At the risk of sounding harsh, on a scale of 1 to 10, I gave this episode a resounding 4 rating - and that was being generous. Two brief scenes, both involving Kathy Beale, salvaged what was otherwise a heap of stinking, steaming, stewing shite.
Seriously, what is going on with EastEnders? The last four Executive Producers have systematically gutted this programme beyond belief and recognition. Two 30-second scenes involving Kathy Beale and Tina and Kathy and Ben were all that was worth anything at all in this piss-poor offering.
People whined, whinged and moaned about Phil and Sharon, Phil and Sharon ... well, I'd rather have a month of solid Phil and Sharon and the return of Linda Carter than the shitfest we were served tonight. I wonder how bad the week's worth or episodes which in January that were allegedly pulled, actually were ... because I tell you, they couldn't have been worse than the shower we saw tonight.
Kirkwood didn't work. Newman didn't work. DTC made the thing a joke, and who the hell knows what Sean O'Connor is doing? Once again, give the thing to Tony Jordan's production company, and let's see what he would do with it, because it's drinking in the last chance saloon at the moment.
The Shit with MIchelle. Tell me, is there a storyline coming up where Michelle collapses in a catatonic stupor and has to have brain surgery? I'm wondering if it's so, and if the brain surgeon, played by somebody who used to be on Holby City, say .... ohhhhh, I don't know ... the divine John Michie, or the even more divine James Frain ... discovers that there's some flesh-eating worm devouring part of her brain and making her Fucking Stupid!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Because each time I see her and each time I see what she's doing, I want to scream.
She's applying for a teaching assistant's job at - what? - East Walford High School? Seriously, Michelle? To begin with, your prospective employers will smell a rat, and it won't be coming from the bins.
First of all, they'll see you're over-qualified. Secondly - and this would have held true for your supply teaching job even if you hadn't raped a student (because that's exactly what you did, even though he probably made the moves on you first; you were the adult, and he was a precocious little shit. You absconded responsibility), your teaching qualifications were obtained on the wrong side of the Atlantic.
Education is a snobby profession, and nowhere is it snobbier than in the UK, when it comes to recognising US qualifications. Doesn't matter that you speak with an English accent - and as an English teacher, employ bum-clinchingly embarrassingly bad grammar - they'd have something to say about that. They'd also want - surprise surprise - references. Even if she lied and told them she was doing something else in the States - working at Walmart's or Chuck E Cheese - they'd want references.
As a teaching assistant, she would still be working with young people, the sort of people she fucked in the US. If the supply teaching agency wouldn't touch her with a barge pole, she shouldn't be allowed to worm her way back into the profession via the backdoor of being a teaching assistant. A few weeks ago, she recognised the fact that her professional career was over because of her misguided, ill-gotten romantic association with a minor below the age of consent. It hit her like a brick, and at that point, she wanted to dis-associate herself from Preston.
Better late than never, and hindsight is 20/20 vision.
Besides all of the above, she is psychologically and emotionally unfit to deal with children on a professional basis. She's ostensibly looking after Dennis and Louise, but it's patently obvious that Dennis, who's onto what is going on between her and Preston, is ruling the roost as far as she's concerned.
All he has to do is remind her of what he knows, and he's allowed to do anything he wants. Today, it was staying home from school because he was unprepared for a spelling test.
He's angling for a new computer game, and Michelle is talking tough - but Dennis knows that she might talk the talk, but she doesn't walk the walk. All he has to do is turn the screw and mention Preston, and she melts. When Louise has to go to school and wants to know why Dennis isn't going again, he cheekily mentions to her that he knows something about Preston, which makes Michelle almost shit herself once again. She's forced to say Dennis threw up, and Dennis says his secret is that Preston called last night.
But Michelle is getting tired of Dennis's constant demands, and when she tries to spell the situation out to Dennis, he lands her the line of the episode. She reminds him that blackmail is a crime. Dennis's response is sheer Den-cum-Phil ...
So is what you did with Preston.
And here's the second big stupefying shocker of ignorance in this segment. Michelle denies that what she did with Preston was a crime.
You what? Michelle, you slept with Preston in Florida. He was 16 when this started, and you were 46 - thirty years older. The age of consent in Florida, and you would know this even if the storyliners and writers at Elstree don't, is 18. You committed statutory rape. Rape. You had sex with someone who was below the age of consent, and that is, essentially, rape. You, yourself, said you were lucky to escape prosecution, but if this were reality television, you'd be auditioning for Orange is the New Black in real time. This is after Preston's mamma would have bitch-slapped you all over Pensacola and his daddy would have run after your bingo-wings with a shotgun.
