We've suffered yet another week of dire, substandard episodes. Again. The only reason I scored this episode slightly above mediocre was on the strength of the last scene, alone.
Watching it, I thought about characters about whom I really cared in the show. I used to care about Sharon, and I still do, somehat; but when she initially returned under John Yorke's watch, he set on on the irreversible road to perdition, stripping her of her resilience and fortitude, wrenching her away from the Mitchell dynamic, with whom she worked best, post-Den-and-Angie and established her as a precursor to Ronnie Mitchell in the tragic heroine stakes. Under Berridge and reunited with her zombie dad, the writers invested Den's attention to and love for Sharon with more than a slight hint of incest - hence, why a lot of people initially viewed Archie and Ronnie as an extension of Den and Sharon. Kirkwood made her beg for crumbs from the Branning table, and Newman didn't know what to do with her. DTC changed her backstory, gave her a cartoon birth father and had her actively cover for two murderers, as well as tacitly look the other way whilst an innocent man was framed for a murder.
I used to care about Phil, but Yorke put the boot in on his character by tacking the worst part of Grant onto Phil and, effectively, smothering the basic good and decent part of Phil Mitchell.
Pat and Peggy are dead. Carol isn't coming back anytime soon. The Beales are ruined.
I suddenly realised tonight that, lately, the characters whom I've enjoyed watching the most are Steven Beale, Kush Kazemi and Dennis Rickman Jr. Two background props and a kid.
In fact, Bleu Landau, a kid, an actor on the cusp of puberty turning thirteen this year and playing a ten year-old, is, at the moment, running rings around the more established actors on the show. He makes the former go-to girl who really needs to go full stop, Jacqueline Jossa, look even more pedestrian than she usually is.
This isn't a cooked-up Tiffany Butcher-Simon Barlow type of pre-pubescent lead, one minute playing the innocent child by uttering badly-written dialogue meant to be spoken by a child three years younger than the character is supposed to be, and the next sounding like a precocious moppet imitating a sophisticated forty year-old. The writers have really pegged this kid - the grandson of Den Watts, and the stepson raised by Phil Mitchell.
So there you have it. Sean O'Connor's EastEnders, a social commentary obsessed with Council cuts and binbags, is being carried by a child actor.
Go figure.
And It's Good-bye from Him. I had heard Danny Dyer's departure was precipitous, but I didn't think it was as precipitous and discomababulated as this - leaving to go to Bulgaria upon receiving word from Tamwar that Nancy had been hit by a car.
When he stormed into the kitchen of the Vic, where Whitney had just finished the online sale of what I had thought to be Lauren's lost phone, screaming about wanting the earliest flight to Sofia, Bulgaria, I thought he was fleeing some sort of police raid.
Of course, he's barreling off like a bull in heat, without having told Linda (whom he still blames for abandoning him to care for her ailing mother), which means one thing and which begs another question -
A. It looks as though Dyer's sudden departure probably changed the course of a storyline, meant, eventually, to evolve into some kind of affair/attachment/pity party with Whitney; so, unless, normal service resumes upon his return, however long that might be, the furtive tonguefest in the hospital a couple of months back, was all for nowt - yet another storyline begun and left unfinished (like Billy and the stolen post) ... and ...
B. How will the pub remain open in his absence? A licencee (Mick, Linda or Shirley) doesn't have to be on the premises all the time, but the pub must have a Designated Premises Supervisor, or DPS, who has a personal licence. Quoting from the government's official guidelines for public houses:-
This link will explain fully why it's impossible for either Johnnie or Whitney to operate that pub in Mick's absence, however long that might be. Once again, the show has shown itself to be light on research and removed from reality. However, Shirley's supposed to be returning in the next couple of weeks, but I'm still plumping for Shazza to get back behind that bar, as more than just a barmaid.
Eeeuuuuuuuuuuuuuwww, an awful thought just occurred to me. Remember that particular arrogance Whitney displays when she's in any sort of semblance of authority? Can you imagine her issuing orders to Sharon?
The Go-To Girl Should Go. The ubiquitous Beale sitcom continues, and I'm wondering what's being achieved here. Are they making the Beales so patently awful and boring so that we feel sorry for Lauren and enjoy her little jaunt into serial infidelity?
I hate even admitting it, but Whitney is right: Lauren isn't turning into her father, she is simply just like him - which probably explains the tension that always pervades their natural relationship.
However, the show's depiction of Ian insisting that the Beales sit in of an evening and play a Koch Brothers approximation of Monopoly is just another example of Ian's swift descent into becoming the show's latest sad, fat clown, only tonight he was a sad, boring, obnoxious clown.
Juxtapose that with Jane's version of a night out being attending Denise's community solidarity meeting at - where else? - the community centre.
Now juxtapose that, even further, with Steven having the night off from the restaurant and wanting to spend some time with Lauren, who's bored.
