Some may think me harsh, but I've been giving particularly low ratings to this show of late, and tonight was no different - a paltry 4 out of 10, and that was merely for finding out that Stacey was pregnant. It's much the same old same old every night - Michelle whining about herself, Denise preening and creating another sitcom/romcom moment with Kim preening about herself also, Rebecca crying after the umpteenth latest instalment of "Six Hundred Ways to Make Rebecca Fowler Cry", and Lauren, rolling her eyes and looking bored to tears to be anyplace near the Beales.
Not just again, but again and again and again and again. Oh, and we have the great celebration that is the Walford Fayre upon us.
Get Den Watts. He'll know what to do.
The Bullying Storyline: Chapted 9,457.63. Another day, another incident of Sniggle and Snaggle tormenting and torturing Rebecca. This is a frustrating storyline, all and all because it could be resolved - and effectively so - by Rebecca speaking out and telling any one of a number of adults about what the hell is going on. So, forgive me, if I look on that final scene of Rebecca crying, yet again, and putting in a call to the distant Sonia, weeping that she had no one with whom she could talk and she couldn't cope with having no one.
I do know, from personal experience,that when the chips are down and you're feeling really beleagured, there's no one you want more than your mother, but Rebecca was lying when she intimated that she had no one. She chose not to say anything to any of the adults in her life, several of whom could have put the fear of God into the cartoon bullies, and one who could have found her inner bitch and shamed Louise to the hilt.
Before I dissect this, it seems to me that Sean O'Connor, in this programme, is giving all kinds of back-handed, inadvertant tributes to the old 1950s American comedy show, I Love Lucy. Kim and Vincent are Lucy and Ricky Ricardo, and he seems to be using Rebecca in the same way Desilu used Lucille Ball's crying and her off-key singing to promote her on-screen character. Because, like Lucy, not an episode goes by where we don't see Rebecca crying ...
... or singing ... badly.
... except that Rebecca isn't in a comedy, so her tears aren't meant to be funny, and the show is pushing the idea that she can really sing.
I get it that we're supposed to feel sorry for this girl, but in her own way, along with the rest of the teens, she's immensely unlikable. Before the welter of tear-ridden storylines came along, she came across as smug, almost condescending with her father, and demanding to be treated like an adult, when she was the orchestrator of a lof of bad luck which came her way mostly because of her own immature and bad judgement.
Taking nude pictures of herself and retainging such nude pictures of Shakil on her phone was bad enough; allowing herself to be goaded into sleeping with Shakil before she was emotionally ready for such a relationship was worse, and sleeping with the awful Prestonovich after knowing him for five minutes was beyond stupid. All along, I've said she was the classic book-smart kid, who had little of no common sense.
Tonight proved it.
That said, this bullying storyline is unpleasant to watch, to the extent that you wonder how some people -Sniggle,Snaggle and Keegan - could be so de-sensitised to any sort of compassion for other people as to be almost psychopathic. It's real meanness to be consistently and coldly mean to another person for no other reason. Star hit closest to their reasons for being that way- it's mostly jealousy, probably because of Rebecca's grades and because she's actually had what they crave: someone interested enough in her to want to sleep with her, because they seem to have no friends except each other. They are still cartoon characters, however, and one step up from the atrocious Keegan, who makes a living out of being rude to all and sundry.
If EastEnders really did want to adhere to the soap genre's remit of being the modern-day version of that old mediaeval morality play, we'd see karma rear up and bit Sniggle, Snaggle and Keegan where it would hurt the most.
That could easily be achieved with the girls. For a start, there's Rebecca's caved-in guitar on the floor of her room. You can't tell me Stacey doesn't go into her room just to give it a thorough clean every now and then, and she'd come across the guitar. As she is having lessons in guitar, you'd think Martin (who must have bought the intrument for her) would be made aware of the fact that it was broken. So what does she do? Sit there, quivering, with her nose getting redder and redder and blubbering I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry over and over again.
She needs to tell someone and let them deal with it. She approached the school, but they could do nothing about her claims because the two girls and Lousie clammed up - well, Louise was coerced into backing them. With the guitar, even telling Stacey, she'd have no proof with the authorities, but with the shit-eating incident, she's got ample proof.
On her phone.