Suck on that. And, please, EastEnders, stop trying to make this atrocious character, this epic fail of a re-cast, into something sympathetic. She isn't sympathetic, she is simply pathetic.
She's so strung out by the 10 year-old son of her oldest friend for betraying, yet again, Sharon's trust that the only way she can deal with his having the upper hand is to appeal to his better nature, literally beg him to leave off the expensive demands and be content with the odd late night staying up or extra television. In place of the expensive game Dennis wanted, she offers to send his mother flowers for Mother's Day.
But here's the big clincher - once again, there's nothing for dinner, so as Louise comes in, she goes out to get take-away, pizza for Dennis, but Louise wants fried chicken, so she has to get both; but this is how ditzy Michelle is: she leaves her credit card, which should be maxed out by now, with her having no means of re-paying the outstanding debt, on the kitchen table and the laptop open and logged onto the internet. The last thing we see Dennis doing is picking up the card and sitting down with the laptop. I somehow suspect he's going to get his game.
The last thing we hear from Dennis is the text message he sends to Michelle, telling her that he's starving. Instead of getting food for the kids, she's been sitting on her arse, dowing short after short in the Vic, so fast and furious that even Martin notices and wonders if something's wrong. Since she doesn't have her card with her, she can't get food for the kids.
She's pining for Preston, and even Martin is missing his help, and that's dangerous too. Preston isn't supposed to be working at any sort of job, even casual labour, in the UK, and Martin has taken him on as an assistant on Ian's stall. Wanna know a way Preston can be gotten rid of? Ring the DWP and tell them that an illegal is working on a market stall in Walford. With no work permit and his passport only stamped as a tourist, he'd be detained and deported - and Martin and Ian would be fined.
This is such an appalling storyline and such an insulting and disgraceful character assassination of an original character who was probably the most nuanced character in the history of the show. In the entire history of the programme, this is the first time anyone has essentially rubbished irreparably a character of such importance.
Long-term viewers who watched Susan Tully's Michelle are simply insulted and horrified by this re-cast; viewers who've watched since the days of Yorke's tenure will only know Jenna Russell as Michelle, and the character as an incredibly silly, ineffectual and weak woman, a professional educator who was irresponsible and immoral enough to sleep with someone under the age of consent and someone in her charge.
The re-cast should never have happened. It shouldn't have ever been considered. There is no redemption for someone like that. She cannot hope to be some sort of mystical matriarchal figure, and no, I'm sorry, neither of her children should join her - not the 32 year-old Vicky, now joined at the hip with the effete milquetoast, Spencer Moon, nor the American with the Surrey accent who attended a non-existent British school in rural northern Florida, Mark Wotsit.
And thinking of him lately, I was reminded of something Michelle said about him - that he "sometimes used a British accent" in order to impress and pull girls in the US. Creepy, huh? Bit of a groomer like his mother, and someone who made a habit of hanging out with 15 year-olds when he visited last summer.
The Shit with Denise. Well, another storyline in The Denise Show ends, only for another to begin.
It's not working.
Seriously, it's not.
The more we see of Denise, the worse she emerges as a character - ill-tempered, arrogant, entitled, rude, obtuse and narrow-minded.
Denise reminds me of Trump. Really, she does. She's as bloody-minded and loose-lipped as he is, saying the first thing which comes to her tongue - which is disengaged from her mouth - saying things she either knows nothing about or shouldn't really say under the circumstances; then, like Trump, she digs her heels in and refuses to apologise for what,essentially, is something she's done wrong.
Refusing to apologise? Refusing to admit she's wrong? Sounds pretty Trump-ish to me.
Tonight also gave us a chance to see Yolande doing an impersonation of Angela Merkel, in something else that didn't make any sense. This meeting was at The Minute Mart's Head Office in Birmingham, and before she left, Patrick had told her that Yolande would "try to make this meeting" - whilst assuring Denise that Yolande had put in a good word for her.
Whether she really told Patrick that or whether Patrick simply assumed she would in order to reassure Denise is debatable. What is certain is that Denise thoroughly believed that this meeting, which turned out to be essentially between her and her sworn enemy, the Area Manager (yet another cartoon character), refereed by Yolande, was simply window-dressing. Denise would get her wrist-slapped, get told off and that would be that.
