Well, now we know the purpose of all the bins and the rats and the foxes - note the clever play on words. Ne'mind that most London boroughs and, indeed, most local councils employ fortnightly bin collections. There are things called amenity tips, dumps, and since most people either have a car or access to one in Walford, there's no reason for rubbish to lie and fester. Most people with common sense take their refuse to the dump, especially the weeks where there is no collection scheduled.
It's not rocket science.
Ah, but it is the vehicle for the emergence of Sean O'Connor's newest star, Denise. Yes, we've had The Stacey and Ronnie Show, the Branningfest and the Carter Half-Hour; now, courtesy of SOC, we have The Denise Show, starring Denise and with a new storyline to add to her increasing collection each week.
So all of this angst about rubbish bin collections and council cut-backs and the market being in danger was all down to give us Denise's glittering moment today - when an elected official was invited to open a local Easter Fayre - which is what borough council elected officials usually do, if the local MP isn't on hand to do so and if a minor celebrity doesn't live in your midst - and when the woman began her speech, it was time for Denise, self-designated Mouth of Walford, to begin heaping abuse and criticism on someone who was an invited guest.
But then, Denise is so fucking arrogant and uncouth, that's right up her stride these days.
Look, I'm all for holding politicians accountable for their actions. I'm the person who makes a Transatlantic call WEEKLY to give her Republican Congressman hell. I speak to him, he listens, he takes what I have to say. I still pay taxes in my own country, and those taxes pay his wages. He has Town Hall meetings - not scheduled to open schools or dedicate memorials -but actual meetings with constituents where they can have their say- and lately, he's being ripped a new arsehole; but I wouldn't expect anyone to be as ungracious to belittle and harangue him when he's shown up to dedicate a memorial or to open a function.
There's a time and a place for everything, and this wasn't it. Also, who the hell does Denise think she is, criticising the woman for not having grown up in Walford. As I remember, Denise didn't. She came from out of nowhere, looking for Patrick, thinking he was her father. She certainly isn't from Walford. This is the fucking 21st Century. Elected officials don't have to be born and brought up in the district/area they serve. People move around. The previous Mayor of London was born in New York City, as was the MP who recently tried to save the policeman's life in a terror attack. I daresay their constituents don't worry about their representatives antecedents as long as they are represented well. There's no law which says someone has to be born and raised where he serves politically. It helps, but in an area as transient as Walford, the originals - Dot, Martin, Michelle, Ian and Sharon - are outnumbered by people who aren't Walford born and bred at all.
This was just another contrivance to add to Denise's growing list of storylines, since most of today's fare (another bad pun) consisted of the camera following her about, canoodling with Kush, and then the camera following her about again, when she was presented with the dilemma of Kush having told her he loved her.
Which was one of the biggest jokes thus far on this show.
This guy is the absolute KING of all the MommyMen in the Square. Seriously. He loves Denise? He loves her? A year ago, he was holed up in his smelly flat, downing beer after beer, mourning one dead son, giving up on his natural son and weeping copious tears about the woman he married and betrayed. He was feeling so sorry for himself, he targeted another vulnerable girl- this time, the girlfriend of his brother-in-law - and bedded her.
Denise and Kush have a relationship based on sex. When they're not locked into one another, he acts like a hesitant child around her. She acts like the adult. He impulsively tells her he loves her. Just like that. The sex comes first, and then he loves her. Odd, how he was never so forthcoming with Shabnam in that respect. I seem to recall he had difficulty in that sort of commitment, although he actively pursued her enough in the beginning.
But all of a sudden, after five minutes, Kush loves Denise - a woman two years younger than and the former best friend of his mother. It's already been established that Kush is Oedipal - arguably, the most Oedipal male on the Square - more than Phil Mitchel, more than Mick Carter, more than Ian Beale. Denise is his ulitmate fantasy - a mommy with whom he can have sex. Not his mommy, but his sex mommy. Someone who coddles him and treats him like a little boy needing encouragement and who rewards him with sex.
Denise is reluctant to say she loves him. What clinches it for her is him defending her in front of Carmel, after Denise effectively humiliated Carmel. So that makes Kush the biggest prize in Walford for Denise. It also didn't help her visiting Kim and having Kim make Vincent parade around like a slick piece of beefcake - talk about objectifying genders. Sexism cuts both ways. What's next on the agenda - Denise and Kim comparing the sizes of Vincent's and Kush's dicks?