Sniggle, Snaggle and Louise may not have realised it, but the moment they entered the Fowler home and destroyed Rebecca's property, threatening her, they'd committed a crime. Even Louise, whose tacit behaviour would not absolve her of corporate responsibility. However, feeding Rebecca catshit in the manner in which this was done was in the very least culpable and reckless conduct and at the most, assault. This time, Rebecca has proof. She has the film on her phone. All she has to do is show this to Stacey and/or Martin, and they're done. They don't even have to take this incident up with the school, they can go to the police. Job jobbed.
It's, at once, both difficult and boring to watch this repetitive storyline. We get the picture. We don't have to see anymore evidence that these people are thoroughly nasty individuals, who've tormented Rebecca until she's a blubbering mass - and we never get an episode where she isn't crying or fucking singing - and who've frightened Louise to the point of almost swallowing her tongue around them. She's their useful idiot. She stands around whilst they torment Rebecca, and just for an instant, a second or two, she looks on the point of finding her inner Mitchell and of nutting them one, of reaching out with each hand, entwining her fingers in each of their fouls strands of hair and knocking their heads together until we actually see the cartoon stars, but in the next instant, one of them imperiously shouts ... Louise! ... and Louise shits herself into submission.
After all, they need Louise to buy their junk food and fizzy drinks.
But now we were allowed to see the entire purpose of this circular storyline. It's a never-ending played out contrivance to herald the return of SuperSonia, who did a farily good job, if you recall the incident of the doughnuts, in psychologically bullying Rebecca, herself.
And, of course, Sonia will blame Martin and Stacey for their perceived ineptitude in dealing with Rebecca, when Sonia did a pretty piss poor job of doing that, herself.
You wonder where Star has been in all of this, because she offered Rebecca a lifeline, and she was too fucking trusting of Sniggle, who looks her age of 25 and who sounds as if she's on 40-a-day. She was played by those girls. It's about time someone played them.
Another Dose of Michelle. And another episode with Michelle front and centre. This is the continuing saga of the rehabilitation of this awful character.
When we last saw her, she was drunkenly insulting Sharon, allowing Sharon finally to see exactly what Michelle really thought of her friend, and then reaching for her phone, in desperation, to try to reach Preston.
Even tonight, her pithy apology to Sharon was made more to keep on Sharon's good side, basically because Sharon is subsidising her totally. Lose Sharon's support and she has no one, which she whiningly acknowledged,when she gave her poor reason for ringing Preston. To say she was sorry? Really? And realising that she'd lost him and that now poor, pitiful Michelle has no one?
Why is that? No acknowledgement of her own part in driving a wedge between herself, her behaviour and the people who matter. When this episode started, she only had Sharon in her corner. The first scene has Sharon dishing out orders to her children to help around the house "to make it nice". Neither are willing - maybe because they're both cranky, spoiled kids, but also maybe because they resent Michelle being brought into their safe place and foisted down their throats. As soon as Michelle enters the kitchen, Dennis and Louise got up and left, with short shrift for either Michelle or Sharon.
The worst part is that Michelle's self-serving apology came with an almost flirtatiously coy admission that ... I'm a cow ... followed by a "moo", which had Sharon in stitches. All is forgiven. Again. As usual.
Michelle can come into Sharon's home, use Sharon's money to subsidise her underaged boyfriend, assault Michelle's son and stepdaughter, wreck Sharon's car and insult her to her face, whilst allowing herself to be financially supported by her, and still Sharon fights her corner. The day before, she'd been to the cemetary to visit her parents' graves. Today, on the anniversary of Mark's death (which has never been noted before on the show), she goes back "to see Mark". (Sorry, but isn't Mark buried near his parents' grave?) Like she said, Michelle seems to get along fine with dead people, simply because they can't answer back; and she's certainly oblivious or impervious to the reasons why Sharon's children just might be giving her grief, all she can do is offer a back-handed criticism of Sharon allowing her children to be so disrespectful when Sharon reminds Michelle that she, Michelle, held her own as such against Pauline.
How many more references are we going to get about Fowlers past? We've had our limit with with Pauline and Arthur, and tonight it was Mark's turn, with what turned out to be a competition between Michelle and Martin as to who can remember Mark the most.
Stacey gets the wooden spoon for dismissing Rebecca's brooding in bed as typical teenage girl behaviour, assessing that Martin should be used to that, considering that he grew up with such a being in his home - except that Martin would have been little more than a toddler when Michelle was in her teens and hardly qualified to remember how his parents dealt with her. Thus, begins Stacey's effort to rehabilitate Michelle "for Martin's sake."
