Natalie Mitchell is one of the better writers on the show. She grew up watching it, and she knows it better than most of the lazy hacks in the writing room; and this was well-written, except that she had such difficult subject matter with which to work.
From least to most ... Because it looks as though there are a lot of things brewing.
The Eternal Narcissist. Bad, bad mistake for Stacey to get finagled into allowing Carmel to take Arthur to baby yoga classes. Bad mistake. Kush made the conscious decision to step back from having anything to do with his son, acknowledging his limitations, the circumstances of Arthur's conception and his own betrayal, both of his best friend and of his ex-wife. With that in mind, he told Carmel expressly to stand down, because - if you remember - Carmel was all over the idea of Arthur like a bad rash from the moment he was born. Even before he was born, she was lobbying Kush to tell Shabnam, herself, recovering from a stillbirth and reeling from Kush refusing to allow her to petition for custody of Jade, about Arthur. When Stacey was ill, she was constantly bothering her about Arthur, and when Stacey and Martin attempted to include Kush in their parenting, Carmel effectively barreled in on the scene and sidelined Martin.
Now she's winnowing her way into the child's life again, always moaning that he is her grandson. Well, touch. Newsflash: She has no rights to the child. In fact, the only rights she has are those accorded her by Stacey. Arthur has Martin's surname. She's also, arguably, the most self-centred, narcissistic, self-absorbed person in the show - and another one with a binge drinking problem. Carmel has to be the centre of everyone's world. She's even stultified her own sons' emotional development. The one son who seems to have made a success of his life has been the one who got the furthest away from her that he could.His wife doesn't want children, quite possibly because she knows she'll be pushed to the hinterlands by the Grandmother from Hell, Carmel. Shakil is spoiled and pampered. Kush is in his thirties, yet he's seen socialising with his mother in the pub of an evening. The only friend he has is Martin, and his friendship with Martin is now based on shame and gratitude.
Where is a love interest for this character? This speaks volumes for the lack of female characters between the ages of 26 and 40, especially with the demise of Roxy Mitchell. That was a demographic ignored, discontinued and killed off by both Dominic Treadwell-Collins and Sean O'Connor. Since the stillbirth and the Arthur reveal, indeed, since he bedded Nancy Carter and got handed his arse by Tamwar, Kush has been little more than a glorified extra, hanging about the market, gossiping and flexing his muscles. The actor and the character deserve better.
That said, Carmel is the sort of person who, if you gave her an inch, she'd take a mile. The more access Stacey lets her have with Arthur, the more she's going to stake a claim to that child and strive to involve Kush more. For fuck's sake, let's not build up Stacey and Martin only to tear them apart. Whatever happened to Stacey holding her ground? Surely, she knows what an old trout Carmel is. No good will ever come of this.
The Eternal Friend. Donna and Nancy. That worked, and Nancy left. Donna and Roxy. That worked, and Roxy died. And now ...
We had Donna admonishing Kush tonight, telling him to tell Carmel to STFU, essentially, for going on and on and on about Roxy having had cocaine in her blood at the time of her drowning death. She wouldn't want people simply to remember Roxy as the cokehead who snorted one too many and drowned.
And the next thing you know, Donna is in the café, suggesting that Tina, with whom she's never interacted, much less spoken with before, and she go out drinking after work. Mourn Roxy in one line, make a new friend by the next one. Still ... Tina and Roxy work ... do you see a pattern? I admit, I wouldn't shed a tear if Tina were to leave the show. Even with the Carters in declining numbers, she's someone whom they could afford to lose. Having said that, I like the character a lot more since Sonia left and she's confined to family matters and this new friendship with Donna.
Hope Springing Eternal. So Michelle makes a scarecrow Sharon for the allotments. (By the way, what's she planting this time of year? It's too late for winter crops, and planting doesn't really start until March. It's just as well Sharon's away, because I don't think she'd be that amused by this sort of thing. All very well and good for Michelle to say it's ok to make fun of your best friend, but this is someone who's letting her stay with her and her family and who's contributing nothing to their household, after wearing out her welcome at her brother's house.
