On a scale of one to ten, I gave this episode a resounding FIVE, but only because of the actual end of the programme.
Surprise appearances, however, don't redeem Sean O'Connor in any way. I'm all for the soaps tackling issue storylines. The original remit for television was, after all, to educate, inform and entertain; and I was one of the biggest fans of the daddy of all issue soaps, Brookside, but this show is not a platform for dispersing the producer's pet peeves about the disintegration of society in general, using one actor in particular as his own special mouthpiece to air his private thoughts and opinions about society today.
To think:Dominic Treadwell-Collins used the show as his special toy, his Disney creation, his fanboi dreams made into sensationalist reality. Sean O'Connor is using it as a soapbox.
I don't want to hear faceless Council voices being lectured and hectored on the end of a phone because the Community Centre was closed and the adult education courses moved to the local college. (Yes, I do get the symbolic meaning of the community Centre being the actual "heart" of the community for all the few and far between times we saw it) - when, in actual fact, the only reason a complaint is being registered was because the person in question could now no longer afford the tube fare to get there. I don't want to hear this rant devolve into yet another rant about the poor people who were being excluded from bettering themselves because of the travel expense of attending such courses.
That would be you, Denise, wouldn't it? And exactly why, pray tell, are you in a predicament? When you willfully left employment on an angry whim, did you spend the ensuing weeks looking for alternative work? No? Instead, you carried on as normal, expecting the leaves on one of the trees in the Square to suddenly start sprouting money. Denise sees the removal of the adult classes from the community centre to the college as denying impoverished people an education. Since Denise is obviously now an impoverished person - living in a property worth nearly a million quid by London standards - with not an ounce of food in the house and reduced to scavenging through the bins for discarded foof.
And I don't need a further social lecture about the corporate hierarchy rampant in this country and its relation to the drone workers occupying the base of the plan, as the apt interpretation of J B Priestley's symbolic social commentary play An Inspector Calls.
I don't need scenes where Kush, who - in almost every scene - manages to look younger and younger and younger, until tonight he was reduced to a stuttering, blubbering schoolboy worshipping at the altar of Saint Denise, enticing her with home-cooked offerings and feasting, himself, off her every word, as she lectures him about the play in question before racheting off into social commentary - all of which, I daresay, went straight over Kush's head.
At the end of all of this, Kush admitted how he always enjoyed English classes in school, citing Romeo and Juliet, befure Denise, without thinking, pointedly sneers at what she perceives as his pretentions ...
What? Did they put the film on?
I'm glad Kush took offense at that horribly pedantic and condescending assumption on Denise's part, and another thing - the way her customarily po-face waxed lyrical in an almost orgasmic expression of pleasure before she began stuffing her face with his fare, was a positive insult to anyone who has truly been hungry and, in particular, to the genuinely starving people of the world.
The reason Denise's situation resonates particularly unsympathetically, except for the few noticeable sausage surprises who have sprung up to target any expression of opinion contrary to that of her being a blameless saint, is that she brought this situation on herself. She had weeks to look for, and maybe even secure, work. Instead, she spent it doing what she normally does - drinking in the pub, eating in the café, buying stuff in the grossly over-priced Minute Mart (according to her) and fucking Kush. Suddenly, she's destitute and down to her last pennies, starving herself and closing down in stubborness, probably on the misguided assumption that, like the great artistic and literary icons of bygone years, she is suffering for her art.
She's suffering for her arrogance and complete lack of common sense throughout this overly-long storyline that will end up in a couple of weeks with Kush and Kim finding out about her "suffering". Then, they'll have a group hug, Kush will tell her how marvellous and brave she is, Kim will slip her a couple of hundred quid on Vincent's tick, and they'll all have a mollycoddling moment when everybody tells Denise how wonderful she is. Again.
She can't even borrow a tenner off her own sister. No one's going to be judgemental if you ask your sibling for a loan of 10 quid. Instead, she has to get caught up in Kim's petty materialism, although for a moment there, I was thinking Vincent was going to find out that someone had been making strange purchases on his credit card (Whitney, anyone?), but that angle seems to have been forgotten. Gone with the wind which swept through Walford and captured the real spirit and individual flavour of the place.
Now it's just a bunch of individual scenes cobbled together with characters who don't normally interact, exchanging lines and not really talking to each other - witness Lauren doing what she does best tonight - talking at people, but not really listening to what they say and, indeed, not intending to listen. She talks to hear the sound of her own voice, and that scene where she greeted Michelle, as if she'd known her all her life, whilst Michelle was in the middle of her community service work.