I can understand Martin's anger and disgust with Michelle. In her own way, she was as bad as the cartoon bullies in using his daughter as a pawn in a dangerous sexual game, and Michelle was an adult! He shouldn't be expected to forgive her so readily,but for some reason, Stacey can't fathom that. I wonder if she'd feel the same if someone like Kat or Belinda or even Sean had used one of her own children in such a foul manner? She'd blow a gasket. Any parent, bar Sharon, would.
Sean O'Connor seems to like gardening scenes - Stacey Slater planting daffs, and not the proper bulbs, but transplanting plants. The general idea he's trying to push is the trite old adage about getting your hands dirty in soil to cleanse the soul. I didn't like, however, Stacey's casual emasculation of Martin, dismissing his resentment of MIchelle without even trying to understand why this cuts him to the quick ..
I love Martin, but stuff him!
Really, Stacey? What Michelle did was seriously bad. She abused the trust and natural affection of her niece, and by extension, her brother. She used his child for her own ends. Stacey, as a mother, should understand the strength of emotion and the sense of betrayal that Martin feels. It hurts him all the more because he has few blood relatives left, and she should understand the depth of his sentiment. She doesn't need to rush a reconciliation, and she doesn't need to diss the fact that, apart from Michelle, Ian is Martyn's closest relative. Ian gave Martin a job, and in his own way, he's made Stacey feel a part of that family - quite a change from her cousin Belinda, who - although she paid the rent on their flat until she'd maxed her card out and her business failed - had precious few compliments and a lot of barbs to dish to Martin.
She needs to let Martin keep his distance from Michelle, and Michelle needs to digest fully the implications of her misbehaviour. Inappropriate behaviour has its consequences, and she needn't have acted so surprised at encountering Preston's mother standing guard. Ma Prestonovich was only protecting her underaged child.
Instead, we have the daffodil bonding scene between Stacey and Michelle, where she makes sure that Michelle is the first to know that she's pregnant with Martin's child, instead of Martin, himself; and they're open enough with their congratulations that Rebecca witnesses this and feels even more isolated and betrayed. Of course, she never got around to telling Martin her good news, and now Michelle is their honoured guest at a dinner which includes the dulcet tones of Jean Slater. Martin's bound to find out that Michelle knew the news he should have known first. But then, Stacey, although she loves Martin, is yet another woman who not only coddles and babyfies her partner, she's also another in the growing line of people,who are coddling Michelle.
Another Tedious Sitcom Dinner Party - Oh Wait! Denise Has Another Storyline. Bullshit! Just total and utter bullshit! I don't care how popular Denise is, this character cannot carry this programme and doesn't deserve to front and centre this show.
Oh, joy! She has another storyline -this time, an ongoing silliness about both she and Kush being inadvertantly goaded into signing up for "Miss Walford" and "Mr Walford" in competition with the appallingly self-centred, ignorant and unfunny Kim and the reluctant, recalcitrant and emasculated Vincent.
Gangster, businessman, rap singer, eunuch ... these can all be used to describe Vincent, and Kim uses three of the four. We can easily ascertain the fourth descriptive adjective.In fact, I'm surprised that Kim hasn't had Vincent's balls bronzed and suspended on a chain she wears around her neck. She treats him like a servant -barking out orders to serve the wine, act the host, show the evil eye and other preposterous demands.
Vincent seems intelligent enough and is certainly street suss; you'd think with Kim going on and on about how expensive everything on her table and in her house is, that he'd realise the only reason she stays with him. In the final ludicrous scene, which amounted virtually to a self-obsessed argument between Kim and Denise about who's prettier than whom, with the increasingly puerile Kush and Denise becoming joined at the hip as a team for the Walford "beauty" contest - which five minutes before the effete intellectual Denise, liberally and ignorantly peppering her dialogue with a plethora of "ain't" (such is the English literature student), was labelling as demeaning -Kim has to remind Vincent to hug her.
More and more, I get the impression that Vincent may just be with Kim for Pearl's sake. The gist of the sitcom-within-a-soap was the age-old tale of an uncomfortable dinner party where two unlikely guests discover a connection between the two. In this instance, it was Vincent discovering that Kush liked his only rap recording that Vincent had made, which resulted in a man hug and both men singing along to the beat.
