Shit Writer, Shit Episode - Review:- Monday 30.01.2017

Well, that didn't take long, did it? Follow up what has arguably been Sean O'Connor's best week thus far as EP, with an episode penned by Katie Douglas.

Why is that woman still allowed to write for this programme? Or maybe they just hand her the episodes which are fillers and which really serve no purpose but to re-hash the same things over and over and over and over and over and over again ... like the increasingly dire Fox situation.

That's right. Denise Fox is becoming like Fox news - boring, repetitive and mean-spirited.

Finish This Baby Shit Already! As well as a strong strand of misogyny, there seems to be a heavy strand of bullying trending through the show right now. Once again, we get the same scenes, although through a falsely different perspective, about Denise, Kim and the wedge her adopted baby has thrown between them.

I am so fucking tired of hearing Kim whine about that baby "being raised by strangers," I could scream. She's like Trump and his creature Kellyann Conway and their alternative fact universe, which is a euphemism for a lie. EastEnders' penchant for describing adoption and farming a kid out to be "raised by strangers" is offensive and repugnant, both to adoptees and people who have adopted children. Please don't insult my intelligence by saying that this is just the way the show wants to portray the ignorant, insipid, selfish and narcissistic Kim (those adjectives describe Trump); EastEnders has always had this agenda about birth relations superseding adopted relations. This is why so many of its characters either find their birth parents or unrealistically get adopted children returned to them.

We know that this child will inevitably end up back on the Square, either in Phil's custody or Denise's or them living together as a couple and raising him. There have been too damned many mentions of this child for it not to feature in the future.

How many times, as I rhetorically asked, do we have to hear Kim wail about "my nephew being raised by strangers?" How many times does Denise have to say she doesn't regret giving the baby up for adoption? Look, either this is a positive and educational storyline about the efficacy of adoption and the courage of someone who opts to give her baby up for adoption, or it's the standard common-and-garden soap bumpf which becomes maudin and melodramatic and results in a particularly trite soap trope.

Because, you see, I think this storyline is a fraud. It sounds as though Denise is trying to convince herself that she did the right thing - we have the constant wringing of the hands, the clinging to Libby, Patrick and Grandma Medusa, the constant reference to people gossiping, when actually people may be more understanding of her situation than she thinks. 

The ingratitude of Denise actually knows no bounds. Her supposed best friend, Carmel, enjoying an epiphany moment and who has apologised to Denise for her tactlessness, offers her help and moral support. Denise turns her nose up as though she's encountered a bad smell. This is after rushing out of the house to avoid the bickering of Grandma Medusa and Patrick. 

Tonight's episode was particularly embarrassing for both Patrick and Vincent. We had to suffer the awfully silly and just plain bad scene of Grandma Medusa attempting to do some housework and smacking Patrick about with cushions just to get him to move from one position on the sofa to another, instead of asking him to move. That was for the comic effect, and it tanked.

I'm tired of seeing po-faced Libby, Patrick and Grandma tiptoeing about on eggshells at the risk of upsetting the already fragile Denise's ego, and I'm tired of the various attempts to reconcile Denise with Kim. Granny's tried and failed. Vincent's tried and failed. Now Libby's tried and failed. She took it upon herself to visit Kim and, in unison with Vincent, who - again - was reduced to a giggling, simpering, emasculated male making a bad joke about his mother-in-law - her ploy was to emphasize how much Denise missed Kim, and how much Kim missed Denise.

But Kim wouldn't budge on the whine about the baby being raised by strangers, and refused to budge on the idea that Denise was still the same person as she always was. Kim is too immature to suck it up and accept that Denise's decision was best for her and the child. This one action has defined Denise in Kim's narrow-minded eyes for the rest of her days.

All through this circular rigamarole, something suddenly dawned on me that Kim and Denise are this producer's Roxy and Ronnie - a co-dependent relationship, again, with the question of a child at the core. I wish the show would move away from this sibling friend shit, a theme introduced by John Yorke and continued until this day.

EastEnders hasn't yet solved its big problem of circular storylines. Either get the kid back or shut up about it.

The Mitchell Situation and Michelle. Michelle's interposed herself into the Mitchell dynamic, and it's just a teeny weeny bit weird. On the one hand, I can understand her concern for Sharon. Sharon is her best friend, her oldest friend and she hones in immediately on Sharon's tense demeanor, her currying favour with Phil by being over-protective of him, running around like a headless chicken, waiting on his kids hand and foot, trying to keep him happy.

In that respect, Michelle was right to call Phil out on his perceived taking advantage of Sharon's good nature. And that was about time. At least we got a semblance of a conversation between Phil and Sharon, but because the subject of Phil's son got dropped almost as soon as it was brought up after the birth, and attention was paid on other situations, it had the effect of coming out of the blue and it featured in only one scene, but it was a scene laden with foreshadowing.

Somewhere in the conversation it was established that Sharon didn't want Phil to have custody of this child, although an exploration of her reasons might have done more in revealing her insecurity about the relationship. She's afraid of Phil hating her because somehow he knew or realised that she didn't want the kid.

Did I miss something? Because in that scene she shared with Phil on the day he found out about the baby, she made an eloquent defense of adoption and people who were adopted, but ended by supporting Phil had he wished to seek custody of the child.

Now Phil's saying that he decided not to go for custody of the child in deference to Sharon, before reiterating what Denise had said that about him making a mess of bringing up his own children and about his age in question. Sharon brings up another infuriating idea - the idea that this child is "a Mitchell."

Sorry, no, he isn't. We can't be defined by our genetic make-up. Phil provided the sperm and the requisite DNA contribution to this child. This child is no more a Mitchell than Michelle Fowler's son is. The child will be more influenced by his environment and by his adoptive family than he will the Foxes or the Mitchells. Even this idea of inherited traits is a myth propagated by this show. Sharon offers this perspective to Phil on a plate, cooked and ready to serve with her insecurity as dessert. She thinks that Phil, the ultimate manchild, will come to hate her for refusing to raise a child borne of his infidelity on a drunken one night stand he couldn't even remember.

I'm sorry, when Phil promised her that she and Dennis were his second chance, I didn't believe it for a moment. To begin with, there's his recent dead friend Tony's widow and child, and I think Phil will drift toward these two out of guilt; and Sharon will suffer. And by the time he's got that situation out of his system, someone will probably think of a reason for him or Denise to get the Holy Child back, and Sharon and Dennis will probably get shafted on that one too.

On a second instance, who the hell does Michelle think she is, offering to go to Walford High and talk with Louise's teachers about the bullying she's suffering at the hands of Keegan and his mates? She is no relation to Louise. She didn't even know her before this extended visit, and the teachers in question wouldn't give her the time of day. Surely, she knows that - or is she that stupid or arrogant? The only people with whom the school would treat in relation to Louise are Phil, Sharon or, should she ever show up, Lisa. Is this something stupid Douglas stumbled upon and thought sounded good?

Teenaged Angst. Once again, a circular storyline. Where is this going? Is this some sort of bullying storyline about Louise, who is being made the cruel brunt of Keegan's jokes? If this were a story about bullying - and cyberbullying in particular, it might be interesting - because it's very prevalent and relevant, and it also heightens awareness of a particularly ugly strain of misogyny aimed at Louise. It's actually quite disturbing, and you get the feeling she may get hurt - and I mean, physically - in all of this.

But it's been tempered down as a plot device to the silly lovelorn tale of Rebecca the Smug and Shakil the Unintelligible. Can she look more smug? Can someone please tell the actress that throwing her head back and jutting her chin forward for all her dialogue doesn't look natural.

I get it that SOC wants to show some intricacy in teenaged romantic relationships as opposed to the loyalty of friendship, but this is just boring - and it's boring because the teens in question are so unlikable.

And the Rest. Sam remembers Ronnie and Roxy died, almost a month after it happened, but she doesn't remember she has a son. Stacey and Martin have reverted to background characters, and I gather the sole content of their conversations from here on out are about the planned Fowler child - until she finds out that Martin was injured in the baby-making department.

Mick is having a Chinese night, and the fact that he got his friend, whose parents were Thai, to cook Chinese food, is very subtly racist - as in "all Orientals look alike." We get it that the Carters are desperate to earn money, but I gather that Princess Whitney has been packed off to Whitfield to visit King Drip. At least Mick, in his guilt for snogging his son's wife, is treating Lee with a bit more kindness, going by his remarks.

Abi, who was curiously absent during the bus collision, remarks to Jack that she has heard of her father's heroics - all the while, we know what Max is plotting. 

Max, like Vincent, is having mother-in-law problems, which means he'll probably sleep with Glenda before long.

Jay and Ben are getting a flat together, then they aren't. Clock how Jay's terse explanation to Michelle that he got in a spot of bother and can't be around young girls was rendered. They have something in common. Does that mean they'll share a flat?

