Once again, on a scale of 1 to 10, I was generous and gave this episode an 8, but for the wrong reasons. For all people whinged, whined and moaned about them, once again, the show proves one thing: It misses the major Mitchells.
Love'em or hate'em - and John Yorke certainly started them both on the road to free-fall - but the show misses Letitia Dean and Steve McFadden. I appreciate many of the viewers who have only watched since the Yorke era don't realise what these two characters were in the 1990s, and the writing team on hand don't know how to handle their characters. But as many people whinged, whined and moaned about Sharon and Phil as moaned about Linda Carter, and all it took was that brief appearance by Kellie Bright for me to realise how much she's missed, but it also made me realise how much I'd like to see Danny Dyer -as much as I like Mick Carter on a good day - leave the show. I think Dyer's come to the end of his tether with the character of Mick, but I think Bright's character has countless numbers of roads down which to travel without playing nursemaid mummy to the biggest Oedipal baby on the show.
Not only that, with the brief introductions of guest characters like Konrad the shopkeeper or dodgy Tom, Jay's heretofore unmentioned friend, it's been made painfully obvious how much the show is crying out for new characters and how tired some of the staple characters have become - the Branning girls spring instantly to mind. And whilst I know that Lisa Faulkner's due to be introduced, it's patently obvious that she's the requisite savvy blonde, sexy businesswoman type whose future lies with one of the two Branning brothers.
Probably the reason I rated tonight's show so highly was because at last we've seen some sort of comeback, payback, whatever you want to call it for this version of Michelle, Sean O'Connor's dystopian wreck of an iconic character who is nothing like the original version and nothing like anything that character would have ever become, but also, in the show not releasing any spoilers concerning tonight's episode - although I somewhat knew a bit of what to expect - it was an eye-opener watching things develop in real time, culminating in "the stunt" (on the back of the cobbled-together bus crash from weeks ago), which was realistic enough in demolishing Beale's place.
In actual real time, Kush and Kathy would be brown bread, but after the bus which fell on Martin and Whitney, Kathy's probably got a slight cut above her left eyebrow, and Kush has a dislocated pinkie finger. Or maybe not.
We'll now have to wait until Thursday to see.
The Storyline Apart. Literally, this was the episode where two storylines collided, but before we get to them, I'd like to say something about the best and most realistic issue storyline which served as an eventual backdrop or a plot device for the shit-hitting-the-fan one.
This would be Tina's and Sylvie's storyline. I sat thinking last night, after Monday's episode, about the BSAs coming up in the spring and wondering whom EastEnders would put forward as their nominees for Best Actress and Best Actor. I know Emmerdale will rightly tout John Middleton, and he should win; but I can see no one, actor or actress, worthy of EastEnders to nominate. Oh, they're sure to push Lacey Turner, but Turner's been little more than a supporting player, as she was tonight.
On the other hand, Luisa Bradshaw-White has really come into her own in this storyline.
Although it was cast as a backdrop to all the action going on with the Michelle reveal, it still was a storyline in and of itself. It was quite something to see Sylvie carry on dancing throughout the brouhaha, oblivious to the confusion around her, safe and secure in her own world. When Vincent stopped dancing with her, she danced with herself.
Throughout everything, Sylvie's safest living and re-living her life in the 60s, when she was everyone's party girl. Now, Tina is facing self-recrimination for having made the decision to put Sylvie in a care home where she can get professional help. Even though her mother abandoned her as a child, she still wants to do right by her. It was a powerful moment when some boisterous punters at the Vic started copping feels of Whitney and Tina, who had to try to eject them from the pub - once again, there's a weakness here, with Whitney and Johnnie, both unlicenced, running the pub - surely, that's illegal? Surely there has to be licenced cover?
When both women can't handle these men, it's Sylvie who rouses herself briefly to castigate them for manhandling her daughter, even recognising that Tina is a lesbian, chasing he men off, and then reverting back to her nebulous existence in the past. And finally, hearing a particular Dusty Springfield song, she's moved to reminisce and admit to Tina that she used to sing this song to her children as a lullaby, that she was an awful mother, but she still loved her children, and wondered what had become of them. The final scene of Tina and Sylvie locked in an embrace, with Tina silently crying, was powerful beyond words.
