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.
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.
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