This should be the official song of Walford.
In this episode, we were presented with alcohol being introduced into the home of an alcoholic who'd just had a liver transplant and teenaged boys objectifying girls from a distance over generous helpings of straight vodka. And Millennial Michelle drinking and drinking and drinking and wallowing in self-pity.
I'm surprised I liked this episode so much, considering that it was fraught with cruelty, self-centredness, hypocrisy and outright misogyny. Has Walford become Trumpland?
Millennial Michelle: The Epic Fail Continues. Okay, I know what her dirty little secret is, and I'll deal with that sometime over the weekend when I've seen the offensive episode.
Suffice it to say that I can now opine that Sean O'Connor should be taken out and kicked.
He should have been taken out and kicked for even considering a re-cast of Michelle, much less re-casting her with this particular actress. I'm sure Jenna Russell is a very accomplished and very good actress, but this will probably be her first failure in a role, recreating a character that was so seminal, so pivotal and so iconic that the job had "failure" written all over it before it began.
I remember someone being commissioned to write a sequel to Gone With the Wind because people just had to know if Scarlett and Rhett ever got back together. The book was rubbish and the mini-series which depicted it, even worse. How could Timothy Dalton even come close to Clark Gable's Rhett Butler? Well, he couldn't, and Jenna Russell's Michelle is nothing like Susan Tully''s character in any way, shape or form.
This woman is presumptuous, arrogant, interfering, overriding, self-pitying and rude. She walks into anyone's home - her brother's, her childhood friend's - and takes over, unasked.
She pushes the hospitality of Martin and Stacey, helping herself to what is probably their one bottle of wine, being kept for the ubiquitous celebration between themselves. Even her pithy promise to replace the bottle she drank stank of a promise the nature of piecrust - easily made, easily broken.
She is, however, sensing some hostility from Stacey and a presumption that she's overstayed her welcome. The story about cooings with Tim over the phone and a plane ticket back were so obviously lies. Feeling thus, she decamps to Sharon's house, knowing that this is Phil's first night home from the hospital and never thinking that the couple might like some quality time alone and that Phil might need some quiet and rest for his first few days.
Instead, she barges in and instantly begins to cook dinner for the couple. When Louise appears and protests that she had wanted to cook dinner for her father, Michelle tosses off a casual insult over her shoulder, remarking that with her, Michelle, cooking dinner, at least it would be nice.
At least someone's remembered the animosity that existed between Michelle and the Mitchell brothers, because Phil stomps off to bed, and once he does, this strange woman immediately whips out a bottle of wine and starts raiding Sharon's cabinet for wine glasses. Is she that tactless or lacking in common sense? Because as prickly as she could be, Michelle, Tully's Michelle, was rarely tactless and was grounded in good common sense.
Phil is an alcoholic. He's just got a new liver, and his next drink could send him spiralling out of control again. When both Sharon and Louise inform Michelle that there can be no alcohol in the Mitchell household, ever; this stranger simply shrugs her shoulders and says, nonchalantly,
He's gone to bed, he won't be coming back down.
And? Really, Michelle? I was too glad that for once, Sharon stood her ground and thought of her husband, even though Michelle, later over a cup of tea, which she wishes was a cup of wine, she disparages Sharon's husband and her marriage.
Left to her own devices, because she didn't accompany Sharon or Stacey to the baby shower (in and of itself an oxymoron as far as Sharon is concerned), she downs the bottle of wine on her own. She must have been drinking upstairs in her room because Rebecca and Louise were on babysitting duties. Still, she meandered downstairs long enough for Stacey to overhear a whiningly pitiful phonecall to the unseen Tim in the States.
This character isn't working at all, and the sooner she leaves Walford, the better.
Trumps-in-Training. I think we met one of SOC's heralded new characters tonight - another teenaged male, Keegan. Obnoxious, sneering, self-absorbed and frighteningly misogynistic.
Donald Trump would adopt him, no questions asked.
As bad a character as he is and portrayed by an inadequate actor, for the first time tonight, I actually liked Shakil.
With Carmel otherwise engaged at the baby shower, Shakil was coerced into having a male bonding party with a group of loutish lads. The overt misogyny exhibited by so young a character, his appalling objectification of women and girls, was, frankly, quite frightening.
According to Louise, she was invited to this party, where - it happens - she would have been the only female there. Considering Keegan's overt arrogance - the way he callously laughed when he accidentally damaged her new phone - you have to wonder why she was invited.
She refused, but Keegan was insistent that you didn't need women to have a party, not when he had, on hand, a video taken of someone named Callie, a girl who was having a party and to which Keegan hadn't been invited.The video showed the girl undressing, and this piece of shit was shown gloating at the fact that he'd sent the video to other students all over the school.
He thought that was a joke, but Shakil didn't. He objected to what Keegan did, as much as he could raise any sort of objection.
If SOC is about to raise the question of misogyny in this day and age, and particularly, misogyny amongst younger men - mindful of the fact that EastEnders has always exhibited a casual misogyny, from Mick's passive aggressive bullying of Linda to Jack's petty horniness - it's good that he's doing so. But if this is just another quirky character, he's someone we don't need.
And just a thought ... this is an Afro-Caribbean male, and this demographic has always been famously discussed amongst sociologists for supposed overt misogyny.
