Community Spirit Is Flagging the Viewers - Review: Monday 27.02.2017

I'm worried about EastEnders, the same way I was worried about Brookside. I was sick on Monday evening, so sick I couldn't even think about watching anything on television, just lying in bed with a hot water bottle. But I realised something this evening, today ... I didn't miss EastEnders at all. Even to the point that I debated whether or not it was worth my while watching Monday's programme; but I'm a creature of habit, so I did, and that meant writing what I thought about it.

And I thought ... there wasn't much there. Just bits of various examples of community spirit or, rather, how the community is dysfunctional. It dawned on me one of the reasons why the show isn't working anymore. Most of the characters are cartoons, caricatures. The soap genre has always drawn on OTT acting styles, camp in certain instances; that's part of its make-up. But it's troubling when you can identify almost every character as a type, or you find that they're actually looking the part they're playing before they open their mouths. There's no inference anymore, and precious little nuance. 

Rebecca's the shy, plain girl with no common sense and low self-esteem. I knew a girl years ago when I was in high school. She sat behind me in Shakespeare class - small, mousy, plain, she even hunched her shoulders like Rebecca does. No one ever knew her to have a boyfriend, and she always wore baggy men's shirts over her jeans. Imagine our surprise when, returning from Christmas break, we found out she'd had a baby during the past fortnight. Rebecca reminds me of her. 

Denise is "Angry in Tunbridge Wells" - at least, that's one of her many incarnations. She's always been angry, and ungracious, and ungrateful and generally rude - except now it's all the more evident and emphasized. The unlikely friendship of Jane and Stacey, as they turn into the two gossiping yet counselling matriarchs of the Square by dint of being married to the two scions of the two most prominent families in Walford is glaringly obvious. Even Max looks like the sly, shifty melodrama villain as he plots his way to the Square's destruction, if we ever get to know what that plan is. The awful schoolkids are cartoons, even attitudes - such as misogyny - are treated as norms.

But the worst thing about it is that all of this attitude is played out against circular storylines or storylines that are so awful, that you wish a plague of locusts would descend on the characters and eat them alive.

It's painful to watch. It makes me angry. Brookside was once my favourite soap, and I loathed the assholes who destroyed it and turned it into a parody. I'm beginning to feel the same way about EastEnders.

Oh, and the reason I'm worried? I didn't miss watching the show last night at all. In fact, during the day, I knew I'd have to watch it, out of sheer habit; and I didn't like that feeling in the least.

The Double-Edged Sword of Deceit: Michelle and Rebecca. This so-called love triangle is seriously sick, but even so, it's the most interesting thing to watch on the programme at the moment. It's like rubber-necking a seriously gruesome traffic accident or watching grisly blood'n guts horror film. You cover your eyes, but you just have to peek through your fingers to find out what happens next.

The conversation near the end of the episode between Michelle and Rebecca was probably the highlight of a decidedly lowlight programme. It harkened back to the days when EastEnders was big on nuance, and the original Michelle, played by Susan Tully, was, at once, probably the most nuanced and complicated character on the show until Phil Mitchell arrived (that is, until John Yorke fucked him over). I think this was a stab by TPTB at trying to get Jenna Russell to channel original Michelle.

The real Michelle (because Russell can never be the real deal) is someone who was infinitely capable of doing horrific things that imploded upon the people she loved most - her parents, Sharon - but at the end of the day, she had a way of sticking by them, a unique loyalty that made even those she hurt the most realise just how important she was to them; and in the end, the audience rose to her. Oh, there were times when you could actively dislike her for the cow she was, but somehow, you were always brought around to her point of view. To a great extent, Peggy Mitchell was like that too.

But this woman comes off as nothing of the sort. From the very beginning of the episode when she pathetically admits to the manipulative Preston that she was jealous of his having slept with Rebecca, we could view this discussion between Michelle and Rebecca at the end of their segment for what it was - a double-edged sword of deceit. Rebecca, still naive and essentially innocent, even after having been taken advantage of by two boys, sexually, approaches Michelle sincerely and with an honest desire to talk about what's troubling her.

Her questions are, genuinely, those of a sixteen year-old girl, who's precipitously slept with someone she barely knew and now wants to find out where the land lies in that circumstance. She simply wants to know if Preston's said anything about her during the weekend, but she also confesses to the gossip that's circulating the school about her having slept with what is described as "a random American."

This writing room, under O'Connor, is good with continuity, as opposed to their stint under Treadwell-Collins's watch, when they had to re-write virtually every main character's history to support whatever sensationalist storyline in which they were involved. And so, we had an oblique reference to Den and how Michelle had to face down the gossips when she was pregnant at Rebecca's age. All Rebecca was concerned with, hearing that tale, was how Michelle could have coupled with someone so much older; and, tellingly, Michelle remarks that when you love someone, really, age doesn't come into it.

That was kinda creepy, especially when you think about her relationship with Prestion, which I'll discuss in a moment, but the allusion was there in the remark. She obviously had an agenda, upon hearing Rebecca's original question, because she immediately started pushing Shakil as the "nice guy" on whom Rebecca should be concentrating. It was interesting to note Rebecca's actual real remark about her reputation, saying that had she been a boy, no one would be batting an eyelid at her actions.

This is true. The old double standard still holds true, but whilst Michelle's remark about having sex and enjoying having sex was all right for women in general, it wasn't the remark to be making to Rebecca at this time and place. She's been silly. On two occasions, she's been manipulated into going to bed with boys on the cusp of being men, who wanted to bed her for various reasons, and neither of those reasons had anything to do with love - one was for sheer horniness and the other was a revenge tactic. On the other hand, that remark, made by Michelle, was some sort of self-justification for her relationship with Preston, which, in and of itself, becomes sicker with every episode. 

In an indirect sideswipe of Rebecca's original question, Michelle basically tells her she'd be better off tending to her schoolwork, rather than thinking about boys the way Michelle had. Hang on ... Michelle didn't think about boys, she thought about men. Much older men (Den, horny Geoff), sometimes married men (the computer repairman) and her best friend's ex-husband, who was still infatuated with Sharon. In fact, for the better part of Michelle's youth, she spent most of her time, fighting to get what she wanted; and when she ultimately got it, she threw it away with one moment of madness.

When Rebecca finally demanded an answer to her question, Michelle told her the truth - what Preston said - that sleeping with Rebecca was "just a bit of fun", that he did it because she was "there." Callous and truthful, yes; and maybe Rebecca needed to hear that, especially after she mooted the idea of talking to Preston, to see if they had the chance of having a relationship together, when it's obvious that they don't. So Michelle was being brutally honest with her niece to dispel any illusions the silly girl might cherish from this encounter; however, she was also looking after her own interests. After all, she'd told Preston at the very start of the episode that she was jealous of the fact that he'd slept with Rebecca, just as she was jealous of the spectacle he put on for her benefit in the kitchen that morning, clad only in boxer shorts and a tank top in front of Louise and Snaggle Head and Sniggle, in all his glory.

He was teaching Michelle a further lesson, after preying on what he knew was her jealousy at having discovered him with Rebecca, on Friday, when she gave into that jealousy to sleep with the scrote. He was taunting her with how easily he could attract someone younger - a choice of three, no less; and Michelle fell for it.

She's a weak and pathetic woman. Maybe this comes from having spent so much time in the company of older men in her youth that she now craves something she's lost forever. I don't think she loves Preston; she loves the idea and she's blinded by the compliment of someone younger paying sick court to her and calling her "his girl." I don't think somehow he'd be calling her that in twenty years' time when she's pushing seventy, using her bus pass, moving stiffly with arthritis and literally looking her age, whilst he's still a young thirty-seven.

