As you know, I don't do this very much, but ....
I GAVE THAT EPISODE A RESOUNDING TEN TEN TEN TEN TEN TEN TEN!
Ladies and Gentlemen, EastEnders is in the building, and that is just precisely why I moseyed on over to the BSA website today and voted a straight flush for EastEnders. Mr James and I are singing from the same hymnal tonight.
That episode is what makes EastEnders the show it is, and it was pitch perfect in every way. Just the right amount of characters, just the right amount of Old Walford-New Walford blends. Perfect. Just perfect.
In every way.
Phil's Sees the Light and It Is Darkness.
Can you imagine Phil, Max and Alfie singing this?
Finally, at last, tonight, EastEnders got the Phil-Sharon chemistry right. Sharon knows Phil better than Phil knows himself. She grounds him and keeps him just this side of respectability. He still hasn't fathomed that she'd anticipate his every move, and he was surprised when he returned from his early morning foray in frightening children (or trying to do so) to find Sharon awake and waiting for an explanation.
You know who'd have anticipated her doing that? Grant. Phil doesn't.
Once again, the chemistry that has been so lacking was there with McFadden and Dean tonight. You just get the feeling now that they trust whoever is writing their stories and dialogue, and so the natural attraction between the two is back - Phil, trying at once to protect Sharon and yet keep her in the dark about his doings, and Sharon having none of it, standing up to Phil and demanding he tell her the truth, that she know - part and parcel - of what's going on.
I need to know what I am to you - a wife or a moll.
I know, to a great extent, that the Phil-Sharon endless love affair has been retconned a great deal, but it's one retcon with which I can live, because Sharon belongs with the Mitchells, and she and Phil, this time around, are good together. When Sharon told Phil how much she loved him and missed him when he was away, I honestly think this struck a chord with Phil.
I still think Phil knows about Sharon's father, and for some reason, he's keeping this information to himself.
Phil's a man on a mission, however, intent on getting The Arches back from Max, and he's using veiled intimidation against Max's son to score points and scare Max. It's pretty low that a man like Phil would resort to this sort of tactic, but Phil realises that Max's kids are his weak link. Just showing Max a pair of spectacles the previous day was enough to send Max scurrying off to Devon to whisk Oscar back to London on a late-night run too late to have a child like that on the road and awake. In fact, so frightened of Phil is Max that he hides Oscar in the kitchen of his house with Carol.
The scare tactics are enough to convince Max that The Arches just aren't worth the bother, and he promises to have the paperwork transferring ownership back to Phil by 2pm.
Phil's promised Sharon that he won't use physical force with Max, and he's true to his word; and it's interesting to note that the one member of the Branning family to stand up to Phil is Carol, in the name of her family. Phil's pronouncement of the Brannings in general garnered the line of the night:-
Your family are a joke.
Truer words were never spoken, yet this time two years ago, we were mired in the moral terpitude that was the Brannings, who dominated every episode in a way the Carters could only hope to do. Now, they are a spent force, consisting of Max, Carol, Abi (who's defected to the Mitchell camp) and silent Oscar.
Of course, we all knew what the eventual outcome of the Mitchell debacle might be - the discovery of the real culprit who gave away The Arches.
Well, Phil lost the chance to get the Arches back this time, but he did son in a purely chivalric way. He was honest enough with Sharon to tell her and Ben he was going to see Max about getting The Arches back, legally. Ben's worried, but Sharon assured him that Phil would never find out. Consider Sharon's loyalty, that every time Phil remarked about Sharon "messing things up," she never flinched, and Phil used this as a hammer against Max, threatening him with dire consequences if he ever thought to trick Sharon again.
Max obviously knows Sharon better than Phil does.
Trick Sharon? Nobody could ever trick Sharon.
And Max suddenly realises he holds the trump card. Phil doesn't know how Max got The Arches. All it takes is a piece of paper, signed by Ben, that brings the awful truth to fruition for Phil - it wasn't his wife who flummoxed and gave away The Arches. It was his son, playing the Big I Am.