So now we know what all the bins brouhaha has been about and all this palaver with "community" and such - it's been a vehicle upon which the latest star of the show, Denise, may expound. Odd that, since prior to this incarnation,she's been the one Walford resident who singularly never gave a monkey's about community, just about herself. And it was an exclusive speech as well, literally telling the Mayor that she had no idea about that community and what it had been through with bins etc because she wasn't from that community, which is a pretty negative message and something almost akin to the Brexit deplorables.
The bins' problem could have been solved by people visiting the dump. Any other grievances residents have with the Council - well, that's what council meetings are for. They're open to the public, and any local resident is free to attend and air his or her grievances. That's called "democracy", Denise - and maybe that's a word you should add to your vocabulary.
I'm still wanting to know how she's managing to pay the mortgage on what is effectively a near-as-dammit 3/4 of a million poind property in a trendy part of London, with no job and an ueber-expensive nail job?
#FuckOffDenise.
Finally Some Movement. Sharon was right. That was assault. She could have had Sonia's silly self-centred arse.
Rebecca is all over the place. She calls for Sonia and tells her everything; then, when she shows up, shouting the odds, accusing Stacey of neglect and Martin of being a bad parent, Rebecca runs for the hills. Allegedly, she refused to see Sonia all weekend.
Good.
Sonia behaved despicably, making everything all about her and making herself out to be the better parent than Martin. Kudos to Dot for not giving Sonia any tea and sympathy, merely telling her that what happened with Rebecca would have probably happened anyway and had nothing to do with her not being on hand. And kudos to her for reminding Sonia that Martin and Stacey would have given Rebecca all the support that they could- and they did. They were there for her constantly, but the silly girl refused to talk or to tell them anything about what happened. When her elders did find out - Martin about the sexting and Michelle finding her with Preston - she made them swear not to tell Sonia, in Martin's case, or Martin, in Michelle's.
And finally, kudos to Rebecca for pointedly telling Sonia that she actually liked living with Martin and Stacey, that they were a family. Kudos to Stacey for making Sonia visit Rebecca. I don't get where Sonia says she and Rebecca could always talk things through. On the general scheme of things, Sonia's been an abysmal mother to Rebecca. She abandoned her and Martin to live with Naomi, she emotionally blackmailed Rebecca into thinking that if she left to pursue a scholarship at a music school, she'd be responsible for Sonia's marriage ending, she's passive-aggressively bullied Rebecca, herself. Sonia's always wanted what she didn't have. When she was with Martin, she wanted to be with Naomi. When she was with Naomi, she wanted Martin back. She came to Walford trash-talking Martin and left him for Tina, but when Martin was with Stacey, she was trying to snog him.
She even starts out on the wrong foot with Rebecca, assuring her that none of the bullying was Rebecca's fault. You what? At this point in time, I'm not only confused as to why Rebecca rang Sonia, I imagine Rebecca's confused as well. But the only thing Sonia's managed to ascertain from Rebecca is that Louise was part of the group of bullies who tormented Rebecca.
And once again, Sonia overreacts.
Had Sharon not opened her mouth, Sonia most definitely would have physically attacked Louise. Instead, when Sharon literally told her to bugger off and called into account Sonia's record as a mother, she got pushed in the duck pond. I didn't like the way Derek and Michelle stifled a laugh, Michelle was even laughing about it when they returned to the Mitchell house.
Big credit to Sharon - Letitia Dean, along with the impeccable Linda Henry - carried that episode. Sharon didn't put a foot wrong with Louise. Louise thought Sharon would be fighting her corner, but she quickly got to the bottom of Louise's behaviour, admonishing her about trying to cast blame onto Michelle and Preston and then tossing Louise's pithy excuse about "belonging to the right social set" at school right out the window of irrelevance. Later, with a hefty dose of retconning, Sharon further sounded Louise out on the meaning of friendship, reminding her that it would have been so easy for Sharon to have joined in with others criticising Michelle for falling pregnant when she was a teen, except that Sharon was Michelle's friend, and friends don't turn on other friends.