Only we're treated to just how bored she is. If anyone had any doubt about how selfish, self-centred and self-serving Lauren was and always will be, this episode emphasized that beyond a shadow of a doubt. Of course, selfishness has always been the identifying characteristic of the Brannings. Max was a sexually selfish man married to Tanya, a materialistic, selfish woman.
Both sides combined to produce Lauren, who sat drooling over the phone upgrade she'd got through her insurance when she lost her original phone, whilst keying in the number of her prospective bit on the side and attempting to text him, when Steven interrupted her. This is a classic premise of a sitcom with an ongoing theme - someone bored by the background to her life offered by her boyfriend's family and her boyfriend, so she contemplates infidelity
Except that tonight, we learn that Lauren doesn't really want a clandestine affair, when she bolts the boardgame evening (after playing a silent game of covert rudeness during the entire time she sat at the table, complete with an artsy-fartsy overshot view of the family sat around the boardgame), for a few hours of talking at Whitney about her problem, talking at her and never once registering or listening to anything Whitney might have to offer.
No, Lauren doesn't want the thrill of the chase; she wants rid of Steven. He bores her. Truth be known, her son bores her. As she said to Steven, she wants to go out. She's 23, she's got a baby, she's got some sort of glorified tea-lady job at a web design company, because, girlfriend, ain't no way that bitch is going to be a web designer with not even one GCSE. I mean, Denise is getting one GCSE, and the Square treat her as if she's about to get a PhD. Nope, Lauren is stuck in a household with a man for whom she left the father of her child, a man so immersed in doubts about his own self-worth and his sexuality, a man who loves her and her child and wants to provide for them; she lives with his father and step-mother, both of whom helped conceal the identity of the killer of her best friend, and she's bored by simple domesticity.
Steven, who has had mental health issues in the past, and has been formerly identified on the programme a decade ago as being gay, has become simply part and parcel of the fixtures and fittings. For his part, he's desperate to be recognised as Ian's dutiful son. He works with him, helps him in his businesses, and is the only one of Ian's surviving children who, willingly, has returned to win his trust. In many ways, although the show hasn't served it up front and centre to the extent it did with the Mitchell counterpart story, Steven's quest for Ian's approval somewhat mirrors Ben's struggle for Phil's approbation.
Lauren wants her freedom again, even to the extent of putting herself in the frame to rent a spare room from Ben and Jay in their new house, but I daresay Ben and Jay aren't going to be that keen on a young mother with a child, so it begs the question about how serious Lauren is about her young son? Because I think she's bored by Louis as well.
Max liked the thrill of the chase, whenever the domestic front - with Rachel and subsequently with Rachel - got too boring. But he always maintained the home front and returned when he got bored. He only came unstuck when he got Tanya pregnant and had to leave Rachel and Bradley. Max married Rachel because he got her pregnant; he married Tanya and left Rachel when he got Tanya up the duff. Lauren was about to get a termination when Peter talked her out of it, but she's not with Peter now, she's with his brother, and she has Peter's son.
This is life, and Lauren is bored by it. However, having texted Josh, the mystery man (whom I'm betting is married as well), she reluctantly returns home, but Steven is beginning to twig that something is wrong.
I have no idea where TPTB plan to take Lauren's character after this. The cracks in her relationship with Steven have been apparent for sometime. Will she be the second Branning daughter to have involved herself with a closeted gay man? Will a re-cast Peter return, and will we then find out exactly what went on in New Zealand? Is Steven all he seems to be? Have they forgotten the diabetes storyline so soon? Will EastEnders ever be interesting again?
Two More Boring Storylines Collide For Denise. The star of the show was served up in double doses tonight.
I don't know where this council protest storyline is going. We've had them, done badly, before - the market sit-in with Shirley necking vodka from a bottle, and the crashing of the Council Christmas lunch by market traders objecting to the sale of Beales' for a supermarket chain. I get it that they're concerned about council cuts and the fortnightly bin collection. (On the last one, it's beyond me why no one has figured out going to the local dump, but there you go).
I just don't see why they're raising money by sponsored exercise bike rides and a Fayre on the Square. What, exactly, are they aiming to do? Or is this just another pointless exercise in O'Connor's quest for community solidarity?
It was all a silly backdrop to set up the eventual re-connection between Kush and Denise.
And it was bad.
Derek is back, but Derek's become a finicky, fusspot, clamouring on and on about the Council's policy on rubbish bins and rude Council officials, wittering on non-stop to Denise. As with his stint at Christmas, there's no association at all with Martin Fowler at all; instead, Derek has been placed with the Trueman-Fox-Hubbard dynamic. I can see that Patrick needs a crony and a co-hort of his own age (although the purported crush Derek was supposed to have had on Patrick was more than a bit far-fetched). He's known Patrick for years. But it looks like Derek's supposed to lend credence as a background character to this Council protest malarky again.