I don't know what his game is. Maybe he was flattered by the attention of an older woman; but I don't think he loves her. It would be interesting to know what sort of relationship he had with his parents, because at times, he sounds like a recalcitrant child demanding petulantly that a parent let him have his way - demanding money from Michelle to return home, flouncing out of the room every time she denies some sort of request. The truth is she wants him to leave because as long as he's within spitting distance, she's going to give into his demands. He's too young and too self-absorbed to understand what she had to sacrifice for having been stupid enough to have sex with a minor. At last, someone, Pete Lawson, no less, actually had Michelle utter the line that she'd committed a serious crime, and she could have gone to prison. (*Reality check: this is utter fiction that this woman is even sitting on that sofa in another country talking to the minor she, in legal terms, raped. She would actually be in prison now, and his parents would be suing the school system for negligence in allowing such a person to groom and target their child. No matter if Preston actually initiated affections, Michelle was the adult; and the responsiblity lies with her).

The sheer stupidity of this boy is rank - even thinking about getting a job in this country, when he has no qualifications and cannot legally stay. Getting a visa? How? Impossible. Besides, where the hell are his parents? He's probably left the country without their consent and probably took money from them under false pretences to make the trip. The authorities should be after his Russian-sounding ass. And there's Martin, being stupid enough to allow him to work on the stall. Michelle was right there - what if Carmel or someone else from the council asked to see his work permit - because Martin is paying him. This could not only impede upon Martin, but also upon Ian Beale because Ian owns the fruit and veg stall.

There was another double-edged observation from Michelle to Rebecca as well, when Michelle told Rebecca that Preston working with Martin was meant as a ploy to taunt Rebecca. He wanted her to see him, knowing that all he had to do was open his mouth to Martin, and Martin would know the score about Rebecca. Maybe, too, this was a vocalised fear on Michelle's part because he could also open his mouth to Martin about Michelle as well. Her remark to Preston about losing her family in the US because of him was enough - Martin and Rebecca are all she has left in Walford, and she doesn't want to lose them as well. Preston knows this, and he's not above using this as a veiled threat in order to get his way.

Do I feel sorry for this woman? No. She made her bed hard, now she has to lie in it. After awhile, it just gets tiresome to watch someone stick around day after day - when is his original return flight booked? Why aren't his parents going beserk and getting the police to liaise with authorities here to get his arse home? This is just turning into a sick situation.

As for the teens involved in all of this, less of this dynamic, please. I'm beginning to wonder if Louise is a wimp. She was feisty enough until recently in the programme, and when she's in the company of Snaggle Head and Sniggle, she morphs into a female version of Shakil, standing around and saying nothing when the other two go off on a tangent about Rebecca.

I don't know why these two dislike her so much, but as EastEnders is not becoming the place to be for misogyny, I wondered how long it would be before we saw it at the hand of women, themselves. Believe me, there are no greater misogynists than our sisters in gender. And tonight we saw Sniggle looks-shaming Rebecca, referring to her as ugly, when Sniggle isn't anything to write home about as well. She and Snaggle Head are cartoons in bitchery, exaggerated bitchery, bragging to Shakil about Rebecca's "random American" when they'd be like bitches on a heat race with their knickers - one Yank and they're off.

But Louise just stands around and says nothing, during all of this, looking gormless. She's got character enough to call the other two out for their idiocy. She's supposed to be a Mitchell, FFS! (Ironic remark she made to Michelle about Michelle not being her mother - where is Lisa, who doesn't even get a mention these days?) Louise is all right about approaching Rebecca when Sniggle and Snaggle aren't around, but she clams up from fear when they approach. Some friend.

The Mouths. I've lost track of the number of storylines Denise has in the offing at the moment. Let's see ... there's the baby storyline, the non-sister relationship with Kim, there was the smack with Keegan the Scrote, and now there's the repercussions after that.

Denise has always had a big mouth and the propensity to speak before she thought. I'm surprised nothing more has come from it thus far. She's rarely apologetic, she's ungrateful, she's got a huge ego and sense of entitlement, and she's bloody rude.

So much for the elevated ideas about her station because she's read a few books in a GCSE course and fancies the teacher. She got played tonight by a pro - the newspaper. Of course the reporter was going to report facts ... and bend them to the slant of the story. He didn't deal in fake news, or alternative facts. He stated what Denise actually said and did, and there was no argument with what was printed - except by Denise.

As Carmel said, she did hit a kid, and she fully admitted to branding the Minute Mart, her bread and butter, as a concern which rips off local people. What astounded me was her utter arrogance in thinking that neither the district manager nor anyone in positions of authority would see this piece, and if they did, they simply wouldn't care.

Is she seriously stupid, or does she think that her shit doesn't smell? These people think about profits, and the last thing any company needs is an employee who slags off the outfit to the public. 

Denise objects to the term "shopgirl"? Well, yes, that's archaic, and more than a bit sexist (another EastEnders' stab at misogyny). The proper term would be "shopworker" or "retail worker" - and, I'm sorry, but that is what she is, until she lands qualifications which lead to something better. 

Even Donna, who's been known to be more than a tad insulting on occasion, was telling her to rein her rants in a bit. And she's still going on, making insinuations about Shakil in front of Carmel, and expecting Carmel to take it -w which, actually, she does and with aplomb. Imagine Carmel having a rant about youth and making insinuations to Denise's face about Libby or Chelsea? Denise's reaction doesn't bear thinking about.

Of course, we had to have a confrontation with the other mouth, Keegan. I deeply dislike this character, but I've noticed that he seems only to target women and girls for his particular hatred. He was intent on humiliating Louise for some unknown reason - and Sniggle and Snaggle are still cruelly intimidating her over the catfish incident and her escapade on the bus when it crashed; he's now trying to intimidate Denise, who gives as good as she gets; but it's obvious that he's trying to goad her into a confrontation again, which would ultimately end in her swatting him. This little arsehole knows how to play the system. Another smack from Denise, and she'd get custodial time. 

The actor is bad. I especially hate the way he snorts like a bull to indicate anger. I hope his stay is short-lived. He's not even a character you'd like to hate. He cowered when Kush appeared - funny, how a smack from Denise would mean a call to the police, but a clout from Kush would have been humiliating in the extreme. I wonder if the teacher he glassed at his former school was a woman?

Like Kush said, Denise has to learn to keep her big gob shut, but in the end, we see that TPTB at The Minute Mart have gotten wind of her little bit of adverse publicity. She wants to remember that she's lucky even to have a job in that place again, after the shenanigans she got up to before.

There was irony at play in this sequence with Kush's advice to the gormless and mostly-silent Shakil - who's coming across as the most likable in a largely loathsome group of teenagers, mostly played by adults. 

That's not the way you treat women.

Really, Kush? What about the way you treated Shabnam? Or Stacey? Or the myriad of faceless women you chatted up, bedded and then binned, using your dead wife as a chat-up line? What about Nancy Carter? I suppose having a long stint standing around on the market in the background has given you time to think.

Shakil is conflicted, and he's probably typical, not only of most adolescent males, but most males in general and their attitudes to women and sex. Shakil likes Rebecca, but the main reason he was interested in her was the fact that he was horny, and he wanted sex and afterwards, casual sex. She was silly enough at sixteen, to think this was the relationship to end all relationships. Whether she dumped him or he dumped her is a moot point. She allowed herself to be manipulated by Louise, and subsequently, by Sniggle and Snaggle, by Louise tricking her into sending Shakil's naughty pictures to everyone in school. It's difficult to gauge Shakil because he says so little - possibly because when he speaks, no one can understand him. He still likes Louise, but he won't talk to her because of masculine pride and because she always seems to be surrounded by manipulating and mean females, and also because as much as he's told by Kush to talk to Rebecca, he doesn't know how to do so. 

And now, he's tagging along after Keegan, looking uncomfortable every time Keegan taunts and verbally flagellates another female. Not offering any defence of Louise, standing by dumbly and tacitly accepting corporate responsibility for taunting Denise, and receiving the blame for as much.

Now, he seems affronted that Rebecca has slept with another boy, an American boy, at that. Had he done the same, moved on and slept with another girl, Rebecca would have been hurt, and he wouldn't have cared. No one would have cared except her and her friends. This is what boys do, after all; but woe betide a woman who does the same. It's as true in adult relationships as it is in adolescence. The hateful girls are slut-shaming Rebecca, when they are, in fact, lusting after having sex with Preston, and because they can't, they make damned sure that Shakil knows about this, and they go out of their way to infer that this was a conscious choice because maybe - just maybe - Shakil didn't rate up to much in bed.