Not only that, Michelle has an interview this coming Friday for a supply teaching agency. Seriously, is this a joke? Does she really, absolutely, seriously think that she will even be allowed to be a supply teacher here in the UK after what went down in the US? In the real world, Michelle wouldn't even be here. She'd be back home, shackled and wondering if orange really were the new black, because she'd have been arrested, tried and sentenced and be languishing in jail, branded a statutory rapist.
Because that is exactly what she is. Please note the difference here: Jay is a sex offender, through his own negligence, he is a sex offender; but Michelle is a rapist. Pure and simple and up front. Have sex with a kid under the age of legal consent, and, sorry, madam, but you are a rapist.
Chew on that.
However, in EastEndersLand, the boy's parents and the school were either too dumb or too backward or to whatever to call the police; but Michelle lost her job - sacked on the spot. That is one of the few times an employer can refuse to give a good reference, especially since Michelle hopes to be working with young people, especially young males, again. The agency will have to apply for references, and in this day of globalisation, allowing for five hours' time difference, they could know Michelle's dirty little secret in the space of a day, in the space of hours if they ask in the afternoon, which would be right about the time school was getting underway in Florida.
I'd be seriously annoyed if the lazy-arsed writers allowed this character, who will never be Michelle by any stretch of the imagination, to secure a post as a teacher, considering the shortcomings in her professional and personal background.
Oh, and writers - and Natalie Mitchell should have remembered this and objected to it - Michelle was always attracted to older men - Den Watts, horny Geoff the lecturer, and even Tim, who Sharon remarked was years older than Michelle. This woman, when stood up by Kelvin Carpenter - this is the second time the character has stood someone up, because a few years ago, he was about to meet up with Ian (I haven't seen the actor since he appeared in Guy Ritchie's Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels) - immediately made it her mission to cozy up to two of the nameless students living in the house next door to Denise. At least we got a chance to put a face to a no-name this time around. Those guys didn't look like students. They looked like men in their mid- to late-twenties, but it was enough to infer that Michelle was out to snare a bit of fresh, and much younger, male flesh.
Interesting that Ben demurred from stopping her making a fool out of herself, but Jay stepped in to stop the proceedings. She was too daft to know that, as far as the boy in question was concerned, this was just some horny middle-aged woman who would do as a bit of flesh under whom he might ease his sexual tension before discarding her. The line of the night goes to the no-name with a face, the line which brought Michelle down to earth with a bang:-
Who is this? Your son?
I know the late, lamented Roxy had a problem with the fact that she was approaching forty, and seemed to always contrive to get involved with men at least a decade younger than herself, but Michelle clearly has another problem as such. She's approaching 48, she must be menopausal, and these liaisons with younger men - men young enough to be her son - isn't a desperate cry for a lost youth, albeit Michelle was running after sexual father figures since she gave birth to Den Watts's daughter at the age of sixteen - it's just silly. And dangerous.
Whatever the reason, and I do hope O'Connor doesn't allow such an aberration as a liaison between Jay and Michelle, he has surely fucked up one of the most iconic, if not the most seminal and one of the most nuanced characters in the show's history with this recast and this labelling of her as a statutory rapist.
The Eternal Bit of Foreshadowing. Is Ian Beale about to be landed with a health issue? Is this natural karma for the Beales and their part in framing Max for a crime he didn't commit? By the way, when the hell is Max's revenge going to happen, or is that just a damp squib?
The Fucking Eternal Triangle: The Eternal Victim, the Eternal Culprit and the Eternal Prick. I hate the Lee-Whitney-Mick storyline. I hate it because this is rooted in Lee's depression and his low self-esteem, and it goes back beyond the decision made by Sean O'Connor to ax the character of Lee Carter (although I suspect that the character will return, sooner rather than later, with a new head and a new attitude).
On the one hand, it perfectly depicts how little people know or understand or even are willing to try to understand about mental illness. The Carters are certainly no strangers to health issues with their children. They went out the way to understand Nancy's epileptic condition. They are au fait with all the underlying problems that could await Ollie, were his accident to have impaired him in any way. They understand the repercussions of Johnny having been born prematurely.