And so we end this portion of the episode with what's become a staple of Ben's character - the roughing up/beating up of Ben. It was hilarious how Phil steam-rollered into his house and removed Ben with one fell swoop, over Sharon's protests and to the surprise of the others - off, to take a little ride. I wonder if he's consigning him to Kathy.
People wonder why The Arches are so important to Phil. The Arches is a joke of a garage. In this day and age, such garages are not even feasible, but The Arches provides Phil with a front. It's from The Arches that Phil plans all his dodgy deeds.
Kat's Down Down Deeper and Down.
How brilliant is Stacey? She hasn't put a foot wrong lately. With Kat decompensating and closing in on catatonia, Stacey steps up to the plate - ditching work for a day to front the stall and taking Mo to task. Mo still refuses to admit her guilt in taking Harry's money, insisting that Kat should have listened to her. Alfie, on the other hand, is desperately trying to contact Kat, who won't answer.
Kat's spent the night sitting on the sofa, staring into the distance. She can't even respond to her children crying. Later, Stacey tries to offer a pep talk, after Kat bewails the fact that she always wanted better than she had for her chidlren. She couldn't even manage that. As much as Stacey tries to apologise for her knowledge about Harry's money, Kat won't have it, even though Stacey tries to explain that Mo actually thought she was doing some good for Kat in taking that money.
Kat's reply to that brought the entire ethos of her history with Harry into perspective, in a far more effective way than any of the Dirty Girl crap with which we've had to put up for the past five years.
After everything he did to me, I'm expected to take his money. What does that make me?
That's the cri de coeur from Kat's heart which is eating away her soul.
(There was also the added bonus of a brief scene between Stacey and Martin tonight. Watch this space.)
One observation: The flat where Stacey, Mo and Kat are living was a furnished flat. Kat has taken a mattress from the house, stuffed with money by Mo, and burned it. Isn't that sorta kinda vandalism as the furniture in the flat doesn't belong to them, but to whoever owns the flat?
Good Cop, Bad Cop and Team Cindy.
I am firmly Team Cindy.
She is sixteen. She's decided she wants her baby adopted, and that doesn't mean having her adopted by the dysfunctional couple who harbour her (and a murderer), and raised alongside her as some sort of pseudo-sister.
She is sixteen and legally that means she's an adult. She can speak to a social worker without either Ian or Jane present, neither of whom is her legal guardian nor any sort of blood kin. Their attempts at bullying her into allowing them to adopt the child is nothing short of despicable. She should immediately call her social worker, arrange a meeting away from the Beale House of Horrors and tell the social worker to what they've exactly been subjecting her.
The fact that, after conniving amongst themselves, Ian came out as the bugaboo in treating Cindy as an insignificant walking womb which provided him with an umpteenth chance to fuck a child up and Jane with a chance to nurture a child from infancy. How entitled are these people?
This child belongs to Cindy. If she wants to put her up for adoption, for whatever reason, it's no business of theirs. The form is to sign the child over to Social Services, and they enact a closed adoption, without Cindy ever knowing who the adoptive parents were. Presumably, she'd have to consent to Ian's and Jane's adoption of the child, and if she refused to give that, then that is the end of the story, surely. Of course, they're not listening to her. They think she's just a child who doesn't know better.
Ian booms in bombastically brushing her aside, whilst Jane advises caution, even going along with Cindy's claims about listening to her. I loved it, when Cindy told Ian to his face how pathetic and patronising he was of her wishes. Even worse, was Liam's lame-brained assumption that Ian's adoption of Beth would be good for Cindy. She'd get to see Beth every day. Cindy was too right in her assessment of him - he's just like Ian. The worst sort of Beale.
Her ultimatum is that either Beth goes or she goes. Well, Bobby the Basher has issued an ultimatum of sorts of his own about what happens if Cindy should go.
Poor baby Beth.
The Beales are appallingly in need of a slap.