In one of the most atrocious scenes in recent months, we had to suffer the insufferable Carmel, presenting Denise with karmic crystals to bring her good luck in the meeting, while Kim (OMIGOD, those three in one scene was enough to make you puke) was telling her just to keep her mouth shut, apologise, and admit that she was wrong to say and do what she did.
As soon as everyone said that, you just knew Denise would behave badly. Very badly. She was actually worse than Sniggle or Giggle in making her "apology." She rolled her eyes, affected a rude look of boredom, wouldn't make eye contact either with Yolande or the Area Manager - in fact, she turned sideways away from them, and reluctantly - ever so reluctantly - managed an apology in pieces, prompted by Yolande.
Honestly, the worst sort of adolescent in this programme would have behaved better than this 48 year-old woman.
Initially, it was agreed that Denise would get her job back, along with a letter of reprimand from the company; but before Denise could return to work, she would have to attend what was essentially an anger management course. This was after Yolande had read Denise's words to the reporter in the article in which she featured. Denise's rationale was pithy - it was "the local rag" and she apologised as if someone were pulling her teeth.
Once she found that she had to attend an anger management course, which was really a people skills' course - basically, she needs to learn tact and temper control. And that sets her off. It also was a prime exhibit of her stupidity. She had the audacity to call out Yolande in her official capacity:-
I thought you had my back!
Yolande: Believe me, if I weren't here now, it would have been a lot worse.
Denise was that arrogant and that entitled that she could not fathom why she was summoned to Head Office, after her suspension. Even now, she simply cannot fathom what she's done wrong in essentially trash-mouthing a company which employs her and pays her monthly wage. What does she not understand about biting the hand which feeds you?
So she quits in a huff, which means she gets nothing - no reference, and above all, she can't sign on the dole. And of course, when she returns to the pub, where Carmel's silly community meeting had coincided with Donna's birthday celebrations and had been abandoned in order to drink, she starts whingeing about the failure of the meeting and blaming everyone who ever tried to help her for losing her job.
When Kim comes to call after the pub, all she can do is quote Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, but as Kim says, Jane Eyre isn't going to pay the bills. This was another example of Denise pulling rank on Kim and making some sort of pedantic remark to show off what she's learned in the last year. Who the hell quotes Charlotte Bronte? Shakespeare, yes. The Romantic poets? Most definitely. But quoting Charlotte Bronte? I suppose TPTB are going to send Saint Denise far and wide and academically successful on the strength of one GCSE, and one wonders about her, because like Michelle, her grammar is fucking atrocious.
So Saint Denise is off on yet another EXCELLENT adventure, a bit like Bill and Ted, and we'll be carried along on the wave of her non-popularity. We know that she'll connect with Kush. Again. And Carmel will probably raise hell and cry, and we'll get the two squaring off and screaming at each other in the middle of the pub, with a hapless Kush doing his fish impression, opening and shutting his mouth wordlessly.
In other words, another mediocre episode sometime in the future of EastEnders. If the show is this dire now, what's it going to be like, come July?
The Shit with Lauren and Whitney, Two Girls Who Talk AT Each Other. Please, stop making Whitney the victim here. Now that he's off-screen, everyone is blaming Lee. Lee left her - when we all remember the reasons behind his leaving her, that he recognised that she was, once again, "Mickifying" him, building him up on the pedestal Mick erected as the ultimate hunter-gatherer alpha male.
It annoyed me last week that Mick simplified Lee's existence to being happy simply to wear a uniform and follow rules and regulation. I've no doubt a lot of Lee's problems intensified when he left the army, but I remember when Lee's depression really began.
Lee was given orders to return for a hitch in the Middle East, but Whitney cried (she was living at Bianca's then) and told him that if he were so far away, she was afraid she couldn't be faithful to him; so he fanagled a hitch at home at the recruiting centre, a job he hated, and that's where the trouble began. He did that for Whitney. Remember that when she and assorted other characters are trash-mouthing Lee, the way Moose, his so-called friend was doing today.
FFS, Lee is a poxy security guard. He wears a uniform only when he's on duty, which is probably in the evening, and working in Dover, he probably makes shit wages. I'm assuming, as well, that Beanbag's left his wife, and now, lo and behold, Lee appears to have moved on and is seeing another girl. Well, I hope she appreciates him more than Whitney did.
She makes me sick. When I heard her remind Lauren that Lauren told her to fight for her marriage, she asserted that she did, but did she? She spent money that Lee didn't have, and she went running to Mick every time Lee cut a fart that wasn't to her liking and listened to Mick tell her, repeatedly, that Lee didn't deserve her. When he wasn't telling her that, he was telling Lee that Whitney was too good for him, that he should man up and take responsibility. And when Mick wasn't doing that, Whitney was admonishing him to try to be more like Lee.