Yet they did nothing to avail themselves of knowledge of Lee's depression. They never talked to him about what was bothering him - I do think it lay in the fact that he was precluded from doing another tour in the Middle East, by Whitney's constant carping that she didn't want him to go. It was futher exacerbated by his discharge from the army. He was like a fish out of water. Then there's his constant attempts to live up to his father's image - a totally unrealistic image which is nothing like Mick in reality.
As Lee told the woman in the car park, his parents have this amazing marriage, but is it so amazing? They put on this united front for the kids, this play-house thing where Mick is the hunter-gatherer, the all-omniscient father and the protector of his family, and Linda promotes that as well - when in reality, until three years ago, they were two overgrown children who'd lived with her mother since they were in their early teens and shitting out children before they were out of secondary school.
Neither one of them has had a youth, sleepovers with girlfriends, pub crawls with mates, because when their friends were all out clubbing and studying for exams, they were changing nappies and pretending to be adults.
What was that one remark Mick made tonight about Whitney having a strop and going to Bianca's? That Linda was always running home to Elaine when she was Whitney's age at the first sign of a barney? Pardon me, but Whitney is now 25. By the time Linda was that age, she had a son about ready to start secondary school, and two younger kids in primary school .... and guess what? How the hell could she run home to Elaine when she and Mick bloody lived with Elaine!!!!!!!!!!! What did she do? Run into the next room when they had a big argument?
But Mick isn't the strong man either Lee or Whitney think him to be, and if Lee weren't on such a downer at the moment - and he's not feeling sorry for himself as Mick the Ignorant pointed out tonight, this is low self-esteem, and that's been ingrained upon him by his father and his worthless wife for months on end now - Lee would see that MIck isn't strong at all. In fact, he should have known that for years. Anyone who lashes out in anger the many times Mick has, isn't a strong man. He should also remember how Mick treated Nancy - the same cold-hearted way he's treating Lee now - because of her accident concerning Ollie.
Instead of acting like the adult in the room on that occasion, instead of dealing with the fight brewing between Nancy and Lee, which eventually caused the accident, Mick stormed from the room in a strop, the way he did tonight. And afterward, he did the same thing to Nancy, telling her he loved her but couldn't stand her being around him. This isn't an adult. This certainly isn't a parent at all. Even Linda couldn't move him.
This is a spoiled manbaby. A Trump of a man.
Instead of trying to understand not just the root of Lee's depression, but what actually depression is, Mick kept constantly telling Lee to "man up." Just like he told him to do so tonight. Man up and take his pills. Man up and get out of this depression.
When you are suffering from depression, you aren't thinking straight, and you often think, do and say things that aren't right. Lee didn't want to worry his parents about finding a job. So he took the first one which came along and bigged it up because he thought that's what they and Whitney wanted to hear. All along, he knew the truth, but he was afraid to tell anyone for fear of not living up to everyone's expectations.
I still don't think he loves Whitney. When he first got serious with her, he told her he wanted to be like his parents - marry young and have children. That's what Whitney wanted, but Whitney can't abide being with the dependable bloke, much less being married to him. As long as Whitney made up a version of Lee in her head, as some superstrong, city slicker who'd give her all the material stuff she craved - and she craved a lot - she was happy. But Lee couldn't live up to that image that was a lie.
I don't think she loves him either. He was just the bloke who asked her to marry him. And he asked her this, after finding out she hankered after his father. Remember what happened the last time Whitney was engaged (to Tyler Moon)? She slept with Joey Branning.
Well, this time, the bad boy is her father-in-law.
I hated this aftermath storyline because she did exactly what I thought she would do - she made herself the victim to Lauren. It was to Lauren she originally confessed after the miscarriage that she didn't think she could tolerate being around Lee if depression set in. That was the only time she was ever honest in her life about this.
Tonight, she never even mentioned Lee's depression, that he'd been suffering from depression that made him do things he normally wouldn't do. Nope, this was all about her, except for the bit where she reluctantly confessed that she had said some things that were so out of order that he was goaded into smacking her. It wasn't even a smack which left a mark, even though the reaction, itself, was wrong.
What pissed me off even more was that she then assumed the standard whine of an abused woman - someone who constantly professes love for the man who repeatedly beat and hit her, making excuses for Lee, saying he is good deep within. Lauren knew exactly what she was insinuating, and she even went so far as to confess that she and Peter weren't right for each other and they had a child.