As Rebecca seems to be intent on leaving the area for a Sixth Form college, ostensibly, away from Walford (Kidderminster?), Louise will be left on her tod, at the mercy of shitheads like Keegan, and whilst I won't be sad to see the drippy Rebecca leave, if she is leaving, I don't want to see Louise bogged down in what is tantamount to an abusive relationship.
The Skank Denise and Her Annoying Daughter. Of course, this is the week where the blessed Blood Mitchell is born, and Mick, lamenting the the fact that he never knew his birth father until it was too late, remarks to Saint Denise that he thought Buster may have stepped up to the plate and assumed responsibility, if Shirley had just allowed him to know about Mick's birth.
Denise has let it be known that her babys father doesn't want anything to do with the child, but she's left with food for thought from Mick, so you know that she's going to spill the beans to Phil.
The surprise baby shower was a complete sham, and you wonder at the brass of Denise, sitting in the same room with the wife of the man who fathered her child. She's got herself into this mess, first of all, by doggedly refusing the option of an abortion and choosing to bear the child of a man she hated. To what purpose? That leads to the second problem - deciding to give the child up for adoption and then keeping this a secret from everyone remotely close to her, except Patrick. If something like that doesn't cause the mother of all hellraising fights, then nothing will.
But then, Denise has always been immersed in the repercussions of poor judgement. She'll expect to come out of this smelling like a rose, when she really shouldn't. She's an annoying character, and I'm fucking sick and tired of her perpetual smacked-bum face, her arrogance, her condescension, and her annoying relatives - the insipidly shallow Kim and that awful prig Libby, who's returned home, just to be present at the birth. Libby is as annoying as Michelle in much of the same way, swanning in and subjecting everyone to her way of doing things. She needs a slap, and Denise needs to go.
The irony of this is that Shirley, her sometime best friend, who purports not to judge her, wants to know who the baby's father is, as if she could become an avenging angel in getting the guilty party to own up to his responsibilities toward Saint Denise. However, once the idea is planted in her mind that Buster was in the thralls of an affair behind her back, the judgement motif goes out the window, because she thinks that Buster is the father of the Holy child.
Jack-Attack. There comes a time when grief becomes sheer selfishness, and that's Jack. He's surly, he's taciturn, he's like a bull in a china shop, keeping Max and everyone else at arm's length, insistent that he's going to move to Ongar - something will stop him from doing so.
He's in the anger phase of grief at the moment, and he's looking for someone to blame for Ronnie's death. In this episode, he found someone - Roxy.
It transpires that Roxy suffered a heart attack the moment she hit the water and literally sank without a snowball's chance in hell of a hope. Ronnie died trying to reach her sister. The police, at the moment, don't know how she died, but we saw her get tangled in her wedding dress and silently scream in the water. It's enough for Jack to draw his own conclusions - Roxy was a junkie. Her cocaine habit played havoc with her arteries, she suffered a heart attack and Ronnie died saving her. If not for Roxy, then Ronnie would be alive.
It plays in with Jack's myth about Roxy always bringing Ronnie down (when the truth is exactly the opposite). But the cruelest thing about this was the way he treated Glenda in the aftermath of this discovery, insulting her over her "junkie daughter" as if this were Glenda's fault. Here's a woman who has lost two children, and Jack is callous in his contempt. As well, he needs to remember that the "junkie daughter" is the mother of his child, and that his sainted wife cold-bloodedly killed two men.
Glenys Barbour is playing a blinder in this, and whilst I know she won't be a permanent addition to the cast - she spends half a year in the States - she'd be a welcome addition.
The Carters Come Full Circle. Karma bites that fat arse, doesn't it, Mick? After a terribly cruel phone conversation with Lee, where he reminds him that he's cleared Lee's debts with his own credit cards, Mick is forced to find £14,000 to ship Elaine and Linda home, medi-vac, from Spain.
Mick owns a pub. He bought the place outright with money. He pays Sharon and Tracey as barstaff, and probably Whitney too, and Abi. The rest of his help is family, two of whom take a share in profits, and people like Johnny and Babe are paid cash in hand as and when.
That pub mist mint a cool million a year, yet he can't find 14K in readies to ship his wife and mother-in-law home? The Vic is a solid business, which has been going in the community for years. I would suppose Mick has good credit history, considering that, working for Elaine, he had his room and board paid for and only had to worry about clothing his kids, so why won't the bank sub him what is actually a small loan to cover the cost of the specialise plane fare? I simply can't see why he couldn't get his hands on that amount of money. He must take that in in a week.
But I suppose it establishes the fact that, after berating Lee about his lax finances and taking money from loan sharks, he inevitably has to do the same, himself. This, and the fact that Babe was caught red-handed selling booze disguised as tea for the morning buffet lunch might hint at trouble ahead for Mick and his licence.
Hmmm ... I wonder if Shazza might re-claim the licence and arrange to have the Carters manage the pub for her? And Shirley is on the licence too.
Shirley and Sharon as licencees of the Vic. I like that.
I would think as well that Babe's underhanded behaviour will lead to her leaving as well. I'd bet, with this feud she's having with Kathy, leads to Kathy finding out about the Carters breaking licence rules at Babe's behest.
And everyone that matters in the Carter household is blaming Lee.
More departures on the horizon..
Pretty good episode.
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