Remember when Brookside was the great issue soap? The set was a cul-de-sac of actual houses, and the soap began by depicting the actual social problems of the residents - unemployment, union issue, sickness, death, rape, sexual abuse, domestic violence.
It tackled all those issues and did them well ... except sometime in the late 90s, it morphed into a tits'n arse show and the social commentary, formerly done so well, took on the air of a badly enacted public service announcement. One scene, in particular, sticks in my mind. After Ron's last heart attack, his son-in-law, Max (yes, there was a Max in Brookside, as well) and the dishy doctor who'd formerly been in Hollyoaks and whom I always thought would have been a good addition to EastEnders, stood outside Ron's hospital room door and went through all the warning signs of and ways to prevent a heart attack.
It sucked.
This is the way I feel watching EastEnders now. It's a chore. It's a badly contrived social commentary, with false community awareness and stereotypically assumptive scenes contrived to show situations designed to tug on the heartstrings of viewers in hopes that they might find some sort of identification with the central character involved. The truth is, I don't know how to respond.
I can totally understand leaving a job because you find the situation there unbearable; I can even understand walking out of a situation causing you great stress, without having another job lined up for the future. I can't, however, condone the person who walks out on a job in a fit of pique because she was actually presented with the stark reality that the problem inherent in her job was, in fact, her attitude. Couple this with an Micawberian arrogance so great that she doesn't attempt to look for other work until she's at the point of starvation, and she still doesn't have the point driven home to her.
The other key element lacking and linking a lot of storylines is the surfeit of responsibility for one's actions. Denise cannot and will not accept that she's brought herself to her empirical impasse because of her own actions. Whitney, similarly, is schocked beyond belief when she reads the terms of the solicitor's letter, citing that Lee wishes to divorce her due to her "unreasonable behaviour". Lee's obviously had time to think, but the writers haven't.
Lee and Whitney were married at the beginning of November 2016. They cannot divorce yet because they have not yet been married one year. Either the writers were jumping the gun or else, they are banking on the perceived ignorance of the viewing public, or both. Probably both.
EastEnders is still a world where men are incredibly infantilised (Kush, Martin, Jack) and is rapidly becoming a world populated by overt women who remind me of 70s drag artists and the archtypical villain from a 19th Century melodrama.
And that's beside the inveterate preaching and the cutesy clever piece of free publicity courtesy of a postcard from Alfie and Kat, featuring an impressionist painting of a child on a shore and a sea full of red water. Redwater, geddit? Clever that. Not.
The Dickensian Melodrama: Denise. More of this:-
This is the new face of EastEnders. Sean O'Connor famously stated he doesn't "do" social media (whereas Dominic Treadwell-Collins did it a bit too much); in this instance, it's a shame he doesn't because he'd see how vastly unpopular, unrealistic and simply insulting this storyline is. Insulting for a variety of reasons - insulting to the people who, through no fault of their own, fall upon genuine hardship and have to negotiate the benefits' system and insulting to the civil servants who are part and parcel of the Department of Work and Pensions and who, literally, are on the front line in dealing with people who often vent their frustrations, physically, upon people who are simply just doing their jobs. This is why there are now security personnel at Job Centres.
We're made to believe that Denise, who's singularly lacking in common sense, overcompensated by her vast pride and arrogance, has been existing on tap water for however many days it's been. The show goes out of its way to depict scenes where Denise is shown to be tantalisingly close to food - Martin, chomping away on a sandwich yesterday and today, getting an extra tutorial session (you wonder if the Scandinavian tutor goes out of his way with all his other students or just Denise) with her teacher in the middle of the café, with him ordering up a succulent pastry to go with his tea.
We're treated to another stereotypical scene at the job centre - this time, where she's interviewed by an even younger-looking civil servant, to whom she immediately takes offence because of his youth and what he perceives as his judgement of her situation. For fuck's sake, the kid -who's actually 27 - is only doing his job.
The crux of the situation comes just as we were expecting it. You cannot tell me that Denise would not know that if you leave a job of your own free will, you cannot expect to claim benefits as easily as if you were made redundant. First, she's shocked by the fact that the clerical officer serving her has, himself, been unemployed three times in his relatively young working life; secondly, she's even more shocked to find that she's got to wait 10 weeks before she can claim any unemployment benefits, which actually is tantamount to 15 weeks because payments are made in arrears.