So he sulks, he feigns indifference when she tries to speak to him, but he's having second thoughts and is on the cusp of making contact with her again, when Keegan comes along to drop poison in his ear. Seeing Rebecca leave the house where Preston lives, ne'mind the fact that her aunt also lives there and she just may have been visiting her, Keegan determines that she deserves some sort of vile punishment for dumping Shakil and rubbing his nose in it.

You wonder where all the misogynistic hatred comes from in this character, but you really don't want to know, because that would mean a continuance of his vile character.

Massaging Egos. So Ian doesn't want to get his test results? Whoda thunk that? This is another overused staple in EastEnders - Carol, Tanya, even Mark Fowler played the denial card when confronted with major health issues.

The friendship of the moment happens to be the unlikely friendship between Jane and Stacey. This is unusual because of the situation with Bobby and how the Beales set Max up to be carted off to prison. However, Stacey, a murderer, herself, is in no position to judge, and the Beales are family twofold. Ian is Martin's cousin, and by marriage, also Stacey's cousin. Lauren was once her sister-in-law and is now her friend. They are both young mothers with children. So I suppose there is a natural affinity, the two of them being married to Lou's grandsons.

As much as I'm uneasy with the free ride the Beales have been given in relation to avoiding prison punishment for harbouring Bobby, I can accept that they've been dealt karma of a different sort with Jane confined to a wheelchair and now something about to happen in relation to Ian's health.

It was clever, however, the way they tied this in with Dot's self-imposed isolation, which was typical Dot and also a typically stupid diva-ish thing to do. Dot is elderly, and with Abi away for the weekend, anything could have happened to her alone and on her own in the house. Watching Dot feel sorry for herself as Jack and then Stacey and Jane pommeled her doors and windows.

Jane thought fast enough to alert Dot to Ian's health issues and we got what amounted to yet another journey in continuity through the Beale-Fowler male medical history line - how Pete died young from a car crash, how Arthur had a brain hemorrhage and never went to doctors (no blood kin), and finally, how grandad Albert died all too young. Throw in Jim's stroke and Ian's already beginning to sweat and think about his coffin.

The Good Wife. Notice how subtly Whitney has moved into wife mode - specifically, Mick's wife. She's the one who sorts some of Mick's financial woes by halving his 20k fine for breaking licencing laws. The fine was actually 10k apiece for both Mick and Babe - except, no one's seen or heard from Babe since she uttered a curse on the Vic. Why, one would almost think that Babe was behind all the bad luck that's been heaped on the Vic. Whitney points out that Babe needs to be found, and Mick toddles off to the Vic to report her disappearance. The police put out a bulletin for her arrest.

Mick's attitude toward Whitney is ever-so-slightly changing with the departure of Lee and in Linda's absence. He's openly calling her "babe" now. And when Whitney says she's going to visit Lily, he again calls her "babe" and declares he'll walk her over. They have the mien and demeanor together of a couple, not someone who should have a fatherly interest in someone who's still, effectively, married to his son.

In fact, when they run into Jack and Mick, confident that Jack was still going to loan him the money needed to fix the Vic, with the workmen carrying on and expecting to be paid at the end of the week, has the brass to remind Jack of the loan, which makes for an uncomfortable moment - because Jack was just on his way to tell Mick that the loan wasn't going to be a loan anymore. He had a lot of valid reasons - Dot's accident means he's going to have to pay for health care (not that Jack's short a few bob) etc - all the while with Max standing near, making quasi-inaudible remarks about the state of play in Jack's life - he's just lost his wife, he has to find child care, he doesn't need this extra expense - and all the time, Mick is cringeing with embarrassment at having to beg, whist Whitney the new Non-Wife, openly begs, even offering to look after Jack's children, anything, anything to help Mick. Anything.

The two traipsed off from the pub and left a hungover Johnny to deal with the workmen, having partied all weekend at Ben's and Jay's housewarming party, which is what students do. How long before something happens between Mick and Whitney and how long before Johnny finds out?

The Worst of Times - Review:- Friday 24.02.2017

Ever since Sean O'Connor took over the helm as EP, there's been an on-going theme about rubbish collection, rats and dysfunctional society, a loss of community. Dominic Treadwell-Collins normalised murder and murderers. O'Connor's stab at normality is to make everyone whinge and moan about fortnightly rubbish collections, having a Square on the cusp of trendy Stratford awash in stinking rubbish, rats and rude children, something harkening back to the Middle Ages.

EastEnders was always in a bit of a time warp, even in the 1980s, but this is ridiculous.

Fortnightly bin collections are what's happening in councils across the land. Authorities have been tightening their belts for once. Instead of whingeing, whining and moaning, Denise could do something very British for once in her pathetic ego-centric life - belt up, belt up in a car and go to the dump. She doesn't have a car? Her brother-in-law does.

Kush has a car, Martin Fowler has a van, Jack Branning has a car, Mick Carter has an ageing SUV, Billy Mitchell has a hearse, the Mitchells have vehicles. Everyone on that Square has access to transportation to take excess rubbish to the amenity tip. It's called "getting on with it", something people the world over have done since day one.

Rubbish and rats are one thing, mouthy kids are another; and the show has made them the hateful cartoon variety. Some of these urchins, most of whom are played by adults, are stereotypes. 

When did EastEnders get this bad? The truth is that the show started on the slippery slope downwards with John Yorke's tenure, and started to go off he road under Berridge's tenure. It's been bleeding viewers since 2003, and what happened that year? The show raised the first corpse from the dead. It started spinning out of control with Bryan Kirkwood, went off the rails entirely with Dominic Treadwell-Collins ... and now, regrettably, I think it's in freefall.

Something Easily Lost Is Difficult to Regain. I hate this storyline. I hate how this producer has ruined forever the character of Michelle Fowler. I hate how archly hypocritical she is, how she is capable now of telling bare-faced lies to her brother, and how she abuses the hospitality and responsibility handed to her by her oldest friend, the trust of looking after Sharon's son and stepdaughter. As her mother would say, she treats the Mitchell house like a knocking shop.

Rebecca is a stupid girl. Very intelligent and smart academically, but she's easily led into morally precarious situations. The most interesting thing about the awful group of teens which have been foisted on us, is the weird friendship existing between Rebecca and Louise.

I used to think the friendship shared by Michelle and Sharon was unusual to say the least. Had I a friend like Michelle, who repeatedly betrayed me with people who were closest to me, she wouldn't be my friend - even moreso in that she would naturally assume I'd forgive her anything, whilst the first slip-up I would make would have her giving me more than the cold shoulder. The friendship of Rebecca and Louise is more than quirky, it's almost sadistic.

Rebecca is the older of the two, yet she's the more immature. She's supposed to be smart, yet it's Louise whose virginity has been held intact, and it's Rebecca who's name has been passed around now, by the two ubiquitous mean girls who roam in and out of the camera lens, from pillar to post because she was caught in bed with someone who, for all intents and purposes, is a stranger. Five minutes before she was whisked upstairs, she was telling Prestonovich that it was too soon to get physical.

She allowed herself to be manipulated into having sex with Shakil, only because he was horny, and then was surprised that he, effectively, dumped her. At the time of her initiation into the sexual world, it was clear that Louise was living vicariously through Rebecca's experiences, judging by the way she rushed out to confront Rebecca and hear everything about "the first time" from her very lips. And, to be sure, Louise was doing her level best to push Preston in the direction of Rebecca only recently, even going as far as telling him that Rebecca had "had every boy in school."

She's caught between craving acceptance by the casually mean and intentionally cruel Snagglehead and Sniggle, yet she was mature enough to step up and stop the ruthless baiting and trolling of Rebecca as she sat in the café. She should really have told these cartoon characters where to go and how to get there, and here's a big criticism of the show at this moment. 

