EastEnders is a show for children, about children. Children of all sorts, but mostly spoiled brats of all shapes and sizes.
Tonight, the show featured three of the most annoying spoiled kidults.
Poor, Dumb, Stupid, Gobshite Denise. I can say that now without the Denise Police (that sounds so much nicer than the word "troll" or "passive-aggressive Celtic bully", doesn't it?) charging in, stirring shit, interpreting the slightest nuance of opinion being something that it isn't.
Denise is a stupid, arrogant, ungrateful, pig-headed, rude, loud-mouthed shitkicker, for whom we're supposed to have scores of unremitting sympathy and adoration for her suffering and her plight. This is a character who quickly lost relevance the moment her serial killer husband was arrested, the moment Bryan Kirkwood called time on both her kids - the lazy, stuck-up older daughter and the boring, blue-stockinged younger one.
Ever since 2010, successive producers have struggled to find something for Diane Parish, yet nothing stuck. She spent the majority of her time, playing straight man to the unfunny Kim and the much-missed Zainab, when she wasn't gurning and mouthing off some sort of rude, off-hand comment to someone. I find it totally peculiar the way people fawn over her and shower her with kindness, because she treats anyone who shows her concern like a piece of shit, except Patrick,and even DTC attempted to field a storyline about elder abuse, featuring her, but no one dare impugn the character of Saint Denise.
No, not ever. The show can re-cast a truly iconic character such as Michelle Fowler and then make her a statutory rapist, but poor, saintly, misguided Denise can't be allowed to put a foot wrong. Now, this inadequate producer has stunk up the show by putting her front and centre unendingly, and her storyline is set to go on and on. Next week, she renews her romance with Kush (and there goes any bonding he ever hoped to make with Arthur). We know she'll be involved in Linda finding out about Mick's dalliance with dirty Whitney because she witnessed it; and then, the fact that she's the mother of yet another secret Mitchell son means her miserable gob is going to be glued to the show, and our television screens, forever and a day.
Tonight, we got to see Daddy Patrick come home and take a situation she created, herself, into hand, treating her like the overgrown, spoiled brat she is.
I'm a grown woman ... she whined, just after behaving like a child.
Patrick fixed her breakfast, and she demurred from eating it until he coaxed and coddled her by using reverse psychology ...
There's nothing I looked forward to more than a full English breakfast.
You know, baby doesn't want to eat, so Daddy pretends that he wants baby's food. In fact, Denise and Patrick reminded me of an old oatmeal commercial from the early 1960s in the US ...
Waaaahhhhhhhhhhhh! Denise wants her Maypo, so she gobbles down the full English, whilst Patrick has a grouse about Kim "ignoring" Denise's situation. Denise is too busy stuffing her gob to even demur and tell him that Kim actually did attempt to help her, but Denise kept spurning her efforts.
So off Patrick trots to see Kim (and the adorable Pearl), only to inform Kim about poor Denise's suffering and to rip Kim a new arsehole for not paying attention to her. I couldn't believe Patrick's words!
Didn't Kim realise Denise didn't have a job? How did she think Denise was living?
(Actually, Patrick, Kim did realise Denise was without a job. In fact, if anyone would care to recall, it was Kim, who stepped in, unbidden, and nobbled The Minute Mart area manager into retaining Denise, when he was all too ready to sack her for gobbing off against her place of employment to the local press. Kim actually stuck her neck out for Denise, who proceeded to dig a hole for herself by trash-mouthing the area manager to his face -the first step which led to her wantonly making herself unemployed ...
And actually, Patrick, Kim was constantly offering to have Denise around for meals, and one time got so totally fed up with her attitude that she told her pointedly that what she actually needed was a job, and she needed to have been looking for a job since leaving the Minute Mart. Instead, all Denise did was carry on as usual. Look for a job? It never crossed her mind. She drank at the pub, she ate at the café, she fucked Kush.
(Do you hear that, Denise-bots? She lay around on her lazy arse and fucked Kush when she should have been looking for a job? She was so nasty nice, she turned her delicate nose up at the prospect of helping him on the stall!)