But this was only a background story.
The Victim of Circumstance. Of course, Denise featured in this episode. Featured heavily as Sean O'Connor's designated star of the show. Again,this was a backdrop storyline, the second storyline involving a much older woman being pursued by a younger man.
Watching this, played out against the revelations about Michelle and Preston, it occurred to me that, in many ways, this was the antithesis to that storyline, yet it mirrored it in many ways, and as I watched their drama unfold, I was struck with the similarities between Denise and Kush and Michelle and Preston.
Obviously, the first similarity is that they are two women in their late forties being pursued by much younger men. Like Preston, Kush is the one actively pursuing Denise, and like Preston, it seemed to me that the main purpose of Kush's interest in Denise, primarily, was for sexual purposes.
Although the two had engaged in sexual banter and quasi role playing of teacher and student in their exchange at the community centre, by the time they had repaired to Denise's house after Carmel's untimely interruption, this had given Denise time to think about the situation at hand. And she, the adult in the room, deflected Kush's advances.
For it was clear throughout this that Kush's ultimate motive in his pursuit of Denise was having a regular sexual partner. For all the talk of chemistry between the two of them, it all boiled down to him being horny, and Denise deftly deflecting this horniness. Denise is an attractive woman, and Kush is affected by this attractiveness, but it was evident that Kush has always sought sexual partners without any sort of commitment.
Denise is right to point out that men and women can, indeed, be friends, but this is an alien concept to Kush. It isn't a romance he wanted with Denise, it was casual, regular sex; and this has always been what motivated Kush, at least since his first wife died. He never acknowledged a commitment to Shabnam until she announced that she was pregnant, and even then, he had difficulty - and Carmel even recognised this.
Denise, on the other hand, seems to have learned her lesson, time and time again, reiterating that she no longer wanted to do anything stupid. For Denise, this means not getting drunk with a man and going to bed with him; but ultimately, this served to show that Denise was the more mature half of the couple - and in that respect, Kush isn't that different from Preston, except that Kush is 32 years old, and Preston is 17; sulking is a childish habit that doesn't sit well with with anyone over 30. A prime example of this is Kush's petulant admission that he doesn't want to exchange pleasantries with Denise about the weather as evident of the sort of friendship she wanted, petulantly wondering what it was that "friends" actually talked about.
The exchange in The Albert also mirrored what was going on in the main storyline, with Vincent taking on the role Martin had in the main storyline, appearing just at the moment when Kush, denied his wicked way with Denise, was proceeding to get drunker and drunker, the light-hearted banter when each tried to recommend a love interest for the other began to turn a shade darker as Kush's drinking increased and his remarks toward Denise became snarkier. When Denise subtly intimated to Vincent that Kush should go, Kush took the hint and stalked off to the chippy, making sure that he told Denise that would be where she could find him. Contrived? Yes, because I imagine in the confusion that reigns on Thursday, Denise will know that this is where Kush was headed when the shit, or the BMW, hit the fan.
I suppose what struck me throughout this was just how much Kush's interest in Denise was all about sex - like Preston, he was the horny guy out to get laid, even bumping into one of his many conquests having a drink, herself, in The Albert. This is the way Kush has always been. He doesn't want a meaningful relationship with Denise, he wants sex, and that will last only until Denise either starts to want more in the way of a commitment or until Kush meets another conquest which interests him more. He's learned nothing from his marriage to Shabnam and the loss of their son, but I do think his prurience is a defence mechanism, affected since the death of his first wife. It's a way he can sexually satisfy himself and remain detached from the situation at hand. This works, until someone penetrates that barrier, the way Shabnam did.
As difficult as Shabnam was because of her obvious issues, she made Kush work for her love and respect. The fact that he was so ready to give up on fighting for her that in the 24 hours they had broken up during the early days of their relationship, he relieved himself sexually with her best friend.
Kush is a user of people, and Denise, 16 years his senior, isn't about to be used.