I know Snagglehead and Sniggle or Madison and whatever other trendy name the other one has are characters of the moment. They neither live on the Square, nor do they have parents or relatives who live there, and they don't appear to have that watchable quality that makes us want to see more of them - the way a Tiffany Raymond or a Mickey Miller or even Nigel Bates had, occasional characters, all, who became permanent. These two, along with Keegan, are simply caricatures of mean teens, the two girls being female equivalents of Keegan, who deal in inane bitchery. 

Who in their right minds would have called out ...

I always knew that girl was a tramp ... 

... as Rebecca was unceremoniously led from the Mitchell house, begging Michelle not to tell Martin? Surely, they knew that Michelle was Rebecca's aunt, but Michelle was too focused on getting Rebecca out of that situation and back home.

As for Michelle, she told a bare-faced lie to Martin, partly out of respect for Rebecca's frantic wishes, but mostly because she knew if she told Martin what happened, and Martin kicked off, then the truth would out about her and Prestonovich and the real reason for her sudden appearance in Walford. This lie was as much about her self-preservation as about respecting Rebecca's wishes. 

The lie was stupid, however. All Martin has to do is say something to Shakil about Rebecca texting him, and the lie is exposed. At least Michelle had the shame to demur when Martin pointed out that Rebecca looked up to Michelle, and he also made the common assumption of the lowly that Michelle must be something of a success because - hey, she's got a university education. 

Ted Bundy was a lawyer. Sarah Palin has a university education.

Whatever shame Michelle felt was wiped away as soon as she allowed herself to go upstairs and fuck a child again. I totally get it that TPTB are desperately trying to make Michelle sympathetic, someone who, in a moment of madness, fell into the arms of a student who happened to be under the legal age of consent - and I think it's being insinuated now that he was the one who wore down her defences, even after she related that sorry tale of him standing outside her seedy hotel, crying in the rain.

It doesn't matter whether he pursued her or she groomed him. She was the adult. She should have known better. Ultimately, the blame lies with her. 

As for the boy, he's as much a vile piece of shit as Keegan, but in a different way. The [i]double entendre[/i] remark he threw Rebecca's way as she scurried from the Mitchell house, was meant to insult and humiliate her as much as Snagglehead's and Sniggle's bitchery.

And now, like Michelle, and thanks to Michelle bringing this idiot into the Fowlers' lives, Rebecca's sordid little reputation will always precede her.

The Public Service Announcement in the Worst Possible Taste. Ian in the nude was inferred, and it was an encore of the time, also offscreen and inferred, where a reluctant Stacey had to help him from the bath.

Far more repulsive was the up close and personal shots of Ian Beale's enormous belly, complete with a full plate of food resting on top of it quite comfortably. Not only did we get a shot from that angle, we also had to have a shot belt level from between his legs.

We know Ian's overweight. It's been emphasized by TPTB having Adam Woodyatt tuck his teeshirts into the belt of his Mom jeans instead of wearing the ends loosely over his belt. I can only imagine this storyline is being run in conjunction with the actor trying to lose weight. Good luck to him, but the sitcom feel isn't funny. Not at all.

Life in the Pub. I like Konrad, and I like him with Shirley. If anything, his appearance only emphasizes the desperate need this show has for viable new characters - and someone in Konrad's ilk, instead of silly secondary school children in a half-baked attempt to imitate Grange Hill.

But what was that dialogue all about, with the plumber eyeing Shirley from afar when he should have been doing a quote for Mick.

I've lost count of how deep in debt Mick is. I don't know how many thousands Lee owed, which Mick repaid on his credit cards, but surely Linda must realise that the cards are maxed out. The payday loan he got for 14 grand, to medivac Elaine and Linda back from Spain, must need to be repaid, and then there's his 20k fine for breaking licencing laws. Now, he'll need at least 2 grand to cover work done by Konrad or Konrad's friends or whoever.

Jack was being nice, his only time, when he offered Mick a lifeline, but Max seemed to squelch that. It's been mooted that Max is behind all the misfortunes at the pub, and some weeks ago, there was that mysterious scene with Simon Williams's character at the top of the Gherkin. Max is out to destroy the pub, not to take it over, but to destroy it, but why?

I did like the scene where Abi handed Jack his arse, even at the expense of TPTB making Dot look like the typical ditzy old lady, who can't see two inches in front of her face. The car wasn't damaged, but the fact that she'd been brought home by the police for dangerous driving (and for getting herself out of a scrape) quickly escalated into a car crash scenario. The only person crashing was Jack, and Dot was right. Matthew is her only relative and no relation at all to Jack. Why does he even have this child?

I really would like to see Charlie Cotton return, but since Declan Bennett isn't coming back, we have to live with Jack taking the moral high ground. Denying Dot the right to see her relative was totally wrong. Even worse, was the horrendous and unnecessarily cruel baiting Dot endured by the drunken Kim.

Once again, I suppose Vincent is home minding the baby. You have to ask yourself, as well, where were Lauren and Steven when Jane was having a drink at the pub with Stacey and Ian was preening in front of the mirror. There was no mention of the Beales babysitting. Maybe Vincent's running a baby-sitting service, since that seems to be all he does these days. Kim was well and truly plastered.

The scene where she was mouthing off in the pub and when she found it necessary to call out Dot on her affliction was totally unnecessary, and totally cruel. It was a briliant depiction of exactly how the Square has broken down into mean little units of people who all take the moral high ground, in and of themselves, but who have no right to it.

Interesting that whilst Denise was making an abject fool of herself, mouthing off to the reporter about a broken community and snarling, mean-spiritied neighbours, Kim was the walking embodiment of just that. A drunken lout, who's shamed by Dot's tears. (Actually, that was a totally embarrassing scene).

Meanwhile, with Linda away and Lee gone for good, Mick is beginning to treat Whitney, subtly now, like a wife or a potential love interest instead of a daughter-in-law. She's got him in her crosshairs, and the character, for all she was lying in the dark feeling sorry for herself, comes across as sly and conniving. When she's persuaded to do a shift downstairs, check out how she stops before actually entering the bar and clocks a sloe-eye in Mick's direction, and her handling of a drunken Kim earned her the sort of affectionate reaction Mick used as a public display towards Linda, the touching of her hair and face.

I tell you, it won't be long before he's sleeping with her, and I hope Linda finds out and reacts accordingly.

The Soul of Discretion. Just a couple words about Carmel, whom I thoroughly detest. On the one hand, she was right to recommend counselling to Denise, not just because she's put her child up for adoption, but also because Denise has always been someone to react precipitously and then regret it. She did this when she toyed with Fatboy's affections for the sole purpose that she was horny.

In fact, maybe when Sharon wises up to what's been going on in her home behind her back, Michelle can go stay with Denise. They both have a predilection for picking up and sleeping with much younger men, and both have done the dirty on Sharon by having a child, each, by a Mitchell brother. They could compare notes on living without shame.

However, Matt Evans, the writer of tonight's episode, got a bit of dialogue wrong when Carmel said she felt compelled to speak out against Denise's behaviour because it affected one of Shakil's friend. Only yesterday, she was berating Shakil, in front of Keegan, for even associating with him. What she should have said, and she would have been well within her rights, is that she felt compelled to speak out because people were judging Shakil by his association with Keegan, when, in fact, Shakil had done nothing wrong, especially when the odious Kim was quick to remark that bad behaviour was usually the parents' fault, insinuating that Carmel was a bad parent. Kim is one to talk. I wonder how Pearl will enjoy watching Vincent hold Kim's head over the loo the next morning as she throws up the night's takings from before?

Denise thinks she's clever. In fact, she's the reverse of Rebecca. She thinks she's got common sense, and that she's a cut above the local yokels now that she's read a few books, which also reveals Kim to be hypocritical in view of her remarks about Michelle being snobby. Denise has always sneered at local people, and this time she's using the reporter she's called to rant about the state of Walford, literally blaming the council's fortnightly bin collections, the rubbish and the rats for youths like Keegan acting like sociopaths. 

She was shocked that the reporter seemed aware of her crime, and she bit the bait he offered her, encouraging her to talk about this, telling her that "people would relate to her action". Isn't she aware that she isn't supposed to shoot her mouth off as part of her non-sentence? Also, she makes one rant too many, when she goes off on one about the prices at The Minute Mart being excessive and throwing away good food whilst people use food banks.

