Well, EastEnders can't brag about winning a BAFTA this year, because - as appears to be the norm nowadays - they lost out to Emmerdale. I gather the episode they put forward was the one where Lee attempted suicide by wanting to throw himself off a rooftop garage. Good episode, but only one in a storyline that, frankly, was insulting to the subject of mental health and derogatory to the sufferers of mental illness in this country. As the BBC strove to publicise mental health issues as part of a nationwide awareness campaign, suffice it to say that Lee's storyline - as opposed to the one the previous year, featuring Stacey - was a Masterclass in how not to treat or regard people with mental illness.
Emmerdale's episode was the innovative one where Ashley wandered off for a day and where various neighbours and family members tried to help him - only they weren't neighbours and family members.The show, for one episode, employed a different set of actors to portray Aaron, Chastity, Doug and Laurel, as a depiction of how someone suffering from dementia would perceive people around him, people whom he had known, loved and respected, who somehow become distorted and unfamiliar when seen through dementia.
It was a well-deserved win.
But on viewing tonight's chore of an episode, I'll venture to predict that the show will walk away from the BSA's next month, gongless as well. Two of the three candidates the show put forth for Best Actor were on show tonight -Scott Maslen and Davood Ghadami. The third, Danny Dyer - the one who actually was in the limelight most of the year in various storylines - is still on break.
None of the three went through to the final. Maslen featured heavily in the New Year's Day story of the Blisters' drowning, and since then, has done a fair impression of an angry beetle ...
Ghadami has been beefcake window dressing in the background since Shabnam left the show early in 2016, and only bagged a storyline when the EP decided to make him the walking sex toy of O'Connor's personal favourite leading lady.
The actresses in question fared little better. Nominated were perennial favourite, nonagenarian June Brown, perennial gong-getter Lacey Turner, and the producer's personal pick, Diane Parish. These were cynical picks.
It's obvious that EastEnders were banking on the sentimental vote for Brown, who turned 90 recently, but Dot's only had the occasional storyline and acts primarily as a supporting act within the Branning dynamic. Turner was put forth because - well, because people always vote for Lacey Turner and she always wins (or so TPTB thinks), but - again, Stacey has existed as a glorified background character this year. She's Martin's wife or Rebecca's stepmum, little more. Watchable, but nothing worth banging (or winning) a gong about. Parish was chosen because she's the only definable actress in the show who's had a storyline ... after a storyline ... after a storyline.
Turner made the final cut, but they missed an opportunity in not nominating Luisa Bradshaw-White, who's come on leaps and bounds as Tina in her depiction of someone caring for an elderly and infirm relative.
Turner's a good actress, but if she beats Emmerdale's Charlotte Bellamy, it will be an insulting joke.
Everything you saw about the show tonight is why it shouldn't win anything at the BSA's. Tonight, I actually found myself laughing out loud at various parts of the programme. This is supposed to be continuing drama; it's turning into unintentional comedy.
Cartoonish, is the word.
Max Becomes Snidely Whiplash. Years ago, when I were a wee lass, we had a cartoon - EastEnders, cartoon ... geddit? - called Dudley Do-Right, a dorky Canadian Mountie. There was a villain in that cartoon named Snidely Whiplash.
Tonight, from the very first scene in which Max appeared, when he left the shop after playing nice with Honey and talking down Charlie, the moment he stepped onto the street in front of the shop and took a look around the Square, I swear to the God in which I do not believe that his face took on the look of a cartoon villain. Seriously, all he needed was a waxed mustache to twirl and a black cape. He became Snidely Whiplash ...
Seriously, Max had that Snidely Whiplash look on his face and kept it there thoughout the entire episode.
We know Max is behind all the shenanigans that are going to rear up and bite widdle Mick's chubby arse when he returns; but in the meantime, Max is concerned with getting his own back on Jack. My theory about this is that all their lives Max has witnessed Jack simply reach out and take whatever he wants without compunction; and a lot of what he's taken rightfully belonged to Max. Now Jack's appropriated custody of Ronnie's son - and there's a lot behind his doing so.
