I thought this was the best episode by far this week - and only one Carter amongst the lot. As much as I like the main core of Carters - Mick, Linda, Nancy and Lee - they're being pulled down by the toxicity around and including Dean, Shirley and Buster; and they are, at the moment, lowering the tone of the show.
This was a genuinely good episode, with the star and lynchpin of the piece easily being the divine Stacey; however, the show used its better actors all around tonight, and it showed.
The theme throughout was the moral conscience.
Young Lurve: Whitney and Lee.
I was pleasantly surprised tonight. I actually like Lee and Whitney as a couple. It was nice to see Whitney acting like a normal young girl, having a good time with her boyfriend. It seems Lee is working in Army recruitment, at least in the mornings, and it was sorta kinda sweet to hear them speculate what they could do with the money, the amount of which they had no idea at that time. The first thing which came to their minds was a holiday.
Later, at Carol's, they count out £5000 - a luxury holiday or even a deposit on a flat. Those are Lee's thoughts, but Whitney is the moral arbitre, and wants to give the money back to Mick, something to which Lee strenuously objects. His home, he says, is a war zone, and this money would only make things worse. Of course, it would. Shirley would be the first to claim the money, and emotionally blackmail everyone else.
This was a filler vignette, basically, but it showed what a good pairing Whitney and Lee make. A lot of people don't like Lee, but he's basically a nice guy who wants an easy life with someone who loves him. When Whitney is this way, I really want her to stay, and I'd love for Lee to be the one she chooses as the love of her life, but alas! I know Whitney, and the first bad boy to come along after she got bored with Lee, she'd cheat.
For the time being, that money is safe in Whitney's knicker drawer.
Sharon and Phil.
Sharon demands the impossible from Phil, that he be straight and legit, something the new all-singing, all-dancing, all-gangstering Phil simply can't be.
I won't be a gangster's wife.
Well, as someone else remarked, Sharon may or may not be a gangster's wife, but twice over, I'll bet she's a gangster's daughter. Jay is the only one of the trio of Phil, the increasingly odious Ben and himself, who has a smidgeon of regret about how Phil scammed Max. Jay has a moral conscience, inherited from his dad, and he hates lying. Sharon recognises this and compliments him on it.
Even though Max may have deserved the scam - one good scam deserving another and all that - it's still not something she likes seeing. Sharon's been through this shit before with Den, with Grant and now with Phil. Once again, she wants a peaceful life with the man she loves.
I sometimes wonder if this Phil does love her. Phil certainly hankered after Sharon for years. He never turned down helping her, and he was always there for her; but since they've been married, there's been no joy in Phil for Sharon. He disappears, inexplicably, after his bail trial (and is he still on bail or has that mysteriously disappeared?), without a word to her, and since he's returned, he's been nothing less than short with her.
Sharon's no fool and she's no doormat. She's stood up to the Mitchells before, and her ultimatum now is that Phil either go straight or she goes. I actually feel that Phil does love her, but this is a new and different Phil. This is DTC's re-boot of Phil into Gangsta Phil. He deeply loves Sharon, and he doesn't want to lose her. I also think Phil knows more than he's letting on about Sharon's birth father.
Charlie, a peripheral Mitchell at best and soon to be a non-Mitchell and a piece of toast, is managing the car lot. I hope Phil pays him enough to get him a suit that fits. That too-tight, short-sleeved jacket was straight out of ska in the 1980s. All that was missing was a pork pie hat. Phil banished him to the Mitchell house whilst he appropriated the car lot for a private meeting, so Sharon returns to find him raiding their fridge and with news that Phil's meeting with Ritchie.
Obviously, there's a lot that happens off-screen, and maybe Phil did convince Ritchie to represent Dot in her case (although it won't be Ritchie in court; Ritchie is a solicitor, not a barrister); but it seemed to me that Phil got Ritchie to recommend what appeared to be a gruff, less-than-subtle private eye. This is confusing. Phil shows the PI a picture of Sharon.
There she is. There's the wife.
Does he want Sharon followed? I think Phil is worried about Sharon finding her birth father. Why? Because if Sharon finds Gavin, she finds Kathy,and Phil doesn't want Kathy (or Gavin) back in Walford for some reason, so they are a well-kept secret.
His tale to Sharon about engaging a private investigator to find her birth father may have thrilled Sharon, but it seems that he's having someone watch Sharon to keep her away from her birth dad and lead her on a wild goose chase, so maybe Stephen Marcus is a decoy. I want to know how long Phil has known that Kathy was alive and how long he's known that Gavin is Sharon's father and why all of this is a threat to him.
Stacey the Lynchpin. Stacey was one of the stars of the show tonight. If anyone were to have told me that Stacey would be my favourite character, I'd have laughed in their face, but I totally love her now. She's the only adult in the room. I like that TPTB are making her and Martin a slow-burner. Far better than having them have an instant attraction, a romp in the beds and a flame that burns out all too quickly.
