There are bullies everywhere, and the episode tonight depicted a fair few. A lot of viewers gain inspiration from EastEnders, without even thinking that they do. Like there are seven shades of gay, there are seven shades of bully - some, like Trump, use positions of power to try to extend their sphere of threats and subtle intimidation.
But hold this thought, also like Trump, most bullies are divas, cowards and overgrown spoiled children.
Stacey's and Sharon's Collective Big Mouths. For the first time in ages, I thought Stacey was stupid tonight. Stupid, thoughtless and tactless.
Yes, I know she and Max have a past, and I'm the first to admit that ex-lovers can sometimes be very good friends, but I have to say it: Stacey began her relationship with Martin based on lies and deceit. She would happily have toodled on, talking to him like shit and allowing him to believe that Arthur was his son; but Stacey has a self-destruct button where she cannot help but let loose a secret to the very person from whom she should be keeping a secret.
She told Ryan about Lily the day Ryan returned from his honeymoon with Janine. He'd just got married, and now that marriage was going to be forever doomed, especially as Stacey was egged on by Kat to winch Ryan from Janine.
Stacey's not even thirty, and she's been responsible for the break-up of three marriages. Martin knows about her relationship with Max. He probably knows the circumstances about her relationship with Ryan - he certainly knows Janine, as his ex-wife was, at one time, a close friend of hers, and he grew up with her. He certainly knows now about how she deceived both him and Shabnam, who was supposed to be her best mate.
So, I can forgive Martin his suspicions, especially since Max always seems to make a beeline for Stacey.
There he is, hanging around Walford again today. I thought he had a job. Why isn't he trying to visit his daughters again, or Dot? Dot's at home.
And I could also forgive Martin taking umbrage at some of the things Stacey said, which were particularly tactless and unkind. She invited Max to the Market Traders' do that evening, when she had no right or call to do so, and she played stupid about it. When Martin pointed out that Max wasn't part of the market contingent and had no right to be there, Stacey replied that she wasn't on the market and she was going. She was too stupid to fathom that she was Martin's "plus one", his wife, his date for the evening. Her reply to that ...
Well, Max is my plus-one.
You what? She does understand that a person's "plus one" is their date for the evening or the event. So Stacey is Martin's date, and Max is Stacey's date.
No wonder Martin was pissed off. Any married person would be.
There will always be an element of suspicion on Martin's part, because Stacey and Max were that close. There's always an element of suspicion on most people's part, when their current partner and his/her ex prove to be extremely close friends.
And I was also Team Martin when he returned home to find Stacey and Max having a giggle in the kitchen - and that Stacey thought Martin would find it "hilarious" that their giggle was about Martin's sister "flirting" with Max. To begin with, what Michelle was doing was nothing like flirting. She was digging, sure, curious about the fact that Max, like she, was someone returning to a home they'd left, but I didn't perceive her flirting with him at all.
As well, Stacey blithely tells Martin that Max has been there most of the afternoon because, to Stacey that "made sense" since they were all going to this market do together. Why it made sense is anyone's guess, but that's Stacey being obtuse and ignorant and insensitive to the way Martin might perceive that.
On Christmas Day, when Stacey felt Sonia, through Skype, was interfering with her space, she slammed Rebecca's laptop shut and disconnected the call. If Sonia were hanging about Martin all hours of the day and night, having a giggle about one of the Slaters with him, she'd certainly have a thing or two to say about that.
Then we have the real fly that gets into the ointment. Sharon runs into Max and starts pfaffing about the Square in a lather about telling Phil he was back. The first person she encounters is Martin, who's having a whinge about Max and wondering why he's back.
Sharon doesn't need to say anything, and why is she worried about Phil finding out about Max? Max doesn't know diddly squat about what Phil Mitchell did, and Phil, sick or well, wouldn't give a rat's arse about Max being back in Walford, especially if Max didn't know about Phil's little charade, and he wouldn't care much more if he did know. Even more, Sharon, herself, wouldn't get herself all hot and bothered about Max being back - she's a seasoned pro. She's the adopted daughter of one hard man, the natural daughter of another and all her husbands have been dodgy to the extreme. She can keep a secret when it's mete to do so, and she would know that she and Phil would be best served by keeping their mouths shut. What Max didn't know wouldn't hurt him - or, more precisely, them.
This is plot-driven nonsense.