The Minute Mart will always have prices in excess of those at Tesco, Sainsburys or Aldis. Because you pay for your convenience. Does everyone on the Square do a weekly shop at The Minute Mart? If so, they surely must be able to afford its prices. She's so far up her own arse in self-importance and high dudgeon for having assaulted a schoolkid, that she's gone off on a tangent about the community being broken, when Denise has always held herself aloof from the community in general, unless it suited her. 

In the 90s, sometimes, Kathy used to get on my nerves when she was in the café. She could be bloody rude to people at times, but then, she was having to deal with a difficult marriage to Phil; but Denise is rude ad hoc and to all and sundry, bar Patrick. The fact that she's grasping at straws by using the community to fight her case against being fined for being in the wrong is a joke. An even bigger joke is that she's been subtly tricked into bad-mouthing her employer, and after being allowed to work there after being sacked for pilfering.

Go figure.

And Finally ... Ben and Jay stealing glasses from the Vic. WTF?

This show is dying on its feet.

The Denise Show - Review:- Thursday 23.02.2017

Well, that was truly awful. Half an hour of my life I'll never get back. This has to be the absolute worst episode under Sean O'Connor's watch. It was literally everything Newmanesque rolled into 30 minutes and served up, without even a dollop of ketchup with which to flavour it.

We had the absurd (Ben and Jay, the non-couple couple whose relationship veers someplace in the netherlands between friends, lovers and brothers, whooping it up in what looks like a glorified squat, living like the former tenants - students whom they disparaged - taking order of an expensive flat-screened television and scavenging in wheelie bins for teaspoons) to the predictable (Whitney getting ready to move from one husband to someone else's) to the creepy (Petronovich bedding Rebecca RedNose to make the odious NuMichelle jealous) to the boringly repetitive (Denise is the new Carters is the new Brannings, featured in every episode and juggling about ten different storylines simultaneously) to the ridiculous (the near-blind Dot, marvelling over the "woman in the heavens" who guides the satellite to the garden centre).

The dialogue was awful, the acting was amateurish and the theme of the broken community is pretty trite. It's fucking life, that's what it is. Get the fuck over it.

This programme is tanking. Maybe the BBC should sell the rights to Tony Jordan's production company and see what he can do with it.

Because it's sinking. Fast.

Men Behaving Badly. On the one hand, against the backdrop of incessant whining about a community being broken, Ben summed up life amongst the lowly perfectly for the 21st Century in one line ...

Tonight, this house becomes a home.

And why? Because of the delivery of a huge, flat-screened television.

And doesn't that encapsulate the lack of community Saint Holy Mother Queen and Empress Denise was bemoaning? Because what everyone wants at the end of the day is a little peace, to close the doors of he world, have a bite to eat and settle down in front of the telly.

Ne'mind the fact that Ben and Jay are sleeping in sleeping bags, in their clothes on top of bare mattresses and living out of one room, surrounded by the rotting detritus and assorted rubbish left behind by the previous student tenants, it doesn't matter that they're living the same way - the only difference being that, unlike the students, who were, ostensibly studying at some point in the day or week, Ben and Jay actually have jobs.

Not well-paying jobs by any sense of the word and certainly not paying enough money to afford them the luxury of renting what appears to be a three-bedroomed terraced house in London.

These two were like strangers tonight, and I think it was because within that scope of thirty minutes, where their section encompassed about five minutes altogether, it seems that no one in the writing room could really decide who or what Ben and Jay, together, were meant to be.

To begin with, all the hoopla they exhibited in the run up to renting the house, seemed oddly false and forced. All this "We're-getting-our-own-place-it's-party-time" bluster and bonhomie rang curiously hollow. It's natural that they want to do the place up their way - it's a statement of their independence, after all - but turning down Kathy's offer to clean the place for free to pay professional cleaners to do the job is simply stupid - as stupid as scavenging in a wheelie bin for a couple of teaspoons spotted at the bottom of the bin and getting stuck in head first.

Since moving into this house, Jay and Ben have become a garrulous sitcom, everything badly cute and awfully stereotypical about two young blokes living together; but the situation appears to have confused the writing room about who Ben and Jay are and what they mean to one another. At the beginning of the episode, they were hunkered down on two mattresses in the front room, head-to-toe, and discussing plans for a house-warming party to end all parties. There was more than a little rampant sexism in Jay's remark about missing Sharon ..

All you had to do was put a cup down, and it was washed, dried and put away in an instant.

Yes, Jay, because that's all that women do is clean up after men. You put something down, you expect someone to trail along behind you and pick it up, but now you have to do something yourself.

In another instance when Jay phones Ben at the Arches (after Ben tells Kathy he's got the day off work so he can unpack, he shows up at the Arches), whilst they talk on the phone, Ben's attitude and manner of speaking is almost as cosy and intimate as a man speaking to his girlfriend, or even his boyfriend. I know that the love of Ben's life is Jay, but Jay is heterosexual, and he'll never have a romantic interest in Ben; so maybe sometimes, in unguarded moment, Ben's tenderness to Jay seeps out, in telephone conversations and in talking to other people.

And yet in the next scene, where Jay's found, feet up and stuck in a wheelie bin, because he'd been scavenging around Whitney's cast-off detritus and spotted a couple of teaspoons at the bottom of the bin, they're supposed to be a comedy duo - Jay getting stuck in a bin was supposed to make us laugh, even if it didn't.

The entire exchange between Ben and Jay in the past few episodes has come across as too-loud, too-forced, and too-unfunny.

Their final scene, a trifecta involving themselves and Whitney, a character with whom neither of them have ever had any connection or even dialogue, was totally surreal and borderline bizarre. Released from the bin by Whitney and Ben and seeing them laughing, Jay immediately starts over-acting and shouting at them, telling them not to laugh at him, but in a way that acknowledges that they are, indeed, laughing at him and that he thinks it's funny - before flouncing away to have a shower. 

That's when Whitney, ever the victim and mourning the loss of a man she disparaged, alludes to Paul and asks Ben how he coped after Paul's death - except that this false equivalency was frivolous and grossly disrespectful to Paul's memory - because at the end of the day, Paul is dead and is never returning to Ben; and Lee can return to Whitney anytime he chooses to do so.

Obviously, Ben and Jay expect to get other people to move into the house and share the costs of the rent - how, exactly, does this make them landlords? They rent the house; they don't own it. It simply means they get a couple of other souls to move into a spare bedroom or two and pay their respective quarters of the rent. Ben and Jay can't "rent out" rooms, per se.

Honestly, this is the first episode in a long time where I found myself looking at the clock. Never a good sign.

American Squirm. I was surprised to hear Preston Prestonovich Prestonovsky say he'd only been here a week. It seems like longer.

I'm sorta kinda glad that neither Louise nor Dennis seem all that keen on Michelle hanging around like a bad smell, because she's getting on my nerves as well. 

This was an atrocious segment for various reasons. Really, if Michelle sticks around, maybe she could forge a friendship with Denise. They could sit around, using four-syllabled words in sentences which contain their own incorrect grammar and syntax, whilst looking down their disdainful noses to everyone else.

Martin has never heard of the word "impetuous"? When Michelle warns Martin to keep an eye on Rebecca's growing friendship with Preston, deeming Preston "impetuous", Martin makes the standard Luddite remark ...

You're using big words again, Michelle.

You fucking what? I get it that Martin is supposed to be some sort of common-and-garden Everyman, in the way Ricky Butcher, and before him, Martin's father, Arthur, was; but neither of those predecessors were dolts capable of using words of only one syllable. Once again, the distance between someone like Michelle, with a university degree and everyone else who'd barely finished secondary school, is presented as a vast void. 

To begin with, Michelle has a poxy polytechnic degree. One assumes she got teaching qualifications in the US, where she taught English - but, trust me, even Trumpster Americans in the Deep South aren't so stupid to think that someone speaking with an English accent is qualified to teach high school English. She would have had to have taken a certain number of Education courses and she would have had to have completed a semester of practice teaching even to get licenced by the state - you have to be professionally licenced to teach in state schools.