Jack is still obsessed with Ronnie, and the only living manifestation she has is her son, who happens to be Charlie's son. Jack not only has unresolved grief for Ronnie, he has unresolved grief for James as well, and Matthew, for him, is a second stab at James.He loves his other two children, but not as much as he loves Matthew. If you recall, when Jack thought James was alive, he had no time in the world at all either for Amy or for Ricky. Somehow, Ronnie always got in the way of whatever he felt for either of these kids. She lied to Sam and paid her off to take Ricky to Portugal when he was an infant. And Jack was too busy mulling over Ronnie wanting a divorce the night when he was supposed to babysit a much younger Amy, when she fell in the bath and almost drowned.
Jack's premise is that Matthew must be kept with the other two children, or - I suppose - he'll lose interest in them and just skulk off.
Charlie isn't an intentionally neglectful father. He didn't want to abandon his child - in fact, he tried to take him with him. He ended up being threatened within an inch of his life by psychopath Ronnie and a man who's since had his balls stamped on by his wife's five-inch stiletto heels.
What I hate about this storyline is that we're supposed to view Charlie as the bad guy and root for Jack.
Why?
One thing this storyline has served to do is remind us of just how much of a thug Jack really is. Jack is not a nice man. He was a bent copper who turned grass before being drummed out of the force, and his young daughter paid for that by being crippled by his former drug-dealing associates. Of course, Jack's worried now about the fact that he slugged Charlie, but with sleazy Jimmy vaping all over the place and telling him basically that since Charlie provoked and shoved Jack, it was six of one,half a dozen of another, Max has to take a step back and come up with a contingency plan.
Of course,we all knew whom Max called when he made that We-have-to-meet-up telephone call. He's installed Charlie in a grotty bedsit nearby,ensuring that he beat a quick retreat after Jack had slugged him. Now he has to inform him that they had to put Plan B into action - and now we know the reason Max was wearing black leather gloves to Charlie's temporary accommodation. We knew that, as soon as we saw the police turn up on Jack's door with a warrant for his arrest. Max had to rough Charlie up sufficiently to make an assault seem likely.
Now we've seen Jack, being the aggressive thug again and fighting with the police, whilst his children watch from the window - Jack's actual children. The police will have noticed that,and Social Services will be apprised of that fact, once they're contacted regarding Matthew.
The other thing that strikes me as odd about the entire Jack-Matthew-Charlie situation, is that DTC spent his entire time as EP of the show, preaching that blood kin was far more important than any other adoptive or assumptive familial relationship. O'Connor has spent the majority of his tenure, preaching the obvious - not only in depicting Charlie as the birth father who will ultimately be totally undeserving of Matthew, but in the absurd fact that Denise found out her mother wasn't her mother and that we (hopefully) actually did have a real adoption storyline.
But even this is skewed. As offensive as it was, with DTC having Sharon swan about and refer to her parents as "Den and Ange" whilst referring to Carol Hanley and Gavin Sullivan as her "real" mum and dad, it's just as offensive when someone who was a loving father who was forced out of his child's life should be depicted as someone in the wrong and undeserving of his child.
Yet tonight was the night when the entire premise of Max's revenge, something every viewer had awaited with anticipation, now lunged over the cliff with Max becoming Snidely Whiplash and Jack becoming Dudley Do-Right ...
The Beales Become a Public Service Announcement. Ian, the show's nominated sad, fat clown, can no longer be branded as such. Oh, I know he's supposed to be, and the show is asking us actually to use our imaginations and think of him as such, but Adam Woodyatt has actually lost an immense amount of weight.
So much so that Jane really shouldn't be sitting in judgement of him as we watch him peer longingly into the Beales' totally inadequate fridge -really, Ian is a chef; what chef would have such a dinky little dorm fridge like that in his kitchen? Ian would have one of those big American extravaganzas, with an ice maker and an water dispenser- the kind I have in my kitchen, only I'm not a chef - only to have him snatch a packet of processed meat. (Again, processed meat cuts in a chef's household?)
No mention is made of Ian's actual weight loss; instead, we are made to watch the idiotice attempts at comedy when Ian cheats with his pedometer and when he's caught eating by Jane, who now wants him to attend slimming classes.