But no..... the first thing Sharon does is spill the beans about Phil nobbling that juror ... to Martin. Martin, who - unlike his wife - harbours no secrets from her. So whilst Sharon and Ian toddle off to the hospital to tell Phil - that was her second big worry, telling Phil that Max the Knife was back in town - Martin and Stacey have another discussion about Max, that was just as infuriating.
There were loads of reasons why I felt increasingly angry when watching this scene -
First of all, when Martin brought up the fact that he was concerned about what Max's presence in the Square might mean for Ian and Jane, emphasising that they were his family, Stacey went off on a tangent about how they were the ones who'd sent an innocent man down. All well and true, and any viewer would admit that Ian and Jane were due some heavy duty karma from Max, and I'm one who's looking forward to that; but Stacey acted like some kind of high-arsed hypocrite in that scene.
For the past several months, she's been in and out of the Beale abode as if it were her second home. She's done Jane's hair, taken her out and about, socialised freely with the Beales - she even looks after their grandson; and she and Jane have had good old gossip sessions, even spending an afternoon baking Christmas cakes. She knew about the Beales' cover-up and what they'd done to Max. She knew, also, about Lauren's involvement, and that didn't impinge upon their friendship; but now, she's on her high horse about all of that.
Secondly, Martin isn't buying Max's sudden conversion to peace and light, even though Stacey has fallen for it hook, line and sinker. He's concerned Max isn't kicking off - and he even said he would kick off in his place - when Stacey comes out with an even bigger winner of a line ...
Well, maybe he's a bigger man than you.
Hello?????? This is the man you're supposed to love. A bigger man? This man stood by you after you told him one of the biggest lies imaginable. You led him to believe he'd gotten you pregnant. He looked after your children, got you into a mother-and-baby unit so you wouldn't be separated from your son, and put a roof over your head ... twice. Not many men zwould have given you the time of day, but you always had a knack for attracting decent sorts and shitting on them from a great height. Max a bigger man than Martin? A more interesting character, maybe, but a bigger man? A serial adulterer and a quasi-bigamist a bigger man than Martin Fowler?
And thirdly, because Martin makes the sublime mistake of telling Stacey about how Phil nobbled the juror to insure Max got sent down. Stacey is a moralist when it comes to everyone else's behaviour except her own. Ne'mind the fact that she high-arsed it out of Walford when her confession to killing Archie began to make the rounds and got into the hands of Janine Butcher. Ne'mind the fact that she expected Martin and Shabnam to forgive her slight indiscretion with Kush which resulted in a souvenir, she's now going to tell Max what Phil did, thinking that Phil Mitchell deserves retribution.
He does. I'm the first to say that, but think how much of a real avenger it's going to make Max look - picking his fights with a woman in a wheelchair, a weasel and a transplant patient recovering from major surgery.
Tick Tock. These are the last days of the Mitchell sisters, and whilst this storyline has given us some genuinely good moments - cf: the last scene in Tuesday's episode that they shared - it's also shown the potential to which Roxy could be developed, independently of Ronnie, if her character were allowed to remain - the friendship with Donna, for example; and tonight, a potential relationship with Max.
I know they've been there before, but Max was in a relationship with Tanya (for whom he'd abandoned Kirsty) and not free to pursue Roxy. But now Max is foot-loose and fancy-free, and after Janine, who isn't returning anytime soon, I would have liked to have seen Max with Roxy.
The storyline is plot-driven because it sought to alienate Roxy from her place as Amy's parent, marginalising her from her sister and creating the false idea that it was Roxy who was the clingy, needy sister, who destroyed every relationship Ronnie had, and not the other way around - Ronnie being the obsessive who mangled every relationship upon which Roxy embarked.
Still, it looks as though things have gone full circle. Already Ronnie's starting a marriage, again, with Jack with a secret, having asked Roxy to move with them to Ongar. And it seems that Ronnie's got another child in the bargain. Roxy waxed lyrical about how she'd done a search on the high street in Ongar and found several intersting bars, pubs and restaurants. So Roxy plans on spending her evenings as a bar fly, getting drunk and partying down with the locals. As she reminded Jack today after a particularly stupid session of babysitting, she is still Amy's mother.
Ronnie tried to urge her to act responsibly and make peace with Jack, who's acting like an all-around prick with both Roxy and Max, but Roxy couldn't even handle an 8 year-old and a 6 year-old. Her response when she freaked out and shouted at Ricky for messing with the bridal dress, was to shit herself at the thought he was going to tattle to Jack, instead rewarding them with Christmas chocolate, and falling asleep whilst they ate it all, and Ricky got sick.