(Except, also, that Sharon wasn't exactly at school with Michelle when Michelle fell pregnant. Contrary to the bit of history changed by Saint John Yorke back in his day, Sharon never attended Walford High. She attended a private girls' school locally). She also asks Louise if she thinks Sniggle or Snaggle will still be friends with her in five or ten years. And she reiterates that not only is Sharon disgusted with Louise, but Phil would be as well - and actually, he would.
Louise knows that she's been being used by these two girls. She's frightened of them. That's obvious. She knows better than the fact that what those two girls did and what she witnessed wasn't just a joke. She also knows that she might be next in line for their torments, because IIRC, it started out with them being part and party to Keegan's catfishing of her, and weren't they jealous of Louise at first in Drama Club because Travis was attracted to her?
I thnk Sharon touched obliquely on something too, when she referenced to Louise that Michelle had helped Sharon through "a lot" (a lot of what, I don't know, other than offering her a refuge in Florida from time to time),but I do think that she was acknowledging that the last few months when Phil was ill, possibly dying, couldn't have been easy for Louise to witness either.
The subsequent scene between Martin and Rebecca was good, when she told him that Louise was part of the bullying, but Sonia, again, gets things wrong - first, by comparing the bullying she got from her bleeding trumpet to this. As Martin said, this wasn't even comparable - faced with the wrong foot, Sonia tries to shift the blame for all of this back to Martin and threatens to go to the school - but Martin is right. The school can do nothing unless it catches the girls directly bullying Rebecca or unless someone corroborates their claims.
Sonia oversteps again.
Shirley. Linda Henry is,without a doubt, the best damned actress on the show. In a scene which is the female equivalent of the ex-offender vicar and Aaron Dingle in Emmerdale several weeks back, Shirley is confronted by a female chaplain who also hated her mother, who encourages Shirley to talk about Sylvie, deciding that some women, like Sylvie, should never have been mothers.
Shirley acknowledges that, because Sylvie was so bad with her, she found it difficult to be a good mother to her own children - harkening back to the way Sylvie was mistreated by her own mother. The vicar encourages Shirley not to grieve for Sylvie, but to grieve for the young child Shirley once was, who was brutalised by Sylvie.
Linda Henry doesn't need dialogue. Her facial expressions are so expressive, she got everything right in this. She usually does. She made an otherwise dire episode worth watching.
It's not rocket science.
Ah, but it is the vehicle for the emergence of Sean O'Connor's newest star, Denise. Yes, we've had The Stacey and Ronnie Show, the Branningfest and the Carter Half-Hour; now, courtesy of SOC, we have The Denise Show, starring Denise and with a new storyline to add to her increasing collection each week.
So all of this angst about rubbish bin collections and council cut-backs and the market being in danger was all down to give us Denise's glittering moment today - when an elected official was invited to open a local Easter Fayre - which is what borough council elected officials usually do, if the local MP isn't on hand to do so and if a minor celebrity doesn't live in your midst - and when the woman began her speech, it was time for Denise, self-designated Mouth of Walford, to begin heaping abuse and criticism on someone who was an invited guest.
But then, Denise is so fucking arrogant and uncouth, that's right up her stride these days.
Look, I'm all for holding politicians accountable for their actions. I'm the person who makes a Transatlantic call WEEKLY to give her Republican Congressman hell. I speak to him, he listens, he takes what I have to say. I still pay taxes in my own country, and those taxes pay his wages. He has Town Hall meetings - not scheduled to open schools or dedicate memorials -but actual meetings with constituents where they can have their say- and lately, he's being ripped a new arsehole; but I wouldn't expect anyone to be as ungracious to belittle and harangue him when he's shown up to dedicate a memorial or to open a function.
There's a time and a place for everything, and this wasn't it. Also, who the hell does Denise think she is, criticising the woman for not having grown up in Walford. As I remember, Denise didn't. She came from out of nowhere, looking for Patrick, thinking he was her father. She certainly isn't from Walford. This is the fucking 21st Century. Elected officials don't have to be born and brought up in the district/area they serve. People move around. The previous Mayor of London was born in New York City, as was the MP who recently tried to save the policeman's life in a terror attack. I daresay their constituents don't worry about their representatives antecedents as long as they are represented well. There's no law which says someone has to be born and raised where he serves politically. It helps, but in an area as transient as Walford, the originals - Dot, Martin, Michelle, Ian and Sharon - are outnumbered by people who aren't Walford born and bred at all.
