I'm overly generous when it comes to my favourite writer, Daran Little, but tonight I can definitely say that more than any EastEnders' writer, bar Sarah Phelps, he caught the true essence of Sharon's character. Letitia Dean, Lindsay Coulson and Mimi Keene owned that episode.
Sharon-doubters, hark up! Give the lady the right material, and Letitia Dean lights up the screen.
Let's start with the bleeding obvious first.
This Was a Filler Episode for the Cokers. I imagine the current crop of episodes we're about to be served were those which were filmed during Danny Dyer's extended family holiday in the Caribbean around Easter time. Hence, the Mitchell emphasis and the opportunity to forge a backstory with the Cokers.
So tonight Harry Styles came to Walford. Or his double.
Paul Coker has been many things during all the months he's been mentioned and unseen, but he established himself tonight. When he was first mentioned, he was traveling and on a gap year. Tonight we find he's been AWOL since he was 17 and bragged that he'd been holiday repping in Turkey and thereabouts. He had money, he assured Lola - another reason I gave the episode high marks; one can never get enough of Lola.
Pam gave us all the impression that Paul had been angered by the fact that Pam had euthanised Laurie, Paul's dad, who was dying, and this was the reason he'd stayed away from them and failed to contact them. It was implied that he was angry.
Tonight, however, it seems that he was less angry with Pam than with Les, and it would appear that he knows that Les has been having an affair withAuntie Grace, pardon, the absolutely dire Claudette.
(The single worst moment in tonight's episode came when Les was giving the hearse a polish and Claudette appeared and cooed, You look as though you could do with a massage.
The imagery had me gagging maggots, but what was worse was that these two play out their wrinkly passion under the nose of nosey Pam, who's so busy interfering in other people's lives that she isn't aware of what's going on closer to home.)
Another thing that was established about Paul tonight was that he was yet another lurker, someone who clings to the corners of buildings and sneaks around alleyways and behind market stalls, eyeballing people. Walford has a surfeit of women who have been sexually abused by family members, they have a surfeit of people who have daddy issues, and they have a surfeit of people missing a parent who'll turn up on the doorstep sometime or another. They now have a surfeit of lurkers also - Dean, Vincent and now Paul, who also qualifies in the penultimate category, because tonight we learned that his mother walked out on him when he was tiny - shades of Shirey! - and that inevitably means that sometime, sooner rather than later, his mother will surface in Walford to claim her secret son.
Maybe DVO is his mother? Maybe she's Lola's mother also. Maybe Paul and Lola are long-lost siblings. The mind boggles.
Oh, and Paul is gay.
Paul is the Johnny Carter contingency plan, and tonight we saw a glimpse of what he probably was originally intended to be and what he had to be by dint of Sam Strike striking out. I have a felling Paul was supposed to be the too cute boyfriend of Lola, with Johnny Carter being the obvious attraction for Ben. Now with Johnny gone, Paul steps into the breach and literally sweeps Ben off his feet.
I like Harry Reid, but I couldn't help stifle a laugh tonight at the way poor Ben's being henpecked by the desperate Abi. Abi's convinced herself that she loves Ben, but I get the inkling that she's doing a lot of this to rankle Jay more than a bit. Ben's smitten, but it seems to me that Paul's the one who'll love the one he's with if he can't be with the one he loves, who happens to be a few thousand miles away. The look on Ben's face after that passionate kiss was a beaut!
Of course, we know what's bound to happen. Ben will set up a cosy afternoon/evening in bed with Paul and be disturbed by Abi. Bring it on! Abi deserves every bit of karma biting her ample posterior for the entitled way she's behaved all year. She deserves the absolute worst possible for killing poor Tramp. I hope that haunts her every day.
As for the Cokers, they're really there now, more or less, to anchor Paul. The actor who plays Les is the only actor on the programme who's hammier than June Brown. No wonder the pair share few scenes. Pam's cosiness and her nosiness put me right off. And Claudette ... the least said about her, the better. I dislike intensely her entire family.
She's sleeping with Les and pretends to be concerned about his wife's emotional well-being, even telling him that his grandson was an attention-seeker. Who the hell is this woman? She'd be better off looking after her own donkey.