The Awful Truth. I never knew Preston was Rebecca's boyfriend. They slept together a month ago, and not much has happened since, until Michelle turfed him out, after he'd returned from Manchester. Whilst this overdue revelation panned out, I was struck, once again, by how bad an actress Jasmine Armfield is. She does ok with the teens-in-the-schoolyard stuff, but she was bloody awful in this and easily the weakest link.
Still, I appreciate that the boyfriend line was a contrivance tailor-made to make Michelle look even more like a slimy putz.
Kudos? Well, to James Bye, obviously, and to Lacey Turner, albeit her role was more along the supportive bent. She stepped up to the plate in sending Preston on his way, and this was, I suppose, one of the singular successes of this episode.
At long last, we got some sort of history, both with Michelle and the little scrote upon whom she's fixated.
I think it's safe to say that this Michelle has been an absolute epic fail of a character. Even more alarming was the fact that the revelation of Michelle's relationship with Preston, the length of it and its repercussions in Florida were all news to Martin, that he had never thought to question his sister why she'd suddenly appeared in Walford after 20 years' absence, leaving her job and her family.
She was on a visit, remember? Remember the leaving do the Fowlers and the Beales threw for her in the Vic? She was supposedly leaving the following day - got her return ticket all bought and paid for, as she reiterated to Stacey, who was none too glad to see the back of her.
And yet she stayed. And her brother didn't wonder at that? He didn't wonder at her leaving his house, where she was his guest and horn in on the hospitality of a friend, whose good nature she'd abused twice before. Martin exhibited no curiosity at all, and neither, for that matter, did Stacey, and she's pretty quick to cast a beady eye on a dodgy situation.
The exchange between Martin and Michelle was probably the best scene in the episode, and James Bye has come into his own as Martin. The childhood reminiscence stuff, once again, was laid on too thick at some points - in fact, I never remember Martin referencing Michelle at all during his adolescence. As for her never returning home, Martin should have remembered that when Arthur died, Michelle had just given birth to Mark and was in no condition to return for the funeral; but it's true that she had no excuse for not returning for Mark's funeral, and she fell out (over the phone) with Mark for not showing up at Pauline's - but I can believe the part Martin referred about Pauline crying in the kitchen over Michelle's absence. Another thing that struck me was the allusion to Michelle's husband, Tim, whom Martin described as not being exactly a dynamic person, but seemingly so inconsequential that he isn't even allowed to have a surname.
Tim becomes just a faceless non-entity who loved Michelle, but Martin was right - and the continuity was good in that respect - to bring up how selfish Michelle was. This was always the downside of her personality, how she'd step over anyone and anything to get what she wanted. She married Lofty, yet let herself be convinced by a wierdly jealoous Den, that she really didn't want Lofty's child, so she aborted the baby and callously dumped Lofty.
She betrays her best friend by sleeping with the friend's father and becoming pregnant by him; she sleeps with Sharon's ex-husband and again falls pregnant;' and in both instances, thinks it the most natural thing in the world that Sharon should forgive her, which is what she did. One wonders if she'll forgive Michelle for hitting Dennis.
Of course, Michelle was all over the place. Not only was she desperately trying to cover her tracks about her dirty little secret, she was bombed out of her mind on a cocktail of sleeping pills and fizzy booze. The thing about Michelle, however, is that she's spent all her life, doing whatever it is she wanted to do, never considering whom she hurt, yet expecting a blanket forgiveness from them - Sharon, Pauline, Arthur, whoever she hurt, she expected - and got - forgiveness. In return, she offered loyalty. No one can deny, her major transgressions apart, that she's been loyal to the likes of Sharon and Ian. On the night she was killed, Pauline was off to a new life, living with Michelle in Florida.
But this time, her luck has run out. The rule of thumb in life is hurt me, but you don't hurt my kids, and this time, Michelle is on a hiding to nothing. She's hit Dennis, as the avenger Louise, is quick to inform everyone listening to her conversation with Rebecca in the pub, and this is sure to get back to Sharon; and Martin now knows that she's used his daughter as a tool in her wierd sex game of cut-and-thrust with Preston. No matter, Michelle reminding Martin that she did try to warn him and Stacey off Preston, that was too little too late and done with the express purpose of covering Michelle's arse.