And Michelle is secretly necking vodka like Shirley Carter because her husband doesn't want to know her. What next?

Phoenix Rixing - Review:- Thursday 26.01.2017

It took a long time coming, but this was undoubtedly the best episode of the week and, so far, the year. It was absolutely pitch perfect on all fronts, and it should have been a lesson to the likes of Dominic Treadwell-Collins and Alex Lamb that sensationalism and elaborate plot twists often detract from some simple twist and mysteries that leave the viewers thinking.

The show took a turn tonight. We were lulled into a false comfort zone, and now our curiosities have been awoken. 

Watch and learn.

The Victims

This is the first time I can remember an episode which examined a viable aftermath to a catastrophe, with hints of things to come in future storylines. It was believable, watchable and immensely interesting.

1. Denise. Denise got carted off to hospital, accompanied by Libby. Left behind whining on her tod, Kim, for once in her life, was ticked off royally by Vincent, who dug deep and found his balls. He told her, on no uncertain terms, that her duty was to reconcile with Denise and sent her and Grandma Medusa off to Walford General with that in mind. His loyalty, however, lay with Donna and insuring that she was all right in the pub.

Denise had concussion, but things were made no better with Kim, who's intransigent when it comes to Denise's decision to put her son up for adoption. Kim wants Denise's forgiveness, but on her own terms. She's such a narcissist, she's unable to see anything in any manner but her own, and people kept repeating the the mantra that "Kim would come" around or "give her time." Kim's stating that Denise was dead to her cut deep with Denise. 

However, she got some surprising support from Mick, who lauded her for putting the child in question first, and doing what she thought was best for him - giving him to a couple who wanted and would love unconditionally her child. What she did took guts. Denise thanked him for not judging her, but minutes later, she, herself, was put in a position where it was exceedingly difficult not to judge Mick.

2. Martin. I kept thinking all along that something more was wrong with Martin - and in real life, a lot more would be wrong with him - especially when he kept insisting that he was only a little bruised. In many soap tropes, the next instant, that person is keeling over dead.

But how much do I love the Fowlers? They just keep getting better and better, and now that she came close to losing Martin, I think Stacey realised FINALLY just how much she loves him. I'm the biggest cynic in the world, but at the end of their segment, when Martin announced to the assembled people waiting in the hospital at the end of their segment that they were having a baby, effectively using that announcement as a means of approving Stacey's newly-stated desire to have his child, I smiled; and how big a man was Martin to affirm his love for both Arthur and Lily, even saying he'd die for them?

Pauline and Arthur, amidst everything going doolally around them, managed to stay together until Arthur's death. I hope Stacey and Martin, as well as Mick and Linda, remain one couple who stay together and grow. I'm looking forward to Baby Fowler and their Fruit'n Veg Empire.

3. Whitney (and Mick and Lee). I knew this would happen! People have been honing in on this for weeks, only now, instead of Whitney making all the moves and meaningful gestures, Mick does the same - and gets stitched up for this.

I'm sick of Whitney emerging from a vat of shit without any foul smell. Who the hell else has a bus fall on top of them and emerges with little more than a headache and healthy enough to rise from the bed and full-on snog her father-in-law? All through this episode, when Mick only made cursory attempts to find Lee, he was acting more as if it were Linda under the bus and not Whitney, especially in the hospital when he was leaning over her bed, getting very close, physically to her, stroking her hair, telling her she was such a beautiful girl and how important she was to him (with Linda added as an afterthought), then - for the clincher - swearing that he'd "make Lee" take her to Wakefield and do anything she wanted.

These weren't the words of a father-in-law, these were the words of a man, giving vent to his attraction to his son's wife and fighting that attraction, knowing it was wrong. And when the dirty bitch kissed him - a full-on, open-mouthed snog - Mick kissed her back. 

Cast your mind back to the other attempted snogs last year. Mick decidedly repelled both of those attempts, and Linda sussed early on what Whitney was about. She called her out on trying to move in on Mick. I'm actually surprised that Linda is so trusting of Whitney after that. This time, however, Mick met her full-on. Witnessed by Denise.

Seeing what she saw came hard on Denise's sense of propriety, especially since Mick had not judged her decision to put her son up for adoption; now, seeing what she did see, she's confused and conflicted. She saw Whitney kiss Mick and Mick kiss her back.

Cop this: Mick Carter has officially cheated on Linda. No amount of protest of how much he loves his wife, either to Denise (a friend of Linda's) or to Whitney stands for anything. In fact, his protest of loving Linda to Whitney and Whitney's reply that she loved Lee were simply pithy excuses that each guilty party gave to try to convince themselves that the moment of madness was a one-off which meant nothing. That was a lie, and now that a protocol has been breached, we're in for weeks of weak attempts to avoid each other only to have another moment of madness when they give into passion.

Shall I venture a guess that Lee will find out about this and that this will make him leave? Where that slut Whitney stands in all of this, with Lee gone and Linda away, is anyone's guess. But she has been subtly coming onto Mick for weeks, especially since Linda's deparure - making herself available, coyly cozying up to him to accompany him to a hospital appointment with Ollie or to go to the Cash and Carry. Mick was only too happy to cling to her, as an obvious rebuttal and rejection of Lee, her husband and his son, in the wake of finding out Lee's part in the raid on the Vic. He was reinforcing Lee's poor self-esteem, wordlessly indicating to him that he wasn't good enough for the saint known as Whitney,and Whitney didn't stint on stirring the pot against Lee - running to Mick at every excuse to diss Lee and complain about Lee's inadequate behaviour. Lee didn't want to have fun, he didn't want to do this or that, didn't want to go to Wakefield with her, Lee blamed her for his financial problems ... yadda yadda ... and Mick lapped it up as a further excuse to get the boot in on Lee.

At the same time, and and I know Whitney realised this - Mick was enduring his first long period away from Linda. He was missing her, and he was vulnerable emotionally. She steps into the breach and when she's hurt, he allows his behaviour to step across the moral line in the sand. He has bee, in his heart, unfaithful to Linda, and all the excuses he makes for loving Linda ring hollow.

And once again, when Lee is found and rushes to the hospital, he ends up promising Whitney the world, little knowing that she is only using him as second best.

She's a slut, with form for dumping the proverbial dependable bloke for the edgy guy, and she sees Mick as just this. It wouldn't surprise me now if she sleeps with him, because Lee finding out about this liaison and leaving. It also wouldn't surprise me if Whitney finds herself pregnant by Mick and tries to pass the baby off to Linda as Lee's.

Leopards never change their spots, and maybe that was the significance of the leopard-print dress which Whitney wore on the night she had her first real argument with Lee, the night she ran running, tattle-taling, to Mick.

New Beginnings.

The Teens. They're still unlikable, and I really don't want to see anymore of the odious Keegan, who cleaned out the Minute Mart of cigarettes and booze, and went about trying to flog them. I actually felt sorry for Shakil in this, and I was confused. Yesterday, Louise was going on and on about how Shakil had saved her life, and yet once she saw him at the table in her house with Rebecca, she flipped out and ordered him to leave. 

And where were Phil and Sharon in all of this? One of the final scenes during the musical montage showed Ben tucking up a sleeping Louise on the couch in the living room. Louise is Phil's only daughter and she and Sharon are reasonably close. They should at least have been hovering in the background, but there appeared to be no one at home, indeed, when Rebecca went there; but I suppose the premise in telling her to go to Louise's was that her Auntie Michelle was there.

So we're back to Shakil and Rebecca's puppy love boring storyline. Why are they so fucking unlikable? Is it because they are so bad as actors or so badly written? I just don't care about them. Perhaps it's because they are so much older than they are supposed to be - in fact, the scenes of the bus crash reminded me of the underaged immigrant scandal of a few months ago. The ginger-haired "student" looked well into his thirties.

Jack. I found Jack's situation - the part where he was overcome in the pub by scenes of police and ambulances outside in the Square, which brought home to him his recent loss - quite realistic. It gave us the great scene between between him and Max, where he speaks eloquently about his loss and how he finds it difficult to cope. As with Carol, once again, Max uses his loss of Bradley as an analogy, because he can truly feel Jack's anguish. At the end of that scene, Jack thanks Max for being there for him, for coming back. The irony of that remark was reflected later.

The Cheesy Bit and the Montage. The worst bit of the piece was Carmel's cheesy speech in the pub - the "heart of the market" speech. These two episodes have done Bonnie Langford no favours, and that speech was cheesy.

I'm normally not a fan of montages, musical or otherwise, but I quite liked this one, as it served as a segue into the most important climax of the piece, ending with Stacey leaving a voicemail, thanking Max for saving Martin's life, as well as linking all of the main participants in the tragedy - apart from Mick's dilemma - Jack and his three children watching the activity outside; the tired paramedic and Carmel and the market traders watching the fire brigade remove he bus driver's body from the wreckage; the woman reunited with her child; the scene of Denise, her daughter and mother returning to the Square to be greeted by Patrick and Vincent, with the camera pulling back to reveal that this is being watched by the reflection of Kim looking out her front window. Excellent direction there.