Once again, the neighbourhood meeting is a flop, this time because the hapless Preston failed to deliver Denise's flyers advertising the meeting for that night. (In a tip to the commonly perceived assumption amongst the British that Americans are intrinsically stupid, Preston's reasoning for not delivering the brochures - for which Denise has paid him, beforehand - is that he thought "tonight" meant "tomorrow night." So he was going to distribute the flyers the next morning.
Go figure.
Then, after offering this explanation, TPTB had their heroine Denise promote another common fallacy which the British perceive to be suffered by Americans. Pointing to the brochure and pointing to the word "tonight", Denise reiterates:-
Can't you read?!!! (I don't know how many times I've had Brits imply openly to me that Americans are illiterate).
In that scene at the Mitchell house, I thought Denise was rancid. I'm no fan of Preston's. I don't like him. I don't like Denise, and I'm not overly fond of Michelle; but Denise was in the wrong there. She was rude and aggressive.
The kid made a mistake. He probably wasn't fussed at distributing flyers and didn't bother to read them, but it's doubtful that any more people than the quartet who showed up would have showed up at all, even with a flyer. Instead, Denise storms into the Mitchell kitchen spewing venom because it's all Preston's fault that she didn't have enough time to bask in the light of her own ego. And as for stupidity, Denise shouldn't have paid Preston before he'd done the job. At least he offered to give her money back - a full ten quid - which she refused, even though she hasn't got a job, and even though she went to the untold expense of having those flyers printed. In that instance, I was Team Michelle. Denise had no right to come full on like that. She's all mouth and aggression, and a deeply unpleasant person, and I hope this is fully revealed, in time, with Kush.
Of course, that upcoming liaison is the second situation prevalent which involves a younger man becoming romantically entangled with a much older woman. Kush is 32, Denise is 48. He fancies her, and her new game of playing hard to get offers him a challenge. This time, she's not hopping right into bed - does she think she's still incredibly fertile enough to conceive again, right after her drunken bout with Phil Mitchell?
He might banter about wanting to see her in a bikini, and they'll eventually get together, much to the chagrin of Carmel, who'll probably end her friendship with the terminally ungrateful Denise right then and there; but whether or not this is for the long-term is debatable. Kathy was eleven years Phil's senior, and that didn't last. Sixteen years is a big gap, and whilst Arthur is Kush's natural son, he's relinquished rights to him, and it's highly unlikely he'll have a family with Denise. In fact, Kush is roughly the same age as her oldest daughter, or at the very least, a couple of years older. (Oh, please, don't be tempted to bring back the lazy, self-important Chelsea in a cack-handed attempt at a poor man's version of an Alexis Carrington-Dex Dexter-Amanda Carrington triangle.)
Denise is so singularly rude, verbally aggressive, condescending, snide and eternally ungrateful that I cannot fathom what there is about her personality that's appealing to Kush. As for the community organising, in the time she spent sniping at Preston, Kush, Honey and Derek (who would have been the only people to have shown up even if the flyers had been distributed) had come up with some viable ideas of their own and had gone about implementing them.
But I still don't understand what all the fund-raising is about. I thought this was a registered protest and a meeting to discuss Council cuts, not organising a fucking village fete.
The Systematic Character Assassination of Michelle Fowler Is Now Complete. Wow. Just wow. Where the character goes from here is anyone's guess, but after the big reveal, which happens next week and after smacking the shit out of Dennis tonight, I'd be surprised if Sharon entertained her following that.
Dennis can be a little shit. His grandad was a big shit; his father was a pretty shit, aspiring to be a big shit, and his stepfather, who's been a big influence on him, is the Queen Mother of big shits. So with Dennis, the attitude is nurture as much as nature.
I don't think Dennis is bullying Michelle, as some people think. He isn't. He's simply witnessed something that he knows is inappropriate behaviour in an adult who's supposed to be responsible for him, and he's reacted to it. He's canny enough to sense that, for all her protests, Michelle knows she's been doing wrong and is scared shitless at the prospect of Dennis telling his mother. For all intents and purposes, Sharon thought this affair was ended. She never bargained on Michelle bringing this underaged kid, who pursued her to Walford, into Phil's home and absconded her responsibilties to Sharon's son and stepdaughter. She wouldn't be pleased that MIchelle is using her home as a knocking shop,and she'd be even less pleased to learn that she's smacked Dennis.
And she'll be certain to learn about it, because Louise witnessed it. (I must admit, I had a feeling throughout all this segment that something would happen. Although I knew he was going to be smacked, I thought that either someone - Phil and Sharon appropriately - might return home by surprise to find him there on his own, alone, or that they'd find him passed out from alcohol poisoning, although he blanched at the taste of vodka). Remember, as well, that there really shouldn't be any booze in the Mitchell house. One of the few occasions in which Sharon did tell Michelle off was when she brought a big bottle of wine for the two of them to share, and there's she's been, necking wine and spirits and providing Preston with beer. When she did smack Dennis, I expected Sharon and Phil to show themselves, but Louise is nearly as good. She'll be sure to tell the tale, and she won't be manipulated by Michelle.