They spent a drunken, but chaste, night together, they're hung over, and they're suitably awkward with each other. There's an air of Bradley about Martin, slightly gauche and dorky - vis-a-vis his misunderstanding when Stacey suggests he share an accommodation, and he thought, for a moment, that she was referring to him sharing with her, something of which she quickly, but nicely, disabused him.
There's an interest there, and it will grow. They're two single parents, who've been hurt in the past and who are wary of another relationship. She's cautious, he's shy. There will be obstacles - most probably Sonia and Ryan, who have a claim on their future in being the other parent to Martin's and Stacey's respective children - but I hope, in the end, that they triumph, get together and stay together. I'm ready for Stacey Fowler.
There's no one better than Stacey at the moment for handing people their arses - be it Max, at his sleaziest, who sneers at her having a coffee with Martin Fowler and stays around long enough for Stacey to find out he was the one who copped off with Kat; or Kat, herself.
Stacey said what everyone has been saying about Kat since 2010. Yes, she's had a rough deal in life, but instead of moving on and trying to deal with her past in a constructive way, she uses this as a means to behave badly, justify her bad behaviour and present herself as the eternal victim. Nothing is ever Kat's fault. She hides behind her victim status, and at the moment and for a long time, she's had Alfie there to pick up the pieces. In short, she uses Alfie, who loves the bones of her. That's a dressing down that Kat finds difficult to take, but it's true. Every word of it.
Stacey Slater, the moral compass of Walford. Whoda thunk it?
Mr Sleaze.
Just as no one does a drunk better than Steve McFadden, no one does sleaze better than Jake Wood. Wood and Lindsay Coulson gave an acting masterclass tonight. I hope Carol doesn't leave now. Carol clucking over her brother is always good watching,and now her brood have all but gone, I'd like to see Max move in - and Abi, as soon as she's dumped by Jay for his boyfriend.
Carol was right from the getgo. Max's descent has nothing to do with Phil Mitchell. Phil was only the manifestation of what's really troubling Max. He's grieving for Emma, for Lucy Beale and for Jim. Max's reaction was to get drunk and try to try it on with Kat, and when Stacey ticked him off about his behaviour, he got even drunker and took it out on Jim's old motorbike, which Carol had salvaged from Jim's lock-up.
Max finding an old picture of him and Jack with Jim, something which Jim kept in his helmet, hit him with the force of a tornado. It was then, especially with Carol's remark about Jim wanting to keep his boys with him on the bike, broke Max down into tears of remorse. That was truly a sad, poignant, but beautiful scene between Max and Carol, and the best scene of the episode.
Moonlighting.
I must admit, I'm finding the Moons hard going at the moment, especially knowing that their departure is imminent. Stacey is right. Kat takes Alfie for granted. She tears around, using her past abuse as an excuse to behave inappropriately, gets in trouble, and there's Alfie to clean up the mess. Alfie spent the entire night comforting a sobbing Kat. As Stacey says, Kat doesn't act as much as she reacts.
Kat got pissed because Alfie wouldn't kiss her, when Alfie was in the middle of a trial run for a potential job. He was being professional, and she took offence, got drunk and ended up copping off with Max Branning.
Everyone walks on eggshells around Kat for fear of what will transpire. What I don't get, however, is how Alfie reckons he's broken Kat. Alfie knows her back story, and he also knows that Kat's always been the one to cheat on him. Yet he accepts the blame for everything. He accepts the blame for breaking Kat. How? How?
Kat thinks he means the fire, and she assures him that she knows now that this was an accident, but it's Alfie who's the sin-eater,who cops the blame for everything and promises to mend the broken Kat, and then he promises to set her free.
That's right, Alfie-haters. Alfie wants to free Kat. Alfie thinks that he's the one who's holding her back. Alfie.
And, Alfie-haters, this isn't something Kat wanted to hear. Alfie keeps referring to Kat the way she was when he met and fell in love with her - feisty, gobby, afraid of nothing; yet Kat, eventually, tells him that this version of herself wasn't the real Kat. That was what she became after her rape. To fix herself, she has to find who she was before the rape, and so she returns to a convent.
I suppose all will be revealed in the next episode, but I had thought Kat had her baby in a hospital, and that she'd been sent away from home to live with Charlie's sister, not to some Magdalen laundry place ... or are they saying that somehow, before the rape, Kat was affiliated with these nuns?
She introduced herself as Kat Slater to the sister who opened the door. Let's see what transpires.
Afterthought: Who else finds it creepy that Ian and Jane are acting Mr and Mrs Normal after the humongous secret they're witholding? Ian shouting at Martin as if he were a lackey, lecturing Alfie and Jane smugly preening to Kat over the situation with Beth?