And then ...

Max. Hailed as a hero, Max's reaction is decidedly low key, even when Lauren praises him. Of significant note was Max suddenly, and surreptitiously, becoming all ears when gobby Babe discloses to him that Mick isn't all that solid financially with the pub.

The mystery phone call led him to the gherkin in the City and a mysterious stranger standing at a window overlooking East London. At first, I thought maybe this was Gavin, but he turned out to be someone I simply can't fathom. The stranger was extremely well-spoken and spoke of having lived and been born and bred in that area of London which probably incorporated Walford. It seems that Max's little "office job" has been something more than something ticking over. That would explain the expensive car and the amazing amount of time off work he appeared to be given.

Max is working for this person, it seems, and doing very well. But who is he? Obviously, we'll find he's someone from Walford long ago, but who? Clive Mitchell? Harry Beale? The guy appears to be a property developer. He knows Walford, that's certain, because the first thing he hones in on is the pub.

What about the pub?

That's the question, and one which Max is quick to answer - he's not fussed about the pub. It could burn for all he cared. And that's puzzling. Mick's beef is with the Beales and, to a great degree, the Mitchells; but he has no beef at all with the Carters. We know that the Carters are dicey financially, and it's been overshadowed that they are in real danger of losing their licence. 

Max in the pub or what? But hang on ... harken back to Carmel's "heart of the market" speech, where she pledges to fight for the market to remain. The market runs right in front of and alongside the Vic. If this guy is a property developer, and from what he said about the state of the East End now as opposed to then, he might be intent on bringing Walford as is down or altering it in some way to achieve his goals.

The final shot of the reflection of Max's pale face against the black of the London night was chilling, almost terrifying.

He's truly out for revenge.

The Wheels on the Bus - Review: Tuesday 24.01.2017

And so the much-heralded disaster week gets its disaster, although it was rumoured for awhile that there was going to be an incident with a bus that was going to impact on the lives of the Square's residents and maybe - just maybe - there'd be a death.

First things first, for all the stunts implemented by EastEnders in recent years, they just haven't measured up. and have come across as damp squibs. Measured by the standards of the Carl White-Phil Mitchell crash or the New Year's Day 2015 crash, which saw the end of Emma Summerhayes, this stunt wasn't that bad. It certainly didn't achieve the high standards of the massive Emmerdale road crash in the autumn, but it was better than recent efforts. 

Still, by reality standards, too many people got off with superficial injuries. I gather this accident was based on the Glasgow dumper truck incident from Christmas 2015, when the driver of a city truck blacked out, lost control and mounted the pavement. Even then, with the truck going about 20 mph, 5 people died. EastEnders lost no one - oh, wait ... maybe they lost Whitney by virtue of the fact that her mobile phone seemed to survive intact, even though there seemed to be little left of her other than a greasy smudge, which could have come from the oil in her hair or the fact that she looks as though she never washes.

There were also little nuances in this episode that gave us a hint of things yet to come, but some of it - let's be frank - exhibited some pretty poor acting, either for the most part (Tilly Keeper, Bonnie Langford) or in certain other parts (Emma Barton). In fact, the bus incident really pissed me off. It never looked as though the bus was going to blow up, as the cowardly, misogynistic thug, Keegan, intimated, literally moving hell and high water to get himself out, so he could grin inanely, film the aftermath on his Iphone, thieve some stuff from the shop and insult Grandma Medusa in the shop.

This is a deeply unpleasant character, and he's more than a spoiled brat. What we're seeing here is the advent of the latest EastEnders' psychopath character. I went back and watched this episode for a second time tonight, and I was actually shocked at his general shittiness of character when he saved himself by jumping from the bus, openly telling Shakil not to bother about helping the girls or anyone else and how adversely both Mick and Jack reacted to his behaviour when he jumped. As well, he continued his insistence that the bus was going to "blow up", when in the end, there was no danger of that at all. If there were, then the entire community wouldn't have put their own lives at risk to lift the bus up and down several times before eventually lifting it high enough to extricate Martin.

If there were any danger of the bus blowing up, in this day and age, Martin would simply have been left to his fate, but good old East End community spirit dredged up symbolically, the rallying cry led by a returning iconic character for the rescue of the life of a character who was not only the scion of an original family but the first baby born on the show. This was a tip to the unifying community spirit engendered by the Second World War, even moreso by the scene in the tube, where Shirley, Tina and Sylvie were stuck on a stopped train, when Sylvie's cracked memory recalled seeking shelter in a tube station during the war, holding tight to her mother's hand and bursting into a rendition of "Run, Rabbit, Run",  and joined by Shirley and eventually Tina, to the consternation of one passenger and the amusement of two others.

The second standard soap trope was the Fox sisters' situation, and any viewer could have seen this coming a mile away, the situation where two characters have fallen out over some incident, and one says to the other ...

You're dead to me.

... only to have a massive accident occur, where one of the two is badly injured, and the pair reconcile. Denise wasn't even badly injured. She was knocked out for what appeared to be less than an hour, but she came around quick enough to get to her feet and open the door. Some unintended humour occurred when Kim started screeching for England when Denise was found in the passenger well at the front of the bus, and she and Vincent started the effort of freeing what they supposed at that time was Denise's body, only to have Vincent find the wheel of Donna's wheelchair and later, its crushed body, dropping all concern for Denise and rushing off to find his sister.

There's family loyalty and family loyalty and a smack in the gob, figuratively, of Kim's smug face. Kim was left weeping and wailing over the inert body of her sister, but she wasn't wailing for Denise - she was wailing because she felt bad about herself and having said what she said - like the thief who gets caught with his hand in the till, who's ever so sorry for getting caught, but not for the people whom he was robbing. It came as a shock to Kim and her massive ego when Denise recoiled at her touch and refused her tacit apology, remembering the last words which Kim spoke to her.

But the irony was in this:- Kim and Denise are blood sisters, who'd fallen out, and now their discord still hasn't been resolved; yet as soon as Vincent discovered his foster sister was missing, she was his first concern, not even thinking of returning to Kim and Denise until he was certain that Donna was OK and in good hands. And this was someone who was allegedly raised by "strangers."

I thought the initial lead-in to the episode was clever - showing a repeat of the crash and then fading quickly to black, only to re-emerge slowly and in soft focus, as if someone - a victim - is just waking up from a trauma, seeing things blurred and unfocused and hearing muted activity around them. It's clear that person is Carmel, and we watch her slowly getting her bearings, gazing about at the ruin and suddenly realising that it was the bus collision which caused the havoc.

Bonnie Langford's good performance stopped there. Sorry, but Langford cannot do intense drama, and she quickly went into screeching mode, looking desperately for Kush. (The fact that he couldn't be found automatically and immediately after the crash, led to the first feint of the episode - psssst! we're supposed to be wondering if Kush copped it.)

The worst bit came when she realised Shakil was still aboard the bus ...

Mah bayyyy-beeee! Mah bayyy-beee! Save mah bayyy-beee!

Screeched at full-lung umpteen times, enough to begin to grate on one's eardrums. Contrast that to the nameless woman who'd lost her small son, Lewis, and her plaintive cry, at intervals, of his name.

But Langford wasn't the most embarrassing. That belonged to the teens - to Rebecca and to the dippy Louise. When the bus collided, the pair weren't even hurt, yet Louise set forth a continuous catterwaul that was virtually non-stop. The odd thing was that everyone on the upper level of the bus was walking around, almost unscathed. There were no bad injuries, to use a favourite Trumpian word, no carnage. OK, first thing after an unexpected accident, you're in shock, but you test your limbs to see that no damage has been done and then you go about trying to extricate yourself from that situation. Louise didn't even do that. She just clutched the bar across the front of her seat and wailed.

When Shakil told her she had to move her legs because Rebecca couldn't get out, I thought for a moment that she'd be rendered disabled. Nope, she ate, whilst Rebecca scarpered, and then did her dramatic diva queen turn, deeply inhaling before delivering a dramatic line, before jumping off the bus. Well, sliding down the side of the bus, actually.

Thanks, mostly, to Shakil and to the male rescuers - Jack, Max, Mick - she managed effectively to slide down the side of the bus, but not without passing on a singular dramatic moment, inhaling deeply and closing her eyes. And it really wasn't that far down. Bloody hell, Louise was practically touching the ground before anyone was able to grab her.

And whilst Emma Barton was generally good in a supportive, background way, TPTB saw fit, in the pub, to give her a dramatic moment, for no reason whatsoever, really. Fine one moment, and then in the next, she starts to blub ...

It just came out of nowhere right at the shop. (Er, no, love, it didn't).