This was just another contrivance to add to Denise's growing list of storylines, since most of today's fare (another bad pun) consisted of the camera following her about, canoodling with Kush, and then the camera following her about again, when she was presented with the dilemma of Kush having told her he loved her.
Which was one of the biggest jokes thus far on this show.
This guy is the absolute KING of all the MommyMen in the Square. Seriously. He loves Denise? He loves her? A year ago, he was holed up in his smelly flat, downing beer after beer, mourning one dead son, giving up on his natural son and weeping copious tears about the woman he married and betrayed. He was feeling so sorry for himself, he targeted another vulnerable girl- this time, the girlfriend of his brother-in-law - and bedded her.
Denise and Kush have a relationship based on sex. When they're not locked into one another, he acts like a hesitant child around her. She acts like the adult. He impulsively tells her he loves her. Just like that. The sex comes first, and then he loves her. Odd, how he was never so forthcoming with Shabnam in that respect. I seem to recall he had difficulty in that sort of commitment, although he actively pursued her enough in the beginning.
But all of a sudden, after five minutes, Kush loves Denise - a woman two years younger than and the former best friend of his mother. It's already been established that Kush is Oedipal - arguably, the most Oedipal male on the Square - more than Phil Mitchel, more than Mick Carter, more than Ian Beale. Denise is his ulitmate fantasy - a mommy with whom he can have sex. Not his mommy, but his sex mommy. Someone who coddles him and treats him like a little boy needing encouragement and who rewards him with sex.
Denise is reluctant to say she loves him. What clinches it for her is him defending her in front of Carmel, after Denise effectively humiliated Carmel. So that makes Kush the biggest prize in Walford for Denise. It also didn't help her visiting Kim and having Kim make Vincent parade around like a slick piece of beefcake - talk about objectifying genders. Sexism cuts both ways. What's next on the agenda - Denise and Kim comparing the sizes of Vincent's and Kush's dicks?
So now we know what all the bins brouhaha has been about and all this palaver with "community" and such - it's been a vehicle upon which the latest star of the show, Denise, may expound. Odd that, since prior to this incarnation,she's been the one Walford resident who singularly never gave a monkey's about community, just about herself. And it was an exclusive speech as well, literally telling the Mayor that she had no idea about that community and what it had been through with bins etc because she wasn't from that community, which is a pretty negative message and something almost akin to the Brexit deplorables.
The bins' problem could have been solved by people visiting the dump. Any other grievances residents have with the Council - well, that's what council meetings are for. They're open to the public, and any local resident is free to attend and air his or her grievances. That's called "democracy", Denise - and maybe that's a word you should add to your vocabulary.
I'm still wanting to know how she's managing to pay the mortgage on what is effectively a near-as-dammit 3/4 of a million poind property in a trendy part of London, with no job and an ueber-expensive nail job?
#FuckOffDenise.
Finally Some Movement. Sharon was right. That was assault. She could have had Sonia's silly self-centred arse.
Rebecca is all over the place. She calls for Sonia and tells her everything; then, when she shows up, shouting the odds, accusing Stacey of neglect and Martin of being a bad parent, Rebecca runs for the hills. Allegedly, she refused to see Sonia all weekend.
Good.
Sonia behaved despicably, making everything all about her and making herself out to be the better parent than Martin. Kudos to Dot for not giving Sonia any tea and sympathy, merely telling her that what happened with Rebecca would have probably happened anyway and had nothing to do with her not being on hand. And kudos to her for reminding Sonia that Martin and Stacey would have given Rebecca all the support that they could- and they did. They were there for her constantly, but the silly girl refused to talk or to tell them anything about what happened. When her elders did find out - Martin about the sexting and Michelle finding her with Preston - she made them swear not to tell Sonia, in Martin's case, or Martin, in Michelle's.