Seriously, does Sean O'Connor think the viewing public really are that stupid? Woodyatt's wearing Ian's "fat" clothes, and they're hanging on him. His gut is now almost non-existent, and his arms are thin.
The storyline initially kicked in by making a joke out of his potential for diabetes,and now it can't even depict reality by having Jane or someone compliment him on his progress.
No,because that's not how Ian has to be. Instead, we see him sulk and stomp off to the Vic where he orders up what appears to be a glass of wine and some pork scratchings and talks to Woody, a veritable stranger, about his predicament. Would Woody attend a fat club? They discuss the pros and cons of nagging women, and Woody the new Mick-of-all-advices, reminds Ian that Jane has been through a lot, and if he had a wife who'd suffered as much as Jane, he'd attend a Fat Club at her bidding as such, because she'd suffered so.
(You can't help but emit a wry smile of irony anytime anyone talks about how much "poor" Jane has suffered, especially when one thinks of her dumping Lucy's body in the boot of her car and then dragging Lucy across the Common to leave her to the elements. Jane has suffered? Jane got karma).
And we even get the sentimental scene of Ian returning home, unexpectedly, to see "poor" Jane doing her walking exercises and struggling every step of the way, only to be reminded that almost a year ago, she met her karma.
Strange, how they can't even mention Bobby's name.
The only other thing this segment spewed up was Whitney very purposefully and physically flirting with Woody and falling for him over the remark he made about how he'd treat a partner who'd suffered. The camera panned totally on Whitney as Woody said those words.
Woody is a nice guy. I like him, but she's still stupid enough to fall for someone on the strength of one remark. Even Hitler liked dogs.
The Working Girls.
Michelle. How fucking stupid is Sharon? Michelle has a job interview and doesn't tell her what the nature of the job is. Sharon assumes it's a teaching job.
Can someone have this woman engage a brain cell, please? Anyone with any common sense, and certainly someone who's a mother would know that Michelle can never be allowed inside a classroom with responsibility for children and young people again? Obviously, Sharon is all right with the fact that Michelle was in a position of trust and abused that trust by having sex with one of her students - moreover, a student who was below the legal age of consent in the state where she worked. But, of course, Sharon is OK with that. She even joked about it and called Michelle a "cradle-snatcher."
What the fuck happened to Sharon? This Sharon is dumb beyond belief to think that Michelle would get another job in education. Even Martin, who's presented as a Luddite, knew better and had to set Michelle straight about her loss of profession.
I thought the scene with the unnamed girl as they awaited their interviews started out as an ageist assumption by a much younger woman and a pretty crass depiction of a Millennial, in that the girl thought that life in London these days was much harder than it was in Michelle's time. She also thought that, because of Michelle's age, this was a pin-money job and that she and her "husband" had a nice home.
While at one and the same time, the girl's plight - newly married and forced to live with her inlaws because she and her husband could neither afford rents in London or even to buy a home (yet Ben, Donna, Jay and Abi happiy rent a house which would rent on the market at about 2k per month) - it also showed her naivete and age assumption that she thought she would get the job in question.
Granted, Michelle lied through her teeth to get that job. Her only retail experience has come thirty years before when she served in the café from time to time. Her family's "retail" experience has been as market gardeners, and she was never seen on the stall at any time.
She came across as eager, positive and not at all desperate and even had nous enough to refer to her age as being a positive asset. It's a part-time position, but Michelle would probably be a quick learner in that situation and might move onto something more permanent there. (At least, they're dealing with employment off the Square now).
Denise. On the other hand, we have the star of the show. I'm sorry. I don't need anymore hearts-and-flowers scenes of Denise stopping point blank in the middle of the market to gaze longinly at Martin chomping a sandwich and Kush counting a roll of money, only to see Carmel standing at the end of the market like the showdown scene from High Noon, then to have her look suitably famished and wobbly (just to remind us that she has no money and hasn't eaten).
I actually thought the Job Centre scene was good, even if it were presented to us in what has now become O'Connor's inimitable, preachy, Old Maidish lecture style.
Yes, we know there have been benefits' cuts, and yes, we see what the beleaguered civil servants have to contend with and how the benefits' law is structured is grossly unfair in how it stops as soon as someone gets employment of a certain level, as evidenced in the lengthy background scene which Denise observed with the woman and her small children being told that she no longer qualified for benefits whilst she complained that child care was too expensive for her to maintain.
