's final rejoinder to Shirley to "protect" Mick, even admitting that he was hard on the outside, but soft inside, the standard PR blurb we've incessantly seen about him. Then - poof - Stan dies.
The highlight scene for me in all of this malarkey was when Buster Bloodvessel, King of Scrotes ...
... ambles into the Vic, intent on "bonding" with his grandchildren, only to be given short shrift by both Lee and, wonderfully, by Nancy, who defines beautifully the full extent of Buster's non-relationship to them:-
You don't have a past with us, and you certainly don't have a future.
Get Nancy some friends fast, please.
I was a bit put off by the Hollyoaks-ish ending, in that there were two deaths, and all we saw was Carol getting hugged by Sonia, and the rest of the vignettes were Carter, Carter, Carter, including the ubiquitous bedscene featuring Linda and a hirsute Mick, and ending with Shirley clinging to her lifeless old Pa.
They could have and should have shown Max musing into a glass of whiskey.
Decent enough episode, but not as good as some of the others this week and last.
Was it a good episode? It was watchable, most notably for the performances of Linda Henry, Danny Dyer and the subtleness of Lindsay Coulson, easily the best actress on the programme.
Yet it was also annoying. And frustrating. And it emphasised the fact that there are some supremely irritating actors who happen to play some supremely irritating characters.
Don't get me wrong, a lot of the episode was very effective and affecting, and for once the slipshod writing room had done their homework in the intricacies and detail of a terminal cancer patient's death; they even captured the most hateful and selfish aspect of Shriley's character and allowed us to see beneath the surface of that.
But it was an episode which I watched in a state of great perturbation.
It's ironic that The Death Episode concerned the two families who have dominated the horizon of the piece for the past four years, the latter dominating exclusively this past year. Yet it took a full three years' of continuous domination and unbridled growth - i.e., relatives and satellites coming out of the woodwork - for the Brannings to be so hated and reviled, and only one year for the Carters to achieve overkill.
It's not over for them yet.
Pray silence for the deceased ... both of'em. I really don't know whose relatives annoyed me more.
The Lesser of Two Deaths: Jim
It's life, Jim, but not as we know it ... It's worse than that, he's [i]dead[/i], Jim!
OK, OK, I know. John Bardon died a year ago, and Jim has been an off-screen presence since 2011. Since 2013, the Brannings have been dwindling down until they are a spent force. Now the mighty Pretender family foisted upon us by Bryan Kirkwood (after Kate Harwood and Diederick Santer began their expansion) as a possible replacement for Mitchell domination has been reduced to a shell of its former self - the original Branning, Carol, who's never really been a Branning at all (we've always known her as a Jackson); horny lounge lizard, Max; spoiled brat Abi, and the abysmal Sonia, her Fowler daughter and the weakest link either the Brannings, Butchers or Beales could achieve (Liam the Lug), and Whitney, who never knew Jim and, I daresay, never gave a rat's arse about him.
Jim is dead. Dead as a doornail, as Dickens said about Marley. Since he's lived off-screen for the past five years, meriting only a mention here and there from Dot, and an almighty blessing-out by her of her family's negligence of the old man, it behooved the show to kill his character off, off-screen.
It also behooved the show to use the death of this character, who graced our screen for the first eleven years of this century and who married one of the show's principal dame characters, a man who could claim relation/association by marriage to the likes of Pauline, Pat, Peggy, Patrick, the Beales, the Fowlers, the Butchers, the patriarch of the Branning family ... as a plot device for further enhancement of DTC's pet project family, the Carters.
As expected, Jim's off-screen death was a vehicle through which we could see the people who should be most affected by it - bar Dot - use it as an excuse to behave badly.
Yes, grief does strange things to people, but then some people's true natures come to the fore by things which are associated with death.
First, there's Carol, and Lindsay Coulson never gives short change. She's a whirling dervish, from rising early in the morning, to be surprised by the foul stench of Tina, who seems to have implanted herself into that dynamic (puke), when she mused about having to collect Jim's clothing from the care home as soon as he died, because there was a waiting list for his bed. (Harsh reality in 21st Century Britain, and kudos to the show for having the guts to proclaim that. This is the stuff of Julia Smith's EastEnders. It's little remarks such as this which give the show it's cutting edge, not overt sensationalism). Then she winds herself up like a spinning top, whipping about the kitchen, fixing breakfast for the waifs and strays who make up her family these days, and concerned only about breaking the news to Dot about Jim.