In all the discussion between Martin and Michelle about Preston, it was coy of the programme to avoid Michelle mentioning that their relationship, whilst in Florida, was actually a crime. Equally pointless was Michelle saying that she was happy in her life until she succumbed to Preston's sexual pressuring. It was as I thought. He was a sexually precocious, spoiled brat, who pursued her for his amusement. She was the adult, and his teacher, who should have known better than to respond to his advances.
She was an ego trip, but for all his protestations that he loved her, he was a spoiled kid who reacted like a child - and Martin described it brilliantly in reminding Michelle that this boy is, emotionally, still a child - every time he didn't get his own way. His party piece was flouncing out of the room as soon as she said no. He showed his callous measure when his reaction to her telling him to associate with someone his own age was to get emotionally and romantically involved with Michelle's niece, even sleeping with her to make Michelle jealous.
And no more did Preston come across as a child than his behaviour tonight. He wasn't traumatised by what happened in the pub in the least. His reaction seemed to be Cool! Now we can be out in the open -because skulking around in the shadows and on the sly can become more than a bit boring. And he more than got what he deserved when Martin clouted him, bloodying his nose, not so much for hanging around with Michelle, but for using Martin's daughter for his own ends.
Yet that scene where he confronted Rebecca made you realise that this guy was just a kid. Thrown out of Ian's house, seemingly rejected by Michelle, who suddenly realised that she really was about to lose the last remnants of her family, Preston seemed to think he could simply bounce back to Rebecca. He looked like nothing more than a simple teenager when he was trying to plead his case with her. But what did he think that would prove? He told Rebecca that he still liked her, but he loved her aunt. How is that supposed to make her feel?
That was a brilliant scene as well, not for Rebecca's po-faced Garbo-esque reaction to everyone, dramatically declaiming to Louise that she simply wanted "to be alone", but for the protective reactions of Whitney and Stacey, Stacey backing Whitney up by reinforcing the idea to Preston that he wasn't welcome in the pub Whitney was managing and yet making him feel her verbal force in graphically describing what she'd like to do to him for hurting her stepdaughter - that's the first time Stacey has referred to Rebecca as that. It was warming.
Yet five minutes later, we had Rebecca stumbling into a stumbling Michelle and breathlessly exclaiming the ludicrous line,
You've lost everything! We've both lost Preston!
I'm glad Martin didn't stint in reminding Michelle of the litany of people she'd hurt by continuing this relationship, but I take exception in two instances, Martin making one of them, that Michelle was old enough to be Preston's grandmother. She's thirty years older than he, which means she is more than likely old enough to be his mother, so I don't know where he got off reminding her that Preston was young enough to be her grandson - Glenda having sex with 17 year-old Leon was a glamorous fifty-something woman who could have been his grandmother; but Michelle could easily have given birth at thirty. That remark was a bit overexaggerated.
And kudos for Louise - for her protecting Dennis, when Michelle started to lambast the child verbally, blaming him for telling what he'd seen. Michelle was clearly out of order and under the influence of drugs and drink when she virtually assaulted Louise when Louise said she was calling Phil, Bereft and rightfully abandoned by people who had once loved her, Michelle was grasping at straws and gunning for finding Preston, so she takes the keys to Sharon's BMW.
The rest, as they say, is history. Did Preston cop it? I'm not sure. I don't think she hit him or even clipped him, and it looked as though he took a nose dive in a pile of rubbish, which is suitable for him at any rate. I hope he's gone.
But Michelle has destroyed the chippie, with Kush and Kathy inside, and it's the type of destruction and force that could badly injure any fit young bloke, much less an elderly woman. There's some sort of overshadowing from Kush's remark about being fit and young. Yet consider this: Michelle committed a crime in Florida when she slept with Preston; driving under the influence of drugs and alcohol (which can easily be established) and causing grievous injury to a person whilst in that state is a crime as well.
Could we see Michelle, eventually, arrested and imprisoned for this? Because this was, surely, a crime.