This is a real mess.
Tonight was a welter of reinforcement that her relationship with Preston was simply wrong - morally and reprehensibly wrong. However, the epiphany that keeps coming to Michelle isn't that it was wrong for her to have taken advantage of an underaged person who was in her remit of care and responsibility, she's simply backing off because the result of that crime she committed- and let's not beat about the bush, in Florida, this is statutory rape, a crime; even if Preston initiated this relationship and made sexual advances toward her, she was the adult and shouldn't have responded - is that her professional career is over. Ended. Zilched. Kaput.
That's the only reason she's backed off him.
The entire ethos of this segment was steeped in immaturity - Preston's overt, spoiled-child mentality, Michelle's own emotional immaturity and her inability to deal with young children (you wonder how she lasted so long in the teaching profession), ending with her smacking Dennis and calling him a brat. Preston is just as much a brat, someone who, obviously, has never known the word "no", whose parents have gone from trying desperately to get in touch with him now to sending him money transfers.WTF?
I also got the impression that Preston pushing for a public date with Michelle for dinner, wanting to hold her hand in public, wasn't as much out of affection for her and love as for wanting the people she knew to see her and to witness her humiliation. I think this is a cruel boy (who was back with the Russian accent tonight), but it doesn't mean I sympathise with Michelle. They are both as rotten as one another.
However, the fact that she allowed him to manipulate her into leaving Dennis at home on his own, with no guarantee that Louise would return on time was supremely irresponsible of her - and don't think Dennis won't milk this with Sharon and Phil for all it's worth. He owes Michelle nothing now that she's smacked him. And why did she eventually smack him? Not for lying to her about using her debit card (topped up, I imagine, with the money Sharon was paying her for housekeeping and for the kids) to buy the computer game he wanted, but because Dennis accused her of being a paedophile. He actually used the word, which he'd learned in school.
Okay, she's not a paedophile because she's not attracted to young children, but she is a statutory rapist. She broke the law. It cost her her job, and in real time (not EastEndersLand), it would cost her her liberty. Whatever the word, and Dennis got the word wrong, but he didn't mess up on the concept. Forty-eight year-old women can sleep with all the thirty-two year-old men they want. In Florida, it's illegal for a 47 year-old woman to start an affair with a 16 year-old and to carry on that affair for a year. In the UK, whilst not illegal, it is, if the adult in question is the younger person's teacher, and if he/she isn't, it's just creepy and perverse.
Hearing a harsh description, or at least Dennis's version of what he perceives her to be, is too much for Michelle. And she reacts adversely. Abominably. Remember Sharon has said publically that Dennis is the most important person in her life, and she cut off contact immediately with Gavin the moment he clouted Dennis.
Michelle slept with and got pregnant by Sharon's father, and she forgave Michelle. Michelle slept with and got pregnant by Sharon's ex-husband, and she forgave Michelle. Michelle raised her hand and struck Sharon's only child.
Strike three. You're out.
As if that weren't enough, the vast gulf in ages between Michelle and Preston kept surfacing tonight - the girl with American-themed restaurant with the gutteral Katherine Ryan Canadian accent assuming Michelle was Preston's mother hit home with Michelle, as much as Preston's subsequent peevish assessment of her as an old lady, before he did his party piece of flouncing out of the restaurant and leaving her to pay - on her maxed out credit card when she discovered there were no funds on her debit card. She returns home to find that Preston is scrunched up on the sofa, playing computer games with Dennis, like the kid he is. To think Michelle is having sex with someone who is essentially still a child is totally creepy.
This entire storyline has been uncomfortably creepy, even moreso considering it's resulted in the abject and total character assassination of one of the most important and iconic characters in the history of the show. After next week, I don't see any return or redemption for Michelle - not the way she's reacted to the children left in her charge, not the way she's manipulated her niece emotionally and certainly not in abusing her position of trust and sleeping with an underaged kid.
But then, it's dawned on me. Just as Ian has become the ubiquitous sad,fat clown of EastEnders' yore, so Michelle has become the well-educated, suddenly well-spoken professional in a position of trust, who turns out to be scurvy and immoral (think Mad May, Stella, Lucas and Yusef) ... and that's an EastEnders staple too.