Really? According to the UK Government website, if you resign from your job, it can be up to 26 weeks before benefits are considered.. Anyway, Denise takes offence at this; even at this point, she cannot accept that she left The Minute Mart of her own volition, in high dudgeon because she was affronted at being told to take an anger management course. Even now, she's saying she was practically forced out. She isn't making excuses to the guy, she genuinely believes this. This, people, is entitlement. Seriously. As well, she's telling porkie pies all over the place.
To begin with, she hasn't been trying to find work exclusively. She didn't even begin to consider finding another job until she was literally down to her last ten quid. Then she circulated her CV to the pharmacy and the bookies' and went for a cleaner's job (which she actually didn't know was a cleaner's job and then let her attitude get the better of her then and there). In fact, as everyone knows, Denise did absolutely nothing to find work in the wake of quitting The Minute Mart; she simply carried on doing everything she did before, when she was working.
Secondly, she started rattling off a list of grievances against The Minute Mart, amongst them, their failure to pay her maternity pay. I am sorry, but that was a lie. I well remember the episode where Libby exhaustively e-mailed The Minute Mart's head office, laying out the case for Denise's maternity pay and resulting in her actually getting a written contract, which was much to her benefit - something she later threw back in The Minute Mart's face. As for them not paying her maternity pay, Denise took no maternity leave. She literally returned to work as soon as she was discharged from the hospital, give or take a couple of days. Honey even questioned whether she was actually fit enough to return to work so soon. She took no leave, so she gets no pay. Simples?
All of that denial, coupled with an emotional breakdown, only proved what a genuinely compassionate individual the young civil servant, who - from one of his remarks - isn't happiest to be in that job, in that he literally stuck his neck out for her and tried to help her, first by offering her some tea and biscuits. I'm actually sick to the gills of watching Denise clasp that plastic cuppa as if she were some homeless hobo stuck around a wasteyard fire, and gobble down the digestive biscuit. But then, the guy, a stranger, is yet another in a long line of people, who actually show Denise understanding and kindness, for which she resolves to be singularly ungrateful. He actually bent a rule for her. After asking if she had any family who might help her out whilst awaiting the benefits to kick in, she told him she had no one.
Hello?
Libby is earning. Sometimes a child does have to look after and care for a parent. Does Libby know what's happening with Denise? Short answer: No. Kim and Vincent would certainly help, but again, she's too rigidly proud and stubborn to tell them of her plight. Maybe the words Kim told her the other week are ringing in her ears.
You should be looking for a job!
She should have been looking for a job all along, instead of nursing her wounded pride and nursing Kush at the same time. Two things of which I am utterly tired of hearing regarding this character: I'm tired of hearing about her putting her son up for adoption. Let's play this one for real,and not have a secret son crawling out of the woodwork anytime in the future. And I'm tired of her constantly bringing up that pithy GCSE, the coursework of which looks like the scope of work Libby is doing for her PhD. Yes, it's a great accomplishment, but it's relative. It won't mean a better job; it simply means a sense of accomplishment for Denise's much-expanded ego, but it won't pay the bills.
She lashes out and throws a wobbly at the young man attending her, and when she returns home, she only finds that, when she dropped her bag, he surreptitiously put the packet of digestives inside and also the referral to the Food Bank. Once again, someone does something nice for this ingrate.
She kept repeating the mantra of not being a charity case.In a week when we find that the Royal College of Nurses are considering strike action because of long hours, government cuts, the aboliition of the nursing bursary and low pay; in a week when we find that many nurses actually resort to using Food Banks, I find Denise singularly unsympathetic, entitled and pathetic. She doesn't need a food bank when she has family willing to help her.
Please. Get a life and get off my screen. Overkill.
If that isn't enough, we have to be subjected to Kim and her OTT efforts to save the Community Centre, the latest project in social awareness foisted upon us by Sean O'Connor. Kim's stupid fractured French and her presumptuous referral to the mayor, first as her "sistrin" and later referring to the mayor's "minions" was singularly unfunny.
I was no fan of Ronnie Mitchell, a character whom I thought outstayed her welcome,but, please, the Fox Sisters are no comparison and a poor substitute for The Blisters.