During the waiting game scene, we saw Denise schooled in what benefits were all about and how it was no shame to claim them. This was taught her by the unnamed Polish woman waiting in the queue, who couldn't understand Denise's reticence. Denise harps on about how she'd never claimed benefits, in all her working life, how she'd worked hard for her and her two kids. (Really, Denise? You never claimed child allowance? Never? Ever?) We got reminded of Denise's former employment at the local Post Office. (I used to run a Post Office; there were queues, but never this long).
Once again, Denise never "ran" the Post Office. She worked there. Zainab was her boss. And she left when she put in for a promotion and Zainab gave the job to Shabnam, who actually had a degree. That was another job which Denise left voluntarily, but then, she was married to Kevin.
The Polish woman reminds her that benefits are her right, if she's paid taxes all her working life. She points out a given - that there are some cheats and people who would rather draw benefits than work, but they were actually few. She also reminded Denise that everyone else waiting in the queue had been put our of work as well. However, there was one difference between the Polish woman's plight and Denise's - the Polish woman had been made redundant. She'd been let go when her company lost some major clients and had to downsize. Denise quit her job in a godalmighty snit when she was offended by Yolande, her professional superior, requiring her to attend an Anger Management course.
She now finds herself destitute, not because she's spent the past few months actively looking for work - she hasn't. She went about her life doing much the same things she did when she was working - drinking in the pub, eating out, shopping at The Minute Mart and fucking Kush. For a prideful, ungrateful woman, she's surrounded by people who care about her and would support her - her sister and brother-in-law, her toyboy. One thing, however, was left ambiguous - her status with relation to her house. She stated that she "lived with family."
The former B and B's status has been all over the place throughout the year. Audrey Trueman owned it, and when she died, it went to her sons, Paul and Ant Knee. Patrick came to live with them. Then, suddenly, after Yolande left, I thought Kim had bought the place and extended it with the the purchase of the house next door where the "Friends" element now live. But it seemed she only owned that house. A couple of years ago, we learned that Patrick and Denise actually had a mortgage on the old B and B portion of the property - as if a State Pension and a minimum wage zero hours' contract would qualify for a mortgage on a four-bedroomed terraced property in trendy East London. We know that because when she was formerly unemployed, she depended on the rent paid her by Shirley, Buster and Dean to pay the mortgage and the bills. But tonight her residential status is ambiguous.
Then came the clincher scene with the Job Centre civil servant. There's a lot of confusion here - Denise maintaining that the voice on the end of her telephone call told her to come into the Job Centre and apply for benefits. The telephone person obviously thought she had completed the online application for Universal Credit. The civil servant was only doing his job, all the while Denise was saying everything that came into her mind to make him think - I don't know what - that she was noble and responsible (she'd never claimed for benefits before), that she was desperate (she had no money and no savings), that she was even getting that damned GCSE in English Lit "to make things better" (how?). Once again, the guy was only doing his job; people in these positions have been known to be attacked, and Denise was getting pretty insistent. Telling her to move aside was a prelude to calling the appropriate people to escort her from the premises.
Even at home, even with no nourishment other than water, she even now hesitates before applying on line.
Listen, I am fully in sympathy with people who, through no fault of their own, find themselves in dire need of government benefits in a world where such protection has been made hard to come by - but to have this character as representative of this dynamic is not only a joke, it's offensive. She needn't suffer with tap water when she's got a sister who'd help her in an instant. Kim is brash, yes; but she's also a woman of great compassion when it comes to her immediate family. No one would be any the wiser, but no, the great Denise has to be the poster girl for every issue Sean O'Connor would have emphasized, namely the community ...
The Walking Clipboard. We got the ubiquitous "community" scene, of course. We've gone from bins to the Community Centre, with Kim handing out leaflets about a meeting and Carmel refusing to cooperate with the market traders because of her new job in the Planning Department, saying to liaise with them would prove to be a conflict of interest.
Kim got the line of the night as Carmel walked away.
You and your clipboard.