Michelle was not a victim. She was the author of her own defeat. And this re-cast has ruined this character for perpetuity.
Love'em or hate'em - and John Yorke certainly started them both on the road to free-fall - but the show misses Letitia Dean and Steve McFadden. I appreciate many of the viewers who have only watched since the Yorke era don't realise what these two characters were in the 1990s, and the writing team on hand don't know how to handle their characters. But as many people whinged, whined and moaned about Sharon and Phil as moaned about Linda Carter, and all it took was that brief appearance by Kellie Bright for me to realise how much she's missed, but it also made me realise how much I'd like to see Danny Dyer -as much as I like Mick Carter on a good day - leave the show. I think Dyer's come to the end of his tether with the character of Mick, but I think Bright's character has countless numbers of roads down which to travel without playing nursemaid mummy to the biggest Oedipal baby on the show.
Not only that, with the brief introductions of guest characters like Konrad the shopkeeper or dodgy Tom, Jay's heretofore unmentioned friend, it's been made painfully obvious how much the show is crying out for new characters and how tired some of the staple characters have become - the Branning girls spring instantly to mind. And whilst I know that Lisa Faulkner's due to be introduced, it's patently obvious that she's the requisite savvy blonde, sexy businesswoman type whose future lies with one of the two Branning brothers.
Probably the reason I rated tonight's show so highly was because at last we've seen some sort of comeback, payback, whatever you want to call it for this version of Michelle, Sean O'Connor's dystopian wreck of an iconic character who is nothing like the original version and nothing like anything that character would have ever become, but also, in the show not releasing any spoilers concerning tonight's episode - although I somewhat knew a bit of what to expect - it was an eye-opener watching things develop in real time, culminating in "the stunt" (on the back of the cobbled-together bus crash from weeks ago), which was realistic enough in demolishing Beale's place.
In actual real time, Kush and Kathy would be brown bread, but after the bus which fell on Martin and Whitney, Kathy's probably got a slight cut above her left eyebrow, and Kush has a dislocated pinkie finger. Or maybe not.
We'll now have to wait until Thursday to see.
The Storyline Apart. Literally, this was the episode where two storylines collided, but before we get to them, I'd like to say something about the best and most realistic issue storyline which served as an eventual backdrop or a plot device for the shit-hitting-the-fan one.
This would be Tina's and Sylvie's storyline. I sat thinking last night, after Monday's episode, about the BSAs coming up in the spring and wondering whom EastEnders would put forward as their nominees for Best Actress and Best Actor. I know Emmerdale will rightly tout John Middleton, and he should win; but I can see no one, actor or actress, worthy of EastEnders to nominate. Oh, they're sure to push Lacey Turner, but Turner's been little more than a supporting player, as she was tonight.
On the other hand, Luisa Bradshaw-White has really come into her own in this storyline.
Although it was cast as a backdrop to all the action going on with the Michelle reveal, it still was a storyline in and of itself. It was quite something to see Sylvie carry on dancing throughout the brouhaha, oblivious to the confusion around her, safe and secure in her own world. When Vincent stopped dancing with her, she danced with herself.
Throughout everything, Sylvie's safest living and re-living her life in the 60s, when she was everyone's party girl. Now, Tina is facing self-recrimination for having made the decision to put Sylvie in a care home where she can get professional help. Even though her mother abandoned her as a child, she still wants to do right by her. It was a powerful moment when some boisterous punters at the Vic started copping feels of Whitney and Tina, who had to try to eject them from the pub - once again, there's a weakness here, with Whitney and Johnnie, both unlicenced, running the pub - surely, that's illegal? Surely there has to be licenced cover?
When both women can't handle these men, it's Sylvie who rouses herself briefly to castigate them for manhandling her daughter, even recognising that Tina is a lesbian, chasing he men off, and then reverting back to her nebulous existence in the past. And finally, hearing a particular Dusty Springfield song, she's moved to reminisce and admit to Tina that she used to sing this song to her children as a lullaby, that she was an awful mother, but she still loved her children, and wondered what had become of them. The final scene of Tina and Sylvie locked in an embrace, with Tina silently crying, was powerful beyond words.