I suppose now Moose will start sniffing around her dirty head - her hair looks as though it's lathed in grease - when TPTB should have staved off bringing this actor off long enough so that he could be re-introduced as Peter Beale.
Once again, we were treated to the Whitney-Lauren Snorefest where they talk at each other and don't bother listening. Lauren's bored with Steven. She's so bored with him that she won't even bother trying to drum up a romantic moment with him. They'd planned a movie day, sitting around watching DVDs; and Steven invites Jane to stay and watch the film with them. It's Lauren's birthday the next week, and she wants to go out clubbing with Whitney, surmising that Steven won't even realise it's her birthday.
Actually, he has. He's gone to the trouble of ordering her all the Kiwi sweets she liked in New Zealand, and all he gets is a passing comment from Lauren and a shrug.
The big secret passed between them is that Lauren's met a nameless man who was so struck by her that he passed her his mobile number, the photocopier geek where Max worked. She binned the number, but not after keying it into her phone, so she's looking to play away. (Like father, like daughter - Max only ever strayed when he got bored with domesticity.) She even describes the excitement of the thrill of the chase or alleviating her boredom with someone new, and that sounds exactly like Max.
Ironically enough, the romcom that they watched had Steven predicting that the heroine would bed the bad boy and eventually decide that she wanted to return to the hero, then wondered why girls do that in real life.
Foreshadowing much? Actually, this is how Max operated. He'd get bored of domesticity and he'd have an affair, compartmentalised, at first, in order to separate home life from the bit on the side - except Max's bits on the side inevitably imploded on his family life - Stacey, and before her, remember that Tanya was the original bit on the side.
This is where the incredibly self-righteous Whitney advises Lauren to stick with Steven and work on her relationship. After all, it's not Whitney's fault that Lee left - but then, nothing is ever Whitney's fault.
They re-connect when Lauren decides to text Photocopier Man whilst sitting beside a sleeping Steven as the film credits roll, except she can't find her phone. The way she speaks to Steven is terrible, as if he were her servant or a piece of shit. She lives in that house, rent-free; Steven's taken on her child and wants to raise him as his own; and she contributes nothing to the Beale household, yet she's bored by Steven, bored by her son, bored because she's a glorified tea girl where she occasionally works,and she wants to have an affair. She's already broken up one marriage that involved a young child.
This time,by the time she barges into the pub and upstairs without anyone's permission to look for her phone, Whitney's had a re-bound offer from Moose. When Lauren calls her out on her hypocrisy, Whitney sniffs,
It ain't the same as with you and Steven. I'm single.
Such are the thought processes of chavs, because I was Team Lauren when Lauren actually engaged her brain enough to hand Whitney her skanky arse:-
Well, technically Whitney you aren't. You're still married.
And so she is. And she will remain married until November, which is the earliest she can apply for a divorce. But Whitney's not interested in Moose, not whilst Mick is around, not while they can still dissect how bad Lee was and carry on in their ignorance not understanding him, splicing him down to the stupidly simple fact that they reckon that all Lee had to do was put on a uniform and pretend he was in the army, and he'd be happy.
How long and how much of Lee has Moose actually seen of him? Not much, from what he said. Did he actually see or hear from Lee's mouth that he'd moved onto someone else? He was probably told as much by Beanbag.
This was a totally pointless exercise by two totally pointless characters who are more who are past their sell-by date.
Kathy. The best scenes tonight concerned Kathy and Tina and Kathy and Ben. The irony against which this was played was the fact that Mother's Day is Sunday. Tina's waiting for Social Services to assess Sylvie with a view to moving her into a home, and she's feeling dreadful for it.
Ben, on the other hand, is about to turn 21 and doesn't want any celebrations, even to the extent that he cuts Kathy brutally short when she wants to celebrate by taking him to the South Bank and the London Eye. But later, he receives a birthday card from Pam and Les (how I miss them!) and Ben remembers advice Pam had given him - not to live his life with Paul looking over his shoulder.
Ben's real reason for reluctance to celebrate his birthday was that Paul would have turned 21 in February, and they were going to celebrate both their birthdays by going to New York. The card and Pam's reminder finally make him realise that he has to move on with his life and he finally suggests to Kathy that they combine celebrating his birthday (which is also Peggy's incidentally) and Mother's Day on the South Bank.
Kathy and Ben are two of the few characters I actually like at the moment.