And then breathlessly whispering ... I can't live around here anymore, it's not safe for mah kids.

Contrast that bit of amateur dramatics with the likes of Lacey Turner, who was absolutely pitch perfect - and here's another soap trope used: the couple who've had an argument, one of them suddenly lying under a bus, literally, and the wife running to be at his side, even going to the extreme of having Martin tell Stacey he loved her, a standard deathbed confession. I hadn't realised that Martin was caught up under the thing, but then it made sense as he was talking right at the moment the bus came looming right up over them, and it seemed to aim directly at him. Good camera work, shooting from the bottom up to enhance the height of the bus.

And the rescue effort was led by Max, with Mick playing second-in-command, and Johnny Carter exhausting all efforts to get the emergency services, any emergency service to come, until Max decided, against the grain, to get a combined tally of people from the Market and the Vic to spew into the Square and heave together to lift the bus off Martin, because it seemed that the First Responder services in and around the area weren't effectively available.

In and of itself, that was a pretty dangerous thing to do, and if could have done Martin more harm than good. And the local hoi-polloi removing him from under the bus, but I suppose the one and only paramedic who moseyed on along was giving them proper instructions on how to move Martin out.

The inference throughout it all was that someone was going to die - with the prime suspects being Denise and Martin - two longstanding characters on the programme.

In the end, it was no one who died, not even Whitney's telephone, unless, of course, her body hasn't been found; but even I'm dubious now about having a glove found that doesn't have an owner. It won't do to kill her off screen. This just adds to the possibility of an unconvincing return. Habeas corpus ... Let us see the owner. It will give the us proof that whoever is dead is really dead. No more off-screen deaths.

The buzzing mobile phone is Whitney's, something which alerts us to the fact that something major had just happened or was about to happen.

The question is ... Is she dead?

The stars of the episode, however, were the Golden Girls - Sylvie, Shirley and Tina - accosting strangers to take pictures of them on their mobiles, talking about life, in general and growing old. Interesting to note how likable these characters have become, with Shirley stripped back to the bare essentials of what makes her great. The cack-handed remarks and zingers, the ability to tell a story as much as to write for themselves.

The scenes on the bus were precious, and so was the picture.

Death Is in the Air - Review:- Monday 23.01.2017

As if EastEnders couldn't get enough of death. We've just buried Ronnie and Roxy, and now there's a surprise death this week. (Who am I kidding? I've just watched 2 episodes back-to-back as my January from hell continues to progress, and I know the twist. I blame this on Trump, but then I'm blaming everything on that mofo at the minute.)

Deaths in EastEnders seem like the Number 10 bus, or in this instance, the bus from Walford High which seems to be destined for Barking - nobody dies for donkey's years, and then we get three all in a row.

At least we know that one of Sean O'Connor's favourite devices is overshadowing. This episode laid it on thick and fast.

The episode gave us lots of hints as to the victim about to be stiffed.

Potential Victim Number One: Jay ... or Maybe Not. The first scenes are all about Jay. I'd never seen Jay being given so much attention. Not long ago, he was a pariah, but at the beginning of Monday's episode, he was everybody's principal boy. The shadows of overshadowing hang all around him - Kush greets him with a misquotation about a "chill" wind bodes ill before realising that it's an "ill" wind. Of course, Jay's been ill and missed the Blisters' funeral. Donna wants him to have a look at her wheelchair, with the wheel sticking.

Later at Coker and Sons, Billy catches him searching for flats - so it's a good piece of continuity that they've remember that Jay is under notice from Social Services to leave the Mitchell house, so he's looking for flats and got distracted by looking at ueber-priced property in Soho. (Look, why can't they remember that there's a flat going empty upstairs, Les and Pam's old place? He and Jay could flatshare).

Jay and Billy were the light entertainment highlight of this episode. When they are firing on all four cylinders, Jay's and Billy's relationship is much more natural, affectionate and entertaining that the co-dependent relationship that Jay obviously doesn't enjoy, but to which he is addicted, the Mitchells. Billy is genuinely fond of Jay, and appears more fatherly and caring about him than the decrepit, toxic Phil, who blows hot and cold toward him as it suits his own special circumstances.

As Billy and Jay rush off to pick up a recently deceased person, Billy makes the overshadowing remark of the episode:-

Let's hope we don't have to bury anybody else we know by the end of the month.

So you know right away that whoever dies is going to be someone the pair of them know, if not one of them.

Later, we were treated to lengthy scenes of the pair of them en route back to Walford stuck in some sort of massive traffic jam, where they discussed, basically, life in general and, in particular, Jay's circumstances. Billy noticed a young care assistant at the place where they had collected the body they were transporting was attracted to Jay, and he'd surreptitiously slipped her Jay's mobile number. Jay is reluctant to even discuss the possibility of a relationship, based mostly on his police record as a sex offender. Billy, on the other hand, bigs up the positive side of being in a stable relationship, and urges Jay to live his life because this day could be his last.

Potential Victim Number Two: Denise (Well, It's Obvious). Friday's episode left us in no doubt, with Kim's final words to Denise at the duff-duff:-

You're dead to me.

Hey, wait a moment. Didn't Max say that to Lauren over a year ago, and they seem to be fine now? In this instance, however, the line was a plot device. Any viewer knew that with an impending disaster scheduled to happen this week, there would be some dramatic scene involving Denise and Kim, and these words would come back to haunt them.

Denise was bothered about this, and you could tell that Kim was, as well, but she was still up her own arse about Denise giving the baby up for adoption. It was the classic stand-off situation where Denise was demanding an apology from Kim, which she may or may not accept, and where Kim was refusing to reconcile with Kim or to accept her decision.

Circular storyline. It provided a prop for Grandma Medusa to be thrown out of Kim's house, and it also show us, yet again, exactly how emasculated Vincent has become. At least he had the courage to admit to Kim that he came down on her side of the argument because he knew she was standing behind him.

Potential Victim Number Three: Martin (or Kush or Donna or ... Anybody in the Market. The episode began with Carmel meeting with a strange man looking around the market, and the real action kicked in when Stacey informed Martin that one of the mothers present at a birthday party Arthur was attending asked her if she'd heard any rumours about the market being moved.

(Hang on a minute ... Arthur was at a birthday party? Arthur turned one year old not so long ago, Christmas Eve to be exact. He's still a babe-in-arms, so how can he possibly enjoy a birthday party? And wouldn't this be more or less some sort of glorified play date where mothers intermingled and gossiped? Yet Stacey uses it like a faux nursery? At least it explains where Arthur is - a day-long birthday party - when the shit hits the fan.

Martin's in bolsheviki mood when he hears the goss about the market being moved. Apparently, it's being moved miles away and into a covered setting, with enlarged stores in shop motifs and a chance for the stall-holders to expand. Not willing to accept the possibility of change and the expense that comes with it, Martin proposes a strike, but no one concurs with him, so he closes the stall and storms home, only to be berated by Stacey for taking a stand.

Whoever decided to turn Stacey and Martin into a 21st Century equivalent of what Pauline and Arthur were was a bloody genius. Their argument was strong, but you could tell that there was a lot of love behind their situation. But once again, this is a standard soap trope of a couple having an argument, and then something tragic happening, with the strong possibility of a death, leaving the survivor guilt-stricken. So already, we had Kim's awful words to Denise, and Martin and Stacey parting in a row, with Stacey's words ...

Why don't you re-open the stall if you fancy some air?

Stacey's concerns are practical - they're barely making ends meet; and Martin is typically condescending in his reply. Yes, he knows she ran her own stall ... for about five minutes, and his family have been stallholders in Walford for about 70 years (well, closer to 80, I'd say).

Spot the Victim: Lee and Whitney. Pardon the pun, but this was the real Trumper of the episode. 

It seems that King Drip Ryan, a killer no less, has managed to get released from prison, find a brilliant job in Yorkshire and marry his prison guard girlfriend. As. If.

Anyway, he's invited Whitney and Lee up to Wakefield to celebrate, but the way Whitney words this news, it does come across to a Lee, low on self-esteem and confidence, as if she were willfully making an overt comparison between Lee, her husband with no criminal record, and her lesser-mortal brother, who seems to have successfully turned his life around (the subtle implication being that Lee hadn't). The clinker was when Whitney said that the magnanimous Ryan would pay for their train fare to Wakefield, which prompts Lee to storm out of the flat.

And Whitney goes whining to Mick. Again. And presenting Lee as the bugbear in all of this. Lee does nothing. He doesn't want to do anything. He just sits around. It sounds entitled and spoiled, the whining whinge of a spoiled brat, telling Mick just enough to get him even more riled at Lee, instead of wanting to talk to Lee - I mean really talk to him about what is bothering him. This is something no one has attempted to do - to talk to Lee, even with a third an non-interested party present, possibly Shirley, to find out the core causes of his behaviour. Instead, Mick stares hard at his son and unconsciously is brought into a conscious flirtatious relationship, assuming the knight in shining armoure role to Whitney's princess-in-distress, married to a young man, who behaves like an old one. At one point, Mick even just tells Whitney to say they are going to Wakefield, end of story; but off she toddles to town to buy King Drip and Queen Drizzle an engagement present.