The Crying Game.
I have to say that Stan's terminal cancer is the best and most accurate depiction of the disease in its final stages that the show has ever produced. Tanya's cancer was a joke. Carol's was a public service announcement that stopped short of actual reality, but this is the real deal.
Once cancer hits your spine, it moves up to the brain - hence, Stan's beginning to ramble and failing to recognise his family. I clocked that the moment he asked the second time about the bell. His drifting off suddenly into sleep was the precursor of the coma which comes shortly before the final phase of the disease. Cora knew this, as she sat with him and tried to divert him by talking about their wedding - a wedding which probably won't come off for obvious reasons.
Ann Mitchell is a class act, and the scene of her breaking down in grief in the Carter kitchen was totally heart-wrenching. This is the second time Cora's lost someone whom she's loved deeply, and it's tearing her apart. She lets go entirely, not caring who hears her sobs because she knows, deep down, that Stan can't.
Contrast that to her unexpected arrival at the Carters' and Linda's face when Mick plopped her heavy toiletry case onto the counter, Linda gamely offering Cora her shelf in the bathroom.
I honestly felt for Shirley in this episode. Stan's asking for Dean, and Shirley, herself, has been trying vainly to contact Dean, whilst Tina is urging her to give that venture up. Even when she hears Stan, in his ranting, calling for Dean, which Shirley, who loves Dean as much as she loves Mick, takes as tacit permission to bring her son home, she's deterred by Tina.
The last thing Dad needs in his last days is to see us fighting, and you know whenever Dean's around, he stirs trouble.
For Tina, the non-mother idiot, it's more important that Shirley and Mick are reconciled than Dean show his face around the place again. For Shirley, it's the simple matter of having two sons, one of whom did a terrible thing to the other's wife. I don't know if she's still in denial, but I do know she's in a quandry about what to do, with her dying father asking for Dean, not recognising her and Mick and with only days of his life left.
Linda Henry, Timothy West and Ann Mitchell made that vignette tonight.
Excellent episode.
I GAVE THAT EPISODE A RESOUNDING TEN TEN TEN TEN TEN TEN TEN!
Ladies and Gentlemen, EastEnders is in the building, and that is just precisely why I moseyed on over to the BSA website today and voted a straight flush for EastEnders. Mr James and I are singing from the same hymnal tonight.
That episode is what makes EastEnders the show it is, and it was pitch perfect in every way. Just the right amount of characters, just the right amount of Old Walford-New Walford blends. Perfect. Just perfect.
In every way.
Phil's Sees the Light and It Is Darkness.
Can you imagine Phil, Max and Alfie singing this?
Finally, at last, tonight, EastEnders got the Phil-Sharon chemistry right. Sharon knows Phil better than Phil knows himself. She grounds him and keeps him just this side of respectability. He still hasn't fathomed that she'd anticipate his every move, and he was surprised when he returned from his early morning foray in frightening children (or trying to do so) to find Sharon awake and waiting for an explanation.
You know who'd have anticipated her doing that? Grant. Phil doesn't.
Once again, the chemistry that has been so lacking was there with McFadden and Dean tonight. You just get the feeling now that they trust whoever is writing their stories and dialogue, and so the natural attraction between the two is back - Phil, trying at once to protect Sharon and yet keep her in the dark about his doings, and Sharon having none of it, standing up to Phil and demanding he tell her the truth, that she know - part and parcel - of what's going on.
I need to know what I am to you - a wife or a moll.
I know, to a great extent, that the Phil-Sharon endless love affair has been retconned a great deal, but it's one retcon with which I can live, because Sharon belongs with the Mitchells, and she and Phil, this time around, are good together. When Sharon told Phil how much she loved him and missed him when he was away, I honestly think this struck a chord with Phil.
I still think Phil knows about Sharon's father, and for some reason, he's keeping this information to himself.