On a more sinister note, what's this about Stacey deciding that Kush should have more association with Arthur? I daresay Martin hasn't been consulted, given the look Kush sidled at Martin today, and it was Carmel who gave him the information. Seriously, is she doing this because she's now pregnant with Martin's child? If she is, she's stupid, because with Kush comes Carmel, and we know what she's all about.
With all the forced community crap, it's a wonder Sean O'Connor isn't turning us all into sociopaths.
Where's Janine?
Emmerdale's episode was the innovative one where Ashley wandered off for a day and where various neighbours and family members tried to help him - only they weren't neighbours and family members.The show, for one episode, employed a different set of actors to portray Aaron, Chastity, Doug and Laurel, as a depiction of how someone suffering from dementia would perceive people around him, people whom he had known, loved and respected, who somehow become distorted and unfamiliar when seen through dementia.
It was a well-deserved win.
But on viewing tonight's chore of an episode, I'll venture to predict that the show will walk away from the BSA's next month, gongless as well. Two of the three candidates the show put forth for Best Actor were on show tonight -Scott Maslen and Davood Ghadami. The third, Danny Dyer - the one who actually was in the limelight most of the year in various storylines - is still on break.
None of the three went through to the final. Maslen featured heavily in the New Year's Day story of the Blisters' drowning, and since then, has done a fair impression of an angry beetle ...
The actresses in question fared little better. Nominated were perennial favourite, nonagenarian June Brown, perennial gong-getter Lacey Turner, and the producer's personal pick, Diane Parish. These were cynical picks.
It's obvious that EastEnders were banking on the sentimental vote for Brown, who turned 90 recently, but Dot's only had the occasional storyline and acts primarily as a supporting act within the Branning dynamic. Turner was put forth because - well, because people always vote for Lacey Turner and she always wins (or so TPTB thinks), but - again, Stacey has existed as a glorified background character this year. She's Martin's wife or Rebecca's stepmum, little more. Watchable, but nothing worth banging (or winning) a gong about. Parish was chosen because she's the only definable actress in the show who's had a storyline ... after a storyline ... after a storyline.
Turner made the final cut, but they missed an opportunity in not nominating Luisa Bradshaw-White, who's come on leaps and bounds as Tina in her depiction of someone caring for an elderly and infirm relative.
Turner's a good actress, but if she beats Emmerdale's Charlotte Bellamy, it will be an insulting joke.
Everything you saw about the show tonight is why it shouldn't win anything at the BSA's. Tonight, I actually found myself laughing out loud at various parts of the programme. This is supposed to be continuing drama; it's turning into unintentional comedy.
Cartoonish, is the word.
Max Becomes Snidely Whiplash. Years ago, when I were a wee lass, we had a cartoon - EastEnders, cartoon ... geddit? - called Dudley Do-Right, a dorky Canadian Mountie. There was a villain in that cartoon named Snidely Whiplash.
Tonight, from the very first scene in which Max appeared, when he left the shop after playing nice with Honey and talking down Charlie, the moment he stepped onto the street in front of the shop and took a look around the Square, I swear to the God in which I do not believe that his face took on the look of a cartoon villain. Seriously, all he needed was a waxed mustache to twirl and a black cape. He became Snidely Whiplash ...
Seriously, Max had that Snidely Whiplash look on his face and kept it there thoughout the entire episode.
We know Max is behind all the shenanigans that are going to rear up and bite widdle Mick's chubby arse when he returns; but in the meantime, Max is concerned with getting his own back on Jack. My theory about this is that all their lives Max has witnessed Jack simply reach out and take whatever he wants without compunction; and a lot of what he's taken rightfully belonged to Max. Now Jack's appropriated custody of Ronnie's son - and there's a lot behind his doing so.
Jack is still obsessed with Ronnie, and the only living manifestation she has is her son, who happens to be Charlie's son. Jack not only has unresolved grief for Ronnie, he has unresolved grief for James as well, and Matthew, for him, is a second stab at James.He loves his other two children, but not as much as he loves Matthew. If you recall, when Jack thought James was alive, he had no time in the world at all either for Amy or for Ricky. Somehow, Ronnie always got in the way of whatever he felt for either of these kids. She lied to Sam and paid her off to take Ricky to Portugal when he was an infant. And Jack was too busy mulling over Ronnie wanting a divorce the night when he was supposed to babysit a much younger Amy, when she fell in the bath and almost drowned.