Kim, increasingly, reminds me of Flip Wilson, the late American comedian from the 1970s, who regularly dressed in drag to create one of his most famous alter egos, Geraldine Jones:-
Geraldine was funny. Kim isn't.
Skinny Man at a Fat Club. Why is it that all during the horrendously patronising SlimStart segment, featuring Ian, the star of the Beale sitcom, I kept thinking about Matt Lucas as Marjory, the functionary head of Fat Fighters ...
It also doesn't help that the storyline and relevant characters all refer to Ian's weight problem when Adam Woodyatt's lost so much weight that you can't conceivably call him fat anymore. No wonder he felt like a square peg in a round hole (pun intended). Once again, we're confronted with a slew of po-faced people, coupled with a group leader who made it her life's purpose to draw out the most minute psychological reason behind each individual's reason for being there - from one woman trying to slim for her wedding to the man with whom Ian had initially spoken, resorting to comfort eating after a messy divorce.
This took on the aura of an AA meeting as she pushed and pushed Ian to elaborate as to why he ended up overweight. For a moment, after having had the man sitting beside him, admit to over-eating in compensation for a messy divorce, I thought for a moment Ian was going to cite Lucy's death as his excuse for comfort eating, but, of course, he only remarked on his health scare. The group leader, an ex-fattie, seemed more like a psychological drill sergeant, but it seems that this SlimStart did the trick with Ian and he returns home to turn down a healthy salad meal and courgette cake for a run by the canal.
Mission accomplished. Public service announcement concluded.
The BabyMen. Stacey is too trusting of giving access to Arthur to Kush and Carmel. Please stop her from going on and on ad nauseam about needing the support of everyone around them because they're having a baby. For God's sake, Stacey has a mother, and Martin has an aunt who's also his godmother. Sonia will be back, and she won't be able to stop herself from helping out and interfering. They've already roped in Michelle. Why involve Kush and Carmel, especially since Carmel has ulterior motives?
Kush is babyfied enough. He's an emotional adolescent who's ultimately attracted to older women or women who treat him as though he's a child, which is exactly what Stacy did with both Martin and Kush tonight.
I can understand Martin's reluctance to embrace Kush either as a friend or to allow him access to Arthur. Kush was his best friend, and he colluded with Stacey in allowing Martin to think that Arthur was his child. He also knows Kush's history as a sexual predator, and there's always the suspicion that he and Stacey might bond over the child again - as well as Kush's part in concealing Shakil's sexual involvement with Rebecca.
But I really hate the way this show goes out of its way to present Stacey as the only adult in the room on this occasion. She took it upon herself to lecture and hector Martin into forgiving Michelle, when Martin had every reason for a lengthy displeasure in respect to how his sister had treated his child, totally disregarding Martin's feelings, and instead berating him until he finally relented, admitted he was wrong and reconciled with Michelle.
Now she's determined to shame him into reclaiming his friendship with Kush.
Kush ain't got no best mate.
Tough titties. Kush "ain't got no best mate" because Kush can't really be trusted. Kush is lucky that Martin forgave him after the fiasco with the deception around Arthur, but now, as with Michelle, Martin is shamed into bonding with Kush over a beer, even to the point that both Martin and Kush are depicted as singularly inarticulate enough to convey even the simplest of apologies. Stacey, more than adequately made an individual apology for each.
Quite frankly, I'm pretty fed up with Martin being depicted as the eternally uncouth Luddite and Kush as the emotionaly stunted thirty-something adolescent with an Oedipal complex. And, please, no more of these contrived scenes of someone on the rebound from an affair being confronted right, left and centre with loving couples.
And kudos to the show for getting some sly publicity for Redwater.
The Awful Truth. How is it that Whitney is served with a solicitor's letter informing her of Lee's intention to divorce her "for unreasonable behaviour?" Lee and Whitney haven't been married a year yet. He can't start divorce proceedings until November.
Be that as it may, the dirty girl is shocked to learn that Lee is divorcing her for "unreasonable behaviour." Like Denise, she has a hard time getting her head around the fact that she's actually responsible for something. Granted, the remaining Carters, led by widdle Mick and Johnny the plank, have mollycoddled her and reinforced the belief that she was too good for Lee and everything that happened in that marriage happened as a result of Lee's behaviour, not Whitney.