Watching it, I thought about characters about whom I really cared in the show. I used to care about Sharon, and I still do, somehat; but when she initially returned under John Yorke's watch, he set on on the irreversible road to perdition, stripping her of her resilience and fortitude, wrenching her away from the Mitchell dynamic, with whom she worked best, post-Den-and-Angie and established her as a precursor to Ronnie Mitchell in the tragic heroine stakes. Under Berridge and reunited with her zombie dad, the writers invested Den's attention to and love for Sharon with more than a slight hint of incest - hence, why a lot of people initially viewed Archie and Ronnie as an extension of Den and Sharon. Kirkwood made her beg for crumbs from the Branning table, and Newman didn't know what to do with her. DTC changed her backstory, gave her a cartoon birth father and had her actively cover for two murderers, as well as tacitly look the other way whilst an innocent man was framed for a murder.
I used to care about Phil, but Yorke put the boot in on his character by tacking the worst part of Grant onto Phil and, effectively, smothering the basic good and decent part of Phil Mitchell.
Pat and Peggy are dead. Carol isn't coming back anytime soon. The Beales are ruined.
I suddenly realised tonight that, lately, the characters whom I've enjoyed watching the most are Steven Beale, Kush Kazemi and Dennis Rickman Jr. Two background props and a kid.
In fact, Bleu Landau, a kid, an actor on the cusp of puberty turning thirteen this year and playing a ten year-old, is, at the moment, running rings around the more established actors on the show. He makes the former go-to girl who really needs to go full stop, Jacqueline Jossa, look even more pedestrian than she usually is.
This isn't a cooked-up Tiffany Butcher-Simon Barlow type of pre-pubescent lead, one minute playing the innocent child by uttering badly-written dialogue meant to be spoken by a child three years younger than the character is supposed to be, and the next sounding like a precocious moppet imitating a sophisticated forty year-old. The writers have really pegged this kid - the grandson of Den Watts, and the stepson raised by Phil Mitchell.
So there you have it. Sean O'Connor's EastEnders, a social commentary obsessed with Council cuts and binbags, is being carried by a child actor.
Go figure.
And It's Good-bye from Him. I had heard Danny Dyer's departure was precipitous, but I didn't think it was as precipitous and discomababulated as this - leaving to go to Bulgaria upon receiving word from Tamwar that Nancy had been hit by a car.
When he stormed into the kitchen of the Vic, where Whitney had just finished the online sale of what I had thought to be Lauren's lost phone, screaming about wanting the earliest flight to Sofia, Bulgaria, I thought he was fleeing some sort of police raid.
Of course, he's barreling off like a bull in heat, without having told Linda (whom he still blames for abandoning him to care for her ailing mother), which means one thing and which begs another question -
A. It looks as though Dyer's sudden departure probably changed the course of a storyline, meant, eventually, to evolve into some kind of affair/attachment/pity party with Whitney; so, unless, normal service resumes upon his return, however long that might be, the furtive tonguefest in the hospital a couple of months back, was all for nowt - yet another storyline begun and left unfinished (like Billy and the stolen post) ... and ...
B. How will the pub remain open in his absence? A licencee (Mick, Linda or Shirley) doesn't have to be on the premises all the time, but the pub must have a Designated Premises Supervisor, or DPS, who has a personal licence. Quoting from the government's official guidelines for public houses:-
It is a mandatory requirement that any premise which holds a premises licence authorising the retail sale of alcohol as a licensable activity, must have a DPS specified on the licence.
The DPS must be a holder of a personal alcohol licence Any premise at which alcohol is sold or supplied may employ 1 or more personal alcohol licence holders but only 1 can be named on the licence at any one time.
The DPS will normally be the individual who has been given day to day responsibility for managing the premise by the premises licence holder.Wasn't this established when Mick and Shirley had to spend the night in the cells after Babe broke the licencing laws? It was revealed that Lee held a personal licence and, obviously, was the DPS. Lee has gone, and no one's said anything about Whitney or Johnnie having a personal licence, and I would imagine Mick leaving on a 7.30 AM flight would give anyone much time to get one, sooooooo ... how is the pub going to be run? Because we both know that neither Whitney nor Johnnie are capable of running any sort of business on a day-to-day basis, much less a pub, even though Princess Whitney might think herself eminently capable.
This link will explain fully why it's impossible for either Johnnie or Whitney to operate that pub in Mick's absence, however long that might be. Once again, the show has shown itself to be light on research and removed from reality. However, Shirley's supposed to be returning in the next couple of weeks, but I'm still plumping for Shazza to get back behind that bar, as more than just a barmaid.
Eeeuuuuuuuuuuuuuwww, an awful thought just occurred to me. Remember that particular arrogance Whitney displays when she's in any sort of semblance of authority? Can you imagine her issuing orders to Sharon?
The Go-To Girl Should Go. The ubiquitous Beale sitcom continues, and I'm wondering what's being achieved here. Are they making the Beales so patently awful and boring so that we feel sorry for Lauren and enjoy her little jaunt into serial infidelity?
I hate even admitting it, but Whitney is right: Lauren isn't turning into her father, she is simply just like him - which probably explains the tension that always pervades their natural relationship.