Oh, and didn't Martin question the strength of the shorts Mick was selling? Is he buying dodgy booze or watering his stock down?
Seriously, what is going on with EastEnders? The last four Executive Producers have systematically gutted this programme beyond belief and recognition. Two 30-second scenes involving Kathy Beale and Tina and Kathy and Ben were all that was worth anything at all in this piss-poor offering.
People whined, whinged and moaned about Phil and Sharon, Phil and Sharon ... well, I'd rather have a month of solid Phil and Sharon and the return of Linda Carter than the shitfest we were served tonight. I wonder how bad the week's worth or episodes which in January that were allegedly pulled, actually were ... because I tell you, they couldn't have been worse than the shower we saw tonight.
Kirkwood didn't work. Newman didn't work. DTC made the thing a joke, and who the hell knows what Sean O'Connor is doing? Once again, give the thing to Tony Jordan's production company, and let's see what he would do with it, because it's drinking in the last chance saloon at the moment.
The Shit with MIchelle. Tell me, is there a storyline coming up where Michelle collapses in a catatonic stupor and has to have brain surgery? I'm wondering if it's so, and if the brain surgeon, played by somebody who used to be on Holby City, say .... ohhhhh, I don't know ... the divine John Michie, or the even more divine James Frain ... discovers that there's some flesh-eating worm devouring part of her brain and making her Fucking Stupid!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Because each time I see her and each time I see what she's doing, I want to scream.
She's applying for a teaching assistant's job at - what? - East Walford High School? Seriously, Michelle? To begin with, your prospective employers will smell a rat, and it won't be coming from the bins.
First of all, they'll see you're over-qualified. Secondly - and this would have held true for your supply teaching job even if you hadn't raped a student (because that's exactly what you did, even though he probably made the moves on you first; you were the adult, and he was a precocious little shit. You absconded responsibility), your teaching qualifications were obtained on the wrong side of the Atlantic.
Education is a snobby profession, and nowhere is it snobbier than in the UK, when it comes to recognising US qualifications. Doesn't matter that you speak with an English accent - and as an English teacher, employ bum-clinchingly embarrassingly bad grammar - they'd have something to say about that. They'd also want - surprise surprise - references. Even if she lied and told them she was doing something else in the States - working at Walmart's or Chuck E Cheese - they'd want references.
As a teaching assistant, she would still be working with young people, the sort of people she fucked in the US. If the supply teaching agency wouldn't touch her with a barge pole, she shouldn't be allowed to worm her way back into the profession via the backdoor of being a teaching assistant. A few weeks ago, she recognised the fact that her professional career was over because of her misguided, ill-gotten romantic association with a minor below the age of consent. It hit her like a brick, and at that point, she wanted to dis-associate herself from Preston.
Better late than never, and hindsight is 20/20 vision.
Besides all of the above, she is psychologically and emotionally unfit to deal with children on a professional basis. She's ostensibly looking after Dennis and Louise, but it's patently obvious that Dennis, who's onto what is going on between her and Preston, is ruling the roost as far as she's concerned.
All he has to do is remind her of what he knows, and he's allowed to do anything he wants. Today, it was staying home from school because he was unprepared for a spelling test.
He's angling for a new computer game, and Michelle is talking tough - but Dennis knows that she might talk the talk, but she doesn't walk the walk. All he has to do is turn the screw and mention Preston, and she melts. When Louise has to go to school and wants to know why Dennis isn't going again, he cheekily mentions to her that he knows something about Preston, which makes Michelle almost shit herself once again. She's forced to say Dennis threw up, and Dennis says his secret is that Preston called last night.
But Michelle is getting tired of Dennis's constant demands, and when she tries to spell the situation out to Dennis, he lands her the line of the episode. She reminds him that blackmail is a crime. Dennis's response is sheer Den-cum-Phil ...
So is what you did with Preston.
And here's the second big stupefying shocker of ignorance in this segment. Michelle denies that what she did with Preston was a crime.
You what? Michelle, you slept with Preston in Florida. He was 16 when this started, and you were 46 - thirty years older. The age of consent in Florida, and you would know this even if the storyliners and writers at Elstree don't, is 18. You committed statutory rape. Rape. You had sex with someone who was below the age of consent, and that is, essentially, rape. You, yourself, said you were lucky to escape prosecution, but if this were reality television, you'd be auditioning for Orange is the New Black in real time. This is after Preston's mamma would have bitch-slapped you all over Pensacola and his daddy would have run after your bingo-wings with a shotgun.