Jack's premise is that Matthew must be kept with the other two children, or - I suppose - he'll lose interest in them and just skulk off.
Charlie isn't an intentionally neglectful father. He didn't want to abandon his child - in fact, he tried to take him with him. He ended up being threatened within an inch of his life by psychopath Ronnie and a man who's since had his balls stamped on by his wife's five-inch stiletto heels.
What I hate about this storyline is that we're supposed to view Charlie as the bad guy and root for Jack.
Why?
One thing this storyline has served to do is remind us of just how much of a thug Jack really is. Jack is not a nice man. He was a bent copper who turned grass before being drummed out of the force, and his young daughter paid for that by being crippled by his former drug-dealing associates. Of course, Jack's worried now about the fact that he slugged Charlie, but with sleazy Jimmy vaping all over the place and telling him basically that since Charlie provoked and shoved Jack, it was six of one,half a dozen of another, Max has to take a step back and come up with a contingency plan.
Of course,we all knew whom Max called when he made that We-have-to-meet-up telephone call. He's installed Charlie in a grotty bedsit nearby,ensuring that he beat a quick retreat after Jack had slugged him. Now he has to inform him that they had to put Plan B into action - and now we know the reason Max was wearing black leather gloves to Charlie's temporary accommodation. We knew that, as soon as we saw the police turn up on Jack's door with a warrant for his arrest. Max had to rough Charlie up sufficiently to make an assault seem likely.
Now we've seen Jack, being the aggressive thug again and fighting with the police, whilst his children watch from the window - Jack's actual children. The police will have noticed that,and Social Services will be apprised of that fact, once they're contacted regarding Matthew.
The other thing that strikes me as odd about the entire Jack-Matthew-Charlie situation, is that DTC spent his entire time as EP of the show, preaching that blood kin was far more important than any other adoptive or assumptive familial relationship. O'Connor has spent the majority of his tenure, preaching the obvious - not only in depicting Charlie as the birth father who will ultimately be totally undeserving of Matthew, but in the absurd fact that Denise found out her mother wasn't her mother and that we (hopefully) actually did have a real adoption storyline.
But even this is skewed. As offensive as it was, with DTC having Sharon swan about and refer to her parents as "Den and Ange" whilst referring to Carol Hanley and Gavin Sullivan as her "real" mum and dad, it's just as offensive when someone who was a loving father who was forced out of his child's life should be depicted as someone in the wrong and undeserving of his child.
Yet tonight was the night when the entire premise of Max's revenge, something every viewer had awaited with anticipation, now lunged over the cliff with Max becoming Snidely Whiplash and Jack becoming Dudley Do-Right ...
The Beales Become a Public Service Announcement. Ian, the show's nominated sad, fat clown, can no longer be branded as such. Oh, I know he's supposed to be, and the show is asking us actually to use our imaginations and think of him as such, but Adam Woodyatt has actually lost an immense amount of weight.
So much so that Jane really shouldn't be sitting in judgement of him as we watch him peer longingly into the Beales' totally inadequate fridge -really, Ian is a chef; what chef would have such a dinky little dorm fridge like that in his kitchen? Ian would have one of those big American extravaganzas, with an ice maker and an water dispenser- the kind I have in my kitchen, only I'm not a chef - only to have him snatch a packet of processed meat. (Again, processed meat cuts in a chef's household?)
No mention is made of Ian's actual weight loss; instead, we are made to watch the idiotice attempts at comedy when Ian cheats with his pedometer and when he's caught eating by Jane, who now wants him to attend slimming classes.
Seriously, does Sean O'Connor think the viewing public really are that stupid? Woodyatt's wearing Ian's "fat" clothes, and they're hanging on him. His gut is now almost non-existent, and his arms are thin.
The storyline initially kicked in by making a joke out of his potential for diabetes,and now it can't even depict reality by having Jane or someone compliment him on his progress.