She never stopped to think of her economic situation until she was down to her last tenner. As much as I love Patrick, he was wrong to condemn Kim, and the writer wrote that piece as having Kim roll over and play dead in response to all of Patrick's allegations. Kim was never out of Denise's face! She made excuses to see her all the time, yet Denise feinted, lied and put her off as unwelcome, rather than show what hardship she had inflicted on herself, rather than take any offer of help from Kim.
Even in tonight's episode, Denise refused Kim's offer of money. Why? Yes, Kim married a wealthy man, and yes, she splashes money; but the offer she made Denise tonight was simply help borne of love, compassion and concern. Call it a gift, call it a loan, but this is a way that families support each other. It's a weak family who's wealthier members can't or won't look after the vulnerable. This was after she and Kim had had as much of a heartfelt conversation as it was possible for two dimwits to have, where Kim eventually fed Denise's enormous ego by telling her how clever she was again. Denise is like Donald Trump, she gets off on being told how clever she is.
The money wasn't charity. It was given with love. Denise can take a tenner off her sexy tutor, who'll eventually ask her for a return of the loan, if he doesn't sleep with her in lieu; but she cannot take a gift of money from her sister. Instead of a heartfelt, dignified "thank you," she pushes the money back at Kim and tells her to shove it. I guess Denise is just too comfotable living vicariously as an adolescent, taking an adolescent's academic courses and being supported financially and emotionally by a frail, old pensioner.
Kim didn't make that situation worse. Denise did. She wouldn't accept any offer- no job, no housing and no hand-out - from Kim.
What a pathetically stupid woman! She can't even look after herself.
The Spoiled Brat As a Thug: Jack. I hate O'Connor's stagey art film-style motifs. We witnessed one such at the beginning of tonight's episode, where the theme and the mood of the episode was set, simply by showing Mick, wearing the pink dressing gown of the woman who's the object of his anger, whilst frantically phoning the scurvy little whore who happens to be the object of his lust - cut to Jack, moodily, hunched over his laptop perusing a site dealing with fathers' rights (except he isn't the father of the child for whom he's fighting) and finally, Saint Denise, alone in her kitchen until Patrick plays Santa Claus and returns with food.
More and more, as this manipulation by Max continues, we're seeing that Jack cares little or nothing at all for his actual children. This is all about Ronnie and Matthew representing the last vestige Jack has of this psychopath, as well as a second shot at the son he never knew, who died.
He's obsessing over the fact that Charlie is applying for residency for Matthew. Deep down, he knows the real truth - that Charlie is Matthew's father. He's even paranoid about leaving the kids with particular babysitters whilst attending a meeting with his brief. Honey is busy; Max has other plans. Finally, he corrals Rebecca into babysitting.
One phrase that keeps running throughout this narrative is particularly niggling ...
Ronnie wouldn't have wanted Charlie to have Matthew.
Honey and Billy both said this, Honey a bit too piously and Billy reinforcing the sentiment by declaring that Ronnie would never have stood for this. I hate such things. These people, who aren't saints, themselves, by a long shot, sit in judgement of a man who was forced out of his son's life and who now, only, wants to have him back where he belongs.
At the end of the day, as usual and in her newfound role as common sense adjudicator of the Square, it's Stacey who attempts to make Jack see sense. It's she who recognises why Amy and Ricky are running rampant.
They are, indeed, affected by this situation with Matthew, mostly because of Jack's behaviour. They see him spending an inordinate amount of time with Matthew, they hear him telling them how important it is that Matthew stay within the family dynamic. Everything is centred around Matthew. They might be kids, but they aren't stupid. They feel that Matthew's importance to Jack, far outweighs their own, in his life.
Amy is old enough to know that Matthew isn't her brother, and probably Ricky knows this as well. Ricky has only just bonded with Jack, himself, after the most difficult of starts, so seeing Jack work himself into a frazzle about a child who isn't their sibling has got to affect them in some way. They're acting out now in a desperate plea for Jack's attention, for a reaction, any reaction. Instead, all the get is Jack ringing some thug with a view to getting rid of Charlie permanently. Of course, he's not thinking straight, and should something like this transpire and it be revealed that Jack was behind this, he'll lose access to all his kids.
The segment was rife with obvious irony as Jack thanks Max for standing by him. One is as bad as another. Jack is willing to kill and innocent man just to retain something to which he isn't entitled.