You what? Lauren left Walford with Max's blessing to go halfway around the world with Peter for a new life and a new baby. The more he's obliquely referred to, the more she openly compares Peter to Steven in Steven's hearing, the more I'm convinced that the writing room hasn't got a clue in hell as how to write their break-up. Instead of making a early recast of Peter when it was time for Lauren to return from New Zealand (and they could easily have cast the actor who plays Moose), they chose to bring Steven Beale back, heterosex him up and make us believe he prayed away the gay, given him a bit of a dodgy edge and then promptly forgot about him. Like Kush, he's now part of the fixtures and fittings and only comes forward when he either has to make up the numbers or push Lauren's kid's pram.
I also think Whitney's insistence to Lauren about staying with Lee was for one reason and one reason only - because sticking with Lee, would give her access to the man she really loves - Mick. In fact, when she said she was texting Lee to return, for a moment, I thought she had texted Mick the Prick.
There were two scenes which stuck out in this episode - the scene between Mick and Lee and the subsequent scene between Mick and Shirley, and both made me angry.
Mick showed what an abject prick he totally was, demanding an explanation from Lee. I liked the bit of backchat Lee gave him under his breath. I think deep down, Lee knows the measure of Mick, but he has to get past the bit about him being Big Daddy and tell him some home truths. I did like it when Mick demanded to know the reason behind their argument, and Lee told him that it was none of his business, just between him and Whitney.
Too true. Mick has no right to know, but I wondered if Mick thought for a moment that Whitney had actually mentioned the kiss they shared, and I also wondered when he stormed from the room where Lee was if he wouldn't rock up at Whitney's flat, but he didn't.
I thought it was presumptuous that he literally blamed Lee for everything and made himself the hero of the piece by reminding Lee that he had bailed his ass out of trouble that gave him the right to know the intimacies of Lee's marital difficulties. And at one point, I was absolutely willing Lee to tell Mick exactly what Whitney had said that made him strike her, but he wouldn't. I wanted him to throw back the fact that he had been being compared to Mick in every pejorative way for weeks by Whitney. I want the penny to drop for Lee that she'd been gaslighting him by whining about him to Mick.
Mick said repeatedly tonight that he loved Lee, but I don't think he does. I think he's jealous of Lee being with Whitney. I think he's attracted to Whitney and that scares him, because he's been with Linda for so long. In part, this is why he's wanting her to come home, and I can tell he's beginning her to feel frustrated by her absence and by her devotion to her ill mother.
And the scene with Shirley annoyed me as well. I thought that Shirley might be a bit more understanding and open to finding out what exactly was bothering Lee, or at least understanding what depression was. Instead, she's relating Lee's behaviour to her experience with Dean and rating Lee a write-off. She was also quick to blame Lee for everything in this situation, when he isn't entirely to blame.
His depression was triggered again by finding out that Whitney had been intent on pursuing Mick, and his proposal to her came in the wake of that discovery. Her acceptance didn't lift this depression, it enhanced it, because it meant he had to live up to the exalted expectation of her and of his parents- the firstborn son striking out in life for himself. Whitney made no effort to understand or deal with his depression. In fact, she admitted to Lauren that she couldn't deal with his depression in the wake of the miscarriage. She didn't want to deal with it. So she ran home to Bianca and in a night, created an image of Lee she could love. The problem arose when she was forced to realise that her image of Lee was nothing like he was in real life, and when she was forced to deal with the fact that he just may be on a depressive bender, from the confession about the raid to his description of what was going on at work and how he hated the job, she did nothing. she never even tried to understand. Instead, she went running to Mick, telling tales about how awful Lee was.
And Mick believed her.
He really is an awful person, and I hope eventually Linda finds out about everything; because on Big Mama's recommendation, he's going to tell Lee to walk away from this marriage, probably to leave Walford; and instead, he'll be the White Prince who rescues Dirty Whitney. I hope Shirley discovers what's going on, and then she'll be in a dilemma as to what to do regarding telling Linda. Because I think Mick will cheat on her.