Secondly - and I was listening to a programme about linguistics today on Radio 4, which made me think of this. You adapt your language to your audience. It stands to reason that Michelle would employ one type of English vernacular in her professional guise and a more familiar speaking tone and vernacular when talking with your friends and family. An example? I sound more Southern when I'm speaking with friends and family from Virginia. 

There is no way Michelle would have come onto Martin sounding like the educational professional and well-spoken woman she's become; conversely, there's no way Martin wouldn't have understood the meaning of the word "impetuous."

But then again, something else struck me about the Michelle segment: Michelle is now a well-educated professional, even though she'll never front a classroom full of children again; she's a self-fulfilling prophecy in EastEnders' terms - the well-spoken, well-educated professional in a position of trust who's done a truly awful thing. Like Stella (who secretly abused Ben); Mad May (who wanted to cut Dawn's baby from her uterus and leave Dawn to bleed to death); and Yusef (who was a wife-beater who tried to burn his wife to death as a young man) - a solicitor, two doctors and a teacher, all of whom are scumbags.

Michelle is no fool, however. She knows exactly what Preston is about, and she knows he's using Michelle. This doesn't, however, exonerate Michelle, the fact that the boy in question in her downfall happens to be a pushy, manipulative, spoiled little shit. She was still the adult in the equation of teacher and student. Whether she made the first move in the establishment of the ensuing relationship or whether Preston did is moot. At the end of the day, if she started the thing, she was the groomer and should have known better; if she didn't, being the adult, she should have put the brakes on the thing and taken responsibility as the adult in the room.

The show should stop trying to make her sympathetic. Some pimply-faced little unpaid intern simply assumed that the age of consent in the United States was the same as that in Great Britain, and that an affair between a teacher of forty-seven would be taken as slightly more serious than an illicit slap and tickle. It wasn't. Somewhere along the line, someone discovered the unintentional faux pas, hence the reason why Michelle was forced to acknowledge that she'd committed a crime in dialogue last week. Her subsequent line about being lucky not to have been prosecuted was a joke - because in the real world, she would have been prosecuted ... because she is technically a rapist.

Only in the narcissistic world of Milo Yiannopolous would she be given any sort of credibility, and we've seen how far he's fallen.

On the other side of this beefcake sandwich is Rebecca, a girl who's a walking example of someone who has a lot of book sense but precious little common sense. And with friends like Louise, who needs enemies? What exactly did Louise mean by telling Preston that Louise had "had" every boy in school? I know she's trying to get Preston interested in Rebecca to help Rebecca move on from Shakil, but did she think that presenting her friend as someone who's cut a sexual swathe through every male student in their high school would make her attractive to Preston, or was that a cack-handed way of saying that she was popular? Except that it gave this horndog the idea that Rebecca would be an easy lay - which is just what she proved to be in the end.

And here, as well, we have the utterly naive Martin, writing off Rebecca's escapade with Shakil, and preferring her involvement with Preston, someone about whom he knows nothing, and why? Because he believes him to be a mate of his nephew's? Because he speaks with an accent he might think exotic and comes from a country where his middle-class lifestyle is miles above anything to which Martin could aspire? Because his cleancut appearance is more preferable than the streetsuss knobhead that is Shakil?

Martin simply thinks Preston is a nice guy, and Shakil isn't because he took Rebecca's virginity - well, it took Rebecca less than a week to crawl into bed with Prestonovich. That either makes him manipulative or it makes her stupid. Or both.

Another anomaly with this badly portrayed character comes when he grabs Rebecca's phone and calls the school, imitating Martin in a cockney accent (probably the way he really talks), presenting Martin as a blokey-bloke ignoramus who would address whatever school official was speaking on the other end of the phone as "mate." Surely the school knows Martin, and surely Martin, in a million years, would never address school officials like that. 

Finally, there was no end to the irony of Kathy rushing to show Michelle a vacant teaching position at the local community college, and Michelle knowing exactly that she could never apply for that position at all. Her professional career is finished, and if the show pretends it isn't, it's dead wrong.

The National Health. Talk about cracking a walnut with a sledgehammer ... we get the message that Ian is worried about his health, specifically about his weight. His constant questioning of everyone from a distracted Michelle to a visibly uncomfortable Mick - I mean, asking Mick if he'd literally fancy what he saw were he to see Ian naked was a bit nonsensical - if he'd put on weight was a walking advertisement for a public service announcement, as well as the fact that two hours after he had breakfast at his home, his mother is calling him out for having a second breakfast in the café.

I realise the show has dumbed-down in its messaging, but this is ridiculous.

What distracted me, however, was the scene shared by Woodyatt and Dyer. I kept thinking about the way Dyer allegedly has supposedly impugned Woodyatt as an actor, yet they carried off that weird scene to perfection.

Dotty Dot. Just what was that supposed to achieve? At first I thought this was all about Dot believing her eyesight was improving to such a degree that, rather than wait for Jack to be able to take her to the garden centre, she felt she could do so, herself. I was afraid for Matthew being with her; but then the whole thing was all about Dot getting bamboozled by the latest technology.

Dot, as I recall, almost twenty years ago, was one of the first people on the Square to crack computers and to understand the Internet; yet here we had her wittering on about Bradley teaching her about "the Google", searching "bushes" and obviously coming up with images of naked women, and inadvertantly starting some sort of music.

And surely she's been in enough cars or at least heard talk of sat nav? Instead, Dot has to play stupid and act as if the mechanical woman talking in the sat nav device is a New Wave spiritual embodiment of an omniscient being, someone away with the fairies on a star in a galaxy far, far away, offering Dot guidance along the roads.

That's enough for her to take Matthew, clamber in the Smart Car and toddle to the garden centre to buy a bitch load of plants, and to get into what can only be described as a dingbat conversation with an elderly couple she'd literally run into. Honestly, talking about the woman in the satellite guiding her, they must have thought she had dementia.

In the end, high on singing to hymns and getting confused by the sat nav device, she manages to turn the wrong way down a one-way carriageway. 

I don't think Dot will be driving anymore, but what the hell was that all about?

Another Notch in Her Lipstick Case. Whitney doesn't want to throw a pity party, but that's exactly what she does. 

The supreme piece of unintentional irony tonight came from Johnny, who told Whitney not to worry, that perhaps "Mr Right" was just around the corner. In Whitney's ambitious mind, he is. It's Mick. 

And remember that most things in EastEnders are not said without reason or purpose. The last thing Lee told Johnny to fo was to "keep an eye on Whitney." Now it's just Johnny, Whitney and Mick living under the same roof, and we know that Whitney and Mick have already come precariously close to a bit of 'ow's yer favver.

They'll do the dirty, and who will discover their sordid little secret?

There's a room waiting for you in Ben's new house, Johnny.

If Whitney had any integrity, she'd spend a long time on her own, thinking about her marriage and her own behaviour towards Lee, but since, like Lauren, she's all about herself, she won't.

And she always looks as though she needs a bath.


Round and Round the Garden. John Yorke started the over-emphasis of particular characters/families (the Slaters), and no one in succession has learned the lesson of overkill. The Slaters were pitched as a better family than either the Beales, Fowlers or Mitchells. They were spread throughout the Square without ever integrating into friendships or associations with depth. They featured in every episode aired for one entire year. They were everywhere. And within five years, they were completely spent.

Oh, they soldiered on in another form with Stacey the resident ingenue at the helm for another five years, but they overkilled Stacey (and Ronnie) during 2009-2010.

The Brannings were meant to replace the de facto Mitchells after Peggy's departure. They grew apace until at times, week after week of episode featured scenes only peopled by the Brannings and their satellites. They came in all shapes, sizes and colours. They slept with each other. They traded wives and girlfriends. When Bryan Kirkwood killed off Pat, he presented us with a ready-made matriarch, Cora Cross, who happened to be an inlaw of the Brannings.