Karma can't come quick enough for some people ... Ronnie, Jane, Bobby.
This was a genuinely good episode, with the star and lynchpin of the piece easily being the divine Stacey; however, the show used its better actors all around tonight, and it showed.
The theme throughout was the moral conscience.
Young Lurve: Whitney and Lee.
I was pleasantly surprised tonight. I actually like Lee and Whitney as a couple. It was nice to see Whitney acting like a normal young girl, having a good time with her boyfriend. It seems Lee is working in Army recruitment, at least in the mornings, and it was sorta kinda sweet to hear them speculate what they could do with the money, the amount of which they had no idea at that time. The first thing which came to their minds was a holiday.
Later, at Carol's, they count out £5000 - a luxury holiday or even a deposit on a flat. Those are Lee's thoughts, but Whitney is the moral arbitre, and wants to give the money back to Mick, something to which Lee strenuously objects. His home, he says, is a war zone, and this money would only make things worse. Of course, it would. Shirley would be the first to claim the money, and emotionally blackmail everyone else.
This was a filler vignette, basically, but it showed what a good pairing Whitney and Lee make. A lot of people don't like Lee, but he's basically a nice guy who wants an easy life with someone who loves him. When Whitney is this way, I really want her to stay, and I'd love for Lee to be the one she chooses as the love of her life, but alas! I know Whitney, and the first bad boy to come along after she got bored with Lee, she'd cheat.
For the time being, that money is safe in Whitney's knicker drawer.
Sharon and Phil.
Sharon demands the impossible from Phil, that he be straight and legit, something the new all-singing, all-dancing, all-gangstering Phil simply can't be.
I won't be a gangster's wife.
Well, as someone else remarked, Sharon may or may not be a gangster's wife, but twice over, I'll bet she's a gangster's daughter. Jay is the only one of the trio of Phil, the increasingly odious Ben and himself, who has a smidgeon of regret about how Phil scammed Max. Jay has a moral conscience, inherited from his dad, and he hates lying. Sharon recognises this and compliments him on it.
Even though Max may have deserved the scam - one good scam deserving another and all that - it's still not something she likes seeing. Sharon's been through this shit before with Den, with Grant and now with Phil. Once again, she wants a peaceful life with the man she loves.
I sometimes wonder if this Phil does love her. Phil certainly hankered after Sharon for years. He never turned down helping her, and he was always there for her; but since they've been married, there's been no joy in Phil for Sharon. He disappears, inexplicably, after his bail trial (and is he still on bail or has that mysteriously disappeared?), without a word to her, and since he's returned, he's been nothing less than short with her.
Sharon's no fool and she's no doormat. She's stood up to the Mitchells before, and her ultimatum now is that Phil either go straight or she goes. I actually feel that Phil does love her, but this is a new and different Phil. This is DTC's re-boot of Phil into Gangsta Phil. He deeply loves Sharon, and he doesn't want to lose her. I also think Phil knows more than he's letting on about Sharon's birth father.
Charlie, a peripheral Mitchell at best and soon to be a non-Mitchell and a piece of toast, is managing the car lot. I hope Phil pays him enough to get him a suit that fits. That too-tight, short-sleeved jacket was straight out of ska in the 1980s. All that was missing was a pork pie hat. Phil banished him to the Mitchell house whilst he appropriated the car lot for a private meeting, so Sharon returns to find him raiding their fridge and with news that Phil's meeting with Ritchie.
Obviously, there's a lot that happens off-screen, and maybe Phil did convince Ritchie to represent Dot in her case (although it won't be Ritchie in court; Ritchie is a solicitor, not a barrister); but it seemed to me that Phil got Ritchie to recommend what appeared to be a gruff, less-than-subtle private eye. This is confusing. Phil shows the PI a picture of Sharon.
There she is. There's the wife.
Does he want Sharon followed? I think Phil is worried about Sharon finding her birth father. Why? Because if Sharon finds Gavin, she finds Kathy,and Phil doesn't want Kathy (or Gavin) back in Walford for some reason, so they are a well-kept secret.
His tale to Sharon about engaging a private investigator to find her birth father may have thrilled Sharon, but it seems that he's having someone watch Sharon to keep her away from her birth dad and lead her on a wild goose chase, so maybe Stephen Marcus is a decoy. I want to know how long Phil has known that Kathy was alive and how long he's known that Gavin is Sharon's father and why all of this is a threat to him.
Stacey the Lynchpin. Stacey was one of the stars of the show tonight. If anyone were to have told me that Stacey would be my favourite character, I'd have laughed in their face, but I totally love her now. She's the only adult in the room. I like that TPTB are making her and Martin a slow-burner. Far better than having them have an instant attraction, a romp in the beds and a flame that burns out all too quickly.