Buster cheated on Shirley, and Mick will cheat on Linda. I hope when Linda returns, Whitney gets another smack, this time from Linda.
From least to most ... Because it looks as though there are a lot of things brewing.
The Eternal Narcissist. Bad, bad mistake for Stacey to get finagled into allowing Carmel to take Arthur to baby yoga classes. Bad mistake. Kush made the conscious decision to step back from having anything to do with his son, acknowledging his limitations, the circumstances of Arthur's conception and his own betrayal, both of his best friend and of his ex-wife. With that in mind, he told Carmel expressly to stand down, because - if you remember - Carmel was all over the idea of Arthur like a bad rash from the moment he was born. Even before he was born, she was lobbying Kush to tell Shabnam, herself, recovering from a stillbirth and reeling from Kush refusing to allow her to petition for custody of Jade, about Arthur. When Stacey was ill, she was constantly bothering her about Arthur, and when Stacey and Martin attempted to include Kush in their parenting, Carmel effectively barreled in on the scene and sidelined Martin.
Now she's winnowing her way into the child's life again, always moaning that he is her grandson. Well, touch. Newsflash: She has no rights to the child. In fact, the only rights she has are those accorded her by Stacey. Arthur has Martin's surname. She's also, arguably, the most self-centred, narcissistic, self-absorbed person in the show - and another one with a binge drinking problem. Carmel has to be the centre of everyone's world. She's even stultified her own sons' emotional development. The one son who seems to have made a success of his life has been the one who got the furthest away from her that he could.His wife doesn't want children, quite possibly because she knows she'll be pushed to the hinterlands by the Grandmother from Hell, Carmel. Shakil is spoiled and pampered. Kush is in his thirties, yet he's seen socialising with his mother in the pub of an evening. The only friend he has is Martin, and his friendship with Martin is now based on shame and gratitude.
Where is a love interest for this character? This speaks volumes for the lack of female characters between the ages of 26 and 40, especially with the demise of Roxy Mitchell. That was a demographic ignored, discontinued and killed off by both Dominic Treadwell-Collins and Sean O'Connor. Since the stillbirth and the Arthur reveal, indeed, since he bedded Nancy Carter and got handed his arse by Tamwar, Kush has been little more than a glorified extra, hanging about the market, gossiping and flexing his muscles. The actor and the character deserve better.
That said, Carmel is the sort of person who, if you gave her an inch, she'd take a mile. The more access Stacey lets her have with Arthur, the more she's going to stake a claim to that child and strive to involve Kush more. For fuck's sake, let's not build up Stacey and Martin only to tear them apart. Whatever happened to Stacey holding her ground? Surely, she knows what an old trout Carmel is. No good will ever come of this.
The Eternal Friend. Donna and Nancy. That worked, and Nancy left. Donna and Roxy. That worked, and Roxy died. And now ...
We had Donna admonishing Kush tonight, telling him to tell Carmel to STFU, essentially, for going on and on and on about Roxy having had cocaine in her blood at the time of her drowning death. She wouldn't want people simply to remember Roxy as the cokehead who snorted one too many and drowned.
And the next thing you know, Donna is in the café, suggesting that Tina, with whom she's never interacted, much less spoken with before, and she go out drinking after work. Mourn Roxy in one line, make a new friend by the next one. Still ... Tina and Roxy work ... do you see a pattern? I admit, I wouldn't shed a tear if Tina were to leave the show. Even with the Carters in declining numbers, she's someone whom they could afford to lose. Having said that, I like the character a lot more since Sonia left and she's confined to family matters and this new friendship with Donna.
Hope Springing Eternal. So Michelle makes a scarecrow Sharon for the allotments. (By the way, what's she planting this time of year? It's too late for winter crops, and planting doesn't really start until March. It's just as well Sharon's away, because I don't think she'd be that amused by this sort of thing. All very well and good for Michelle to say it's ok to make fun of your best friend, but this is someone who's letting her stay with her and her family and who's contributing nothing to their household, after wearing out her welcome at her brother's house.