Then, after Derek was terminated, the clan began to crack and break up. The next galaxy of ascending stars were the Carters, DTC's pet project based on his own family and featuring his own favourite "icon", Shirley.

Familiarity breeds contempt, and Denise is now rapidly approaching that.

Several points - just when did the beautification of the Square become so important? We had one episode in the dead of winter where Stacey and Jane mentioned doing some therapeutic gardening, and nothing more. Denise didn't even bother to help with the chore. In fact, when asked, she turned her nose up at it. Now, all of a sudden, the Square's gardens are becoming the symbol of a broken community. 

Oh, please. The Square's been introverted for years. As people keep reiterating. This is the 21st Century, not 1985. People are more well-off. When the show started, the Fowlers didn't even have a telephone in the house and still used a coal fire.

It now seems that SOC seems intent on making Denise the star of the show. She's featured in almost every episode, even if it's only one scene in the Minute Mart. I've lost track of the number of storylines she has, but she acquired a few more tonight. The magistrates' scene was ridiculous. She went from acknowledging that she'd done wrong - the kid provoked her, and he's vile; but she did assault him - to mouthing off at her sentence in the magistrates' court. 

She pleaded guilty. Did she expect they were going to let her off without a fine? As one of the magistrates said, she simply couldn't take the law into her own hands. Keegan played the system, but that's what people like him do; and even though he did deserve a smack, it did leave a mark, a bruise and noticeable breaking of the skin, even though he did milk his "head injury" for all it was worth.

Even worse, was the ludicrous performance of Kim in the courtroom. Is she just stupid or are they seriously trying to emulate idiotic sitcoms and make her a comedy character, pretending to be an "attorney" based on having watched L A Law. 

That had to be the most embarrassingly butt-clinchingly bad segment of the show. It showed Kim and Denise at their worst. Even more unbelievable was the fact that Denise could just ring up the Walford Gazette, and immediately they'd be interested in hearing her tale of woe and broken community, simply based on what she did and why she was punished. She's effectively been put on probation conditional of good behaviour for 12 months. Mouthing off to the papers will only wave a red flag in Keegan's direction as the little scrote is so de-sensitised, narcissistic and simply mean enough to pursue a vendetta against her, and - again, here we have an adult and a child - Denise is the adult in the room.

Kim even beginning to compare Denise to Nelson Mandela was an insult to the great man, himself. She's an odious creature and simply ignorant. As for Denise, the so-called brainy intellect, for once I was Team Carmel. Carmel is a soft touch. Denise can't retaliate against Keegan, so she targets Carmel with undue criticism aimed at Shakil, who really hasn't done anything but stand around with a basketball, looking gormless. It's corporate responsibility or guilt by association, but she isn't doing herself any favours. 

All this plethora of storylines heaped on the latest version of the Blisters has done is make me wish they were off the screen. Soon. Please.

Awful episode.

Be Careful What You Ask For - Review:- Tuesday 21.02.2017

Here we are, with a new producer, and much of the same old same old - or should I say, same shit different day? I've lost count of how many producers in recent years have manager to make the great majority of characters in the soap totally and utterly unlikable. Either they're simply unpleasant or they've become incorrigibly bad.

As nice as SOC has made them, Ian and Jane can never lived down the concealment of Lucy's murderer and condoning Max being punished for a crime he didn't commit. Maybe they're paying for it via karma, with Jane confined to a wheelchair and Ian about to have a health scare, but they are still irredeemable, as are Phil and Sharon. Both of those characters were fucked up and over by John Yorke, and successive producers made them worse.

Also, I think viewers need to stop asking for dead characters to be raised, secret offspring to be introduced and characters played by people who have stopped acting to be re-cast. In all of these three instances, viewers' demands have been met, and those demands now are met with more than a little bit of caveat emptor.

Kathy was raised from the dead to be a dithering, whimpering dish rag of a woman, decorating the background in most instances and sleeping with a man in a committed relationship. She's a wet noodle and nothing like the Kathy of old. People screamed for Mark so-called "junior", who somehow in the wilds of "Yearling" country spoke with a flawless Surrey accent, acquired at a British school hidden away in remotely rural Florida, didn't know he was supposed to use his father's surname and ponced about with underaged kids like a leering Hugo Boss manniquin. People wailed for Michelle to be re-cast. She was, and returned as a statutory rapist, because someone in the writing room ASSUMED that all laws in the US mirrored those in the UK. This Michelle is an appalling character.

The sum result is that all of this just adds to the show's woes at the moment. O'Connor killed off the Mitchell sisters, one of whom was well past her sell-by date, only to replace them with the appalling Fox non-sisters, one of whom is a narcissistic fool and the other is an arrogant extra who's been unable to fill a storyline since 2010.

I don't know what this show is coming to or where it's heading. In the meantime, Emmerdale keeps winning awards.

The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming! Oh,my Lordy! The writers are all over the place with American speech and vernacular, and Preston Prestonovich Prestonovsky is all over the place with his accent.

I haven't heard the slang word "hanging" since I were a lass donkey's years ago in Virginia. This is the stuff of 70s America, of Starsky and Hutch, Mork and Mindy, of polyester shirts with big collars and wide ties. Who researches this shit? Don't answer, no one. And to have this character mispronounce "Spitalfields" as "Spite-alfields" yet five minutes later refer to area of London unfamiliar to most Americans who don't visit London on a regular basis (South Kensington) as "South Ken" isn't just unbelievable, it's plain, damned stupid. It's laughable, a joke, like Prestonovich, who sounded like a Russian exchange student in that scene in the kitchen with Louise and Rebecca and then sounded like no one I've ever heard in America in the next scene. For the record, an American would pronounce "Spitalfields" with the first syllable like what gobs out of your mouth when you find something disgusting, pretty much like these characters.

Prestonovich is a spoiled, white privileged whiney little bitch who's making a foolish woman who's long lost her common sense jealous, using the woman's niece and taking advantage of the household of a couple whom he's never met. Michelle is taking advantage of her best friend's hospitality. After betraying Sharon twice in their friendshiip, as the shitfucker in the White House would say, bigly, when the shit hits the fan about what's gone on in the Mitchell household whilst Sharon and Phil have been away, this should be the end of the Sharon-Michelle axis.

Pauline would be rolling in her grave.

And, please, Rebecca is such a silly character. She isn't in the least bit sympathetic, and the actress sucks. I am tired of looking at her up-turned chin and her red nostrils when she delivers lines, and I hate the way she tosses her head too. It makes her look smug. She's supposed to be a schoolgirl, not a show pony.

Someone likened Michelle to Tennessee Williams's Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire. I can't see her coming onto Phil desperately and Phil, bellowing a bad impersonation of Ozzie Osborne and screaming, 

Sha-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-r-o-n-n-n-n-n-n-n!

I guess, pretty soon, like Blanche, Michelle is going to have to be dependent upon the kindness of strangers, because when the truth comes out, I doubt her family and friends will want her in their midst. 

Sugar Sugar. Notice how the episode called for Ian to wear his knit shirt tucked into his trousers? It emphasized his portly paunch. After all, Adam Woodyatt's wife is a pastry chef, and it shows. But normally, Ian wears his shirt flowing over his midriff and not tucked into his belt.

Ian's suffering from nocturia, which is a sign of Diabetes Type II, and he's a ripe candidate for that malaise. It's weight-related, and it will mean, if the storyline is accurate, Ian maintaining a certain type of diet and losing weight. Maybe Woodyatt suggested the storyline in an effort to help his own plans to slim down. Just to give you an idea of how much weight Ian's put on in the past decade - well, 9 years - here's Ian finding out just what a little bastard (quite literally) Steven was (and look how much Aaron Sidwell has changed as well) ...

By the way, I like Steven, but what is his point? This was a character who left, having established that (a) he is gay, (b) that he's decidedly quirky and unpredictable, (c) that he's unpredictable and untrustworthy and (d) edgy. Since his return, he's devolved into the good son, who wants to be at the bosom of the family; he's prayed away the gay, and he's become the dependable bloke who manages Ian's restaurant and carries Lauren's son here and there. What a waste of a character, but then, I can't quite fathom why the Branning girls are now glorified extras.