However, the show's depiction of Ian insisting that the Beales sit in of an evening and play a Koch Brothers approximation of Monopoly is just another example of Ian's swift descent into becoming the show's latest sad, fat clown, only tonight he was a sad, boring, obnoxious clown.
Juxtapose that with Jane's version of a night out being attending Denise's community solidarity meeting at - where else? - the community centre.
Now juxtapose that, even further, with Steven having the night off from the restaurant and wanting to spend some time with Lauren, who's bored.
Only we're treated to just how bored she is. If anyone had any doubt about how selfish, self-centred and self-serving Lauren was and always will be, this episode emphasized that beyond a shadow of a doubt. Of course, selfishness has always been the identifying characteristic of the Brannings. Max was a sexually selfish man married to Tanya, a materialistic, selfish woman.
Both sides combined to produce Lauren, who sat drooling over the phone upgrade she'd got through her insurance when she lost her original phone, whilst keying in the number of her prospective bit on the side and attempting to text him, when Steven interrupted her. This is a classic premise of a sitcom with an ongoing theme - someone bored by the background to her life offered by her boyfriend's family and her boyfriend, so she contemplates infidelity
Except that tonight, we learn that Lauren doesn't really want a clandestine affair, when she bolts the boardgame evening (after playing a silent game of covert rudeness during the entire time she sat at the table, complete with an artsy-fartsy overshot view of the family sat around the boardgame), for a few hours of talking at Whitney about her problem, talking at her and never once registering or listening to anything Whitney might have to offer.
No, Lauren doesn't want the thrill of the chase; she wants rid of Steven. He bores her. Truth be known, her son bores her. As she said to Steven, she wants to go out. She's 23, she's got a baby, she's got some sort of glorified tea-lady job at a web design company, because, girlfriend, ain't no way that bitch is going to be a web designer with not even one GCSE. I mean, Denise is getting one GCSE, and the Square treat her as if she's about to get a PhD. Nope, Lauren is stuck in a household with a man for whom she left the father of her child, a man so immersed in doubts about his own self-worth and his sexuality, a man who loves her and her child and wants to provide for them; she lives with his father and step-mother, both of whom helped conceal the identity of the killer of her best friend, and she's bored by simple domesticity.
Steven, who has had mental health issues in the past, and has been formerly identified on the programme a decade ago as being gay, has become simply part and parcel of the fixtures and fittings. For his part, he's desperate to be recognised as Ian's dutiful son. He works with him, helps him in his businesses, and is the only one of Ian's surviving children who, willingly, has returned to win his trust. In many ways, although the show hasn't served it up front and centre to the extent it did with the Mitchell counterpart story, Steven's quest for Ian's approval somewhat mirrors Ben's struggle for Phil's approbation.
Lauren wants her freedom again, even to the extent of putting herself in the frame to rent a spare room from Ben and Jay in their new house, but I daresay Ben and Jay aren't going to be that keen on a young mother with a child, so it begs the question about how serious Lauren is about her young son? Because I think she's bored by Louis as well.
Max liked the thrill of the chase, whenever the domestic front - with Rachel and subsequently with Rachel - got too boring. But he always maintained the home front and returned when he got bored. He only came unstuck when he got Tanya pregnant and had to leave Rachel and Bradley. Max married Rachel because he got her pregnant; he married Tanya and left Rachel when he got Tanya up the duff. Lauren was about to get a termination when Peter talked her out of it, but she's not with Peter now, she's with his brother, and she has Peter's son.
This is life, and Lauren is bored by it. However, having texted Josh, the mystery man (whom I'm betting is married as well), she reluctantly returns home, but Steven is beginning to twig that something is wrong.
I have no idea where TPTB plan to take Lauren's character after this. The cracks in her relationship with Steven have been apparent for sometime. Will she be the second Branning daughter to have involved herself with a closeted gay man? Will a re-cast Peter return, and will we then find out exactly what went on in New Zealand? Is Steven all he seems to be? Have they forgotten the diabetes storyline so soon? Will EastEnders ever be interesting again?
Two More Boring Storylines Collide For Denise. The star of the show was served up in double doses tonight.
I don't know where this council protest storyline is going. We've had them, done badly, before - the market sit-in with Shirley necking vodka from a bottle, and the crashing of the Council Christmas lunch by market traders objecting to the sale of Beales' for a supermarket chain. I get it that they're concerned about council cuts and the fortnightly bin collection. (On the last one, it's beyond me why no one has figured out going to the local dump, but there you go).
I just don't see why they're raising money by sponsored exercise bike rides and a Fayre on the Square. What, exactly, are they aiming to do? Or is this just another pointless exercise in O'Connor's quest for community solidarity?
It was all a silly backdrop to set up the eventual re-connection between Kush and Denise.
And it was bad.