She wasn't interested in the remotest way at Lauren's opinion of her new frock; she was just there to self-validate herself. Michelle barely said a word - unlike the real Michelle, who'd have been in their beating Lauren at her own words, and with equally bad grammar, geeing her up for this job. Lauren wants to use her brain more. Maybe she should use it for some serious grammar studies and to rid her vocabulary of the generic "ain't". Michelle's chief function in that scene was to be shown as looking sadly envious at Lauren - coincidentally, the girl at the bar the other night in the Vic - as being representative of everything Michelle isn't right now- young, confident, not only in a committed relationship, but with the prospect of an even more important male interest with a bigger wallet, lurking inthe background.
Lauren had never spoken to Michelle at all, and even later, when Michelle is hanging about Jane's house - remembering the last time she was there how she was handed her arse by no less than Stacey and Jane, when she receives a phone call, which she dismisses. (Presumably, Michelle still has her US phone; that must be costing someone a fortune in calls). The call is from Tim, who wants a divorce.
Is that also a hint of guilt from Michelle about monopolising all of Sharon's time when Sharon took her eyes off the ball about her own children to tend to Michelle's needs? Maybe she was just afraid of some home truths Louise and Denny might finally say to her in Sharon's presence. Maybe she also feels guilty that she whisked Sharon away for the evening when Louise got hurt.
Now she's taking relationship advice from Lauren, who seems to have become her inverted role model, seeming to understand exactly why Lauren is miffed about not wanting to share her workspace and work life with reminders of the fact that she has a husband and son. It's always easiest to play away when there are no reminders of your real life on hand. Most people in offices have pictures of their families on show, but it's obvious that Lauren doesn't just want space away from her partner and her son; she actually wants to be away from them. And whilst she may not admit it, this is her first step away from a situation she finds stifling and inhibiting.
This isn't to defend Lauren, although if she's unhappy with Steven, she needs to tell him now, rather than later; but Lauren iikes her bread buttered on both sides, but the very fact that she so callously regards the end of a marriage is nothing more than a piece of paper, the signing of which will afford someone else the opportunity to move forward in the way she wants. Maybe she's so cynical because of the dysfunctional home in which she was raised. Or maybe she's just selfish, the way most of the Brannings are, looking out for themselves and their own interests first.
That would explain very much both Max's and Jack's individual motivations. Jack considers Matthew his son - in fact, he referenced him as being "Ronnie's son and mine". Anyone get the vibe of a little bit of transferrance here, that Matthew, in Jack's mind, has become the substitute for James, as well as being the last real link to Ronnie that he has.
But Matthew isn't Jack's son, and the child has a living father, who loved him and who was driven away from him by that same Ronnie. On the one hand, it's only natural that Charlie Cotton want to see his son and be a part of his life. He never willingly abandoned him, and it was nice to see Declan Bennett again, with his Hamilton crop and greying a bit about the gills.
The only reason I can figure Max wants to bring about this separation of Max from Matthew is because so many times Max was sent into exile by the likes of Tanya, if not his own daughters, and that for the better part of 2008, it was Jack who bedded down with the fragrant Tanya and prohibited Max from seeing his children and his newborn son, indeed, Jack and Tanya were actually planning on absconding with the children to live in France, without Max's knowledge or consent, which is against the law.
So maybe Jack, and everyone who's slighted Max, is now in his cross hairs for revenge
And, finally, speaking of criminal activity ... the bully storyline really should be ending right about now, with Sniggle and Snaggle being herded up and marched off to the copshop. Funny, that a few weeks back, Sharon was informing Ian that Louise didn't lie, and yet there she was berating the girl in her hospital bed, annoyed that Social Services had been put on her case because Louise was paralytic. For someone who believed that Louise wouldn't lie, she doesn't seem too apt to believe the fact that the girl genuinely believed she wasn't drinking and doesn't remember what happened at all or even that Rebecca probably saved her life.
Once again, Sharon is motivated in this instance by fear of Phil, even admitting that she'd been taking her eye off the ball recently (to cosy up with Michelle, no less). So she's trying to make up for the situation by playing disciplinarian with Louise, but as soon as she's gone to the shops, when there's a knock on the door, you knew immediately that it wasn't going to be Rebecca on the doorstep; instead, like two bad pennies and looking suitably penitent, there were Sniggle and Snaggle, protesting their innocence, and informing Louise how much they'd been looking out for her all day, even preventing Keegan from putting his filmed images of Louise getting more and more out of control on the internet.
They're really looking to cover their own skanky arses, gauging how much Louise knows and what she remembers. Also, if Cartoon Keegan put those images online, it would blatantly show how Sniggle and Snaggle were egging Louise on and how they particpated in pushing her inebriated actions in front of the camera, how disgusted they were (but not too disgusted to laugh) when she vomited repeatedly, how they joined the herd in following her out onto the Square. That filmed evidence implicates Sniggle and Snaggle heavily; of course, they wouldn't want it online.