Kim got the desultory line of the night, which would have been funny if it hadn't involved the increasingly trite Denise:-
I'd marry Kush before Vincent does.
But otherwise, it was all unfunny jokes and the all-too-familiar theme of Kim, masking her insecurity by overt and tacky displays of wealth and Denise gurning disapprovingly and condescendingly, dotted with unfunny dialogue - like Kim calling the ham prosciutto, and Denise replying with "Bless you" as a put-down for Kim, pretending that such pretentiousness was no more than a silly sneeze.
So now we've taken Denise to another level of self-absorbed arrogance - she's got to win Miss Walford, with Kush ( 'e's got muscles on muscles) hoping to grace her side as Mr Walford.
Seriously? Apart from Kush, these are middle-aged people. Sisters arguing openly about who's the prettiest and who has the handsomest mate. As for Kush, each episode that he's with Denise, he regresses further and further into adolescence -shit, Stacey even dared to pronounce to Michelle that Martin had the emotional maturity of an adolescent; she needs to be reminded of who kept her kids on track when she was suffering from psychosis.
But Kush becomes, more and more, the ineffectual adolescent boy, bowing to the mother-knows-best demands of Denise. Kim has emasculated Vincent; Denise has rendered Kush positively pre-pubescent.
And of course the punchline of the entire Dinner Party from Hell - a favourite meme of EastEnders throughout the years - was the fact that Denise had found that Kim appeared to have a gold-plated toilet brush.
A fool and his money and all that ... tripe.
And As Ever ... A second sitcom within a sitcom within a soap. Ben and Jay are, unbelievably, so skint that they are reduced to cadging free meals off Kathy in the café and voluntarily playing popmen in the pub in the hopes that they'd be offered free drinks the way Peggy would offer Jim Branning as such;but they aren't Jim and Peggy is dead.
Jay may earn little working for Billy, but Ben must earn a reasonable amount. Their mistake came in not insuring the luxury telly that was stolen. And the upshot of this segmant is another misogynist poke at society by O'Connor: it's a source of shame to Ben and Jay that they got fleeced by a woman.
Moving right along, it's surprising none of the Beales are noticing Lauren's overt,unhidden and total boredom with eveyone, including Steven. The karaoke evening isn't her cup of tea. She has to spend it in the company of Steven when she would rather be making up her face for that Photocopier Man she's arranged to meet on a night out with Whitney,who almost lets the cat out of the bag about what Lauren's been up to.
I must admit, I thought for a moment when Steven went to the bar to get a round of drinks in, that Johnny woulld appear, and we'd see a spark of some sort between the two,but I guess O'Connor doesn't think that way.
Another dire episode.
Not just again, but again and again and again and again. Oh, and we have the great celebration that is the Walford Fayre upon us.
Get Den Watts. He'll know what to do.
The Bullying Storyline: Chapted 9,457.63. Another day, another incident of Sniggle and Snaggle tormenting and torturing Rebecca. This is a frustrating storyline, all and all because it could be resolved - and effectively so - by Rebecca speaking out and telling any one of a number of adults about what the hell is going on. So, forgive me, if I look on that final scene of Rebecca crying, yet again, and putting in a call to the distant Sonia, weeping that she had no one with whom she could talk and she couldn't cope with having no one.
I do know, from personal experience,that when the chips are down and you're feeling really beleagured, there's no one you want more than your mother, but Rebecca was lying when she intimated that she had no one. She chose not to say anything to any of the adults in her life, several of whom could have put the fear of God into the cartoon bullies, and one who could have found her inner bitch and shamed Louise to the hilt.
... or singing ... badly.
... except that Rebecca isn't in a comedy, so her tears aren't meant to be funny, and the show is pushing the idea that she can really sing.
I get it that we're supposed to feel sorry for this girl, but in her own way, along with the rest of the teens, she's immensely unlikable. Before the welter of tear-ridden storylines came along, she came across as smug, almost condescending with her father, and demanding to be treated like an adult, when she was the orchestrator of a lof of bad luck which came her way mostly because of her own immature and bad judgement.
Taking nude pictures of herself and retainging such nude pictures of Shakil on her phone was bad enough; allowing herself to be goaded into sleeping with Shakil before she was emotionally ready for such a relationship was worse, and sleeping with the awful Prestonovich after knowing him for five minutes was beyond stupid. All along, I've said she was the classic book-smart kid, who had little of no common sense.