I'd say Lee's moved on. Maybe he's sought counselling. Maybe he's just had time enough away from the situation to think back on things, and maybe he now sees the way Whitney was actually a passive aggressive psychological bully, placing unwarranted and untenable demands on his character, knowing that he was a diagnosed depressive with a medical condition. Maybe he's had time enough to think of her veiled criticism of his perceived weakness in contrast to what she saw as Mick's strength, and maybe he's thought about all the times he was told simply to "man up."
Of course, Whitney has never had anyone tell her any home truths about her inappropriate behaviour before,and also, it was always Whitney who did the dumping.
Now, with Woody firmly in her sites in Mick's absence, she's reduced to seeking reassurance from Woody that she isn't "unreasonable", even going as far as admitting that she's actually "let a few people down before in her life" - yeah, bitch, like Todd, like Peter Beale, like Fatboy who actually bought you a car you never returned.
Her first thought, after the letter, is Mick, wanting to know if anyone had heard from him, saying she'd left him a message the previous week and lying to say the message was asking after Nancy. Even now, she's a calculating bitch. She'll make do with Woody until Mick returns, and that's when the real shit will hit the fan.
Linda can't come home quick enough. And Whitney deserves a smack.
Snidely Whiplash Continues. Max's manipulation of Jack continues, and I wish I could say that it was interesting,but Max continues to be the ultimate cartoon villain.
I hate the way we're supposed to perceive Jack as the wronged party here and Charlie as another villain. I especially hate the way Dot has totally immersed herself in Jack's cause now, when she bleated the loudest for Charlie being brought back into his son's life again.
I actually feel for Charlie in all of this, because he's Max's pawn, and it became clear tonight that he's uncomfortable with this situation. Jack has no rights to Matthew. It was actually acknowledged tonight that Jack was still grieving for Ronnie, but no one has mentioned either how Matthew both manifests a Jack's last link to Ronnie, but also he is a surrogate for James - hence, the reason Jack refers to him as his and Ronnie's son. Jack might be a bit deluded there.
Max obviously has something further planned for Jack, thinking that he'll lose custody of Matthew. Obviously, Ricky has a living mother - hence the rumours of a return for Sam Mitchell - but where does that leave Amy? Possibly living with Glenda?
I have to give EastEnders credit for turning the singular event of Max's revenge into a 19th Century amateur melodrama.
Nice one.
It tackled all those issues and did them well ... except sometime in the late 90s, it morphed into a tits'n arse show and the social commentary, formerly done so well, took on the air of a badly enacted public service announcement. One scene, in particular, sticks in my mind. After Ron's last heart attack, his son-in-law, Max (yes, there was a Max in Brookside, as well) and the dishy doctor who'd formerly been in Hollyoaks and whom I always thought would have been a good addition to EastEnders, stood outside Ron's hospital room door and went through all the warning signs of and ways to prevent a heart attack.
It sucked.
This is the way I feel watching EastEnders now. It's a chore. It's a badly contrived social commentary, with false community awareness and stereotypically assumptive scenes contrived to show situations designed to tug on the heartstrings of viewers in hopes that they might find some sort of identification with the central character involved. The truth is, I don't know how to respond.
I can totally understand leaving a job because you find the situation there unbearable; I can even understand walking out of a situation causing you great stress, without having another job lined up for the future. I can't, however, condone the person who walks out on a job in a fit of pique because she was actually presented with the stark reality that the problem inherent in her job was, in fact, her attitude. Couple this with an Micawberian arrogance so great that she doesn't attempt to look for other work until she's at the point of starvation, and she still doesn't have the point driven home to her.
The other key element lacking and linking a lot of storylines is the surfeit of responsibility for one's actions. Denise cannot and will not accept that she's brought herself to her empirical impasse because of her own actions. Whitney, similarly, is schocked beyond belief when she reads the terms of the solicitor's letter, citing that Lee wishes to divorce her due to her "unreasonable behaviour". Lee's obviously had time to think, but the writers haven't.
Lee and Whitney were married at the beginning of November 2016. They cannot divorce yet because they have not yet been married one year. Either the writers were jumping the gun or else, they are banking on the perceived ignorance of the viewing public, or both. Probably both.
EastEnders is still a world where men are incredibly infantilised (Kush, Martin, Jack) and is rapidly becoming a world populated by overt women who remind me of 70s drag artists and the archtypical villain from a 19th Century melodrama.