I rolled my eyes repeatedly during this segment - when the two brazenly pushed past Louise to force their way into the Mitchell house, when Louise seemed to falter in her anger towards them when they oh-so-sincerely assured her that they'd been looking after her and "taking care of her" all day long at school. However, they seemed to falter once Louise asked them if they'd spoken with Rebecca.
Once again, my eyes rolled when Louise told Rebecca that the two weren't "so bad". Was Louise really so drunk that she thought Rebecca was at this party, asking her if Rebecca saw the girls spike her drink, and Rebecca pointedly retorting that if Louise suspects that they spiked her drink, then her blind-eye to the two has been opened. But, of course, they covered their arses. The empty vodka bottle - presumably downed in "virgin" margaritas by Louise - was conveniently planted in Travis's schoolbag, to be found by the authorities at the school.
Louise is finding it hard to believe Travis would do something like that, and she doesn't know that he was the one to alert Rebecca to what was happening to Louise. I suppose this will end eventually, but O'Connor showed tonight that he can insert a twist to a seemingly endless storyline, worthy of Alex Lamb's clangers, thus, insuring that it continues to drone on and on remorselessly, when the blame for spiking Louise's drink now lies squarely on the innocent Travis.
I was at a loss as to why Ben suddenly showed up in tow with Sharon. She should have been reading him the riot act for taking his eye off Dennis and allowing him to return to the house where all sorts were in action. Instead, he seems to have been there in order to make the ubiquitous threatening line about "getting" Travis for what he'd done to Louise.
End this storyline now, please. Along with others.
Oh, and Woody charms Ian, fills the pub (after all, Tracey's got another job, so Ian shouldn't feel guilty), and Shirley's happy. Ian's price for ending the pub boycott? A silver mug, much like the one Pete Beale kept behind the bar, only with Ian's name and self-appointed knighthood engraved on it. I suppose the social conscience lesson to be learned from that was that if you're nice and polite, the way Woody is, people will respond more than when the barmaid is scowling and miserable, like Shirley.
Quite honestly, I've had enough of Sean O'Connor's inept moralising and social conscience. This man doesn't have the faintest clue. He really needs to go.
Surprise appearances, however, don't redeem Sean O'Connor in any way. I'm all for the soaps tackling issue storylines. The original remit for television was, after all, to educate, inform and entertain; and I was one of the biggest fans of the daddy of all issue soaps, Brookside, but this show is not a platform for dispersing the producer's pet peeves about the disintegration of society in general, using one actor in particular as his own special mouthpiece to air his private thoughts and opinions about society today.
To think:Dominic Treadwell-Collins used the show as his special toy, his Disney creation, his fanboi dreams made into sensationalist reality. Sean O'Connor is using it as a soapbox.
I don't want to hear faceless Council voices being lectured and hectored on the end of a phone because the Community Centre was closed and the adult education courses moved to the local college. (Yes, I do get the symbolic meaning of the community Centre being the actual "heart" of the community for all the few and far between times we saw it) - when, in actual fact, the only reason a complaint is being registered was because the person in question could now no longer afford the tube fare to get there. I don't want to hear this rant devolve into yet another rant about the poor people who were being excluded from bettering themselves because of the travel expense of attending such courses.
That would be you, Denise, wouldn't it? And exactly why, pray tell, are you in a predicament? When you willfully left employment on an angry whim, did you spend the ensuing weeks looking for alternative work? No? Instead, you carried on as normal, expecting the leaves on one of the trees in the Square to suddenly start sprouting money. Denise sees the removal of the adult classes from the community centre to the college as denying impoverished people an education. Since Denise is obviously now an impoverished person - living in a property worth nearly a million quid by London standards - with not an ounce of food in the house and reduced to scavenging through the bins for discarded foof.
And I don't need a further social lecture about the corporate hierarchy rampant in this country and its relation to the drone workers occupying the base of the plan, as the apt interpretation of J B Priestley's symbolic social commentary play An Inspector Calls.
I don't need scenes where Kush, who - in almost every scene - manages to look younger and younger and younger, until tonight he was reduced to a stuttering, blubbering schoolboy worshipping at the altar of Saint Denise, enticing her with home-cooked offerings and feasting, himself, off her every word, as she lectures him about the play in question before racheting off into social commentary - all of which, I daresay, went straight over Kush's head.
At the end of all of this, Kush admitted how he always enjoyed English classes in school, citing Romeo and Juliet, befure Denise, without thinking, pointedly sneers at what she perceives as his pretentions ...