I don't think Paul is a holiday rep anymore than I think Lola is the assistant manager (of sorts) of Blades. I do think, perhaps, he's a rent boy, attaching himself to wealthy gay men for trips around the world.
Saint Carol of the Common Sense. I'm no fan of Cindy's, but I'm totally Team Cindy in her fight against the creepy Beales as they seek to adopt her daughter. I'm glad Cindy's got Carol with whom she can talk.
Cindy has the measure of the Beales and more. As we know, she knows their dirty, little secret. She also knows that she is too young to be a mother to her child, and too distracted to have the child raised as her "sister." When she tells Carol that she's the girl the Beales couldn't get rid of, who only became that much more bearable because she had a baby, she's really meaning that she became more malleable and easier for them to manipulate to their own ends. The Beales want Beth - she's the baby to which Jane thinks she's entitled, and she's Ian's second chance to redeem himself as a parent to Lucy's memory, but as Cindy says, Beth is her daughter and she gets to decide her fate, not the Beales.
How creepy was Jane, floating by the cafe with the new pram, wittering on to Carol about how she wanted to shower Beth with new things and hoped to impress the Social Worker. Well, whatever Carol told Jane, she had no right to do so.
My Sharona.
By the way, Gordon isn't her father.
Ladies and gentlemen, Ms Watts has entered the building. How long has it been since we've seen Phil Mitchell with a guilty look on his face?
The scene of the night was when Sharon was sitting at the dining room table and absolutely crucifying Phil with home truths. The very thought that Phil would use the one thing he'd given Sharon, the investment that he'd made in her which she made pay, to bail out Ronnie's worthless cowhide is utterly insulting to her. Sharon knows the Mitchells inside and out, reminding Phil that Ian had urged her not to marry him, telling him that he loved only himself, and maybe his mother and his brother - but then, Phil had it in him always to occasionally treat Peggy like a piece of shite, and now Sharon's in Peggy's position.
I'm glad of the continuity that Daran Little used for Sharon to remind Phil that Ronnie had robbed Phil blind - not once, but twice. All Phil could do was stammer out excuses that he had no choice, that Vincent had found out about Ronnie killing Carl White. The argument for Phil was that with Ronnie's guilt out in the open, that could have brought all of them down - well, at least, Phil, Sharon, Roxy and certainly Shirley, all of whom knew about the murder.
There were two high points of Sharon's confrontation with Phil tonight - the first was when she was berating Phil about his having bailed Ronnie out, when she reminded him that Grant would have done things differently.
Good. Phil needed to hear that, needed to be reminded of the brother whom Sharon married first and who chose him over Phil, and would most likely do so again. Yes, Grant would have done things differently. He'd have bounced Vincent around Walford, made him cry, and then told Ronnie to "do one."
I'm glad she reminded him of his "blood kin" fetish, remarking that this was one time he should have put her first and asking the hypothetical question of giving him a Solomon choice of Sharon and Ronnie hanging off a cliff, which would he choose? As it seems Phil can't resist putting blood kin above his wife, she'll find her father and then take her son and leave.
The other moment tonight came when she smacked the living shit out of Phil in The Albert when she found he'd forged her signature on the sale of the Vic. Line of the night to Sharon:-
Get out from behind my bar, before I drag you out by your cheap weave!
Sharon is right. Vincent doesn't know with whom he's dealing in Sharon. That was foreshadowing. We don't know yet of what Sharon's birth father, Gavin, is like.
Phil reduced to trailing Sharon up the Square, assuring her that The Albert fiasco was only temporary paled beside his next porky pie, although I have a feeling that Phil, wanting to put Sharon off the search for her birth father, is intended to protect her.
But there it was, a name that's been mentioned once before is mentioned again tonight by a second woman.
A couple of weeks ago, Phil asked Kathy Does Gavin suspect anything?
And tonight when Phil presented Sharon with an address and telling her he'd found her birth father, Sharon said You've found Gavin?
No matter that Phil told her the man's name was Gordon and that he'd changed his name, this is all a ruse. Present Sharon with the very sort of council house drunken and unkempt chav as her father and hope she'll back off.