The other highlight of the episode was Tina, Shirley and Sylvie - Tina's prize of a mother-and-daughter photo session, and her efforts to fanagle Shirley into the shoot. These three work well together, and I find myself liking Shirley again, as she allows herself to be drawn into a dynamic with her sister and her mother which she tries hard not to show that she's enjoying. Sylvie's innocent joy at having her picture taken - A man wanted to take my picture once; he paid me a quid - to Shirley's vivid explanation to Kathy of Tina's pretended illness, they were a hoot.

The Root of the Problem. Well, it's the bus crash, of course, isn't it? And it happens to be the school bus run, with Denise returning from the library. What I found most disturbing about this was, yet again, the obvious, horrendously sexist and demeaning bullying of Louise by this Keegan fuckwit, who seems to be not only an overt misogynist and a bully, but also someone bordering on psychopathic meanness. The scene where he violently barged into her, shoving her violently up against the lockers and then divulging everything she said to him online, thinking him to be Travis, the other boy.

Actually, Rebecca was right. Keegan had committed identity theft, and Travis had a right to know. And Louise exaggerated about Shakil's part in the humiliation of her at the tube station. Shakil didn't laugh. This boy has serious behavioural problems, considering the way he treated Denise on the bus. I hope this arsehole isn't a permanent character. He's vile.

A Tale of Two (or Three) Families - Review:- Friday 20.01.2017 Part II

This was a mediocre episode, although things began to fall into place about certain storylines. It was uneven, repetitive and downright bizarre in some instances.

Round and Round the Garden with Denise. Sean O'Connor has his own version of little twists. He gives us this brief, but brilliant scene between the increasingly appalling Kim and Donna in the market, which should have been an epiphany for Kim, and then it serves no purpose, but to show how obtuse and ignorant Kim really is.

When she questions Donna about her birth mother and if she ever thinks of her, Donna gives the hallmarked response of any adoptee - Claudette was her mother, she never thinks of the woman who gave birth to her, and she had an amazing and loving childhood, growing up with Claudette for a mum and Vincent for a brother. She wasn't raised by strangers, but by people who loved and wanted her. 

I honestly thought that this would provoke Kim into thinking about what Donna said and relating it to Denise's situation, but then when Denise tried a rapprochement by ringing to invite her to lunch, she hung up on her.

We also found out a bit about Denise's family history in the exchange that went down between Kim and Emerald or Ava or Grandma Medusa, whatever she's calling herself, that made me wonder just exactly how old Kim is supposed to be. I know Denise is 47, the same age as Ian and Sharon. I had thought Kim was fortyish, because Vincent is past forty. I didn't think she was in her thirties at all, but yet she remarked to her mother that when she was seven, Emerald handed her over to Denise to raise, and that Denise raised Kim and their other sister Daphne. So have they made Kim significantly younger or Denise significantly older? 

Kim is no spring chicken, and she hasn't been since she joined the show almost seven years ago. So how could Denise, who would have been a schoolgirl, at best, take charge of two younger sisters? EastEnders fails again in continuity.

The other thing I noticed about this segment of the second episode is not only how emasculated Vincent the character has become, but also just how much of a background character Kush has become. Apart from Patrick, Vincent is probably the most likable of the Fox-Hubbard dynamic, but even Patrick is emasculated to a point in that he's reduced, sometimes (and was even so at the end of the episode) to a level of speechless stupefication in the face of the Fox sisters' determination. Good old Patrick, always there to bend to their will.

Now it's Vincent. It's Vincent we see caring for Pearl. Kim takes her out for walks just so Kim, herself, can see and be seen. When Vincent takes the child out, it's for pleasure; but whenever we see the family dynamic, it's Vincent caring for the child, Vincent cooking for her and feeding her. In this episode, when Kim wanted to confront her mother, she didn't ask

I hope Grandma Medusa is short-term. She's another stock character in which EastEnders tries to specialise - the horny grandmother character, poncing about the house half-naked, coming onto her son-in-law and making racy comments with Kush. In the episode prior to this one, Kush and Denise sorta kinda bonded again over the fact that he's had to give up his son for Martin to raise, when he was handed some home truths about his preying on vulnerable women and being as self-centred, but in a different way, as his mother. I hope that wasn't a foreshadowing for someone - Phil or Kim - go fanagle the Christ Child back onto the Square and bring him up right under Denise's nose. In fact, I thought her scene in the previous episode with Libby was very much a laying to rest of the child in question, a moving on.

But everything was blown to the wind by Kim's intransigence, and her literal disowning of Denise because she put her child up for adoption. Kim is simply one stupid bitch, who deserves smacking down by someone, and I'd nominate Libby to do the job. After Donna eloquently described her life and childhood as an adopted child, Kim still cannot see the forest for the trees. No one ever gives a child up lightly, and maybe she feels slighted by the way Grandma Medusa allegedly passed her from pillar to post, but Kim has no right sitting in judgement of Denise, when she's a pretty shitty mother heself. She uses the adorable Pearl as a mini-reflection of herself, dressing her in identical outfits which border on ridiculous, in the hope that people will be attracted to Pearl and then notice Kim. Other than that, she cares little for the child. It's Vincent, with whom we see Pearl mostly. Kim's too busy putting herself and her dodgy ideas about. 

Denise is working a zero hours' contract job on probably minimum wage. Childcare will cost her more than she earns, unless she uses Patrick for free babysitting, but he's an elderly man, himself. Kim is just one intransigent, selfish, stupid bitch. She's probably jealous that Denise had the guts to tackle a problem and do something she seriously would have liked to have done, herself.

On the other hand, I hope this is an adoption story with an end which doesn't mean either parent getting the child back, because for too long the show has dissed the concept of adoption, and that's an insult to every adoptee or adoptive parent everywhere.

And Now We Know ... Another subtle little twist O'Connor interjected in the second half episode, which I thought was marginally better than the first one: I thought when Grandma Medusa, Denise and Libby were having breakfast at the Vic buffet, that once Libby and Denise sussed that Babe was doling out beer in a teapot, that one of them, most likely Libby as she's such a stick, would be the one to grass to the authorities. 

(Mind you, Grandma Medusa got the line of the night about Kim not ever being one to get the best from a sausage).

But the moment I saw Babe top up the brew of the stranger in the Vic and the moment he asked about the licence covering serving alcohol at breakfast, I knew he was someone official. Her coy answer about rules being made to be broken will cost Mick his livelihood. Seriously, you have to be some serious alcoholic who would want to start his day with beer for breakfast.

But the twist to this was the same bloke rocking up and being served in the café and overheard by Kathy reporting Mick, Linda and Shirley as the Vic's licencees, asking that their names be run through the computer for criminal or lesser offences. 

I was right when I predicted that Ian or Kathy would be the downfall of both Babe and the Carters losing the Vic's licence. She reported Babe to the police for sabotaging her coffee machine with ratshit - vandalism - but the guy, in investigating that incident, stumbled onto something much bigger - the Carters breaking licencing laws. The worst that could happen is Mick, Linda and Shirley being hauled off to the nick; the least that could happen is that they'll lose their licence.

You know where this is leading, don't you? First, it will probably lead to Babe leaving Walford, being run out by Mick for one sin too many, namely losing him his livelihood. And second, and here it is ... I predict Sharon will take over the licence of the Vic and the Carters will remain as tenants and manage the place for her, much in the same capacity as they did for Elaine. In fact, I can picture the scene - Mick despondent, not knowing what to do, everyone tearfully packing to leave and suddenly, Shirley has an idea, and goes running to Sharon, to eat crow and ask a favour.

Phil's Search for a Son. They should have a gameshow spin-off from EastEnders - Ladies and gentlemen, Phil Mitchell's Search for a Son .... will YOU be the lucky lad Phil takes home tonight?

Phil attracts waif-and-stray urchins like a magnet attracts metal. He has a difficult relationship with his own son, who constantly craves his attention and love, but Phil can't see past his homophobia. So he has Ben, the real son, about whom he cares little. 

Then there's Jay, the sometime son, who wandered in off the street and appeared to be everything Phil ever wanted in a son - heterosexual, bullish, bullying tendencies, male interests. He even got the boy to change his surname to Mitchell. Alas, Jay's conscience and his propensity to land himself in situations embarrassing to Phil Mitchell's pride, has meant that on numerous occasions, Jay has been consigned to the periphery of the Mitchell kingdom and has reverted to using his original surname of Brown.