Not only that, Michelle has an interview this coming Friday for a supply teaching agency. Seriously, is this a joke? Does she really, absolutely, seriously think that she will even be allowed to be a supply teacher here in the UK after what went down in the US? In the real world, Michelle wouldn't even be here. She'd be back home, shackled and wondering if orange really were the new black, because she'd have been arrested, tried and sentenced and be languishing in jail, branded a statutory rapist.
Because that is exactly what she is. Please note the difference here: Jay is a sex offender, through his own negligence, he is a sex offender; but Michelle is a rapist. Pure and simple and up front. Have sex with a kid under the age of legal consent, and, sorry, madam, but you are a rapist.
Chew on that.
However, in EastEndersLand, the boy's parents and the school were either too dumb or too backward or to whatever to call the police; but Michelle lost her job - sacked on the spot. That is one of the few times an employer can refuse to give a good reference, especially since Michelle hopes to be working with young people, especially young males, again. The agency will have to apply for references, and in this day of globalisation, allowing for five hours' time difference, they could know Michelle's dirty little secret in the space of a day, in the space of hours if they ask in the afternoon, which would be right about the time school was getting underway in Florida.
I'd be seriously annoyed if the lazy-arsed writers allowed this character, who will never be Michelle by any stretch of the imagination, to secure a post as a teacher, considering the shortcomings in her professional and personal background.
Oh, and writers - and Natalie Mitchell should have remembered this and objected to it - Michelle was always attracted to older men - Den Watts, horny Geoff the lecturer, and even Tim, who Sharon remarked was years older than Michelle. This woman, when stood up by Kelvin Carpenter - this is the second time the character has stood someone up, because a few years ago, he was about to meet up with Ian (I haven't seen the actor since he appeared in Guy Ritchie's Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels) - immediately made it her mission to cozy up to two of the nameless students living in the house next door to Denise. At least we got a chance to put a face to a no-name this time around. Those guys didn't look like students. They looked like men in their mid- to late-twenties, but it was enough to infer that Michelle was out to snare a bit of fresh, and much younger, male flesh.
Interesting that Ben demurred from stopping her making a fool out of herself, but Jay stepped in to stop the proceedings. She was too daft to know that, as far as the boy in question was concerned, this was just some horny middle-aged woman who would do as a bit of flesh under whom he might ease his sexual tension before discarding her. The line of the night goes to the no-name with a face, the line which brought Michelle down to earth with a bang:-
Who is this? Your son?
I know the late, lamented Roxy had a problem with the fact that she was approaching forty, and seemed to always contrive to get involved with men at least a decade younger than herself, but Michelle clearly has another problem as such. She's approaching 48, she must be menopausal, and these liaisons with younger men - men young enough to be her son - isn't a desperate cry for a lost youth, albeit Michelle was running after sexual father figures since she gave birth to Den Watts's daughter at the age of sixteen - it's just silly. And dangerous.
Whatever the reason, and I do hope O'Connor doesn't allow such an aberration as a liaison between Jay and Michelle, he has surely fucked up one of the most iconic, if not the most seminal and one of the most nuanced characters in the show's history with this recast and this labelling of her as a statutory rapist.
The Eternal Bit of Foreshadowing. Is Ian Beale about to be landed with a health issue? Is this natural karma for the Beales and their part in framing Max for a crime he didn't commit? By the way, when the hell is Max's revenge going to happen, or is that just a damp squib?
The Fucking Eternal Triangle: The Eternal Victim, the Eternal Culprit and the Eternal Prick. I hate the Lee-Whitney-Mick storyline. I hate it because this is rooted in Lee's depression and his low self-esteem, and it goes back beyond the decision made by Sean O'Connor to ax the character of Lee Carter (although I suspect that the character will return, sooner rather than later, with a new head and a new attitude).
On the one hand, it perfectly depicts how little people know or understand or even are willing to try to understand about mental illness. The Carters are certainly no strangers to health issues with their children. They went out the way to understand Nancy's epileptic condition. They are au fait with all the underlying problems that could await Ollie, were his accident to have impaired him in any way. They understand the repercussions of Johnny having been born prematurely.
Yet they did nothing to avail themselves of knowledge of Lee's depression. They never talked to him about what was bothering him - I do think it lay in the fact that he was precluded from doing another tour in the Middle East, by Whitney's constant carping that she didn't want him to go. It was futher exacerbated by his discharge from the army. He was like a fish out of water. Then there's his constant attempts to live up to his father's image - a totally unrealistic image which is nothing like Mick in reality.