I'm Team Charlie.
Widdle Boy Wost. Mick needs a slap. He's the worst type of spoiled brat, because when he doesn't get his way, he gets nasty and violent. Tonight he came within a hair's breadth of hurting Shirley - throwing her against a wall and hurling a glass at her.
And all because Whitney left. He's spent all night and most of the day, swigging whiskey, sulking and leaving pitiful voicemail messages on Shitney's phone. Instead of running to Bianca, she's run even further, to her skanky brother, King Drip.
May she stay there.
Instead, Mick sits, drinking and feeling sorry for himself, and blaming everyone around him for Whitney's departure - everyone, being Shirley and Linda, especially Linda. In fact, he got quite ugly about Linda.
In vino veritas ... and we saw the real Mick Carter tonight. The real Mick Carter doesn't love Linda. He loves the idea of Linda being an eternal child-like girlwoman, easily giggling, pleased by a party and playing house on a daily basis. He loves the Linda who defers to Mick, who - in her rather stupid innocence, swears that he's her best friend, even as he sidelines and passive-aggressively bullies her.
He hates and is jealous of the adult Linda, the strong Linda, who claws her way back from a humiliatingly violent rape with untold dignity. The adult Linda, who puts her priorities in the right order. Her mother, who looked after and loved her from an infant, falls ill, and Linda goes to care for her. It's not her fault that Mick hasn't told her of the maintenance repairs to do on the pub. He's told her nothing of Lee's debt, which - I'll wager - wasn't half as much as the payday loan Mick took out to get her and Elaine home on a special flight from Spain.
He hates the fact that, for once in her life, Linda has had to put someone before Mick. He even blurted out the fact that Linda didn't put her family first, and then that she didn't put him first. It took Shirley to remind him - the mother who had abandoned him -that Elaine, the woman who took him in, raised him, taught him a trade, gave him a home, financially supported him and his children until he was nearly forty years old, and he resents his wife putting her mother before him in her hour of need? Even Shirley, who has no love for Elaine, recognised this.
And in truth, although Shirley doesn't particularly care for Linda, she backed her to the hilt in dealing with Whitney, and Shirley was right. However much Mick might blame himself for what happened between him and Whitney, she pretty much made herself available around him, caught up on his moment of vulnerability and played him, in the process, alienating him from his son and planting doubts in his mind about Linda. Shirley was totally right in assessing that Whitney successively wended her way through various men in the Carter family, and even though Johnny is gay, there was a time when she hopelessly fancied him. Even now, she was playing faux Linda around him.
Shirley was right to kick her out. Mick getting involved with her would have ripped the family apart - his son's wife. In the end, after he vents his frustrations in a physical attempt at violence against his own mother, he's reduced to a blubbing, babbling wreck, whining that he doesn't know himself anymore.
Mick is a sham, a man of straw. Everything bad which happened after Linda left is down to him and his immaturity. He really is a despicable excuse for a human.
His constant refrain throughout the night was the rejoinder: - But it ain't my pub, innit?
He sounded like a whiny, little bitch, and Shirley should have slapped him. I hope Linda does. Instead, she'll probably mother him.
What a despicable human being!
Lauren's Pregnant. And it's Steven's. Clock her face when he shows her the chocolates. If there's ever a baby that won't be born, it's this one. This is going to be a tale of a secret abortion, about which Steven will find out and then the shit will hit the fan.
Speaking of shit, too much information about Ian's change of diet. Enough of the silly sitcom surrounding diabetes.
The Rest. I'm not the biggest Honey fan - I hate her bitchy, passive-aggressiveness - but I like Billy and the real family issue and the comedy moment about settling Will into the flat, as well as trying to have an intimate moment of their own. It was genuinely funny when Billy, in a role play with his frock coat and nothing underneath, was asked by Will if he were going to work. It's nice to see Billy happy, which means that something bad is about to happen.
And Ben was simply too callous. Calling Abi "boring Branning?" This is the girl he led on in making her believe that he loved her. He cheated on her with Paul and various Grindr males, giving her an STD and then humiliating her in her desperation to hold onto a relationship he used as a front. In this instance, he deserved a smack from Abi for being such a callow cur.
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