(Come to think of it, why is Jay still living at the Mitchell residence? Immediately before Christmas, the Mitchells were told by Social Services that Jay had to find alternative accommodation or else, Louise would be taken into care. Well, Christmas was a month ago, everyone's back at work now, Jay's still living with the Mitchells and Louise is still very much there bopping about the place in her pj's. Has O'Connor forgotten this? He can't surely have forgotten that Jay is a registered sex offender, and that part of his conditions of freedom is that he not live in a household where an underaged girl lives. This can't be yet another piece of forgotten lore, like Billy's post?)

Candidate number three after Jay is Dennis Rickman Jr. Phil's bonded with the boy, for whom he feels a guilty responsibility for Dennis's father's death. Dennis, like Jay, is impressionable and all boy. He loves Phil, who's the only father figure he's ever known, and until recently, Phil was willing to make him a full Mitchell by adopting him and giving him the coveted Mitchell surname. That was before Candidate Number Four came into being.

Candidate Number Four is the holy Fox-Mitchell One-Night Mistake, and he's being carted off to adoptive parents, whisked away from Phil before he ever got a plan in shape to fight for him.

And now, there's another candidate on the scene.

The phonecall Phil received on the eve of the Blisters' funeral wasn't from Grant or Sam or Denise or anyone we knew. It was from Aaron, the aenemic-looking son of Tony, Phil's unseen liver friend, who died. This is another instance of Phil feeling remorse and guilt - guilt that he got the liver that Tony should have got, and Tony died.

They meet in the café, and almost immediately Phil asks if there's anything he can do for the lad, the cheeky little blighter reels off a list of things he wants, which include new trainers, a new computer games console and a trip to Orlando.

Phil's reaction is to dig deep into his bottomless pockets and growl:-

Let's start with the trainers.

You what? He's never seen this kid before and when he asks if he needs anything - like maybe some compassion and emotional support, the little arsehole starts reeling off a list of things his father was obviously too sick to buy him. Not only that, but Phil is a stranger, an older man whom he doesn't know, who offers him money.

At least the boy's mother, who appears to be French, had enough nous to storm around the Mitchell house, in front of Sharon, and rightfully castigate Phil for giving her son money for trainers.

I don't think this is the last we'll see of these people. I think Phil has just inherited another surrogate son, and the likes of Jay, poor little Denny and the holy child will fall by the wayside. And along with the surrogate son, I can see him eventually comforting the mother as well - probably when Sharon gets involved with saving the licence on the Vic. (Phil always reacts precipitously and pejoratively when Sharon gets stuck in on a business project). 

And when he is inevitably found out by Sharon, he'll blame everything and everyone but himself - after he lies, he'll say it was because he was missing the child he lost through Denise's decision, he'll say he was mourning Tony, who is just a name to most viewers because we didn't see him after all, so why should we relate? I hope this will mark the end of Phil for Sharon, because I still think she's going to get her real baby back - the Vic.

But Phil needs to give some attention to his daughter.

Louise Takes a Trip to TrumpLand. On the day when a self-avowed sexual predator is sworn in as the most powerful man in the Free World. the show continues with the ritualistic and misogynistic humiliation of Louise by this cocky little piece of shit, Keenan. 

This is basically cyber bullying - stealing the intellectual content of a boy she likes and whom she knows from Drama Club, and pretending to be him. It shows her naivete and trusting nature - Louise may act all street-suss, but she really isn't. She thinks she's arranged to meet a boy, Travis, for an afternoon, but when he's late, she's confronted by Keenan, and his multi-hued gang. Really, they covered every colour going - bi-racial (Keenan), Asian/Middle Eastern (Shakil), one white lad and one Afro-Caribbean. The BBC is nothing, if not an equal opportunity employer. 

It's then that Louise finds out that Keenan's been the one she's been texting,thinking he was Travis and telling him her innermost thoughts and secrets - like how she misses Peggy and songs Peggy sang to her, as well as her thoughts about Ronnie and Roxy.

This is toxic and actually quite disturbing to watch. Remember this bloke wanted to inviter her to his males-only bash just for the humiliation ritural. It seems, however, that Shakil is not too comfortable with this behaviour, but as yet, he's not found his balls and stood up to this creep.

Happy Families. Glenda wants to raise Matthew, and she has a right to do so. Jack has no rights to Matthew at all, and for some ungodly reason - probably because Declan Bennett is busy with his cabaret in New York - Charlie doesn't seem to what to know his son, and Yvonne doesn't seem to be bothered either.

Those are the only three people who have any right to Matthew, so I didn't take too kindly to Sharon sticking her oar in and having a go at Glenda, whatever Glenda's motives are, and I have to think that she views this as a genuine second chance to make amends for failing Ronnie and Roxy. Instead, we get plotting and planning, the Brannings and the Mitchells, Sharon giving it the big I AM, and Max urging Jack to turf Glenda out.

At least we now know Jack is going nowhere. I thought he'd bought the house in Ongar, but he mentioned cancelling the rental, so maybe he thought about renting it and selling Ronnie's house instead. Max reminds him that all the time he's in Walford, he'll have Sharon and Honey doing his housework and Lauren babysitting (because that's all Lauren seems to do), so he has to stay.

At the end of the day, the simplest thing for Jack to do would have been to ask Glenda to stay and help him with the kids, which is what he did eventually, but not until after the woefully bad scene where Danny showed up and offered to get Glenda to relinquish any claim for Matthew in exchange foro 20 grand. We then had to witness two really bad feigned punches from Jack on Danny (who can't even take a fake punch decently) and then the sounds of Jack beating him up, whilst we watched Max bathe his bacon sarnie in ketchup. The symbolism wasn't lost.

This is how you get rid of Danny and keep Glenda, but Glenys Barber is only in the UK for six months out of the year, so I shouldn't think it will be too long before Jack is bonking her for sympathy sex.

The Funeral Episode - Review: Friday 20.01.2017 Part I

I'm not a big fan of EastEnders' funeral episodes, to say the least. The best funeral episode, I thought, was Frank Butcher's, but a lot of the others were either sensationalistic (like that of the minor character Trina) or downright disrespectful (Pat's funeral was more about the Brannings than it was about her).

I found it highly amusing that the funeral took place on the day of America's funeral, when Donald Trump took over to drive the thing into the ground. So much of EastEnders reminds me of Trump at the moment, it almost hurts to watch it.

Daran Little wrote both episodes tonight, and as much as he's my favourite writer on the show, these were pretty mediocre fare.

The Funeral March. Every wedding isn't without unnecessary drama, and so it is with every funeral. This one, curiously, combined the Mitchells and the Brannings in their grief. I found it The Branning contingent was much depleted - Max and Jack. Lauren played babysitter (what happened to the web design career?) and Abi was a no-show all around, but to me, the episode just emphasised how selfish and immature a man Jack really is. 

I get it that the show is trying to depict him as she selfless, sacrificing father, but he isn't. He simply isn't. I do also get it that he's grieving Ronnie, but a Ronnie that Sean O'Connor has given far too much respect to as a character. It jarred me hearing Honey remark in this episode that Ronnie had the kindest heart of anyone she'd ever known, when she didn't. Ronnie was a psychopath, who obsessed on her sister and who transferred the sexual obsession she may have had for Roxy to Jack and fixated on that. She was obsessed about having a child, and when she finally had one, she consigned his care to his father, who bored her. Just last New Year's Day 2016, Jack was ticking her off because she'd forgotten that it was Matthew's birthday.

She'd killed two men, and often threatened others by warning them that they didn't know of what she was actually capable. I wonder if O'Connor cleaned up Ronnie's image before killing her off to assuage her legion of fanatical fans who thought she could do no wrong, the ones who were positively certain that she'd killed Carl White in self-defense, when I find it hard to defend yourself against someone who's bending over a car boot with his arse up in your face, unless he'd had a curry the night before and you're defending yourself from his flatulence. I guess Ronnie just couldn't stomach Carl's farts so she dropped the boot lid on his neck.

You bastard! She screamed. You've farted in my face!

Yes, I do get that Jack is grieving, but my sympathy is wearing thin with him at the moment. The kids have gone from asking endlessly if Ronnie or Roxy are returning to accepting the fact that they aren't. Now, at the eleventh hour, as the Mitchells and what's left of the Brannings assemble, Jack decides, not only that the children shouldn't attend the funeral, but also that he's not going either.

On a day when the Free World celebrated the ultimate spoiled manchild ascending, EastEnders gives us Jack Branning screwing up his face and asserting that he isn't going to Ronnie's funeral, simply, and that's that. I suppose we were supposed to feel his pain at the thought of his wife being shoved away into the cold. cold ground; but Jack's actions came across as those of a spoiled brat rebelling against something he was supposed to do.

All of this played out in real time, with the likes of Honey, Glenda, Phil, Sharon and Auntie Sal, no relation to either of the Blisters (being from Peggy's side of the family), who never misses a knees-up for a wedding or a funeral, sat in the dining room end of the front room passing judgment without compunction.