Phil's not realising that after The Albert scam, Sharon is taking everything Phil says with a large pinch of salt.
Good episode.
Sharon-doubters, hark up! Give the lady the right material, and Letitia Dean lights up the screen.
Let's start with the bleeding obvious first.
This Was a Filler Episode for the Cokers. I imagine the current crop of episodes we're about to be served were those which were filmed during Danny Dyer's extended family holiday in the Caribbean around Easter time. Hence, the Mitchell emphasis and the opportunity to forge a backstory with the Cokers.
So tonight Harry Styles came to Walford. Or his double.
Paul Coker has been many things during all the months he's been mentioned and unseen, but he established himself tonight. When he was first mentioned, he was traveling and on a gap year. Tonight we find he's been AWOL since he was 17 and bragged that he'd been holiday repping in Turkey and thereabouts. He had money, he assured Lola - another reason I gave the episode high marks; one can never get enough of Lola.
Pam gave us all the impression that Paul had been angered by the fact that Pam had euthanised Laurie, Paul's dad, who was dying, and this was the reason he'd stayed away from them and failed to contact them. It was implied that he was angry.
Tonight, however, it seems that he was less angry with Pam than with Les, and it would appear that he knows that Les has been having an affair with
(The single worst moment in tonight's episode came when Les was giving the hearse a polish and Claudette appeared and cooed, You look as though you could do with a massage.
The imagery had me gagging maggots, but what was worse was that these two play out their wrinkly passion under the nose of nosey Pam, who's so busy interfering in other people's lives that she isn't aware of what's going on closer to home.)
Another thing that was established about Paul tonight was that he was yet another lurker, someone who clings to the corners of buildings and sneaks around alleyways and behind market stalls, eyeballing people. Walford has a surfeit of women who have been sexually abused by family members, they have a surfeit of people who have daddy issues, and they have a surfeit of people missing a parent who'll turn up on the doorstep sometime or another. They now have a surfeit of lurkers also - Dean, Vincent and now Paul, who also qualifies in the penultimate category, because tonight we learned that his mother walked out on him when he was tiny - shades of Shirey! - and that inevitably means that sometime, sooner rather than later, his mother will surface in Walford to claim her secret son.
Maybe DVO is his mother? Maybe she's Lola's mother also. Maybe Paul and Lola are long-lost siblings. The mind boggles.
Oh, and Paul is gay.
Paul is the Johnny Carter contingency plan, and tonight we saw a glimpse of what he probably was originally intended to be and what he had to be by dint of Sam Strike striking out. I have a felling Paul was supposed to be the too cute boyfriend of Lola, with Johnny Carter being the obvious attraction for Ben. Now with Johnny gone, Paul steps into the breach and literally sweeps Ben off his feet.
I like Harry Reid, but I couldn't help stifle a laugh tonight at the way poor Ben's being henpecked by the desperate Abi. Abi's convinced herself that she loves Ben, but I get the inkling that she's doing a lot of this to rankle Jay more than a bit. Ben's smitten, but it seems to me that Paul's the one who'll love the one he's with if he can't be with the one he loves, who happens to be a few thousand miles away. The look on Ben's face after that passionate kiss was a beaut!
Of course, we know what's bound to happen. Ben will set up a cosy afternoon/evening in bed with Paul and be disturbed by Abi. Bring it on! Abi deserves every bit of karma biting her ample posterior for the entitled way she's behaved all year. She deserves the absolute worst possible for killing poor Tramp. I hope that haunts her every day.
As for the Cokers, they're really there now, more or less, to anchor Paul. The actor who plays Les is the only actor on the programme who's hammier than June Brown. No wonder the pair share few scenes. Pam's cosiness and her nosiness put me right off. And Claudette ... the least said about her, the better. I dislike intensely her entire family.
She's sleeping with Les and pretends to be concerned about his wife's emotional well-being, even telling him that his grandson was an attention-seeker. Who the hell is this woman? She'd be better off looking after her own donkey.
I don't think Paul is a holiday rep anymore than I think Lola is the assistant manager (of sorts) of Blades. I do think, perhaps, he's a rent boy, attaching himself to wealthy gay men for trips around the world.