What? Did they put the film on?
I'm glad Kush took offense at that horribly pedantic and condescending assumption on Denise's part, and another thing - the way her customarily po-face waxed lyrical in an almost orgasmic expression of pleasure before she began stuffing her face with his fare, was a positive insult to anyone who has truly been hungry and, in particular, to the genuinely starving people of the world.
The reason Denise's situation resonates particularly unsympathetically, except for the few noticeable sausage surprises who have sprung up to target any expression of opinion contrary to that of her being a blameless saint, is that she brought this situation on herself. She had weeks to look for, and maybe even secure, work. Instead, she spent it doing what she normally does - drinking in the pub, eating in the café, buying stuff in the grossly over-priced Minute Mart (according to her) and fucking Kush. Suddenly, she's destitute and down to her last pennies, starving herself and closing down in stubborness, probably on the misguided assumption that, like the great artistic and literary icons of bygone years, she is suffering for her art.
She's suffering for her arrogance and complete lack of common sense throughout this overly-long storyline that will end up in a couple of weeks with Kush and Kim finding out about her "suffering". Then, they'll have a group hug, Kush will tell her how marvellous and brave she is, Kim will slip her a couple of hundred quid on Vincent's tick, and they'll all have a mollycoddling moment when everybody tells Denise how wonderful she is. Again.
She can't even borrow a tenner off her own sister. No one's going to be judgemental if you ask your sibling for a loan of 10 quid. Instead, she has to get caught up in Kim's petty materialism, although for a moment there, I was thinking Vincent was going to find out that someone had been making strange purchases on his credit card (Whitney, anyone?), but that angle seems to have been forgotten. Gone with the wind which swept through Walford and captured the real spirit and individual flavour of the place.
Now it's just a bunch of individual scenes cobbled together with characters who don't normally interact, exchanging lines and not really talking to each other - witness Lauren doing what she does best tonight - talking at people, but not really listening to what they say and, indeed, not intending to listen. She talks to hear the sound of her own voice, and that scene where she greeted Michelle, as if she'd known her all her life, whilst Michelle was in the middle of her community service work.
She wasn't interested in the remotest way at Lauren's opinion of her new frock; she was just there to self-validate herself. Michelle barely said a word - unlike the real Michelle, who'd have been in their beating Lauren at her own words, and with equally bad grammar, geeing her up for this job. Lauren wants to use her brain more. Maybe she should use it for some serious grammar studies and to rid her vocabulary of the generic "ain't". Michelle's chief function in that scene was to be shown as looking sadly envious at Lauren - coincidentally, the girl at the bar the other night in the Vic - as being representative of everything Michelle isn't right now- young, confident, not only in a committed relationship, but with the prospect of an even more important male interest with a bigger wallet, lurking inthe background.
Lauren had never spoken to Michelle at all, and even later, when Michelle is hanging about Jane's house - remembering the last time she was there how she was handed her arse by no less than Stacey and Jane, when she receives a phone call, which she dismisses. (Presumably, Michelle still has her US phone; that must be costing someone a fortune in calls). The call is from Tim, who wants a divorce.
Is that also a hint of guilt from Michelle about monopolising all of Sharon's time when Sharon took her eyes off the ball about her own children to tend to Michelle's needs? Maybe she was just afraid of some home truths Louise and Denny might finally say to her in Sharon's presence. Maybe she also feels guilty that she whisked Sharon away for the evening when Louise got hurt.
Now she's taking relationship advice from Lauren, who seems to have become her inverted role model, seeming to understand exactly why Lauren is miffed about not wanting to share her workspace and work life with reminders of the fact that she has a husband and son. It's always easiest to play away when there are no reminders of your real life on hand. Most people in offices have pictures of their families on show, but it's obvious that Lauren doesn't just want space away from her partner and her son; she actually wants to be away from them. And whilst she may not admit it, this is her first step away from a situation she finds stifling and inhibiting.
This isn't to defend Lauren, although if she's unhappy with Steven, she needs to tell him now, rather than later; but Lauren iikes her bread buttered on both sides, but the very fact that she so callously regards the end of a marriage is nothing more than a piece of paper, the signing of which will afford someone else the opportunity to move forward in the way she wants. Maybe she's so cynical because of the dysfunctional home in which she was raised. Or maybe she's just selfish, the way most of the Brannings are, looking out for themselves and their own interests first.
That would explain very much both Max's and Jack's individual motivations. Jack considers Matthew his son - in fact, he referenced him as being "Ronnie's son and mine". Anyone get the vibe of a little bit of transferrance here, that Matthew, in Jack's mind, has become the substitute for James, as well as being the last real link to Ronnie that he has.