Suck on that. And, please, EastEnders, stop trying to make this atrocious character, this epic fail of a re-cast, into something sympathetic. She isn't sympathetic, she is simply pathetic.
She's so strung out by the 10 year-old son of her oldest friend for betraying, yet again, Sharon's trust that the only way she can deal with his having the upper hand is to appeal to his better nature, literally beg him to leave off the expensive demands and be content with the odd late night staying up or extra television. In place of the expensive game Dennis wanted, she offers to send his mother flowers for Mother's Day.
But here's the big clincher - once again, there's nothing for dinner, so as Louise comes in, she goes out to get take-away, pizza for Dennis, but Louise wants fried chicken, so she has to get both; but this is how ditzy Michelle is: she leaves her credit card, which should be maxed out by now, with her having no means of re-paying the outstanding debt, on the kitchen table and the laptop open and logged onto the internet. The last thing we see Dennis doing is picking up the card and sitting down with the laptop. I somehow suspect he's going to get his game.
The last thing we hear from Dennis is the text message he sends to Michelle, telling her that he's starving. Instead of getting food for the kids, she's been sitting on her arse, dowing short after short in the Vic, so fast and furious that even Martin notices and wonders if something's wrong. Since she doesn't have her card with her, she can't get food for the kids.
She's pining for Preston, and even Martin is missing his help, and that's dangerous too. Preston isn't supposed to be working at any sort of job, even casual labour, in the UK, and Martin has taken him on as an assistant on Ian's stall. Wanna know a way Preston can be gotten rid of? Ring the DWP and tell them that an illegal is working on a market stall in Walford. With no work permit and his passport only stamped as a tourist, he'd be detained and deported - and Martin and Ian would be fined.
This is such an appalling storyline and such an insulting and disgraceful character assassination of an original character who was probably the most nuanced character in the history of the show. In the entire history of the programme, this is the first time anyone has essentially rubbished irreparably a character of such importance.
Long-term viewers who watched Susan Tully's Michelle are simply insulted and horrified by this re-cast; viewers who've watched since the days of Yorke's tenure will only know Jenna Russell as Michelle, and the character as an incredibly silly, ineffectual and weak woman, a professional educator who was irresponsible and immoral enough to sleep with someone under the age of consent and someone in her charge.
The re-cast should never have happened. It shouldn't have ever been considered. There is no redemption for someone like that. She cannot hope to be some sort of mystical matriarchal figure, and no, I'm sorry, neither of her children should join her - not the 32 year-old Vicky, now joined at the hip with the effete milquetoast, Spencer Moon, nor the American with the Surrey accent who attended a non-existent British school in rural northern Florida, Mark Wotsit.
And thinking of him lately, I was reminded of something Michelle said about him - that he "sometimes used a British accent" in order to impress and pull girls in the US. Creepy, huh? Bit of a groomer like his mother, and someone who made a habit of hanging out with 15 year-olds when he visited last summer.
The Shit with Denise. Well, another storyline in The Denise Show ends, only for another to begin.
It's not working.
Seriously, it's not.
The more we see of Denise, the worse she emerges as a character - ill-tempered, arrogant, entitled, rude, obtuse and narrow-minded.
Denise reminds me of Trump. Really, she does. She's as bloody-minded and loose-lipped as he is, saying the first thing which comes to her tongue - which is disengaged from her mouth - saying things she either knows nothing about or shouldn't really say under the circumstances; then, like Trump, she digs her heels in and refuses to apologise for what,essentially, is something she's done wrong.
Refusing to apologise? Refusing to admit she's wrong? Sounds pretty Trump-ish to me.
Tonight also gave us a chance to see Yolande doing an impersonation of Angela Merkel, in something else that didn't make any sense. This meeting was at The Minute Mart's Head Office in Birmingham, and before she left, Patrick had told her that Yolande would "try to make this meeting" - whilst assuring Denise that Yolande had put in a good word for her.
Whether she really told Patrick that or whether Patrick simply assumed she would in order to reassure Denise is debatable. What is certain is that Denise thoroughly believed that this meeting, which turned out to be essentially between her and her sworn enemy, the Area Manager (yet another cartoon character), refereed by Yolande, was simply window-dressing. Denise would get her wrist-slapped, get told off and that would be that.
In one of the most atrocious scenes in recent months, we had to suffer the insufferable Carmel, presenting Denise with karmic crystals to bring her good luck in the meeting, while Kim (OMIGOD, those three in one scene was enough to make you puke) was telling her just to keep her mouth shut, apologise, and admit that she was wrong to say and do what she did.