Tonight proved it.
That said, this bullying storyline is unpleasant to watch, to the extent that you wonder how some people -Sniggle,Snaggle and Keegan - could be so de-sensitised to any sort of compassion for other people as to be almost psychopathic. It's real meanness to be consistently and coldly mean to another person for no other reason. Star hit closest to their reasons for being that way- it's mostly jealousy, probably because of Rebecca's grades and because she's actually had what they crave: someone interested enough in her to want to sleep with her, because they seem to have no friends except each other. They are still cartoon characters, however, and one step up from the atrocious Keegan, who makes a living out of being rude to all and sundry.
If EastEnders really did want to adhere to the soap genre's remit of being the modern-day version of that old mediaeval morality play, we'd see karma rear up and bit Sniggle, Snaggle and Keegan where it would hurt the most.
That could easily be achieved with the girls. For a start, there's Rebecca's caved-in guitar on the floor of her room. You can't tell me Stacey doesn't go into her room just to give it a thorough clean every now and then, and she'd come across the guitar. As she is having lessons in guitar, you'd think Martin (who must have bought the intrument for her) would be made aware of the fact that it was broken. So what does she do? Sit there, quivering, with her nose getting redder and redder and blubbering I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry over and over again.
She needs to tell someone and let them deal with it. She approached the school, but they could do nothing about her claims because the two girls and Lousie clammed up - well, Louise was coerced into backing them. With the guitar, even telling Stacey, she'd have no proof with the authorities, but with the shit-eating incident, she's got ample proof.
On her phone.
Sniggle, Snaggle and Louise may not have realised it, but the moment they entered the Fowler home and destroyed Rebecca's property, threatening her, they'd committed a crime. Even Louise, whose tacit behaviour would not absolve her of corporate responsibility. However, feeding Rebecca catshit in the manner in which this was done was in the very least culpable and reckless conduct and at the most, assault. This time, Rebecca has proof. She has the film on her phone. All she has to do is show this to Stacey and/or Martin, and they're done. They don't even have to take this incident up with the school, they can go to the police. Job jobbed.
It's, at once, both difficult and boring to watch this repetitive storyline. We get the picture. We don't have to see anymore evidence that these people are thoroughly nasty individuals, who've tormented Rebecca until she's a blubbering mass - and we never get an episode where she isn't crying or fucking singing - and who've frightened Louise to the point of almost swallowing her tongue around them. She's their useful idiot. She stands around whilst they torment Rebecca, and just for an instant, a second or two, she looks on the point of finding her inner Mitchell and of nutting them one, of reaching out with each hand, entwining her fingers in each of their fouls strands of hair and knocking their heads together until we actually see the cartoon stars, but in the next instant, one of them imperiously shouts ... Louise! ... and Louise shits herself into submission.
After all, they need Louise to buy their junk food and fizzy drinks.
But now we were allowed to see the entire purpose of this circular storyline. It's a never-ending played out contrivance to herald the return of SuperSonia, who did a farily good job, if you recall the incident of the doughnuts, in psychologically bullying Rebecca, herself.
And, of course, Sonia will blame Martin and Stacey for their perceived ineptitude in dealing with Rebecca, when Sonia did a pretty piss poor job of doing that, herself.
You wonder where Star has been in all of this, because she offered Rebecca a lifeline, and she was too fucking trusting of Sniggle, who looks her age of 25 and who sounds as if she's on 40-a-day. She was played by those girls. It's about time someone played them.
Another Dose of Michelle. And another episode with Michelle front and centre. This is the continuing saga of the rehabilitation of this awful character.
When we last saw her, she was drunkenly insulting Sharon, allowing Sharon finally to see exactly what Michelle really thought of her friend, and then reaching for her phone, in desperation, to try to reach Preston.
Even tonight, her pithy apology to Sharon was made more to keep on Sharon's good side, basically because Sharon is subsidising her totally. Lose Sharon's support and she has no one, which she whiningly acknowledged,when she gave her poor reason for ringing Preston. To say she was sorry? Really? And realising that she'd lost him and that now poor, pitiful Michelle has no one?