And finally, kudos to Rebecca for pointedly telling Sonia that she actually liked living with Martin and Stacey, that they were a family. Kudos to Stacey for making Sonia visit Rebecca. I don't get where Sonia says she and Rebecca could always talk things through. On the general scheme of things, Sonia's been an abysmal mother to Rebecca. She abandoned her and Martin to live with Naomi, she emotionally blackmailed Rebecca into thinking that if she left to pursue a scholarship at a music school, she'd be responsible for Sonia's marriage ending, she's passive-aggressively bullied Rebecca, herself. Sonia's always wanted what she didn't have. When she was with Martin, she wanted to be with Naomi. When she was with Naomi, she wanted Martin back. She came to Walford trash-talking Martin and left him for Tina, but when Martin was with Stacey, she was trying to snog him.
She even starts out on the wrong foot with Rebecca, assuring her that none of the bullying was Rebecca's fault. You what? At this point in time, I'm not only confused as to why Rebecca rang Sonia, I imagine Rebecca's confused as well. But the only thing Sonia's managed to ascertain from Rebecca is that Louise was part of the group of bullies who tormented Rebecca.
And once again, Sonia overreacts.
Had Sharon not opened her mouth, Sonia most definitely would have physically attacked Louise. Instead, when Sharon literally told her to bugger off and called into account Sonia's record as a mother, she got pushed in the duck pond. I didn't like the way Derek and Michelle stifled a laugh, Michelle was even laughing about it when they returned to the Mitchell house.
Big credit to Sharon - Letitia Dean, along with the impeccable Linda Henry - carried that episode. Sharon didn't put a foot wrong with Louise. Louise thought Sharon would be fighting her corner, but she quickly got to the bottom of Louise's behaviour, admonishing her about trying to cast blame onto Michelle and Preston and then tossing Louise's pithy excuse about "belonging to the right social set" at school right out the window of irrelevance. Later, with a hefty dose of retconning, Sharon further sounded Louise out on the meaning of friendship, reminding her that it would have been so easy for Sharon to have joined in with others criticising Michelle for falling pregnant when she was a teen, except that Sharon was Michelle's friend, and friends don't turn on other friends.
(Except, also, that Sharon wasn't exactly at school with Michelle when Michelle fell pregnant. Contrary to the bit of history changed by Saint John Yorke back in his day, Sharon never attended Walford High. She attended a private girls' school locally). She also asks Louise if she thinks Sniggle or Snaggle will still be friends with her in five or ten years. And she reiterates that not only is Sharon disgusted with Louise, but Phil would be as well - and actually, he would.
Louise knows that she's been being used by these two girls. She's frightened of them. That's obvious. She knows better than the fact that what those two girls did and what she witnessed wasn't just a joke. She also knows that she might be next in line for their torments, because IIRC, it started out with them being part and party to Keegan's catfishing of her, and weren't they jealous of Louise at first in Drama Club because Travis was attracted to her?
I thnk Sharon touched obliquely on something too, when she referenced to Louise that Michelle had helped Sharon through "a lot" (a lot of what, I don't know, other than offering her a refuge in Florida from time to time),but I do think that she was acknowledging that the last few months when Phil was ill, possibly dying, couldn't have been easy for Louise to witness either.
The subsequent scene between Martin and Rebecca was good, when she told him that Louise was part of the bullying, but Sonia, again, gets things wrong - first, by comparing the bullying she got from her bleeding trumpet to this. As Martin said, this wasn't even comparable - faced with the wrong foot, Sonia tries to shift the blame for all of this back to Martin and threatens to go to the school - but Martin is right. The school can do nothing unless it catches the girls directly bullying Rebecca or unless someone corroborates their claims.
Sonia oversteps again.
Shirley. Linda Henry is,without a doubt, the best damned actress on the show. In a scene which is the female equivalent of the ex-offender vicar and Aaron Dingle in Emmerdale several weeks back, Shirley is confronted by a female chaplain who also hated her mother, who encourages Shirley to talk about Sylvie, deciding that some women, like Sylvie, should never have been mothers.
Shirley acknowledges that, because Sylvie was so bad with her, she found it difficult to be a good mother to her own children - harkening back to the way Sylvie was mistreated by her own mother. The vicar encourages Shirley not to grieve for Sylvie, but to grieve for the young child Shirley once was, who was brutalised by Sylvie.
Linda Henry doesn't need dialogue. Her facial expressions are so expressive, she got everything right in this. She usually does. She made an otherwise dire episode worth watching.
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