Epic fail again,but at least she scored an invitation to the Market Traders' do as Max's "plus one." So let me get this straight -
Martin's date is Stacey, Stacey's date s Max and Max's date is Roxy.
Yeah.
Is That All There Is? This surely can't be the end of Lee? Leaving an apologetic two-word note on his car's dash and just walking off?
I also get it that Lee's not thinking straight. Actually, thinking about the Carters in general, and Lee, in particular, prior to the re-casting of Johnny, all of the Carter siblings and Linda were particularly childlike and who behaved and acted far younger than their actual ages.
Linda was like an overgrown child, a little girl playing house with her children as her very own playthings. Whenever she got upset or whenever Mick wanted to distract her, he threw a party, or had a karaoke. All of the kids acted at least a decade younger than they were.
Remember Nancy talking in that silly singsong voice like a twelve year-old? Before Johnny got a new head, he was literally wrapped in cotton wool by his mother.
Lee is the same. He went from the bosom of his mother's pervading care to the army, who told him what to do, how to do it and when to do it. Now, he's adrift in an adult's world, with a wife, rent to pay (for which Jack is hounding him), a job he hates and maybe another baby on the way.
I think a lot of Lee's problem is he's trying to base his life on his father's life, and he sees himself failing at that. Mick, himself, lived the life of an overgrown child playing house with his mother-in-law in charge as the adult in the room until he was almost forty. Lee is twenty-four.
His nemesis, Oz, has hit upon one of his deepest fears, and he articulated that fear tonight when Oz remarked that once Whitney found a "real man", Lee wouldn't see her for dust - which, actually, is true to a certain degree. Throughout the whole section dealing with Lee tonight, there were overshadowings of emasculation. The awful boss ended his assessment, which he passed, by telling him to "man up." As he left the building, one of his last images was of a body builder in an advert about real men, and then came Oz's remark - all of which emanated from the confrontation that morning with Whitney, when she accused him of acting like a child on the playground, trying to get his colleagues at work to like him.
I don't think Whitney loves Lee, but now she's thinking she's pregnant again, and this will tie her indelibly to a man she always thought was weak, or rather, she mistook the complexities of the factions attributing to his depression as weakness.
I dislike her. I feel sorry for Lee.
But hold this thought, also like Trump, most bullies are divas, cowards and overgrown spoiled children.
Stacey's and Sharon's Collective Big Mouths. For the first time in ages, I thought Stacey was stupid tonight. Stupid, thoughtless and tactless.
Yes, I know she and Max have a past, and I'm the first to admit that ex-lovers can sometimes be very good friends, but I have to say it: Stacey began her relationship with Martin based on lies and deceit. She would happily have toodled on, talking to him like shit and allowing him to believe that Arthur was his son; but Stacey has a self-destruct button where she cannot help but let loose a secret to the very person from whom she should be keeping a secret.
She told Ryan about Lily the day Ryan returned from his honeymoon with Janine. He'd just got married, and now that marriage was going to be forever doomed, especially as Stacey was egged on by Kat to winch Ryan from Janine.
Stacey's not even thirty, and she's been responsible for the break-up of three marriages. Martin knows about her relationship with Max. He probably knows the circumstances about her relationship with Ryan - he certainly knows Janine, as his ex-wife was, at one time, a close friend of hers, and he grew up with her. He certainly knows now about how she deceived both him and Shabnam, who was supposed to be her best mate.
So, I can forgive Martin his suspicions, especially since Max always seems to make a beeline for Stacey.
There he is, hanging around Walford again today. I thought he had a job. Why isn't he trying to visit his daughters again, or Dot? Dot's at home.
And I could also forgive Martin taking umbrage at some of the things Stacey said, which were particularly tactless and unkind. She invited Max to the Market Traders' do that evening, when she had no right or call to do so, and she played stupid about it. When Martin pointed out that Max wasn't part of the market contingent and had no right to be there, Stacey replied that she wasn't on the market and she was going. She was too stupid to fathom that she was Martin's "plus one", his wife, his date for the evening. Her reply to that ...
Well, Max is my plus-one.
You what? She does understand that a person's "plus one" is their date for the evening or the event. So Stacey is Martin's date, and Max is Stacey's date.
No wonder Martin was pissed off. Any married person would be.