Sonia the Dumbass: Do you want me to ring the prison?
Carol: No. This is something I have to do face-to-face.
How interesting that Nurse Sonia should opt for the easy way out, initially, and fail to cut her mother some slack for being unable to face Dot later in the episode. Bitch.
Carol can be quietly broken, and it was the sight of the contents of Jim's old suitcase, which seemed to break her resolve. Once opened, she had to go through his clothes, under the guise of separating them into piles for the charity shop or the clothing bank, yet touching every single item, until she's stopped by the sight of Jim's familiar flat cap, and she's interrupted by Saint Sonia the Self-Righteous, who doesn't seem to equate Carol's sudden reluctance to face Dot with her mother's own grief and shock and the fact that once Carol admits to Dot that Jim has died, then he really and truly becomes dead. But for just now, Carol wants to be alone for a few more moments with what's left of her father - his familiar clothing.
Not Sonia the Self-Righteous ...
She storms off to the prison with a bee in her bonnet about how pathetic her mother is. (Christ, can you imagine that bitch as a nurse? She's a geriatric nurse as well. Poor elderly people!)
Later, when Her Royal Saintliness has returned, she publically upbraids Carol for actually going to work to do a shift in the cafe.
Ya can't be bovvered to visit Dot, but ya can come in'ere and serve bacon butties to strangers!
You ignorant asshat, haven't you studied the stages of grief? Some people channel their grief into activity, in order to grieve during a quiet time. Sonia loves to put the emotional boot into people who don't measure up to her high hypocritical standards. Were I Carol, I'd have belted her one across her vile gob.
It's this incident and Rebecca's innocent, overheard question about wondering whether Nana Carol actually liked Grandpa Jim, which sent Carol over the edge.
(Question: Rebecca is fourteen years old. Why the hell is she talking like an eight year-old? What the fuck is it with this show and child-women? The Carters have treated Linda like a child for most of her adult life. The result is that she delights in childish things - parties at the drop of a hat, being praised for doing something badly etc. Silly Tina dresses and acts like a five year-old. Nancy speaks in the singsong voice of a ten year-old, when she's twenty-one; and here we have someone who's supposed to be gifted and intelligent, asking the sort of question Amy Mitchell might ask as a norm.)
Carol storms around to Max, with a reminder of what Jim was before he alighted on the Square - he was a cantankerous, bigoted old wotsit. She had daily chores to do, and he held her to doing them, and when she got pregnant with her fourth child by as many men, Jim the racist proclaimed that she was the dirty slapper who got knocked up by a black man.
Wrong, Jim. Carol was the dirty slapper who got knocked up four times by as many men, a four-by-four.
Yes, this was the anger phase of grief, but Carol, being Carol and a Branning, which means being selfish, doesn't realise that the overgrown children in the household have followed her and now hear the worst about their grandfather.
Then, there's Max.
Why is it that, whenever Max is caught with his trousers down around his ankles and his back against the wall, the camera always manages to make him look like the iconic (in the US) character for whom he does a voiceover as the voice of GEICO Insurance, the Gecko:-
Max has spent all night exploring the hills and valleys of Karin Smart, who wants some more.
An aside on Denise Van Outen: I don't mind her. She's not a great actress, but she's the sort who could do well out of EastEnders, and she's certainly a better actress than Cassidy or the frightful woman who plays Pam Coker.
Of course, she's been primed by Phil Mitchell and knows exactly which button of Max's to push. As she admitted to Phil:- I quite fancy him.
So the scam is for Karin to sleep with Max, juice him up and sell him some dodgy motors - probably cut and shuts (Kevin Wicks redux?). Max pays her off in cash, she gives the cash to Phil, and Phil pays her a commission. Simples.