As Lee told the woman in the car park, his parents have this amazing marriage, but is it so amazing? They put on this united front for the kids, this play-house thing where Mick is the hunter-gatherer, the all-omniscient father and the protector of his family, and Linda promotes that as well - when in reality, until three years ago, they were two overgrown children who'd lived with her mother since they were in their early teens and shitting out children before they were out of secondary school.
Neither one of them has had a youth, sleepovers with girlfriends, pub crawls with mates, because when their friends were all out clubbing and studying for exams, they were changing nappies and pretending to be adults.
What was that one remark Mick made tonight about Whitney having a strop and going to Bianca's? That Linda was always running home to Elaine when she was Whitney's age at the first sign of a barney? Pardon me, but Whitney is now 25. By the time Linda was that age, she had a son about ready to start secondary school, and two younger kids in primary school .... and guess what? How the hell could she run home to Elaine when she and Mick bloody lived with Elaine!!!!!!!!!!! What did she do? Run into the next room when they had a big argument?
But Mick isn't the strong man either Lee or Whitney think him to be, and if Lee weren't on such a downer at the moment - and he's not feeling sorry for himself as Mick the Ignorant pointed out tonight, this is low self-esteem, and that's been ingrained upon him by his father and his worthless wife for months on end now - Lee would see that MIck isn't strong at all. In fact, he should have known that for years. Anyone who lashes out in anger the many times Mick has, isn't a strong man. He should also remember how Mick treated Nancy - the same cold-hearted way he's treating Lee now - because of her accident concerning Ollie.
Instead of acting like the adult in the room on that occasion, instead of dealing with the fight brewing between Nancy and Lee, which eventually caused the accident, Mick stormed from the room in a strop, the way he did tonight. And afterward, he did the same thing to Nancy, telling her he loved her but couldn't stand her being around him. This isn't an adult. This certainly isn't a parent at all. Even Linda couldn't move him.
This is a spoiled manbaby. A Trump of a man.
Instead of trying to understand not just the root of Lee's depression, but what actually depression is, Mick kept constantly telling Lee to "man up." Just like he told him to do so tonight. Man up and take his pills. Man up and get out of this depression.
When you are suffering from depression, you aren't thinking straight, and you often think, do and say things that aren't right. Lee didn't want to worry his parents about finding a job. So he took the first one which came along and bigged it up because he thought that's what they and Whitney wanted to hear. All along, he knew the truth, but he was afraid to tell anyone for fear of not living up to everyone's expectations.
I still don't think he loves Whitney. When he first got serious with her, he told her he wanted to be like his parents - marry young and have children. That's what Whitney wanted, but Whitney can't abide being with the dependable bloke, much less being married to him. As long as Whitney made up a version of Lee in her head, as some superstrong, city slicker who'd give her all the material stuff she craved - and she craved a lot - she was happy. But Lee couldn't live up to that image that was a lie.
I don't think she loves him either. He was just the bloke who asked her to marry him. And he asked her this, after finding out she hankered after his father. Remember what happened the last time Whitney was engaged (to Tyler Moon)? She slept with Joey Branning.
Well, this time, the bad boy is her father-in-law.
I hated this aftermath storyline because she did exactly what I thought she would do - she made herself the victim to Lauren. It was to Lauren she originally confessed after the miscarriage that she didn't think she could tolerate being around Lee if depression set in. That was the only time she was ever honest in her life about this.
Tonight, she never even mentioned Lee's depression, that he'd been suffering from depression that made him do things he normally wouldn't do. Nope, this was all about her, except for the bit where she reluctantly confessed that she had said some things that were so out of order that he was goaded into smacking her. It wasn't even a smack which left a mark, even though the reaction, itself, was wrong.
What pissed me off even more was that she then assumed the standard whine of an abused woman - someone who constantly professes love for the man who repeatedly beat and hit her, making excuses for Lee, saying he is good deep within. Lauren knew exactly what she was insinuating, and she even went so far as to confess that she and Peter weren't right for each other and they had a child.