No amount of friendly coercion from Glenda or gentle yet abrupt manipulation from Jack could induce Jack to budge, so it was down to Dot, once again, to persuade Jack, reminding him that she didn't want to go to Jim's funeral, and she knew that the body in the box wasn't the Jim she'd known and loved, but she felt it her duty to accompany him on this one last journey.

Sal, meanwhile, leaves her acerbic tongue for Glenda, continuing with a litany of criticism about Glenda crying at the death of her daughters, shouting out how she'd abandoned them, accusing her of making everything always about her.

In the end, the funeral was yet another Walford funeral, with Ronnie literally canonised in death and Roxy going along for the ride, Phil reading a schmaltzy poem, allegedly written by Ben, about Ronnie and Roxy forever being with everyone and Donna arranging for an Ibiza-style club number with everyone jumping and dancing about. A fitting end for a psychopath in her mid-forties and her childwoman sister. And Sal's decision to say a few words about how wonderful the Blisters were and how Glenda abandoned them. Quite a change from Sal's earlier opinion of the Blisters, if you remember this:-

Sal was always criticising the Blisters, but since Ronnie returned from prison, in Sal's eyes, the could do no wrong. 

We got the full whack of Ronnie's burial - and I was surprised to realise that Ronnie was actually 43! - but almost nothing of Roxy's, other than to note that they were both being buried in the same grave, with Roxy on top of Ronnie, which was ironic, since Ronnie had always managed to come out on top of Roxy and would, literally, have liked to physically have accomplished that also.

No, poor Roxy got short shrift; instead, we saw Jack, unable to take the full brunt of Ronnie being put away in the ground, repair to the church to find Dot with the kids and to be confronted by Glenda, who's announcing that she wants to raise Matthew. 

I must admit, throughout this episode, especially the scenes at the funeral, I kept hoping we'd get a surprise visit from Charlie. Dot's been in touch with Yvonne, and Charlie loved his son. There's no way he'd not want his child. That was a pretty weak premise.

Watching from the Windows. And so the continuing story of the victimisation of Denise continues. Kim is a bully and a bitch. Because I don't trust this storyline for one moment, I'm confused as to how we're meant to view this situation. I don't know if we're supposed to be Team Denise and understand her motives, or if this is yet another sleight of hand by TPTB, who have spent years bemoaning the fact that blood family outweighs adoptive family anytime. I can't tell you how much I hate the line about an adoptive child being "brought up by strangers."

I do understand that it was a huge step for Denise to put her baby up for adoption, and I understand her motives. In an age where older mothers are the norm, some women, especially those who had their children when they were relatively young, feel that it isn't fair on either the child or themselves when they have a baby late in life. Besides, with Chelsea and with Libby, Denise was, at those times, in a stable relationship with each of the fathers in question. 

As it's been reiterated again and again, Kim doesn't have to agree with Denise's decision to put the baby up for adoption, but she should respect and support her decision. I hate the way she keeps going on and on about the baby being "raised by strangers". However, it was good to see Denise actually apologise to Libby for the way she bullied and berated Libby about her abortion. It took her seeing Ronnie's and Roxy's funeral cortege to realise that life is too short to leave out necessary apologies. That was honest of her, and it was honest of Libby not to pull any punches and to tell her how bad Denise made her feel. She actually did to Libby what Kim is trying to do to her. I really wish someone would smack Kim, the way she pushes up her nose and purses her lips as if she's so perfect from her great height. 

She's an abysmal mother. Pearl is an appendage, and Vincent seems to do most of the hands-on child care.

The Continuing Destruction of Lee. Whitney's a sly, little bitch. She doesn't seem that bothered about the fact that she's spent the night at the Vic, away from Lee, dressed in Linda's pajamas and sleeping in Linda's bed. In fact, it's easy to pretend that she is actually Linda in situ.

Her game is to cozy up to Mick, always making sure that she's saying something either pejorative or mildly worrying about Lee - look sad, brush away a non-existent tear and sigh about how Lee hasn't called her, how she's looked at the phone all morning and even tried calling him, but he wouldn't answer. All of this shit reinforces the idea to Mick that Lee is the one doing the wrong. She's also daubed Babe in it as well, tattle-telling Mick that Babe also thought her wanton spending of Lee's money the reason why he was deeply in debt, and that only adds to Mick's already poor opinion of Babe, after the ratshit incident in the café. Babe's already skating on thin ice, but she susses Whitney's game and remembers the last time she caught Whitney coming onto Mick.

She still doesn't realise that the nature of Lee's job means he can't call her or be on tap for her needs and vagaries during the working day. When he turns up mid-day, she's cold and off-putting with him, playing the high and mighty Carter princess to such a degree that Lee actually does feel now that he has to kowtow to her to gain some sort of acceptance or approval from his father - surprisingly, Mick was so concerned by the fact that Lee hadn't come groveling to Whitney for forgiveness, he was ready to go have a word that morning.

I hate Whitney's show of self-righteousness. It was finding out about her interest in Mick which caused Lee to go off the rails and cheat with Abi, and had Lee not come into The Albert that night, even though she pulled away from his attempted kiss, Whitney was openly flirting with Danny Mitchell. When Lee confronted her at the end of her night out with Stacey, she couldn't handle the home truths and went running to Mick for support. He was wrong to give it to her. 

And, I'm sorry, but what are Lee's dirty clothes doing at the Vic? There was this lengthy and contrived scene, showing Whitney sorting through his dirty boxers and trousers at the Vic, in order to do some washing, when she finds his payslips and is shocked that he earns as little as he does. Apparently, Lee's lied to her about his wages. So that's another nail in his figurative coffin.

Pity the Men - Review:- Thursday 19.01.2017

On the eve of Trump, the last night of normality, we watched three of the Square's best Alpha males in meltdown, and yet another foolish escapade in the land of Fox news.

This was a pretty nothing episode, I'm sorry to say; but then, that seems to be the legacy of EastEnders, at least since Santer's (and by extension DTC's) tenure. Grab us by the pussy with a big storyline, then fade off the denouement with endless circular episodes of different versions of repetitive scenes. It's almost as if TPTB want to see how they can repeat the same scene from umpteen different angles.

This episode, I found to be pretty predictable, pretty circular and pretty brass in attempting to give one woman's voice to the person who's been re-cast.

It's all smoke and mirrors - a bit like Trump, is EastEnders, with its casual misogyny, subtle racism presented by stereotyping minority characters and insecure Oedipal menchildren.

Jack and Ronnie the Corpse. Well, that was Sam Womack's best performance of recent times. Even then, however, she couldn't master playing a stiff. Several times, the camera caught eye movement under her closed lids, and she honestly looked as if she were trying unsuccessfully to stifle a big grin at Scott Maslen's antics over her dead body. That's the first time I've ever seen a corpse smiling or with such expensively manicured nails.

Yes, Jack's grieving, but do we have to go over and over again the fact that the children are having difficulty comprehending the concept of death. I'm having a bit of trouble with that as well. You see, Amy is eight years old, rising nine, a couple of years off secondary school. She's already encountered death this year. Her Auntie Peggy died. OK, she was old and ill, and this is what often happens to old people; but not long afterward, her pet rabbit died, and often, a child's first experience of death is when a pet has passed. The loss of the rabbit - and in particularly traumatic circumstances - didn't seem to affect Amy in any sort of way. She seems to accept that her mother is gone and that she isn't coming back, but Ricky keeps harping about what can only be the prospect of life after death. He seems to have grasped Dot's explanation of Ronnie and Roxy as angels living in heaven, as well as the prospect of seeing the again one day; he can't stop asking questions in this vein, wanting to know if they'll be able to play with Auntie Ronnie when they saw her again in heaven.

This annoys Jack, who's told the kids the grim facts about death, which seems to have confused and upset them even more. They're kids. They need stories like angels and heaven and floating on clouds. There's time enough for the awful truth when they're older, and anyway, Ricky seems to have easily forgotten his mother, who seems to have easily forgotten him.

Jack's like a bull in a china shop, using the kids as props for his grief, insisting that they attend the funeral, which could prove extremely traumatic for them. Imagine Ricky trying to comprehend the fact that Ronnie and Roxy were being shoved into boxes and buried in the ground.  I'm Team Glenda on this - the children would be better off left at home. Someone - Stacey or Whitney - could babysit them; but instead, Jack wants them with her.

I thought the love scene between Jack and Ronnie's corpse was one of the cheesiest scenes ever done in EastEnders. Jack was as wooden as Ronnie was stiff, and his dry crying was embarrassing, as was the cheesy line about seeing her again.

There's another point of dispute I had about this segment of the episode - Jack asking Phil to speak at the funerals, insisting that the Blisters looked up to Phil and that he was their favourite cousin. That's a load of bullshit.