In the midst of this, we have a delightful, but brief scene with Sharon and Phil in the pub, where Phil shows Sharon the profits of greed. He's been selling some motores, he tells her, which aren't strictly kosher. I loved how prudent Sharon became when she thought it was Phil who was going to be offloading these dodgy items, but her face changed at once, to approving admiration when Phil assured her that it would be Max who'd be doing the selling for him. Now watch Max grass Phil up - or rather, watch Karin Smart grass him up.
Max's reaction to Jim's death is the biggest non-reaction of non-reactions. The only thing he offers to do is call April, Suzy and Jack (because, of course, none of them would ever come, even though we know Scott Maslen was asked). Max can't be bothered, either to see Dot or even go with Carol to view his father's body - or corpse, as they refer to it. Maybe they were afraid of that, or maybe that would have brought back memories to Max of having been nailed into a coffin all night, not once, but twice in his life.
With the Branning siblings - on National Siblings' Day, no less - it's every man for himself in promoting selfishness in order to allay grief.
And finally ... there's Sonia.
Sonia is the most annoying character on the show, and Natalie Cassidy is the most annoying actress. Tonight, when she visited Dot, we got yet another glimpse of her party piece when Dot was led into the room - the exaggeratedly sad eyes gazing, glazed over and pityingly into the distance, her mouth turned down in a little Pierrot moue and her expansive clasping of Dot to her as Dot twigged the meaning of the "important" visit.
Puke-a-flaming-buzzard.
Then the conversation with Dot, which took a decidedly weird turn on Sonia's self-righteous and judgemental part: as Dot reminisced about Jim, remembering that she'd taken photos to put up on the shelf for him and wondering about Carol collecting them, Sonia gets angry at her mother and berates her to Dot. Seriously, Sonia? Dot is a woman who has recently lost her son, and now she's lost her husband. She's seen her best friend, Pauline, die, and three of her grandsons.
Dot asks for the Vicar to visit her, reminds Sonia that she and Dot had the best of Jim and admonishes her not to be so hard on her mother, even included a note for Carol, imploring her to remember that Jim was, at least, her father.
I honestly didn't know how to take that - was Dot being facetious, judging by Sonia's smug smile, that because they saw the good side of Jim, that they could allow themselves a subtle dig at those who mourn him who may have suffered at his hand? In the same breath with reminding Sonia that Patrick needed to be told, as Patrick was Jim's best friend - the black man and the racist.
People evolve. Sonia regresses. Axe, please.
The Big D: Stan and All Things Carter.
Goodbye Old Shirl
I'm leaving the Square
But there'll still be
Enough of you there.
There's Linda and Nancy
And Buster the Scrote
There's Dean out a-rapin'
And makin' some notes
There's Lee in the Army
And Johnny away
Sylvie a-rantin'
And Babe holding sway
So while you're a-drinking
And Mick's looking sick
I'm off out of Walford
Back to the Old Vic ... Shakespeare, that is ... bit of Othello, bit o'King Lear.
Stan certainly got the big send-off. I mean big send-off. Well, he's the big star, isn't he? So that means and merits that Stan, a character of whom we've only had one year's exposure, gets The Big Goodbye - full-on Tony Bennett singing "Fly Me to the Moon," big deathbed scene with all of his children and a deliberately underplayed in the only way such a stage-trained thespian as Timothy West could do ... with Shirley at his side, of course. This was always going to be contrived to have Shirly, DTC's muse and Stan's recalcitrant daughter, at his side as he popped his clogs.
Whatever.
Yes, it was affecting, and - my God! - EastEnders certainly did their homework regarding a terminal patient's last days, starting with terminal agitation - the way a dying patient may get restless and incoherent during his last days or hours.
There was a great interplay of gallows' humour from the beginning of Stan's story tonight, with Shirley hearing "hurts ... more" and ordering Cora off to find a doctor, only to have Mick arrive, spend some time with him and determine that Stan actually said "Hurst ... Moore ... Brooking" the Holy Trinity of West Ham players. Stan was preparing himself to meet his maker ... and Bobby Moore.
There was also a great and ultimate conflict between Mick and Shirley, almost for the soul of Stan. I'm glad that Mick stuck to his guns of declaring Stan his father, but Shirley, as fascinating as she was to watch tonight, was shown at her worst.