There will always be an element of suspicion on Martin's part, because Stacey and Max were that close. There's always an element of suspicion on most people's part, when their current partner and his/her ex prove to be extremely close friends.
And I was also Team Martin when he returned home to find Stacey and Max having a giggle in the kitchen - and that Stacey thought Martin would find it "hilarious" that their giggle was about Martin's sister "flirting" with Max. To begin with, what Michelle was doing was nothing like flirting. She was digging, sure, curious about the fact that Max, like she, was someone returning to a home they'd left, but I didn't perceive her flirting with him at all.
As well, Stacey blithely tells Martin that Max has been there most of the afternoon because, to Stacey that "made sense" since they were all going to this market do together. Why it made sense is anyone's guess, but that's Stacey being obtuse and ignorant and insensitive to the way Martin might perceive that.
On Christmas Day, when Stacey felt Sonia, through Skype, was interfering with her space, she slammed Rebecca's laptop shut and disconnected the call. If Sonia were hanging about Martin all hours of the day and night, having a giggle about one of the Slaters with him, she'd certainly have a thing or two to say about that.
Then we have the real fly that gets into the ointment. Sharon runs into Max and starts pfaffing about the Square in a lather about telling Phil he was back. The first person she encounters is Martin, who's having a whinge about Max and wondering why he's back.
Sharon doesn't need to say anything, and why is she worried about Phil finding out about Max? Max doesn't know diddly squat about what Phil Mitchell did, and Phil, sick or well, wouldn't give a rat's arse about Max being back in Walford, especially if Max didn't know about Phil's little charade, and he wouldn't care much more if he did know. Even more, Sharon, herself, wouldn't get herself all hot and bothered about Max being back - she's a seasoned pro. She's the adopted daughter of one hard man, the natural daughter of another and all her husbands have been dodgy to the extreme. She can keep a secret when it's mete to do so, and she would know that she and Phil would be best served by keeping their mouths shut. What Max didn't know wouldn't hurt him - or, more precisely, them.
This is plot-driven nonsense.
But no..... the first thing Sharon does is spill the beans about Phil nobbling that juror ... to Martin. Martin, who - unlike his wife - harbours no secrets from her. So whilst Sharon and Ian toddle off to the hospital to tell Phil - that was her second big worry, telling Phil that Max the Knife was back in town - Martin and Stacey have another discussion about Max, that was just as infuriating.
There were loads of reasons why I felt increasingly angry when watching this scene -
First of all, when Martin brought up the fact that he was concerned about what Max's presence in the Square might mean for Ian and Jane, emphasising that they were his family, Stacey went off on a tangent about how they were the ones who'd sent an innocent man down. All well and true, and any viewer would admit that Ian and Jane were due some heavy duty karma from Max, and I'm one who's looking forward to that; but Stacey acted like some kind of high-arsed hypocrite in that scene.
For the past several months, she's been in and out of the Beale abode as if it were her second home. She's done Jane's hair, taken her out and about, socialised freely with the Beales - she even looks after their grandson; and she and Jane have had good old gossip sessions, even spending an afternoon baking Christmas cakes. She knew about the Beales' cover-up and what they'd done to Max. She knew, also, about Lauren's involvement, and that didn't impinge upon their friendship; but now, she's on her high horse about all of that.
Secondly, Martin isn't buying Max's sudden conversion to peace and light, even though Stacey has fallen for it hook, line and sinker. He's concerned Max isn't kicking off - and he even said he would kick off in his place - when Stacey comes out with an even bigger winner of a line ...
Well, maybe he's a bigger man than you.
Hello?????? This is the man you're supposed to love. A bigger man? This man stood by you after you told him one of the biggest lies imaginable. You led him to believe he'd gotten you pregnant. He looked after your children, got you into a mother-and-baby unit so you wouldn't be separated from your son, and put a roof over your head ... twice. Not many men zwould have given you the time of day, but you always had a knack for attracting decent sorts and shitting on them from a great height. Max a bigger man than Martin? A more interesting character, maybe, but a bigger man? A serial adulterer and a quasi-bigamist a bigger man than Martin Fowler?
And thirdly, because Martin makes the sublime mistake of telling Stacey about how Phil nobbled the juror to insure Max got sent down. Stacey is a moralist when it comes to everyone else's behaviour except her own. Ne'mind the fact that she high-arsed it out of Walford when her confession to killing Archie began to make the rounds and got into the hands of Janine Butcher. Ne'mind the fact that she expected Martin and Shabnam to forgive her slight indiscretion with Kush which resulted in a souvenir, she's now going to tell Max what Phil did, thinking that Phil Mitchell deserves retribution.