No,because that's not how Ian has to be. Instead, we see him sulk and stomp off to the Vic where he orders up what appears to be a glass of wine and some pork scratchings and talks to Woody, a veritable stranger, about his predicament. Would Woody attend a fat club? They discuss the pros and cons of nagging women, and Woody the new Mick-of-all-advices, reminds Ian that Jane has been through a lot, and if he had a wife who'd suffered as much as Jane, he'd attend a Fat Club at her bidding as such, because she'd suffered so.
(You can't help but emit a wry smile of irony anytime anyone talks about how much "poor" Jane has suffered, especially when one thinks of her dumping Lucy's body in the boot of her car and then dragging Lucy across the Common to leave her to the elements. Jane has suffered? Jane got karma).
And we even get the sentimental scene of Ian returning home, unexpectedly, to see "poor" Jane doing her walking exercises and struggling every step of the way, only to be reminded that almost a year ago, she met her karma.
Strange, how they can't even mention Bobby's name.
The only other thing this segment spewed up was Whitney very purposefully and physically flirting with Woody and falling for him over the remark he made about how he'd treat a partner who'd suffered. The camera panned totally on Whitney as Woody said those words.
Woody is a nice guy. I like him, but she's still stupid enough to fall for someone on the strength of one remark. Even Hitler liked dogs.
The Working Girls.
Michelle. How fucking stupid is Sharon? Michelle has a job interview and doesn't tell her what the nature of the job is. Sharon assumes it's a teaching job.
Can someone have this woman engage a brain cell, please? Anyone with any common sense, and certainly someone who's a mother would know that Michelle can never be allowed inside a classroom with responsibility for children and young people again? Obviously, Sharon is all right with the fact that Michelle was in a position of trust and abused that trust by having sex with one of her students - moreover, a student who was below the legal age of consent in the state where she worked. But, of course, Sharon is OK with that. She even joked about it and called Michelle a "cradle-snatcher."
What the fuck happened to Sharon? This Sharon is dumb beyond belief to think that Michelle would get another job in education. Even Martin, who's presented as a Luddite, knew better and had to set Michelle straight about her loss of profession.
I thought the scene with the unnamed girl as they awaited their interviews started out as an ageist assumption by a much younger woman and a pretty crass depiction of a Millennial, in that the girl thought that life in London these days was much harder than it was in Michelle's time. She also thought that, because of Michelle's age, this was a pin-money job and that she and her "husband" had a nice home.
While at one and the same time, the girl's plight - newly married and forced to live with her inlaws because she and her husband could neither afford rents in London or even to buy a home (yet Ben, Donna, Jay and Abi happiy rent a house which would rent on the market at about 2k per month) - it also showed her naivete and age assumption that she thought she would get the job in question.
Granted, Michelle lied through her teeth to get that job. Her only retail experience has come thirty years before when she served in the café from time to time. Her family's "retail" experience has been as market gardeners, and she was never seen on the stall at any time.
She came across as eager, positive and not at all desperate and even had nous enough to refer to her age as being a positive asset. It's a part-time position, but Michelle would probably be a quick learner in that situation and might move onto something more permanent there. (At least, they're dealing with employment off the Square now).
Denise. On the other hand, we have the star of the show. I'm sorry. I don't need anymore hearts-and-flowers scenes of Denise stopping point blank in the middle of the market to gaze longinly at Martin chomping a sandwich and Kush counting a roll of money, only to see Carmel standing at the end of the market like the showdown scene from High Noon, then to have her look suitably famished and wobbly (just to remind us that she has no money and hasn't eaten).
I actually thought the Job Centre scene was good, even if it were presented to us in what has now become O'Connor's inimitable, preachy, Old Maidish lecture style.
Yes, we know there have been benefits' cuts, and yes, we see what the beleaguered civil servants have to contend with and how the benefits' law is structured is grossly unfair in how it stops as soon as someone gets employment of a certain level, as evidenced in the lengthy background scene which Denise observed with the woman and her small children being told that she no longer qualified for benefits whilst she complained that child care was too expensive for her to maintain.
During the waiting game scene, we saw Denise schooled in what benefits were all about and how it was no shame to claim them. This was taught her by the unnamed Polish woman waiting in the queue, who couldn't understand Denise's reticence. Denise harps on about how she'd never claimed benefits, in all her working life, how she'd worked hard for her and her two kids. (Really, Denise? You never claimed child allowance? Never? Ever?) We got reminded of Denise's former employment at the local Post Office. (I used to run a Post Office; there were queues, but never this long).