And that's beside the inveterate preaching and the cutesy clever piece of free publicity courtesy of a postcard from Alfie and Kat, featuring an impressionist painting of a child on a shore and a sea full of red water. Redwater, geddit? Clever that. Not.
The Dickensian Melodrama: Denise. More of this:-
This is the new face of EastEnders. Sean O'Connor famously stated he doesn't "do" social media (whereas Dominic Treadwell-Collins did it a bit too much); in this instance, it's a shame he doesn't because he'd see how vastly unpopular, unrealistic and simply insulting this storyline is. Insulting for a variety of reasons - insulting to the people who, through no fault of their own, fall upon genuine hardship and have to negotiate the benefits' system and insulting to the civil servants who are part and parcel of the Department of Work and Pensions and who, literally, are on the front line in dealing with people who often vent their frustrations, physically, upon people who are simply just doing their jobs. This is why there are now security personnel at Job Centres.
We're made to believe that Denise, who's singularly lacking in common sense, overcompensated by her vast pride and arrogance, has been existing on tap water for however many days it's been. The show goes out of its way to depict scenes where Denise is shown to be tantalisingly close to food - Martin, chomping away on a sandwich yesterday and today, getting an extra tutorial session (you wonder if the Scandinavian tutor goes out of his way with all his other students or just Denise) with her teacher in the middle of the café, with him ordering up a succulent pastry to go with his tea.
We're treated to another stereotypical scene at the job centre - this time, where she's interviewed by an even younger-looking civil servant, to whom she immediately takes offence because of his youth and what he perceives as his judgement of her situation. For fuck's sake, the kid -who's actually 27 - is only doing his job.
The crux of the situation comes just as we were expecting it. You cannot tell me that Denise would not know that if you leave a job of your own free will, you cannot expect to claim benefits as easily as if you were made redundant. First, she's shocked by the fact that the clerical officer serving her has, himself, been unemployed three times in his relatively young working life; secondly, she's even more shocked to find that she's got to wait 10 weeks before she can claim any unemployment benefits, which actually is tantamount to 15 weeks because payments are made in arrears.
Really? According to the UK Government website, if you resign from your job, it can be up to 26 weeks before benefits are considered.. Anyway, Denise takes offence at this; even at this point, she cannot accept that she left The Minute Mart of her own volition, in high dudgeon because she was affronted at being told to take an anger management course. Even now, she's saying she was practically forced out. She isn't making excuses to the guy, she genuinely believes this. This, people, is entitlement. Seriously. As well, she's telling porkie pies all over the place.
To begin with, she hasn't been trying to find work exclusively. She didn't even begin to consider finding another job until she was literally down to her last ten quid. Then she circulated her CV to the pharmacy and the bookies' and went for a cleaner's job (which she actually didn't know was a cleaner's job and then let her attitude get the better of her then and there). In fact, as everyone knows, Denise did absolutely nothing to find work in the wake of quitting The Minute Mart; she simply carried on doing everything she did before, when she was working.
Secondly, she started rattling off a list of grievances against The Minute Mart, amongst them, their failure to pay her maternity pay. I am sorry, but that was a lie. I well remember the episode where Libby exhaustively e-mailed The Minute Mart's head office, laying out the case for Denise's maternity pay and resulting in her actually getting a written contract, which was much to her benefit - something she later threw back in The Minute Mart's face. As for them not paying her maternity pay, Denise took no maternity leave. She literally returned to work as soon as she was discharged from the hospital, give or take a couple of days. Honey even questioned whether she was actually fit enough to return to work so soon. She took no leave, so she gets no pay. Simples?
All of that denial, coupled with an emotional breakdown, only proved what a genuinely compassionate individual the young civil servant, who - from one of his remarks - isn't happiest to be in that job, in that he literally stuck his neck out for her and tried to help her, first by offering her some tea and biscuits. I'm actually sick to the gills of watching Denise clasp that plastic cuppa as if she were some homeless hobo stuck around a wasteyard fire, and gobble down the digestive biscuit. But then, the guy, a stranger, is yet another in a long line of people, who actually show Denise understanding and kindness, for which she resolves to be singularly ungrateful. He actually bent a rule for her. After asking if she had any family who might help her out whilst awaiting the benefits to kick in, she told him she had no one.
Hello?