He does. I'm the first to say that, but think how much of a real avenger it's going to make Max look - picking his fights with a woman in a wheelchair, a weasel and a transplant patient recovering from major surgery.
Tick Tock. These are the last days of the Mitchell sisters, and whilst this storyline has given us some genuinely good moments - cf: the last scene in Tuesday's episode that they shared - it's also shown the potential to which Roxy could be developed, independently of Ronnie, if her character were allowed to remain - the friendship with Donna, for example; and tonight, a potential relationship with Max.
I know they've been there before, but Max was in a relationship with Tanya (for whom he'd abandoned Kirsty) and not free to pursue Roxy. But now Max is foot-loose and fancy-free, and after Janine, who isn't returning anytime soon, I would have liked to have seen Max with Roxy.
The storyline is plot-driven because it sought to alienate Roxy from her place as Amy's parent, marginalising her from her sister and creating the false idea that it was Roxy who was the clingy, needy sister, who destroyed every relationship Ronnie had, and not the other way around - Ronnie being the obsessive who mangled every relationship upon which Roxy embarked.
Still, it looks as though things have gone full circle. Already Ronnie's starting a marriage, again, with Jack with a secret, having asked Roxy to move with them to Ongar. And it seems that Ronnie's got another child in the bargain. Roxy waxed lyrical about how she'd done a search on the high street in Ongar and found several intersting bars, pubs and restaurants. So Roxy plans on spending her evenings as a bar fly, getting drunk and partying down with the locals. As she reminded Jack today after a particularly stupid session of babysitting, she is still Amy's mother.
Ronnie tried to urge her to act responsibly and make peace with Jack, who's acting like an all-around prick with both Roxy and Max, but Roxy couldn't even handle an 8 year-old and a 6 year-old. Her response when she freaked out and shouted at Ricky for messing with the bridal dress, was to shit herself at the thought he was going to tattle to Jack, instead rewarding them with Christmas chocolate, and falling asleep whilst they ate it all, and Ricky got sick.
Epic fail again,but at least she scored an invitation to the Market Traders' do as Max's "plus one." So let me get this straight -
Martin's date is Stacey, Stacey's date s Max and Max's date is Roxy.
Yeah.
Is That All There Is? This surely can't be the end of Lee? Leaving an apologetic two-word note on his car's dash and just walking off?
I also get it that Lee's not thinking straight. Actually, thinking about the Carters in general, and Lee, in particular, prior to the re-casting of Johnny, all of the Carter siblings and Linda were particularly childlike and who behaved and acted far younger than their actual ages.
Linda was like an overgrown child, a little girl playing house with her children as her very own playthings. Whenever she got upset or whenever Mick wanted to distract her, he threw a party, or had a karaoke. All of the kids acted at least a decade younger than they were.
Remember Nancy talking in that silly singsong voice like a twelve year-old? Before Johnny got a new head, he was literally wrapped in cotton wool by his mother.
Lee is the same. He went from the bosom of his mother's pervading care to the army, who told him what to do, how to do it and when to do it. Now, he's adrift in an adult's world, with a wife, rent to pay (for which Jack is hounding him), a job he hates and maybe another baby on the way.
I think a lot of Lee's problem is he's trying to base his life on his father's life, and he sees himself failing at that. Mick, himself, lived the life of an overgrown child playing house with his mother-in-law in charge as the adult in the room until he was almost forty. Lee is twenty-four.
His nemesis, Oz, has hit upon one of his deepest fears, and he articulated that fear tonight when Oz remarked that once Whitney found a "real man", Lee wouldn't see her for dust - which, actually, is true to a certain degree. Throughout the whole section dealing with Lee tonight, there were overshadowings of emasculation. The awful boss ended his assessment, which he passed, by telling him to "man up." As he left the building, one of his last images was of a body builder in an advert about real men, and then came Oz's remark - all of which emanated from the confrontation that morning with Whitney, when she accused him of acting like a child on the playground, trying to get his colleagues at work to like him.
I don't think Whitney loves Lee, but now she's thinking she's pregnant again, and this will tie her indelibly to a man she always thought was weak, or rather, she mistook the complexities of the factions attributing to his depression as weakness.
I dislike her. I feel sorry for Lee.
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