Phil's a man on a mission, however, intent on getting The Arches back from Max, and he's using veiled intimidation against Max's son to score points and scare Max. It's pretty low that a man like Phil would resort to this sort of tactic, but Phil realises that Max's kids are his weak link. Just showing Max a pair of spectacles the previous day was enough to send Max scurrying off to Devon to whisk Oscar back to London on a late-night run too late to have a child like that on the road and awake. In fact, so frightened of Phil is Max that he hides Oscar in the kitchen of his house with Carol.
The scare tactics are enough to convince Max that The Arches just aren't worth the bother, and he promises to have the paperwork transferring ownership back to Phil by 2pm.
Phil's promised Sharon that he won't use physical force with Max, and he's true to his word; and it's interesting to note that the one member of the Branning family to stand up to Phil is Carol, in the name of her family. Phil's pronouncement of the Brannings in general garnered the line of the night:-
Your family are a joke.
Truer words were never spoken, yet this time two years ago, we were mired in the moral terpitude that was the Brannings, who dominated every episode in a way the Carters could only hope to do. Now, they are a spent force, consisting of Max, Carol, Abi (who's defected to the Mitchell camp) and silent Oscar.
Of course, we all knew what the eventual outcome of the Mitchell debacle might be - the discovery of the real culprit who gave away The Arches.
Well, Phil lost the chance to get the Arches back this time, but he did son in a purely chivalric way. He was honest enough with Sharon to tell her and Ben he was going to see Max about getting The Arches back, legally. Ben's worried, but Sharon assured him that Phil would never find out. Consider Sharon's loyalty, that every time Phil remarked about Sharon "messing things up," she never flinched, and Phil used this as a hammer against Max, threatening him with dire consequences if he ever thought to trick Sharon again.
Max obviously knows Sharon better than Phil does.
Trick Sharon? Nobody could ever trick Sharon.
And Max suddenly realises he holds the trump card. Phil doesn't know how Max got The Arches. All it takes is a piece of paper, signed by Ben, that brings the awful truth to fruition for Phil - it wasn't his wife who flummoxed and gave away The Arches. It was his son, playing the Big I Am.
And so we end this portion of the episode with what's become a staple of Ben's character - the roughing up/beating up of Ben. It was hilarious how Phil steam-rollered into his house and removed Ben with one fell swoop, over Sharon's protests and to the surprise of the others - off, to take a little ride. I wonder if he's consigning him to Kathy.
People wonder why The Arches are so important to Phil. The Arches is a joke of a garage. In this day and age, such garages are not even feasible, but The Arches provides Phil with a front. It's from The Arches that Phil plans all his dodgy deeds.
Kat's Down Down Deeper and Down.
How brilliant is Stacey? She hasn't put a foot wrong lately. With Kat decompensating and closing in on catatonia, Stacey steps up to the plate - ditching work for a day to front the stall and taking Mo to task. Mo still refuses to admit her guilt in taking Harry's money, insisting that Kat should have listened to her. Alfie, on the other hand, is desperately trying to contact Kat, who won't answer.
Kat's spent the night sitting on the sofa, staring into the distance. She can't even respond to her children crying. Later, Stacey tries to offer a pep talk, after Kat bewails the fact that she always wanted better than she had for her chidlren. She couldn't even manage that. As much as Stacey tries to apologise for her knowledge about Harry's money, Kat won't have it, even though Stacey tries to explain that Mo actually thought she was doing some good for Kat in taking that money.
Kat's reply to that brought the entire ethos of her history with Harry into perspective, in a far more effective way than any of the Dirty Girl crap with which we've had to put up for the past five years.
After everything he did to me, I'm expected to take his money. What does that make me?
That's the cri de coeur from Kat's heart which is eating away her soul.
(There was also the added bonus of a brief scene between Stacey and Martin tonight. Watch this space.)
One observation: The flat where Stacey, Mo and Kat are living was a furnished flat. Kat has taken a mattress from the house, stuffed with money by Mo, and burned it. Isn't that sorta kinda vandalism as the furniture in the flat doesn't belong to them, but to whoever owns the flat?