Why is that? No acknowledgement of her own part in driving a wedge between herself, her behaviour and the people who matter. When this episode started, she only had Sharon in her corner. The first scene has Sharon dishing out orders to her children to help around the house "to make it nice". Neither are willing - maybe because they're both cranky, spoiled kids, but also maybe because they resent Michelle being brought into their safe place and foisted down their throats. As soon as Michelle enters the kitchen, Dennis and Louise got up and left, with short shrift for either Michelle or Sharon.
The worst part is that Michelle's self-serving apology came with an almost flirtatiously coy admission that ... I'm a cow ... followed by a "moo", which had Sharon in stitches. All is forgiven. Again. As usual.
Michelle can come into Sharon's home, use Sharon's money to subsidise her underaged boyfriend, assault Michelle's son and stepdaughter, wreck Sharon's car and insult her to her face, whilst allowing herself to be financially supported by her, and still Sharon fights her corner. The day before, she'd been to the cemetary to visit her parents' graves. Today, on the anniversary of Mark's death (which has never been noted before on the show), she goes back "to see Mark". (Sorry, but isn't Mark buried near his parents' grave?) Like she said, Michelle seems to get along fine with dead people, simply because they can't answer back; and she's certainly oblivious or impervious to the reasons why Sharon's children just might be giving her grief, all she can do is offer a back-handed criticism of Sharon allowing her children to be so disrespectful when Sharon reminds Michelle that she, Michelle, held her own as such against Pauline.
How many more references are we going to get about Fowlers past? We've had our limit with with Pauline and Arthur, and tonight it was Mark's turn, with what turned out to be a competition between Michelle and Martin as to who can remember Mark the most.
Stacey gets the wooden spoon for dismissing Rebecca's brooding in bed as typical teenage girl behaviour, assessing that Martin should be used to that, considering that he grew up with such a being in his home - except that Martin would have been little more than a toddler when Michelle was in her teens and hardly qualified to remember how his parents dealt with her. Thus, begins Stacey's effort to rehabilitate Michelle "for Martin's sake."
I can understand Martin's anger and disgust with Michelle. In her own way, she was as bad as the cartoon bullies in using his daughter as a pawn in a dangerous sexual game, and Michelle was an adult! He shouldn't be expected to forgive her so readily,but for some reason, Stacey can't fathom that. I wonder if she'd feel the same if someone like Kat or Belinda or even Sean had used one of her own children in such a foul manner? She'd blow a gasket. Any parent, bar Sharon, would.
Sean O'Connor seems to like gardening scenes - Stacey Slater planting daffs, and not the proper bulbs, but transplanting plants. The general idea he's trying to push is the trite old adage about getting your hands dirty in soil to cleanse the soul. I didn't like, however, Stacey's casual emasculation of Martin, dismissing his resentment of MIchelle without even trying to understand why this cuts him to the quick ..
I love Martin, but stuff him!
Really, Stacey? What Michelle did was seriously bad. She abused the trust and natural affection of her niece, and by extension, her brother. She used his child for her own ends. Stacey, as a mother, should understand the strength of emotion and the sense of betrayal that Martin feels. It hurts him all the more because he has few blood relatives left, and she should understand the depth of his sentiment. She doesn't need to rush a reconciliation, and she doesn't need to diss the fact that, apart from Michelle, Ian is Martyn's closest relative. Ian gave Martin a job, and in his own way, he's made Stacey feel a part of that family - quite a change from her cousin Belinda, who - although she paid the rent on their flat until she'd maxed her card out and her business failed - had precious few compliments and a lot of barbs to dish to Martin.
She needs to let Martin keep his distance from Michelle, and Michelle needs to digest fully the implications of her misbehaviour. Inappropriate behaviour has its consequences, and she needn't have acted so surprised at encountering Preston's mother standing guard. Ma Prestonovich was only protecting her underaged child.
Instead, we have the daffodil bonding scene between Stacey and Michelle, where she makes sure that Michelle is the first to know that she's pregnant with Martin's child, instead of Martin, himself; and they're open enough with their congratulations that Rebecca witnesses this and feels even more isolated and betrayed. Of course, she never got around to telling Martin her good news, and now Michelle is their honoured guest at a dinner which includes the dulcet tones of Jean Slater. Martin's bound to find out that Michelle knew the news he should have known first. But then, Stacey, although she loves Martin, is yet another woman who not only coddles and babyfies her partner, she's also another in the growing line of people,who are coddling Michelle.
Another Tedious Sitcom Dinner Party - Oh Wait! Denise Has Another Storyline. Bullshit! Just total and utter bullshit! I don't care how popular Denise is, this character cannot carry this programme and doesn't deserve to front and centre this show.