Saint Carol of the Common Sense. I'm no fan of Cindy's, but I'm totally Team Cindy in her fight against the creepy Beales as they seek to adopt her daughter. I'm glad Cindy's got Carol with whom she can talk.
Cindy has the measure of the Beales and more. As we know, she knows their dirty, little secret. She also knows that she is too young to be a mother to her child, and too distracted to have the child raised as her "sister." When she tells Carol that she's the girl the Beales couldn't get rid of, who only became that much more bearable because she had a baby, she's really meaning that she became more malleable and easier for them to manipulate to their own ends. The Beales want Beth - she's the baby to which Jane thinks she's entitled, and she's Ian's second chance to redeem himself as a parent to Lucy's memory, but as Cindy says, Beth is her daughter and she gets to decide her fate, not the Beales.
How creepy was Jane, floating by the cafe with the new pram, wittering on to Carol about how she wanted to shower Beth with new things and hoped to impress the Social Worker. Well, whatever Carol told Jane, she had no right to do so.
My Sharona.
By the way, Gordon isn't her father.
Ladies and gentlemen, Ms Watts has entered the building. How long has it been since we've seen Phil Mitchell with a guilty look on his face?
The scene of the night was when Sharon was sitting at the dining room table and absolutely crucifying Phil with home truths. The very thought that Phil would use the one thing he'd given Sharon, the investment that he'd made in her which she made pay, to bail out Ronnie's worthless cowhide is utterly insulting to her. Sharon knows the Mitchells inside and out, reminding Phil that Ian had urged her not to marry him, telling him that he loved only himself, and maybe his mother and his brother - but then, Phil had it in him always to occasionally treat Peggy like a piece of shite, and now Sharon's in Peggy's position.
I'm glad of the continuity that Daran Little used for Sharon to remind Phil that Ronnie had robbed Phil blind - not once, but twice. All Phil could do was stammer out excuses that he had no choice, that Vincent had found out about Ronnie killing Carl White. The argument for Phil was that with Ronnie's guilt out in the open, that could have brought all of them down - well, at least, Phil, Sharon, Roxy and certainly Shirley, all of whom knew about the murder.
There were two high points of Sharon's confrontation with Phil tonight - the first was when she was berating Phil about his having bailed Ronnie out, when she reminded him that Grant would have done things differently.
Good. Phil needed to hear that, needed to be reminded of the brother whom Sharon married first and who chose him over Phil, and would most likely do so again. Yes, Grant would have done things differently. He'd have bounced Vincent around Walford, made him cry, and then told Ronnie to "do one."
I'm glad she reminded him of his "blood kin" fetish, remarking that this was one time he should have put her first and asking the hypothetical question of giving him a Solomon choice of Sharon and Ronnie hanging off a cliff, which would he choose? As it seems Phil can't resist putting blood kin above his wife, she'll find her father and then take her son and leave.
The other moment tonight came when she smacked the living shit out of Phil in The Albert when she found he'd forged her signature on the sale of the Vic. Line of the night to Sharon:-
Get out from behind my bar, before I drag you out by your cheap weave!
Sharon is right. Vincent doesn't know with whom he's dealing in Sharon. That was foreshadowing. We don't know yet of what Sharon's birth father, Gavin, is like.
Phil reduced to trailing Sharon up the Square, assuring her that The Albert fiasco was only temporary paled beside his next porky pie, although I have a feeling that Phil, wanting to put Sharon off the search for her birth father, is intended to protect her.
But there it was, a name that's been mentioned once before is mentioned again tonight by a second woman.
A couple of weeks ago, Phil asked Kathy Does Gavin suspect anything?
And tonight when Phil presented Sharon with an address and telling her he'd found her birth father, Sharon said You've found Gavin?
No matter that Phil told her the man's name was Gordon and that he'd changed his name, this is all a ruse. Present Sharon with the very sort of council house drunken and unkempt chav as her father and hope she'll back off.
Phil's not realising that after The Albert scam, Sharon is taking everything Phil says with a large pinch of salt.
Good episode.
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