But this was only a background story.
The Victim of Circumstance. Of course, Denise featured in this episode. Featured heavily as Sean O'Connor's designated star of the show. Again,this was a backdrop storyline, the second storyline involving a much older woman being pursued by a younger man.
Watching this, played out against the revelations about Michelle and Preston, it occurred to me that, in many ways, this was the antithesis to that storyline, yet it mirrored it in many ways, and as I watched their drama unfold, I was struck with the similarities between Denise and Kush and Michelle and Preston.
Obviously, the first similarity is that they are two women in their late forties being pursued by much younger men. Like Preston, Kush is the one actively pursuing Denise, and like Preston, it seemed to me that the main purpose of Kush's interest in Denise, primarily, was for sexual purposes.
Although the two had engaged in sexual banter and quasi role playing of teacher and student in their exchange at the community centre, by the time they had repaired to Denise's house after Carmel's untimely interruption, this had given Denise time to think about the situation at hand. And she, the adult in the room, deflected Kush's advances.
For it was clear throughout this that Kush's ultimate motive in his pursuit of Denise was having a regular sexual partner. For all the talk of chemistry between the two of them, it all boiled down to him being horny, and Denise deftly deflecting this horniness. Denise is an attractive woman, and Kush is affected by this attractiveness, but it was evident that Kush has always sought sexual partners without any sort of commitment.
Denise is right to point out that men and women can, indeed, be friends, but this is an alien concept to Kush. It isn't a romance he wanted with Denise, it was casual, regular sex; and this has always been what motivated Kush, at least since his first wife died. He never acknowledged a commitment to Shabnam until she announced that she was pregnant, and even then, he had difficulty - and Carmel even recognised this.
Denise, on the other hand, seems to have learned her lesson, time and time again, reiterating that she no longer wanted to do anything stupid. For Denise, this means not getting drunk with a man and going to bed with him; but ultimately, this served to show that Denise was the more mature half of the couple - and in that respect, Kush isn't that different from Preston, except that Kush is 32 years old, and Preston is 17; sulking is a childish habit that doesn't sit well with with anyone over 30. A prime example of this is Kush's petulant admission that he doesn't want to exchange pleasantries with Denise about the weather as evident of the sort of friendship she wanted, petulantly wondering what it was that "friends" actually talked about.
The exchange in The Albert also mirrored what was going on in the main storyline, with Vincent taking on the role Martin had in the main storyline, appearing just at the moment when Kush, denied his wicked way with Denise, was proceeding to get drunker and drunker, the light-hearted banter when each tried to recommend a love interest for the other began to turn a shade darker as Kush's drinking increased and his remarks toward Denise became snarkier. When Denise subtly intimated to Vincent that Kush should go, Kush took the hint and stalked off to the chippy, making sure that he told Denise that would be where she could find him. Contrived? Yes, because I imagine in the confusion that reigns on Thursday, Denise will know that this is where Kush was headed when the shit, or the BMW, hit the fan.
I suppose what struck me throughout this was just how much Kush's interest in Denise was all about sex - like Preston, he was the horny guy out to get laid, even bumping into one of his many conquests having a drink, herself, in The Albert. This is the way Kush has always been. He doesn't want a meaningful relationship with Denise, he wants sex, and that will last only until Denise either starts to want more in the way of a commitment or until Kush meets another conquest which interests him more. He's learned nothing from his marriage to Shabnam and the loss of their son, but I do think his prurience is a defence mechanism, affected since the death of his first wife. It's a way he can sexually satisfy himself and remain detached from the situation at hand. This works, until someone penetrates that barrier, the way Shabnam did.
As difficult as Shabnam was because of her obvious issues, she made Kush work for her love and respect. The fact that he was so ready to give up on fighting for her that in the 24 hours they had broken up during the early days of their relationship, he relieved himself sexually with her best friend.
Kush is a user of people, and Denise, 16 years his senior, isn't about to be used.