Libby is earning. Sometimes a child does have to look after and care for a parent. Does Libby know what's happening with Denise? Short answer: No. Kim and Vincent would certainly help, but again, she's too rigidly proud and stubborn to tell them of her plight. Maybe the words Kim told her the other week are ringing in her ears.
You should be looking for a job!
She should have been looking for a job all along, instead of nursing her wounded pride and nursing Kush at the same time. Two things of which I am utterly tired of hearing regarding this character: I'm tired of hearing about her putting her son up for adoption. Let's play this one for real,and not have a secret son crawling out of the woodwork anytime in the future. And I'm tired of her constantly bringing up that pithy GCSE, the coursework of which looks like the scope of work Libby is doing for her PhD. Yes, it's a great accomplishment, but it's relative. It won't mean a better job; it simply means a sense of accomplishment for Denise's much-expanded ego, but it won't pay the bills.
She lashes out and throws a wobbly at the young man attending her, and when she returns home, she only finds that, when she dropped her bag, he surreptitiously put the packet of digestives inside and also the referral to the Food Bank. Once again, someone does something nice for this ingrate.
She kept repeating the mantra of not being a charity case.In a week when we find that the Royal College of Nurses are considering strike action because of long hours, government cuts, the aboliition of the nursing bursary and low pay; in a week when we find that many nurses actually resort to using Food Banks, I find Denise singularly unsympathetic, entitled and pathetic. She doesn't need a food bank when she has family willing to help her.
Please. Get a life and get off my screen. Overkill.
If that isn't enough, we have to be subjected to Kim and her OTT efforts to save the Community Centre, the latest project in social awareness foisted upon us by Sean O'Connor. Kim's stupid fractured French and her presumptuous referral to the mayor, first as her "sistrin" and later referring to the mayor's "minions" was singularly unfunny.
I was no fan of Ronnie Mitchell, a character whom I thought outstayed her welcome,but, please, the Fox Sisters are no comparison and a poor substitute for The Blisters.
Kim, increasingly, reminds me of Flip Wilson, the late American comedian from the 1970s, who regularly dressed in drag to create one of his most famous alter egos, Geraldine Jones:-
Geraldine was funny. Kim isn't.
Skinny Man at a Fat Club. Why is it that all during the horrendously patronising SlimStart segment, featuring Ian, the star of the Beale sitcom, I kept thinking about Matt Lucas as Marjory, the functionary head of Fat Fighters ...
It also doesn't help that the storyline and relevant characters all refer to Ian's weight problem when Adam Woodyatt's lost so much weight that you can't conceivably call him fat anymore. No wonder he felt like a square peg in a round hole (pun intended). Once again, we're confronted with a slew of po-faced people, coupled with a group leader who made it her life's purpose to draw out the most minute psychological reason behind each individual's reason for being there - from one woman trying to slim for her wedding to the man with whom Ian had initially spoken, resorting to comfort eating after a messy divorce.
This took on the aura of an AA meeting as she pushed and pushed Ian to elaborate as to why he ended up overweight. For a moment, after having had the man sitting beside him, admit to over-eating in compensation for a messy divorce, I thought for a moment Ian was going to cite Lucy's death as his excuse for comfort eating, but, of course, he only remarked on his health scare. The group leader, an ex-fattie, seemed more like a psychological drill sergeant, but it seems that this SlimStart did the trick with Ian and he returns home to turn down a healthy salad meal and courgette cake for a run by the canal.
Mission accomplished. Public service announcement concluded.
The BabyMen. Stacey is too trusting of giving access to Arthur to Kush and Carmel. Please stop her from going on and on ad nauseam about needing the support of everyone around them because they're having a baby. For God's sake, Stacey has a mother, and Martin has an aunt who's also his godmother. Sonia will be back, and she won't be able to stop herself from helping out and interfering. They've already roped in Michelle. Why involve Kush and Carmel, especially since Carmel has ulterior motives?
Kush is babyfied enough. He's an emotional adolescent who's ultimately attracted to older women or women who treat him as though he's a child, which is exactly what Stacy did with both Martin and Kush tonight.
I can understand Martin's reluctance to embrace Kush either as a friend or to allow him access to Arthur. Kush was his best friend, and he colluded with Stacey in allowing Martin to think that Arthur was his child. He also knows Kush's history as a sexual predator, and there's always the suspicion that he and Stacey might bond over the child again - as well as Kush's part in concealing Shakil's sexual involvement with Rebecca.