As soon as everyone said that, you just knew Denise would behave badly. Very badly. She was actually worse than Sniggle or Giggle in making her "apology." She rolled her eyes, affected a rude look of boredom, wouldn't make eye contact either with Yolande or the Area Manager - in fact, she turned sideways away from them, and reluctantly - ever so reluctantly - managed an apology in pieces, prompted by Yolande.
Honestly, the worst sort of adolescent in this programme would have behaved better than this 48 year-old woman.
Initially, it was agreed that Denise would get her job back, along with a letter of reprimand from the company; but before Denise could return to work, she would have to attend what was essentially an anger management course. This was after Yolande had read Denise's words to the reporter in the article in which she featured. Denise's rationale was pithy - it was "the local rag" and she apologised as if someone were pulling her teeth.
Once she found that she had to attend an anger management course, which was really a people skills' course - basically, she needs to learn tact and temper control. And that sets her off. It also was a prime exhibit of her stupidity. She had the audacity to call out Yolande in her official capacity:-
I thought you had my back!
Yolande: Believe me, if I weren't here now, it would have been a lot worse.
Denise was that arrogant and that entitled that she could not fathom why she was summoned to Head Office, after her suspension. Even now, she simply cannot fathom what she's done wrong in essentially trash-mouthing a company which employs her and pays her monthly wage. What does she not understand about biting the hand which feeds you?
So she quits in a huff, which means she gets nothing - no reference, and above all, she can't sign on the dole. And of course, when she returns to the pub, where Carmel's silly community meeting had coincided with Donna's birthday celebrations and had been abandoned in order to drink, she starts whingeing about the failure of the meeting and blaming everyone who ever tried to help her for losing her job.
When Kim comes to call after the pub, all she can do is quote Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, but as Kim says, Jane Eyre isn't going to pay the bills. This was another example of Denise pulling rank on Kim and making some sort of pedantic remark to show off what she's learned in the last year. Who the hell quotes Charlotte Bronte? Shakespeare, yes. The Romantic poets? Most definitely. But quoting Charlotte Bronte? I suppose TPTB are going to send Saint Denise far and wide and academically successful on the strength of one GCSE, and one wonders about her, because like Michelle, her grammar is fucking atrocious.
So Saint Denise is off on yet another EXCELLENT adventure, a bit like Bill and Ted, and we'll be carried along on the wave of her non-popularity. We know that she'll connect with Kush. Again. And Carmel will probably raise hell and cry, and we'll get the two squaring off and screaming at each other in the middle of the pub, with a hapless Kush doing his fish impression, opening and shutting his mouth wordlessly.
In other words, another mediocre episode sometime in the future of EastEnders. If the show is this dire now, what's it going to be like, come July?
The Shit with Lauren and Whitney, Two Girls Who Talk AT Each Other. Please, stop making Whitney the victim here. Now that he's off-screen, everyone is blaming Lee. Lee left her - when we all remember the reasons behind his leaving her, that he recognised that she was, once again, "Mickifying" him, building him up on the pedestal Mick erected as the ultimate hunter-gatherer alpha male.
It annoyed me last week that Mick simplified Lee's existence to being happy simply to wear a uniform and follow rules and regulation. I've no doubt a lot of Lee's problems intensified when he left the army, but I remember when Lee's depression really began.
Lee was given orders to return for a hitch in the Middle East, but Whitney cried (she was living at Bianca's then) and told him that if he were so far away, she was afraid she couldn't be faithful to him; so he fanagled a hitch at home at the recruiting centre, a job he hated, and that's where the trouble began. He did that for Whitney. Remember that when she and assorted other characters are trash-mouthing Lee, the way Moose, his so-called friend was doing today.
FFS, Lee is a poxy security guard. He wears a uniform only when he's on duty, which is probably in the evening, and working in Dover, he probably makes shit wages. I'm assuming, as well, that Beanbag's left his wife, and now, lo and behold, Lee appears to have moved on and is seeing another girl. Well, I hope she appreciates him more than Whitney did.
She makes me sick. When I heard her remind Lauren that Lauren told her to fight for her marriage, she asserted that she did, but did she? She spent money that Lee didn't have, and she went running to Mick every time Lee cut a fart that wasn't to her liking and listened to Mick tell her, repeatedly, that Lee didn't deserve her. When he wasn't telling her that, he was telling Lee that Whitney was too good for him, that he should man up and take responsibility. And when Mick wasn't doing that, Whitney was admonishing him to try to be more like Lee.