This is really odd, because we know DTC wants the audience to like her, want to watch her and root for her, but a large part of people, now, don't.
Yes, she's nuanced. Yes, she's a complicated character; but she's simply not a character who's easy to like, and - at the same time - she's not a character you like to dislike, something that would make her watchable.
She's simply despicable. It's not enough that she's sided with her rapist son and openly declared Mick's life partner a liar for stating the bleeding obvious - that Dean raped her. Now, at Stan's deathbed, everything suddenly becomes all about Shirley.
Mick wants to remain with his dying father. He recognises Stan's shortcomings as a father, but he wants to revert to a time where he was known as "Stan's boy", buoyed on by the fact that Stan called out for him and recognised him. Shirley soon shot that down, harshly issuing a verbal smack to Mick by saying that Stan was drugged up to his eyeballs and didn't know what he was saying. Jealousy much, Shirley? Of your son?
When Mick articulates his desire to retreat to a happier time with Stan, being known as his son and always considering himself as Stan's son, Shirley attacks him again. That's right - over the deathbed of her father, she attacks Mick in the usual way?
You wanna be known as Stan and Sylvie's son? WhaddaboutME?
Kudos to Mick for his reply: It's not always about you, Shirl.
From a brilliant home truth, however, we go directly into a moment of maudlin, the gist of which reminded me of another moment of maudlin from years gone by, which led, incidentally, to a great jumping of the shark ...
Yes, Stan's sudden compos mentis moment where he joined the hands of Mick and Shirley, and strugglingly, reminded them of how much they needed each other; and as this entire storyline and the rape is, ultimately, all about Mick and Shirley, a boy and his mum. Mick misses Shirley. Shirley misses Mick. Yet, the mind game objective is cruel: Who has the right to be with Stan at the moment of his slipping this mortal coil?
Once again, Shirley uses the moment to her own advantage, subtly and deftly muscling Mick aside to assert her place. Mick refuses to be ordered home. He simply wants the right to be with his dad.
Mick: That's my dad dying in there.
Shirley: No, Mick. That's MY dad dying in there.
The inference was there, and rank was pulled at, quite possibly, the worst time in Mick's life. As I watched that, I was silently willing Mick to turn heel and go back into Stan's room, grow some balls and turf her out. But no. He didn't. He did what he always does when Shirley cracks the whip. He left. Disowned as Stan's son by Shirley at the moment when he needed Stan's acceptance and blessing.
Shirley was determined that it was she, and only she, to be with Stan at the end. Cora and the increasingly annoying Tina, whose silly little girl act grates on my nerves, were sent home. She's always talking and acting like a pathetically bewildered little girl lost during times of crisis when she's really a fortysomething woman. The family, when they learned of this from Mick, was right to take offence.
Stan's final moments are spent with Shirley reminsicing about something, again, incongruous - Mick as a small child, dressed in a cowboy suit and acting like John Wayne. Once again, Mick spent four years in care - from the time he was about one year old until he was five. By the time he'd returned home full-time, Shirley was married to Kevin and expecting Jimbo. Where the hell did the cowboy story come from? Then, there was Stan's final rejoinder to Shirley to "protect" Mick, even admitting that he was hard on the outside, but soft inside, the standard PR blurb we've incessantly seen about him. Then - poof - Stan dies.
The highlight scene for me in all of this malarkey was when Buster Bloodvessel, King of Scrotes ...
... ambles into the Vic, intent on "bonding" with his grandchildren, only to be given short shrift by both Lee and, wonderfully, by Nancy, who defines beautifully the full extent of Buster's non-relationship to them:-
You don't have a past with us, and you certainly don't have a future.
Get Nancy some friends fast, please.
I was a bit put off by the Hollyoaks-ish ending, in that there were two deaths, and all we saw was Carol getting hugged by Sonia, and the rest of the vignettes were Carter, Carter, Carter, including the ubiquitous bedscene featuring Linda and a hirsute Mick, and ending with Shirley clinging to her lifeless old Pa.
They could have and should have shown Max musing into a glass of whiskey.
Decent enough episode, but not as good as some of the others this week and last.
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