Good Cop, Bad Cop and Team Cindy.
I am firmly Team Cindy.
She is sixteen. She's decided she wants her baby adopted, and that doesn't mean having her adopted by the dysfunctional couple who harbour her (and a murderer), and raised alongside her as some sort of pseudo-sister.
She is sixteen and legally that means she's an adult. She can speak to a social worker without either Ian or Jane present, neither of whom is her legal guardian nor any sort of blood kin. Their attempts at bullying her into allowing them to adopt the child is nothing short of despicable. She should immediately call her social worker, arrange a meeting away from the Beale House of Horrors and tell the social worker to what they've exactly been subjecting her.
The fact that, after conniving amongst themselves, Ian came out as the bugaboo in treating Cindy as an insignificant walking womb which provided him with an umpteenth chance to fuck a child up and Jane with a chance to nurture a child from infancy. How entitled are these people?
This child belongs to Cindy. If she wants to put her up for adoption, for whatever reason, it's no business of theirs. The form is to sign the child over to Social Services, and they enact a closed adoption, without Cindy ever knowing who the adoptive parents were. Presumably, she'd have to consent to Ian's and Jane's adoption of the child, and if she refused to give that, then that is the end of the story, surely. Of course, they're not listening to her. They think she's just a child who doesn't know better.
Ian booms in bombastically brushing her aside, whilst Jane advises caution, even going along with Cindy's claims about listening to her. I loved it, when Cindy told Ian to his face how pathetic and patronising he was of her wishes. Even worse, was Liam's lame-brained assumption that Ian's adoption of Beth would be good for Cindy. She'd get to see Beth every day. Cindy was too right in her assessment of him - he's just like Ian. The worst sort of Beale.
Her ultimatum is that either Beth goes or she goes. Well, Bobby the Basher has issued an ultimatum of sorts of his own about what happens if Cindy should go.
Poor baby Beth.
The Beales are appallingly in need of a slap.
The Crying Game.
I have to say that Stan's terminal cancer is the best and most accurate depiction of the disease in its final stages that the show has ever produced. Tanya's cancer was a joke. Carol's was a public service announcement that stopped short of actual reality, but this is the real deal.
Once cancer hits your spine, it moves up to the brain - hence, Stan's beginning to ramble and failing to recognise his family. I clocked that the moment he asked the second time about the bell. His drifting off suddenly into sleep was the precursor of the coma which comes shortly before the final phase of the disease. Cora knew this, as she sat with him and tried to divert him by talking about their wedding - a wedding which probably won't come off for obvious reasons.
Ann Mitchell is a class act, and the scene of her breaking down in grief in the Carter kitchen was totally heart-wrenching. This is the second time Cora's lost someone whom she's loved deeply, and it's tearing her apart. She lets go entirely, not caring who hears her sobs because she knows, deep down, that Stan can't.
Contrast that to her unexpected arrival at the Carters' and Linda's face when Mick plopped her heavy toiletry case onto the counter, Linda gamely offering Cora her shelf in the bathroom.
I honestly felt for Shirley in this episode. Stan's asking for Dean, and Shirley, herself, has been trying vainly to contact Dean, whilst Tina is urging her to give that venture up. Even when she hears Stan, in his ranting, calling for Dean, which Shirley, who loves Dean as much as she loves Mick, takes as tacit permission to bring her son home, she's deterred by Tina.
The last thing Dad needs in his last days is to see us fighting, and you know whenever Dean's around, he stirs trouble.
For Tina, the non-mother idiot, it's more important that Shirley and Mick are reconciled than Dean show his face around the place again. For Shirley, it's the simple matter of having two sons, one of whom did a terrible thing to the other's wife. I don't know if she's still in denial, but I do know she's in a quandry about what to do, with her dying father asking for Dean, not recognising her and Mick and with only days of his life left.
Linda Henry, Timothy West and Ann Mitchell made that vignette tonight.
Excellent episode.
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