You what? Lauren left Walford with Max's blessing to go halfway around the world with Peter for a new life and a new baby. The more he's obliquely referred to, the more she openly compares Peter to Steven in Steven's hearing, the more I'm convinced that the writing room hasn't got a clue in hell as how to write their break-up. Instead of making a early recast of Peter when it was time for Lauren to return from New Zealand (and they could easily have cast the actor who plays Moose), they chose to bring Steven Beale back, heterosex him up and make us believe he prayed away the gay, given him a bit of a dodgy edge and then promptly forgot about him. Like Kush, he's now part of the fixtures and fittings and only comes forward when he either has to make up the numbers or push Lauren's kid's pram.
I also think Whitney's insistence to Lauren about staying with Lee was for one reason and one reason only - because sticking with Lee, would give her access to the man she really loves - Mick. In fact, when she said she was texting Lee to return, for a moment, I thought she had texted Mick the Prick.
There were two scenes which stuck out in this episode - the scene between Mick and Lee and the subsequent scene between Mick and Shirley, and both made me angry.
Mick showed what an abject prick he totally was, demanding an explanation from Lee. I liked the bit of backchat Lee gave him under his breath. I think deep down, Lee knows the measure of Mick, but he has to get past the bit about him being Big Daddy and tell him some home truths. I did like it when Mick demanded to know the reason behind their argument, and Lee told him that it was none of his business, just between him and Whitney.
Too true. Mick has no right to know, but I wondered if Mick thought for a moment that Whitney had actually mentioned the kiss they shared, and I also wondered when he stormed from the room where Lee was if he wouldn't rock up at Whitney's flat, but he didn't.
I thought it was presumptuous that he literally blamed Lee for everything and made himself the hero of the piece by reminding Lee that he had bailed his ass out of trouble that gave him the right to know the intimacies of Lee's marital difficulties. And at one point, I was absolutely willing Lee to tell Mick exactly what Whitney had said that made him strike her, but he wouldn't. I wanted him to throw back the fact that he had been being compared to Mick in every pejorative way for weeks by Whitney. I want the penny to drop for Lee that she'd been gaslighting him by whining about him to Mick.
Mick said repeatedly tonight that he loved Lee, but I don't think he does. I think he's jealous of Lee being with Whitney. I think he's attracted to Whitney and that scares him, because he's been with Linda for so long. In part, this is why he's wanting her to come home, and I can tell he's beginning her to feel frustrated by her absence and by her devotion to her ill mother.
And the scene with Shirley annoyed me as well. I thought that Shirley might be a bit more understanding and open to finding out what exactly was bothering Lee, or at least understanding what depression was. Instead, she's relating Lee's behaviour to her experience with Dean and rating Lee a write-off. She was also quick to blame Lee for everything in this situation, when he isn't entirely to blame.
His depression was triggered again by finding out that Whitney had been intent on pursuing Mick, and his proposal to her came in the wake of that discovery. Her acceptance didn't lift this depression, it enhanced it, because it meant he had to live up to the exalted expectation of her and of his parents- the firstborn son striking out in life for himself. Whitney made no effort to understand or deal with his depression. In fact, she admitted to Lauren that she couldn't deal with his depression in the wake of the miscarriage. She didn't want to deal with it. So she ran home to Bianca and in a night, created an image of Lee she could love. The problem arose when she was forced to realise that her image of Lee was nothing like he was in real life, and when she was forced to deal with the fact that he just may be on a depressive bender, from the confession about the raid to his description of what was going on at work and how he hated the job, she did nothing. she never even tried to understand. Instead, she went running to Mick, telling tales about how awful Lee was.
And Mick believed her.
He really is an awful person, and I hope eventually Linda finds out about everything; because on Big Mama's recommendation, he's going to tell Lee to walk away from this marriage, probably to leave Walford; and instead, he'll be the White Prince who rescues Dirty Whitney. I hope Shirley discovers what's going on, and then she'll be in a dilemma as to what to do regarding telling Linda. Because I think Mick will cheat on her.
Buster cheated on Shirley, and Mick will cheat on Linda. I hope when Linda returns, Whitney gets another smack, this time from Linda.
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