Abi is still snorting and giggling, and Lauren's "web-design" career seems to have morphed into her looking after various other babies who seem to be there or thereabouts the age of Louie.

Two Peas in a Pod. Did I miss something, or did they scrap an episode? I know EastEnders balks at any display of racism or xenophobia, but tonight we saw the aftermaths of something that's very contemporary in Brexit Britain, and we got what was actually a quasi-racist remark from the doltish Kim. Reverse racism, but racism all the same.

Obviously, there was some trouble directed against the pub's Polish night, with "Poles Go" smeared across the pub door in red paint. Konrad made an apt observation, which was the line of the night ...

This is the Britain we live in.

This is a very current and very relevant storyline, but EastEnders wimps out, yet again, and lets essential action happen offf-screen, so we get what could have been a significant aftermath, but which has now become little more than a titbit for conversation.

Against the backdrop of the Vic's kitchen being fumigated and cleaned for inspection, is the storyline of Mick's money problems and his effort to look after Eternal Victim Princess Whitney, who's stuck alone in her lovenest, staring at the expensive wedding rings on her fingers and her even more expensively manicured acryllic nails. Seriously, how can she be any use in the pub with paws like that?

Whitney's presenting herself as the eternal victim again, and Lee's on the receiving end of disdain again. As well, Whitney's on the receiving end of gossip and misinformation. Now that Lee's gone, she's torched off the warpaint - I guess she's trying to look gamine and innocent in an effort to promote her innocence in the end of her marriage to Lee, when she was a significant part in his breakdown and depression.

Lauren overhears Mick begging Jack to give him back the deposit for the flat, and when Lauren tells Whitney, Whitney, in pure self-pitying mode, assumes she's going to be kicked out. And so ensues a feisty scene with Mick, where she tells him how Lee tried to emulate him, but now she thinks Mick is probably as weak as Lee.

What an irony! She's actually speaking the truth.Mick is a weak man.In fact, he's weaker than Lee ever was, because he presents himself as the strong head of the family, but maintains his position amongst his close-knit family by sheer passive-aggressive bullying and sulking - Linda, Lee, Nancy ... all have been victims of his manbaby behaviour. He's coddled by Shirley and defers to her, but he's an overgrown manchild, and he knows it. He's even admitted as such to Linda - and now, for the first time, he won't even talk to her or return her calls. He's got other things on his mind, other concerns. Sure, one of them is the Vic; but it was obvious that his most important concern was Whitney.

The Hygiene Inspector was due, there were two leaks in the roof of the Vic - one affecting upstairs and one affecting the pub, itself, and the toilet - obviously, a problem with the plumbing; and Mick hasn't even organised someone to fix this.What happened to the roofer Shirley found the other week? Mick can blame Lee for his finances as much as he wants, but it was he who took out the payday loan of £14 grand to get Linda and Elaine back from Spain, and thanks to Babe, he got landed with a fine of £20 grand.

Nope, tonight this was all for Princess Whitney, who gets invited to live in the Vic. I hated the line from Mick that Lee may have turned his back on Whitney, but the "family" hadn't. Bullshit. Mick told Lee to walk away from the marriage. Surely walking away from the marriage meant Lee had to leave Walford. There's no way Mick would have allowed Lee to return to the Vic. He'd have housed Whitney first.

Stay with us.

Who, exactly, is "us"? Shirley and Tina live in Shirley's flat with Sylvie. That means we've got Johnny, Mick and now Whitney in a Linda-less household. Johnny's "worried" about Whitney, he tells Ben. Well, he should be - because harken unto Lee's last words to Johnny

Keep and eye on Whitney.

I think the next few weeks are going to be chokka and repetitive with people finding couples who shouldn't be together in flagrante delicto. And as someone's spotted Shona McGarty filming with a baby bump, I think we're about to get a dose of that old EastEnders' staple "Who's the Daddy". 

Enter Linda with a hearty slap. And there goeth MIck Carter, coward that he is.

I found Ian's reaction to the prospect of Whitney sliming down on their couch hilarious. He always was appalled by her. His line about her staying too long in the shower was sublimely ironic. Whitney always looks dirty.

Oh, and I didn't like the way the Carters casually blamed Abi for the buckets catching leak water hanging about the establishment, joking about her being a "scrubber." That may have been an oblique reference to what happened between her and Lee, but that was still cruel and unnecessary. Also, buckets here and there on the floor of the pub and in the loo are a health hazard. People could trip up and do themselves an injury. That was mean, but then the show is mean at the moment. Mean and ugly.

Gunfight at the OK Corral. That's what the never-ending-ever-decreasing circular story of the Fox non-sisters devolved into - a comically contrived scene which showed the entire market en masse gathering to witness the showdown of the century between a gobby, miserable, arrogant woman whom TPTB are foisting on us by trying to explain her relevance, and a cartoon character of a rude, gobby, OTT little piece of shit.

I am so tired of this adoption storyline. Bottom line is this: the couple adopting appear to be outstanding, so much so that Trish, the hardlined social worker, is championing their cause to adopt. They already have one adopted child. They sound as if they are stable and loving. They love Denise's baby, and the baby has bonded with them. They've named him Raymond, after Ray Charles. And Kim is quick to ask if the couple are bi-racial. Has Kim seen the baby? Does she know he's bi-racial? And what the hell difference does race make? The child could have gone to a black couple or a white couple or even an Asian couple. As long as the child is loved and wanted, why was she so fucking particular?

I also think Denise should have asked Kim to leave whilst she met with the social worker. If she were in need of moral support, then she could have asked Patrick, who would have been the better candidate. Instead, she knew exactly what course Kim would pursue - the emotional blackmail trick. She's playing "good cop" at the moment, reminding Denise that it's not too late to take the child back. 

What a cruel thing to do to those parents, who've bonded with the child and who have given him their time and unconditional love since he was born. He's been with them since birth, and although Denise recognises that, I don't think this will stop her from rescinding her decision. And whilst she feels guilty at giving up this child, she doesn't feel one iota of guilt about the ructure this might cause to Sharon's marriage.

As much as I hate Keegan - and this isn't a character people like to hate and want to see, like Janine; he's just a hateful, misogynistic little scrote in every way - I came to the conclusion that he's a cartoon villain of a character. The initial interaction in the Square between him and Denise was over-acted on both their parts. His basketball bounced onto a bed of flowers. Kids do these things. She got shirty with him, he replied in kind. He was rude, but the line about her being an old bat or whatever it was he called her was cartoonish. Don't get me wrong, I hate this character. In fact, I hate all the yoof characters, but that dialogue throughout was atrocious. 

The second encounter was surreal. It was played out against the backdrop of everyone in the market stopping making a living and standing in a group - important named characters like Martin, Kush, Carmel and Donna to the fore - to watch a showdown between a middle-aged woman and a 16 year-old mouthy kid. Honestly, it was like a schoolyard stand-off, and all about her demanding an apology from him and him trampling on flowers, descending into her making the ubiquitous comment about "blaming the parents" and being glad she wasn't his mother. Only a moment before she was remarking to Kim how she hoped her son wouldn't turn out like Keegan and Shakil, which was rich, considering Shakil has really done nothing but hang about gormlessly with Keegan, and Shakil is also the son of her so-called best friend. That's a slight on Carmel's parenting skills, and Denise wants to remember that Chelsea was no angel and how Denise whinged and whined to Tanya not to punish widdle Chelsea when she had sex on the tanning table with Sean Slater or how she and Kevin destroyed the CCTV tape which proved that Sean never mugged Patrick because the truth would land Princess Chelsea inside a prison.

So she smacked Keegan, something all of us wished that either Shakil or one of the girls would do; but she didn't only smack him. She decked him. She broke skin and drew blood, and that will bruise. And that's assault. Because a little shit like Keegan would know just how to play the system, and at the end of the day, it is an adult smacking a child.

Who am I kidding? He'll turn out to be her nephew with terrible parents, she'll take him in and he'll be her next pet project.

What the fuck has happened to this show? Is O'Connor the new Newman?