When Ronnie and Roxy rocked up in Walford almost 10 years ago, neither Peggy nor Phil even recognised them. They hadn't seen the since they were kids, and the feeling I got was that neither Phil nor the Blisters had particularly close relationships with each other. Too often than not Ronnie deliberately rubbed Phil the wrong way, and one of those ways was when she took up with Jack. Roxy used Phil as a convenience, and Phil was particularly cold with both of them. He considered Ronnie a liability and Roxy the runt of the litter. He barely had two words to say to her. Of course, he came up on their side of the fence when a question of protecting "fairmly" arose. He'd hide the fact that Ronnie had killed a man, but he wasn't too keen on the fact that she'd dumped a gun in his house. Ronnie always cleaned up Roxy's messes, and Phil cleaned up Ronnie's.

Manchild in the Promised Land: Phil. Who is Phil kidding? He's known Sharon for over twenty years, and Michelle, who's been away from her friend for equally that long, knows her far, far better than Phil ever could.

His foul mood might have something to do with guilt at being the recipient of a new liver whilst his recent mate Tony died, but a lot of his bad mood has to do with Denise putting his son up for adoption. He's lying, and Sharon knows he's lying. He's so self-obsessed and selfish, he can't see beyond anyone's needs but his own. 

He professes love for his children, but he totally ignores Ben and has little time for Louise, the child who took his illness very hard. Until he found out about the Miracle Child, Dennis was his favourite toy - the Non-Ben son, all boy who idolises him. But Dennis is not only a Non-Ben, he's a non-Mitchell, but until Phil found out otherwise, he was quite happy to adopt Dennis and give him the Mitchell surname, as if it were some sort of coveted honour to bestow upon the kid.

I'll bet all that's gone out the window now. Of course, if the show is true to form, then there won't be a return for the child that got away, because the adoption papers have been signed, done and dusted. But Phil's got a massive sulk on, and everyone around him has to suffer.

I felt sorry for Ben tonight, when Phil brushed Jack's request aside, without even giving a reason for his refusal. Ben immediately volunteered to speak - yet no one seemed to notice or appreciate this except Michelle. And for all his affirming his love for Sharon prior to his operation, he's back to treating her like an unwanted stepchild. He needs to stop thinking about himself and start thinking about what she's feeling at this moment. What she's feeling was absolutely palpable the moment they returned from the hospital and saw Denise.

People forget that Sharon's been through this sort of thing before she was involved with the Mitchells, getting involved with Wicksy, only for him to dump her and run off with Cindy, the mother of his son (both of whom he subsequently abandoned). Sharon picked up a vibe, however unpleasant it seemed, between Denise and Phil. She knows only too well how easy it is for adverse passion to turn into something else. After all, these two people share a child, wherever that child might be, and that's a bond that won't ever be broken, whilst Sharon will never bear a Mitchell heir, and the one time she was pregnant with one, she chose to terminate the pregnancy.

Sharon knows that Phil's upset about the baby. She needs for him to talk about this, if - for no other reason - than she needs reassuring of her place in his life. She lives in his house, she ministers to the maternal needs of his children by other women, but Phil wasn't with Sharon when Ben and Louise were conceived and born. Phil and their mothers have moved on, but Phil and Sharon were married when this child was conceived, and Sharon is vulnerable.

Kudos to Jenna Russell for giving a go to dialogue which I could only hear in Susan Tully's voice - from her initial interjection at the way Phil was offhandedly dealing with Sharon to forcing herself into his space and making him talk with her, every line she uttered was a line the real Michelle would have said. This was the way Michelle could be, especially regarding Sharon, whom she always defended to the hilt.

I don't think Phil loves Sharon. In fact, I don't think he loves anyone but himself. This baby would be his chance to undo what he did with Ben, to do what he'd hoped to do with Dennis, but this would really matter with this child because he'd be a blood Mitchell. And I don't think Sharon loves Phil. I think she's craved a normal family and a sense of belonging so long that she'll settle for this security, but even now this is threatened.

She deserves so much better than Phil ... and that phonecall he took at the end isn't whom you think it is.

A Bite of the Apple. How much do I hate Whitney? A person most generally speaks the truth when they're drunk, and Lee spoke truth to Whitney's power tonight. He was totally right. Whitney is one of those girls who has subtle, coy ways of getting what she wanted. Oh, she'll never ask outright for something, but she will insinuate. 

The remark she made about marrying Lee in a bin bag wasn't sincere at all. She's like these Scarlett girls you see in the US - "Scarlett" as in "Scarlett" and "Melanie" in "Gone With the Wind." Scarletts will always latch onto milquetoast Melanies as friends, being nice to plainer girls because it makes them seem nicer. 

Whitney's remark about marrying Lee in a bin bag was meant to make her look loyal and sincere and good in the eyes of those who heard the remark. Of course, it works wonders. Because the object of her remark hears this and thinks how good she is, she's rewarded - with the wedding of her dreams. The hint was helped by, as Lee said, her leaving bridal magazines all over the place.

Everything Lee did, every penny of money he borrowed was to live up to Whitney's expectations of him. She made a remark about his having cheated, but Whitney cheated on him long before that incident with Abi. In fact, his encounter with Abi came as a result of having found out Whitney had designs on Mick and had tried to kiss him. Ever since then, compounded with his depression, Lee has felt that he doesn't measure up to Whitney's standards.

He was, indeed, quite happy to carry on living in the pub, and Linda and Mick were happy for that, but she made noises about wanting a flat - wanting to move to Stratford. And I'm sorry, she was coming onto Danny Mitchell tonight. He thought that, or else he wouldn't have made his cack-handed pass. 

And as soon as Lee levelled some home truths at her, she made a beeline for Mick. I thought ... she could have gone to Stacey. Stacey is her friend and Lily's mother, and they'd just returned from a night out. Stacey would be the perfect ear for a little sympathy, but instead, she ran whining to Mick, telling tales of Lee, knowing Mick's innate annoyance at Lee at the moment.

Instead of mediating, Mick took Whitney's side, even threatening to throw Lee out. Why? If Lee had raised his fists to her, I could understand that, but she was whining about Lee blaming her for their money problems, and this is the truth. She was spending money like crazy, when he knew she shouldn't have been and was trying, at least, to cap the loans he was taking out. Because of her, even because of her pregnancy, he resorted to stealing from Jack. Because she'd bought a whopping amount of expensive crackers for Christmas, he stole from the neighbour. She never protested about the earrings or the diamond necklace he bought her for Christmas. 

And Mick took her side. OK, they needed space from each other and time to cool down, but Mick should have sent Whitney to Stacey's for the night, or back to the flat and allowed Lee to stay, but he'd rather choke than do that.

You could just feel the sexual tension when Lee left and Mick gave her the brandy to drink. He is lonely, missing Linda - this is probably the longest he's been separated from someone with whom he's shared a life since childhood - and he's deeply worried about his debt. He is ripe fodder for comfort sex, and he can't see how Whitney has been surreptitiously coming onto him. Whitney knows how to play people, especially men. Of all the people in the family, Babe has sussed her out. It was Babe who discovered the clinch she had with Mick, but because Babe is now also in Mick's bad books, once again, he'll side with Whitney, and to top that, she plays the sympathy card, by calling up her past and lathering Mick with the fact that neither he nor Lee were ever worried about her sordid past - all the while looking up at him with those soft, sad eyes - the same soft, sad eyes with which she enticed Danny Mitchell. 

And of course, in inviting Whtiney to stay, Mick suddenly remembers that "the spare room" (one of many) hasn't been made up - what? The room she and Lee used to share? The Vic must be a Tardis pub, with Mick and Linda's room, Johnny's room, the room Nancy had, Babe's room, and the room Lee and Whitney shared? What about turfing Johnny out to the couch? No, Mick had to surrender his marital bed and sleep on the couch, but not before the pair shared one brief moment charged with sexual electricity. 

Whitney, dirty bitch that she is and always will be, loves Mick. She made up a Mick-myth about Lee and told herself over and over it was true until she believed it, and poor Lee was already having a problem living up to what he thought was the perfect image of his father. 

How long before Mick sleeps with her?

Just Another Bully. Let's not beat about the bush. Kim is a bully, and Denise has a drink problem. Oh, not a major problem ... yet, but as Phil quipped, she's starting back where she left off. Denise, like so many others in Walford, reaches for the bottle as soon as something doesn't go her way. So, yeah, she was "studying" over a glass of wine, and using that as an excuse to indulge her over-active hormones.

I'm glad she's sticking to her guns about the adoption, and I hope the deplorable family across the Square doesn't take the situation, underhandedly, in their own hands. 

When Kim said the words, "as a Mum", I wanted to puke. Pearl is a dress-up doll, who wears weirdly co-ordinated outfits to reflect her mother's inanity. Vincent is the better parent. 

Kim needs a slap.