The Awful Truth. I never knew Preston was Rebecca's boyfriend. They slept together a month ago, and not much has happened since, until Michelle turfed him out, after he'd returned from Manchester. Whilst this overdue revelation panned out, I was struck, once again, by how bad an actress Jasmine Armfield is. She does ok with the teens-in-the-schoolyard stuff, but she was bloody awful in this and easily the weakest link.
Still, I appreciate that the boyfriend line was a contrivance tailor-made to make Michelle look even more like a slimy putz.
Kudos? Well, to James Bye, obviously, and to Lacey Turner, albeit her role was more along the supportive bent. She stepped up to the plate in sending Preston on his way, and this was, I suppose, one of the singular successes of this episode.
At long last, we got some sort of history, both with Michelle and the little scrote upon whom she's fixated.
I think it's safe to say that this Michelle has been an absolute epic fail of a character. Even more alarming was the fact that the revelation of Michelle's relationship with Preston, the length of it and its repercussions in Florida were all news to Martin, that he had never thought to question his sister why she'd suddenly appeared in Walford after 20 years' absence, leaving her job and her family.
She was on a visit, remember? Remember the leaving do the Fowlers and the Beales threw for her in the Vic? She was supposedly leaving the following day - got her return ticket all bought and paid for, as she reiterated to Stacey, who was none too glad to see the back of her.
And yet she stayed. And her brother didn't wonder at that? He didn't wonder at her leaving his house, where she was his guest and horn in on the hospitality of a friend, whose good nature she'd abused twice before. Martin exhibited no curiosity at all, and neither, for that matter, did Stacey, and she's pretty quick to cast a beady eye on a dodgy situation.
The exchange between Martin and Michelle was probably the best scene in the episode, and James Bye has come into his own as Martin. The childhood reminiscence stuff, once again, was laid on too thick at some points - in fact, I never remember Martin referencing Michelle at all during his adolescence. As for her never returning home, Martin should have remembered that when Arthur died, Michelle had just given birth to Mark and was in no condition to return for the funeral; but it's true that she had no excuse for not returning for Mark's funeral, and she fell out (over the phone) with Mark for not showing up at Pauline's - but I can believe the part Martin referred about Pauline crying in the kitchen over Michelle's absence. Another thing that struck me was the allusion to Michelle's husband, Tim, whom Martin described as not being exactly a dynamic person, but seemingly so inconsequential that he isn't even allowed to have a surname.
Tim becomes just a faceless non-entity who loved Michelle, but Martin was right - and the continuity was good in that respect - to bring up how selfish Michelle was. This was always the downside of her personality, how she'd step over anyone and anything to get what she wanted. She married Lofty, yet let herself be convinced by a wierdly jealoous Den, that she really didn't want Lofty's child, so she aborted the baby and callously dumped Lofty.
She betrays her best friend by sleeping with the friend's father and becoming pregnant by him; she sleeps with Sharon's ex-husband and again falls pregnant;' and in both instances, thinks it the most natural thing in the world that Sharon should forgive her, which is what she did. One wonders if she'll forgive Michelle for hitting Dennis.
Of course, Michelle was all over the place. Not only was she desperately trying to cover her tracks about her dirty little secret, she was bombed out of her mind on a cocktail of sleeping pills and fizzy booze. The thing about Michelle, however, is that she's spent all her life, doing whatever it is she wanted to do, never considering whom she hurt, yet expecting a blanket forgiveness from them - Sharon, Pauline, Arthur, whoever she hurt, she expected - and got - forgiveness. In return, she offered loyalty. No one can deny, her major transgressions apart, that she's been loyal to the likes of Sharon and Ian. On the night she was killed, Pauline was off to a new life, living with Michelle in Florida.
But this time, her luck has run out. The rule of thumb in life is hurt me, but you don't hurt my kids, and this time, Michelle is on a hiding to nothing. She's hit Dennis, as the avenger Louise, is quick to inform everyone listening to her conversation with Rebecca in the pub, and this is sure to get back to Sharon; and Martin now knows that she's used his daughter as a tool in her wierd sex game of cut-and-thrust with Preston. No matter, Michelle reminding Martin that she did try to warn him and Stacey off Preston, that was too little too late and done with the express purpose of covering Michelle's arse.