I suppose now Moose will start sniffing around her dirty head - her hair looks as though it's lathed in grease - when TPTB should have staved off bringing this actor off long enough so that he could be re-introduced as Peter Beale.
Once again, we were treated to the Whitney-Lauren Snorefest where they talk at each other and don't bother listening. Lauren's bored with Steven. She's so bored with him that she won't even bother trying to drum up a romantic moment with him. They'd planned a movie day, sitting around watching DVDs; and Steven invites Jane to stay and watch the film with them. It's Lauren's birthday the next week, and she wants to go out clubbing with Whitney, surmising that Steven won't even realise it's her birthday.
Actually, he has. He's gone to the trouble of ordering her all the Kiwi sweets she liked in New Zealand, and all he gets is a passing comment from Lauren and a shrug.
The big secret passed between them is that Lauren's met a nameless man who was so struck by her that he passed her his mobile number, the photocopier geek where Max worked. She binned the number, but not after keying it into her phone, so she's looking to play away. (Like father, like daughter - Max only ever strayed when he got bored with domesticity.) She even describes the excitement of the thrill of the chase or alleviating her boredom with someone new, and that sounds exactly like Max.
Ironically enough, the romcom that they watched had Steven predicting that the heroine would bed the bad boy and eventually decide that she wanted to return to the hero, then wondered why girls do that in real life.
Foreshadowing much? Actually, this is how Max operated. He'd get bored of domesticity and he'd have an affair, compartmentalised, at first, in order to separate home life from the bit on the side - except Max's bits on the side inevitably imploded on his family life - Stacey, and before her, remember that Tanya was the original bit on the side.
This is where the incredibly self-righteous Whitney advises Lauren to stick with Steven and work on her relationship. After all, it's not Whitney's fault that Lee left - but then, nothing is ever Whitney's fault.
They re-connect when Lauren decides to text Photocopier Man whilst sitting beside a sleeping Steven as the film credits roll, except she can't find her phone. The way she speaks to Steven is terrible, as if he were her servant or a piece of shit. She lives in that house, rent-free; Steven's taken on her child and wants to raise him as his own; and she contributes nothing to the Beale household, yet she's bored by Steven, bored by her son, bored because she's a glorified tea girl where she occasionally works,and she wants to have an affair. She's already broken up one marriage that involved a young child.
This time,by the time she barges into the pub and upstairs without anyone's permission to look for her phone, Whitney's had a re-bound offer from Moose. When Lauren calls her out on her hypocrisy, Whitney sniffs,
It ain't the same as with you and Steven. I'm single.
Such are the thought processes of chavs, because I was Team Lauren when Lauren actually engaged her brain enough to hand Whitney her skanky arse:-
Well, technically Whitney you aren't. You're still married.
And so she is. And she will remain married until November, which is the earliest she can apply for a divorce. But Whitney's not interested in Moose, not whilst Mick is around, not while they can still dissect how bad Lee was and carry on in their ignorance not understanding him, splicing him down to the stupidly simple fact that they reckon that all Lee had to do was put on a uniform and pretend he was in the army, and he'd be happy.
How long and how much of Lee has Moose actually seen of him? Not much, from what he said. Did he actually see or hear from Lee's mouth that he'd moved onto someone else? He was probably told as much by Beanbag.
This was a totally pointless exercise by two totally pointless characters who are more who are past their sell-by date.
Kathy. The best scenes tonight concerned Kathy and Tina and Kathy and Ben. The irony against which this was played was the fact that Mother's Day is Sunday. Tina's waiting for Social Services to assess Sylvie with a view to moving her into a home, and she's feeling dreadful for it.
Ben, on the other hand, is about to turn 21 and doesn't want any celebrations, even to the extent that he cuts Kathy brutally short when she wants to celebrate by taking him to the South Bank and the London Eye. But later, he receives a birthday card from Pam and Les (how I miss them!) and Ben remembers advice Pam had given him - not to live his life with Paul looking over his shoulder.
Ben's real reason for reluctance to celebrate his birthday was that Paul would have turned 21 in February, and they were going to celebrate both their birthdays by going to New York. The card and Pam's reminder finally make him realise that he has to move on with his life and he finally suggests to Kathy that they combine celebrating his birthday (which is also Peggy's incidentally) and Mother's Day on the South Bank.
Kathy and Ben are two of the few characters I actually like at the moment.
Oh, and didn't Martin question the strength of the shorts Mick was selling? Is he buying dodgy booze or watering his stock down?
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