Derek is back, but Derek's become a finicky, fusspot, clamouring on and on about the Council's policy on rubbish bins and rude Council officials, wittering on non-stop to Denise. As with his stint at Christmas, there's no association at all with Martin Fowler at all; instead, Derek has been placed with the Trueman-Fox-Hubbard dynamic. I can see that Patrick needs a crony and a co-hort of his own age (although the purported crush Derek was supposed to have had on Patrick was more than a bit far-fetched). He's known Patrick for years. But it looks like Derek's supposed to lend credence as a background character to this Council protest malarky again.
Once again, the neighbourhood meeting is a flop, this time because the hapless Preston failed to deliver Denise's flyers advertising the meeting for that night. (In a tip to the commonly perceived assumption amongst the British that Americans are intrinsically stupid, Preston's reasoning for not delivering the brochures - for which Denise has paid him, beforehand - is that he thought "tonight" meant "tomorrow night." So he was going to distribute the flyers the next morning.
Go figure.
Then, after offering this explanation, TPTB had their heroine Denise promote another common fallacy which the British perceive to be suffered by Americans. Pointing to the brochure and pointing to the word "tonight", Denise reiterates:-
Can't you read?!!! (I don't know how many times I've had Brits imply openly to me that Americans are illiterate).
In that scene at the Mitchell house, I thought Denise was rancid. I'm no fan of Preston's. I don't like him. I don't like Denise, and I'm not overly fond of Michelle; but Denise was in the wrong there. She was rude and aggressive.
The kid made a mistake. He probably wasn't fussed at distributing flyers and didn't bother to read them, but it's doubtful that any more people than the quartet who showed up would have showed up at all, even with a flyer. Instead, Denise storms into the Mitchell kitchen spewing venom because it's all Preston's fault that she didn't have enough time to bask in the light of her own ego. And as for stupidity, Denise shouldn't have paid Preston before he'd done the job. At least he offered to give her money back - a full ten quid - which she refused, even though she hasn't got a job, and even though she went to the untold expense of having those flyers printed. In that instance, I was Team Michelle. Denise had no right to come full on like that. She's all mouth and aggression, and a deeply unpleasant person, and I hope this is fully revealed, in time, with Kush.
Of course, that upcoming liaison is the second situation prevalent which involves a younger man becoming romantically entangled with a much older woman. Kush is 32, Denise is 48. He fancies her, and her new game of playing hard to get offers him a challenge. This time, she's not hopping right into bed - does she think she's still incredibly fertile enough to conceive again, right after her drunken bout with Phil Mitchell?
He might banter about wanting to see her in a bikini, and they'll eventually get together, much to the chagrin of Carmel, who'll probably end her friendship with the terminally ungrateful Denise right then and there; but whether or not this is for the long-term is debatable. Kathy was eleven years Phil's senior, and that didn't last. Sixteen years is a big gap, and whilst Arthur is Kush's natural son, he's relinquished rights to him, and it's highly unlikely he'll have a family with Denise. In fact, Kush is roughly the same age as her oldest daughter, or at the very least, a couple of years older. (Oh, please, don't be tempted to bring back the lazy, self-important Chelsea in a cack-handed attempt at a poor man's version of an Alexis Carrington-Dex Dexter-Amanda Carrington triangle.)
Denise is so singularly rude, verbally aggressive, condescending, snide and eternally ungrateful that I cannot fathom what there is about her personality that's appealing to Kush. As for the community organising, in the time she spent sniping at Preston, Kush, Honey and Derek (who would have been the only people to have shown up even if the flyers had been distributed) had come up with some viable ideas of their own and had gone about implementing them.
But I still don't understand what all the fund-raising is about. I thought this was a registered protest and a meeting to discuss Council cuts, not organising a fucking village fete.
The Systematic Character Assassination of Michelle Fowler Is Now Complete. Wow. Just wow. Where the character goes from here is anyone's guess, but after the big reveal, which happens next week and after smacking the shit out of Dennis tonight, I'd be surprised if Sharon entertained her following that.
Dennis can be a little shit. His grandad was a big shit; his father was a pretty shit, aspiring to be a big shit, and his stepfather, who's been a big influence on him, is the Queen Mother of big shits. So with Dennis, the attitude is nurture as much as nature.
I don't think Dennis is bullying Michelle, as some people think. He isn't. He's simply witnessed something that he knows is inappropriate behaviour in an adult who's supposed to be responsible for him, and he's reacted to it. He's canny enough to sense that, for all her protests, Michelle knows she's been doing wrong and is scared shitless at the prospect of Dennis telling his mother. For all intents and purposes, Sharon thought this affair was ended. She never bargained on Michelle bringing this underaged kid, who pursued her to Walford, into Phil's home and absconded her responsibilties to Sharon's son and stepdaughter. She wouldn't be pleased that MIchelle is using her home as a knocking shop,and she'd be even less pleased to learn that she's smacked Dennis.