Once again, Denise never "ran" the Post Office. She worked there. Zainab was her boss. And she left when she put in for a promotion and Zainab gave the job to Shabnam, who actually had a degree. That was another job which Denise left voluntarily, but then, she was married to Kevin.
The Polish woman reminds her that benefits are her right, if she's paid taxes all her working life. She points out a given - that there are some cheats and people who would rather draw benefits than work, but they were actually few. She also reminded Denise that everyone else waiting in the queue had been put our of work as well. However, there was one difference between the Polish woman's plight and Denise's - the Polish woman had been made redundant. She'd been let go when her company lost some major clients and had to downsize. Denise quit her job in a godalmighty snit when she was offended by Yolande, her professional superior, requiring her to attend an Anger Management course.
She now finds herself destitute, not because she's spent the past few months actively looking for work - she hasn't. She went about her life doing much the same things she did when she was working - drinking in the pub, eating out, shopping at The Minute Mart and fucking Kush. For a prideful, ungrateful woman, she's surrounded by people who care about her and would support her - her sister and brother-in-law, her toyboy. One thing, however, was left ambiguous - her status with relation to her house. She stated that she "lived with family."
The former B and B's status has been all over the place throughout the year. Audrey Trueman owned it, and when she died, it went to her sons, Paul and Ant Knee. Patrick came to live with them. Then, suddenly, after Yolande left, I thought Kim had bought the place and extended it with the the purchase of the house next door where the "Friends" element now live. But it seemed she only owned that house. A couple of years ago, we learned that Patrick and Denise actually had a mortgage on the old B and B portion of the property - as if a State Pension and a minimum wage zero hours' contract would qualify for a mortgage on a four-bedroomed terraced property in trendy East London. We know that because when she was formerly unemployed, she depended on the rent paid her by Shirley, Buster and Dean to pay the mortgage and the bills. But tonight her residential status is ambiguous.
Then came the clincher scene with the Job Centre civil servant. There's a lot of confusion here - Denise maintaining that the voice on the end of her telephone call told her to come into the Job Centre and apply for benefits. The telephone person obviously thought she had completed the online application for Universal Credit. The civil servant was only doing his job, all the while Denise was saying everything that came into her mind to make him think - I don't know what - that she was noble and responsible (she'd never claimed for benefits before), that she was desperate (she had no money and no savings), that she was even getting that damned GCSE in English Lit "to make things better" (how?). Once again, the guy was only doing his job; people in these positions have been known to be attacked, and Denise was getting pretty insistent. Telling her to move aside was a prelude to calling the appropriate people to escort her from the premises.
Even at home, even with no nourishment other than water, she even now hesitates before applying on line.
Listen, I am fully in sympathy with people who, through no fault of their own, find themselves in dire need of government benefits in a world where such protection has been made hard to come by - but to have this character as representative of this dynamic is not only a joke, it's offensive. She needn't suffer with tap water when she's got a sister who'd help her in an instant. Kim is brash, yes; but she's also a woman of great compassion when it comes to her immediate family. No one would be any the wiser, but no, the great Denise has to be the poster girl for every issue Sean O'Connor would have emphasized, namely the community ...
The Walking Clipboard. We got the ubiquitous "community" scene, of course. We've gone from bins to the Community Centre, with Kim handing out leaflets about a meeting and Carmel refusing to cooperate with the market traders because of her new job in the Planning Department, saying to liaise with them would prove to be a conflict of interest.
Kim got the line of the night as Carmel walked away.
You and your clipboard.
On a more sinister note, what's this about Stacey deciding that Kush should have more association with Arthur? I daresay Martin hasn't been consulted, given the look Kush sidled at Martin today, and it was Carmel who gave him the information. Seriously, is she doing this because she's now pregnant with Martin's child? If she is, she's stupid, because with Kush comes Carmel, and we know what she's all about.
With all the forced community crap, it's a wonder Sean O'Connor isn't turning us all into sociopaths.
Where's Janine?
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