But I really hate the way this show goes out of its way to present Stacey as the only adult in the room on this occasion. She took it upon herself to lecture and hector Martin into forgiving Michelle, when Martin had every reason for a lengthy displeasure in respect to how his sister had treated his child, totally disregarding Martin's feelings, and instead berating him until he finally relented, admitted he was wrong and reconciled with Michelle.
Now she's determined to shame him into reclaiming his friendship with Kush.
Kush ain't got no best mate.
Tough titties. Kush "ain't got no best mate" because Kush can't really be trusted. Kush is lucky that Martin forgave him after the fiasco with the deception around Arthur, but now, as with Michelle, Martin is shamed into bonding with Kush over a beer, even to the point that both Martin and Kush are depicted as singularly inarticulate enough to convey even the simplest of apologies. Stacey, more than adequately made an individual apology for each.
Quite frankly, I'm pretty fed up with Martin being depicted as the eternally uncouth Luddite and Kush as the emotionaly stunted thirty-something adolescent with an Oedipal complex. And, please, no more of these contrived scenes of someone on the rebound from an affair being confronted right, left and centre with loving couples.
And kudos to the show for getting some sly publicity for Redwater.
The Awful Truth. How is it that Whitney is served with a solicitor's letter informing her of Lee's intention to divorce her "for unreasonable behaviour?" Lee and Whitney haven't been married a year yet. He can't start divorce proceedings until November.
Be that as it may, the dirty girl is shocked to learn that Lee is divorcing her for "unreasonable behaviour." Like Denise, she has a hard time getting her head around the fact that she's actually responsible for something. Granted, the remaining Carters, led by widdle Mick and Johnny the plank, have mollycoddled her and reinforced the belief that she was too good for Lee and everything that happened in that marriage happened as a result of Lee's behaviour, not Whitney.
I'd say Lee's moved on. Maybe he's sought counselling. Maybe he's just had time enough away from the situation to think back on things, and maybe he now sees the way Whitney was actually a passive aggressive psychological bully, placing unwarranted and untenable demands on his character, knowing that he was a diagnosed depressive with a medical condition. Maybe he's had time enough to think of her veiled criticism of his perceived weakness in contrast to what she saw as Mick's strength, and maybe he's thought about all the times he was told simply to "man up."
Of course, Whitney has never had anyone tell her any home truths about her inappropriate behaviour before,and also, it was always Whitney who did the dumping.
Now, with Woody firmly in her sites in Mick's absence, she's reduced to seeking reassurance from Woody that she isn't "unreasonable", even going as far as admitting that she's actually "let a few people down before in her life" - yeah, bitch, like Todd, like Peter Beale, like Fatboy who actually bought you a car you never returned.
Her first thought, after the letter, is Mick, wanting to know if anyone had heard from him, saying she'd left him a message the previous week and lying to say the message was asking after Nancy. Even now, she's a calculating bitch. She'll make do with Woody until Mick returns, and that's when the real shit will hit the fan.
Linda can't come home quick enough. And Whitney deserves a smack.
Snidely Whiplash Continues. Max's manipulation of Jack continues, and I wish I could say that it was interesting,but Max continues to be the ultimate cartoon villain.
I hate the way we're supposed to perceive Jack as the wronged party here and Charlie as another villain. I especially hate the way Dot has totally immersed herself in Jack's cause now, when she bleated the loudest for Charlie being brought back into his son's life again.
I actually feel for Charlie in all of this, because he's Max's pawn, and it became clear tonight that he's uncomfortable with this situation. Jack has no rights to Matthew. It was actually acknowledged tonight that Jack was still grieving for Ronnie, but no one has mentioned either how Matthew both manifests a Jack's last link to Ronnie, but also he is a surrogate for James - hence, the reason Jack refers to him as his and Ronnie's son. Jack might be a bit deluded there.
Max obviously has something further planned for Jack, thinking that he'll lose custody of Matthew. Obviously, Ricky has a living mother - hence the rumours of a return for Sam Mitchell - but where does that leave Amy? Possibly living with Glenda?
I have to give EastEnders credit for turning the singular event of Max's revenge into a 19th Century amateur melodrama.
Nice one.
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