But Matthew isn't Jack's son, and the child has a living father, who loved him and who was driven away from him by that same Ronnie. On the one hand, it's only natural that Charlie Cotton want to see his son and be a part of his life. He never willingly abandoned him, and it was nice to see Declan Bennett again, with his Hamilton crop and greying a bit about the gills.
The only reason I can figure Max wants to bring about this separation of Max from Matthew is because so many times Max was sent into exile by the likes of Tanya, if not his own daughters, and that for the better part of 2008, it was Jack who bedded down with the fragrant Tanya and prohibited Max from seeing his children and his newborn son, indeed, Jack and Tanya were actually planning on absconding with the children to live in France, without Max's knowledge or consent, which is against the law.
So maybe Jack, and everyone who's slighted Max, is now in his cross hairs for revenge
And, finally, speaking of criminal activity ... the bully storyline really should be ending right about now, with Sniggle and Snaggle being herded up and marched off to the copshop. Funny, that a few weeks back, Sharon was informing Ian that Louise didn't lie, and yet there she was berating the girl in her hospital bed, annoyed that Social Services had been put on her case because Louise was paralytic. For someone who believed that Louise wouldn't lie, she doesn't seem too apt to believe the fact that the girl genuinely believed she wasn't drinking and doesn't remember what happened at all or even that Rebecca probably saved her life.
Once again, Sharon is motivated in this instance by fear of Phil, even admitting that she'd been taking her eye off the ball recently (to cosy up with Michelle, no less). So she's trying to make up for the situation by playing disciplinarian with Louise, but as soon as she's gone to the shops, when there's a knock on the door, you knew immediately that it wasn't going to be Rebecca on the doorstep; instead, like two bad pennies and looking suitably penitent, there were Sniggle and Snaggle, protesting their innocence, and informing Louise how much they'd been looking out for her all day, even preventing Keegan from putting his filmed images of Louise getting more and more out of control on the internet.
They're really looking to cover their own skanky arses, gauging how much Louise knows and what she remembers. Also, if Cartoon Keegan put those images online, it would blatantly show how Sniggle and Snaggle were egging Louise on and how they particpated in pushing her inebriated actions in front of the camera, how disgusted they were (but not too disgusted to laugh) when she vomited repeatedly, how they joined the herd in following her out onto the Square. That filmed evidence implicates Sniggle and Snaggle heavily; of course, they wouldn't want it online.
I rolled my eyes repeatedly during this segment - when the two brazenly pushed past Louise to force their way into the Mitchell house, when Louise seemed to falter in her anger towards them when they oh-so-sincerely assured her that they'd been looking after her and "taking care of her" all day long at school. However, they seemed to falter once Louise asked them if they'd spoken with Rebecca.
Once again, my eyes rolled when Louise told Rebecca that the two weren't "so bad". Was Louise really so drunk that she thought Rebecca was at this party, asking her if Rebecca saw the girls spike her drink, and Rebecca pointedly retorting that if Louise suspects that they spiked her drink, then her blind-eye to the two has been opened. But, of course, they covered their arses. The empty vodka bottle - presumably downed in "virgin" margaritas by Louise - was conveniently planted in Travis's schoolbag, to be found by the authorities at the school.
Louise is finding it hard to believe Travis would do something like that, and she doesn't know that he was the one to alert Rebecca to what was happening to Louise. I suppose this will end eventually, but O'Connor showed tonight that he can insert a twist to a seemingly endless storyline, worthy of Alex Lamb's clangers, thus, insuring that it continues to drone on and on remorselessly, when the blame for spiking Louise's drink now lies squarely on the innocent Travis.
I was at a loss as to why Ben suddenly showed up in tow with Sharon. She should have been reading him the riot act for taking his eye off Dennis and allowing him to return to the house where all sorts were in action. Instead, he seems to have been there in order to make the ubiquitous threatening line about "getting" Travis for what he'd done to Louise.
End this storyline now, please. Along with others.
Oh, and Woody charms Ian, fills the pub (after all, Tracey's got another job, so Ian shouldn't feel guilty), and Shirley's happy. Ian's price for ending the pub boycott? A silver mug, much like the one Pete Beale kept behind the bar, only with Ian's name and self-appointed knighthood engraved on it. I suppose the social conscience lesson to be learned from that was that if you're nice and polite, the way Woody is, people will respond more than when the barmaid is scowling and miserable, like Shirley.
Quite honestly, I've had enough of Sean O'Connor's inept moralising and social conscience. This man doesn't have the faintest clue. He really needs to go.
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