In all the discussion between Martin and Michelle about Preston, it was coy of the programme to avoid Michelle mentioning that their relationship, whilst in Florida, was actually a crime. Equally pointless was Michelle saying that she was happy in her life until she succumbed to Preston's sexual pressuring. It was as I thought. He was a sexually precocious, spoiled brat, who pursued her for his amusement. She was the adult, and his teacher, who should have known better than to respond to his advances.
She was an ego trip, but for all his protestations that he loved her, he was a spoiled kid who reacted like a child - and Martin described it brilliantly in reminding Michelle that this boy is, emotionally, still a child - every time he didn't get his own way. His party piece was flouncing out of the room as soon as she said no. He showed his callous measure when his reaction to her telling him to associate with someone his own age was to get emotionally and romantically involved with Michelle's niece, even sleeping with her to make Michelle jealous.
And no more did Preston come across as a child than his behaviour tonight. He wasn't traumatised by what happened in the pub in the least. His reaction seemed to be Cool! Now we can be out in the open -because skulking around in the shadows and on the sly can become more than a bit boring. And he more than got what he deserved when Martin clouted him, bloodying his nose, not so much for hanging around with Michelle, but for using Martin's daughter for his own ends.
Yet that scene where he confronted Rebecca made you realise that this guy was just a kid. Thrown out of Ian's house, seemingly rejected by Michelle, who suddenly realised that she really was about to lose the last remnants of her family, Preston seemed to think he could simply bounce back to Rebecca. He looked like nothing more than a simple teenager when he was trying to plead his case with her. But what did he think that would prove? He told Rebecca that he still liked her, but he loved her aunt. How is that supposed to make her feel?
That was a brilliant scene as well, not for Rebecca's po-faced Garbo-esque reaction to everyone, dramatically declaiming to Louise that she simply wanted "to be alone", but for the protective reactions of Whitney and Stacey, Stacey backing Whitney up by reinforcing the idea to Preston that he wasn't welcome in the pub Whitney was managing and yet making him feel her verbal force in graphically describing what she'd like to do to him for hurting her stepdaughter - that's the first time Stacey has referred to Rebecca as that. It was warming.
Yet five minutes later, we had Rebecca stumbling into a stumbling Michelle and breathlessly exclaiming the ludicrous line,
You've lost everything! We've both lost Preston!
I'm glad Martin didn't stint in reminding Michelle of the litany of people she'd hurt by continuing this relationship, but I take exception in two instances, Martin making one of them, that Michelle was old enough to be Preston's grandmother. She's thirty years older than he, which means she is more than likely old enough to be his mother, so I don't know where he got off reminding her that Preston was young enough to be her grandson - Glenda having sex with 17 year-old Leon was a glamorous fifty-something woman who could have been his grandmother; but Michelle could easily have given birth at thirty. That remark was a bit overexaggerated.
And kudos for Louise - for her protecting Dennis, when Michelle started to lambast the child verbally, blaming him for telling what he'd seen. Michelle was clearly out of order and under the influence of drugs and drink when she virtually assaulted Louise when Louise said she was calling Phil, Bereft and rightfully abandoned by people who had once loved her, Michelle was grasping at straws and gunning for finding Preston, so she takes the keys to Sharon's BMW.
The rest, as they say, is history. Did Preston cop it? I'm not sure. I don't think she hit him or even clipped him, and it looked as though he took a nose dive in a pile of rubbish, which is suitable for him at any rate. I hope he's gone.
But Michelle has destroyed the chippie, with Kush and Kathy inside, and it's the type of destruction and force that could badly injure any fit young bloke, much less an elderly woman. There's some sort of overshadowing from Kush's remark about being fit and young. Yet consider this: Michelle committed a crime in Florida when she slept with Preston; driving under the influence of drugs and alcohol (which can easily be established) and causing grievous injury to a person whilst in that state is a crime as well.
Could we see Michelle, eventually, arrested and imprisoned for this? Because this was, surely, a crime.
Michelle was not a victim. She was the author of her own defeat. And this re-cast has ruined this character for perpetuity.
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