They spent a drunken, but chaste, night together, they're hung over, and they're suitably awkward with each other. There's an air of Bradley about Martin, slightly gauche and dorky - vis-a-vis his misunderstanding when Stacey suggests he share an accommodation, and he thought, for a moment, that she was referring to him sharing with her, something of which she quickly, but nicely, disabused him.
There's an interest there, and it will grow. They're two single parents, who've been hurt in the past and who are wary of another relationship. She's cautious, he's shy. There will be obstacles - most probably Sonia and Ryan, who have a claim on their future in being the other parent to Martin's and Stacey's respective children - but I hope, in the end, that they triumph, get together and stay together. I'm ready for Stacey Fowler.
There's no one better than Stacey at the moment for handing people their arses - be it Max, at his sleaziest, who sneers at her having a coffee with Martin Fowler and stays around long enough for Stacey to find out he was the one who copped off with Kat; or Kat, herself.
Stacey said what everyone has been saying about Kat since 2010. Yes, she's had a rough deal in life, but instead of moving on and trying to deal with her past in a constructive way, she uses this as a means to behave badly, justify her bad behaviour and present herself as the eternal victim. Nothing is ever Kat's fault. She hides behind her victim status, and at the moment and for a long time, she's had Alfie there to pick up the pieces. In short, she uses Alfie, who loves the bones of her. That's a dressing down that Kat finds difficult to take, but it's true. Every word of it.
Stacey Slater, the moral compass of Walford. Whoda thunk it?
Mr Sleaze.
Just as no one does a drunk better than Steve McFadden, no one does sleaze better than Jake Wood. Wood and Lindsay Coulson gave an acting masterclass tonight. I hope Carol doesn't leave now. Carol clucking over her brother is always good watching,and now her brood have all but gone, I'd like to see Max move in - and Abi, as soon as she's dumped by Jay for his boyfriend.
Carol was right from the getgo. Max's descent has nothing to do with Phil Mitchell. Phil was only the manifestation of what's really troubling Max. He's grieving for Emma, for Lucy Beale and for Jim. Max's reaction was to get drunk and try to try it on with Kat, and when Stacey ticked him off about his behaviour, he got even drunker and took it out on Jim's old motorbike, which Carol had salvaged from Jim's lock-up.
Max finding an old picture of him and Jack with Jim, something which Jim kept in his helmet, hit him with the force of a tornado. It was then, especially with Carol's remark about Jim wanting to keep his boys with him on the bike, broke Max down into tears of remorse. That was truly a sad, poignant, but beautiful scene between Max and Carol, and the best scene of the episode.
Moonlighting.
I must admit, I'm finding the Moons hard going at the moment, especially knowing that their departure is imminent. Stacey is right. Kat takes Alfie for granted. She tears around, using her past abuse as an excuse to behave inappropriately, gets in trouble, and there's Alfie to clean up the mess. Alfie spent the entire night comforting a sobbing Kat. As Stacey says, Kat doesn't act as much as she reacts.
Kat got pissed because Alfie wouldn't kiss her, when Alfie was in the middle of a trial run for a potential job. He was being professional, and she took offence, got drunk and ended up copping off with Max Branning.
Everyone walks on eggshells around Kat for fear of what will transpire. What I don't get, however, is how Alfie reckons he's broken Kat. Alfie knows her back story, and he also knows that Kat's always been the one to cheat on him. Yet he accepts the blame for everything. He accepts the blame for breaking Kat. How? How?
Kat thinks he means the fire, and she assures him that she knows now that this was an accident, but it's Alfie who's the sin-eater,who cops the blame for everything and promises to mend the broken Kat, and then he promises to set her free.
That's right, Alfie-haters. Alfie wants to free Kat. Alfie thinks that he's the one who's holding her back. Alfie.
And, Alfie-haters, this isn't something Kat wanted to hear. Alfie keeps referring to Kat the way she was when he met and fell in love with her - feisty, gobby, afraid of nothing; yet Kat, eventually, tells him that this version of herself wasn't the real Kat. That was what she became after her rape. To fix herself, she has to find who she was before the rape, and so she returns to a convent.
I suppose all will be revealed in the next episode, but I had thought Kat had her baby in a hospital, and that she'd been sent away from home to live with Charlie's sister, not to some Magdalen laundry place ... or are they saying that somehow, before the rape, Kat was affiliated with these nuns?
She introduced herself as Kat Slater to the sister who opened the door. Let's see what transpires.
Afterthought: Who else finds it creepy that Ian and Jane are acting Mr and Mrs Normal after the humongous secret they're witholding? Ian shouting at Martin as if he were a lackey, lecturing Alfie and Jane smugly preening to Kat over the situation with Beth?
Karma can't come quick enough for some people ... Ronnie, Jane, Bobby.
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