Oh, joy! She has another storyline -this time, an ongoing silliness about both she and Kush being inadvertantly goaded into signing up for "Miss Walford" and "Mr Walford" in competition with the appallingly self-centred, ignorant and unfunny Kim and the reluctant, recalcitrant and emasculated Vincent.
Gangster, businessman, rap singer, eunuch ... these can all be used to describe Vincent, and Kim uses three of the four. We can easily ascertain the fourth descriptive adjective.In fact, I'm surprised that Kim hasn't had Vincent's balls bronzed and suspended on a chain she wears around her neck. She treats him like a servant -barking out orders to serve the wine, act the host, show the evil eye and other preposterous demands.
Vincent seems intelligent enough and is certainly street suss; you'd think with Kim going on and on about how expensive everything on her table and in her house is, that he'd realise the only reason she stays with him. In the final ludicrous scene, which amounted virtually to a self-obsessed argument between Kim and Denise about who's prettier than whom, with the increasingly puerile Kush and Denise becoming joined at the hip as a team for the Walford "beauty" contest - which five minutes before the effete intellectual Denise, liberally and ignorantly peppering her dialogue with a plethora of "ain't" (such is the English literature student), was labelling as demeaning -Kim has to remind Vincent to hug her.
More and more, I get the impression that Vincent may just be with Kim for Pearl's sake. The gist of the sitcom-within-a-soap was the age-old tale of an uncomfortable dinner party where two unlikely guests discover a connection between the two. In this instance, it was Vincent discovering that Kush liked his only rap recording that Vincent had made, which resulted in a man hug and both men singing along to the beat.
Kim got the desultory line of the night, which would have been funny if it hadn't involved the increasingly trite Denise:-
I'd marry Kush before Vincent does.
But otherwise, it was all unfunny jokes and the all-too-familiar theme of Kim, masking her insecurity by overt and tacky displays of wealth and Denise gurning disapprovingly and condescendingly, dotted with unfunny dialogue - like Kim calling the ham prosciutto, and Denise replying with "Bless you" as a put-down for Kim, pretending that such pretentiousness was no more than a silly sneeze.
So now we've taken Denise to another level of self-absorbed arrogance - she's got to win Miss Walford, with Kush ( 'e's got muscles on muscles) hoping to grace her side as Mr Walford.
Seriously? Apart from Kush, these are middle-aged people. Sisters arguing openly about who's the prettiest and who has the handsomest mate. As for Kush, each episode that he's with Denise, he regresses further and further into adolescence -shit, Stacey even dared to pronounce to Michelle that Martin had the emotional maturity of an adolescent; she needs to be reminded of who kept her kids on track when she was suffering from psychosis.
But Kush becomes, more and more, the ineffectual adolescent boy, bowing to the mother-knows-best demands of Denise. Kim has emasculated Vincent; Denise has rendered Kush positively pre-pubescent.
And of course the punchline of the entire Dinner Party from Hell - a favourite meme of EastEnders throughout the years - was the fact that Denise had found that Kim appeared to have a gold-plated toilet brush.
A fool and his money and all that ... tripe.
And As Ever ... A second sitcom within a sitcom within a soap. Ben and Jay are, unbelievably, so skint that they are reduced to cadging free meals off Kathy in the café and voluntarily playing popmen in the pub in the hopes that they'd be offered free drinks the way Peggy would offer Jim Branning as such;but they aren't Jim and Peggy is dead.
Jay may earn little working for Billy, but Ben must earn a reasonable amount. Their mistake came in not insuring the luxury telly that was stolen. And the upshot of this segmant is another misogynist poke at society by O'Connor: it's a source of shame to Ben and Jay that they got fleeced by a woman.
Moving right along, it's surprising none of the Beales are noticing Lauren's overt,unhidden and total boredom with eveyone, including Steven. The karaoke evening isn't her cup of tea. She has to spend it in the company of Steven when she would rather be making up her face for that Photocopier Man she's arranged to meet on a night out with Whitney,who almost lets the cat out of the bag about what Lauren's been up to.
I must admit, I thought for a moment when Steven went to the bar to get a round of drinks in, that Johnny woulld appear, and we'd see a spark of some sort between the two,but I guess O'Connor doesn't think that way.
Another dire episode.
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