And she'll be certain to learn about it, because Louise witnessed it. (I must admit, I had a feeling throughout all this segment that something would happen. Although I knew he was going to be smacked, I thought that either someone - Phil and Sharon appropriately - might return home by surprise to find him there on his own, alone, or that they'd find him passed out from alcohol poisoning, although he blanched at the taste of vodka). Remember, as well, that there really shouldn't be any booze in the Mitchell house. One of the few occasions in which Sharon did tell Michelle off was when she brought a big bottle of wine for the two of them to share, and there's she's been, necking wine and spirits and providing Preston with beer. When she did smack Dennis, I expected Sharon and Phil to show themselves, but Louise is nearly as good. She'll be sure to tell the tale, and she won't be manipulated by Michelle.
This is a real mess.
Tonight was a welter of reinforcement that her relationship with Preston was simply wrong - morally and reprehensibly wrong. However, the epiphany that keeps coming to Michelle isn't that it was wrong for her to have taken advantage of an underaged person who was in her remit of care and responsibility, she's simply backing off because the result of that crime she committed- and let's not beat about the bush, in Florida, this is statutory rape, a crime; even if Preston initiated this relationship and made sexual advances toward her, she was the adult and shouldn't have responded - is that her professional career is over. Ended. Zilched. Kaput.
That's the only reason she's backed off him.
The entire ethos of this segment was steeped in immaturity - Preston's overt, spoiled-child mentality, Michelle's own emotional immaturity and her inability to deal with young children (you wonder how she lasted so long in the teaching profession), ending with her smacking Dennis and calling him a brat. Preston is just as much a brat, someone who, obviously, has never known the word "no", whose parents have gone from trying desperately to get in touch with him now to sending him money transfers.WTF?
I also got the impression that Preston pushing for a public date with Michelle for dinner, wanting to hold her hand in public, wasn't as much out of affection for her and love as for wanting the people she knew to see her and to witness her humiliation. I think this is a cruel boy (who was back with the Russian accent tonight), but it doesn't mean I sympathise with Michelle. They are both as rotten as one another.
However, the fact that she allowed him to manipulate her into leaving Dennis at home on his own, with no guarantee that Louise would return on time was supremely irresponsible of her - and don't think Dennis won't milk this with Sharon and Phil for all it's worth. He owes Michelle nothing now that she's smacked him. And why did she eventually smack him? Not for lying to her about using her debit card (topped up, I imagine, with the money Sharon was paying her for housekeeping and for the kids) to buy the computer game he wanted, but because Dennis accused her of being a paedophile. He actually used the word, which he'd learned in school.
Okay, she's not a paedophile because she's not attracted to young children, but she is a statutory rapist. She broke the law. It cost her her job, and in real time (not EastEndersLand), it would cost her her liberty. Whatever the word, and Dennis got the word wrong, but he didn't mess up on the concept. Forty-eight year-old women can sleep with all the thirty-two year-old men they want. In Florida, it's illegal for a 47 year-old woman to start an affair with a 16 year-old and to carry on that affair for a year. In the UK, whilst not illegal, it is, if the adult in question is the younger person's teacher, and if he/she isn't, it's just creepy and perverse.
Hearing a harsh description, or at least Dennis's version of what he perceives her to be, is too much for Michelle. And she reacts adversely. Abominably. Remember Sharon has said publically that Dennis is the most important person in her life, and she cut off contact immediately with Gavin the moment he clouted Dennis.
Michelle slept with and got pregnant by Sharon's father, and she forgave Michelle. Michelle slept with and got pregnant by Sharon's ex-husband, and she forgave Michelle. Michelle raised her hand and struck Sharon's only child.
Strike three. You're out.
As if that weren't enough, the vast gulf in ages between Michelle and Preston kept surfacing tonight - the girl with American-themed restaurant with the gutteral Katherine Ryan Canadian accent assuming Michelle was Preston's mother hit home with Michelle, as much as Preston's subsequent peevish assessment of her as an old lady, before he did his party piece of flouncing out of the restaurant and leaving her to pay - on her maxed out credit card when she discovered there were no funds on her debit card. She returns home to find that Preston is scrunched up on the sofa, playing computer games with Dennis, like the kid he is. To think Michelle is having sex with someone who is essentially still a child is totally creepy.
This entire storyline has been uncomfortably creepy, even moreso considering it's resulted in the abject and total character assassination of one of the most important and iconic characters in the history of the show. After next week, I don't see any return or redemption for Michelle - not the way she's reacted to the children left in her charge, not the way she's manipulated her niece emotionally and certainly not in abusing her position of trust and sleeping with an underaged kid.
But then, it's dawned on me. Just as Ian has become the ubiquitous sad,fat clown of EastEnders' yore, so Michelle has become the well-educated, suddenly well-spoken professional in a position of trust, who turns out to be scurvy and immoral (think Mad May, Stella, Lucas and Yusef) ... and that's an EastEnders staple too.
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