Wasn't Sean O'Connor the man who was brought in to sex up The Archers? Although a lot of their hardcore listeners disagreed with his EastEnderification of that simple tale of country folk, he gave us the crackingly realistic tale of Helen and Tom and domestic abuse.
Was it on the strength of that, alone, that he got EastEnders? I admit, he had his task cut out for him because the fanbois Treadwell-Collins and Lamb had treated the show as if it were their own private toy and, thus, inflicted any manner of sensationalist fan fiction onto the viewing public. The streets crawled with murderers, the show's oldest and most-established characters were entwined in a soul-destroying storyline from which none of them will ever recover. Even Dot killed her son.
O'Connor's task was to normalise EastEnders again, but he's taken on making it his personal crusade to depict the show as a victim of globalisation and corporate take-overs, the sort of which rips apart the heart of the so-called "community."
Teenagers go o a drunken rampage in the home of a young girl whose father almost lost his life to alcoholism. They spike her drink and film her veering out of control, vomiting bile and blood, and laughing about it, many of those scenes, undoubtedly making it online. This is the de-sensitised price of friendship these days. Her stepmother and her shallow, callow sexual predator of a best friend, a woman who's committed statutory rape in another country, sit in a near-empty pub (again, another victim of the break-up of society), swilling free wine and bemoaning the fact that they're middle-aged and pushing fifty. And the local gobshite, who voluntarily quit her job after being called on the carpet for her attitude and temper, instead of instantaneously trying to find other employment, spends weeks romping the bed with a man young enough to be her son, and "studying" for a GCSE course, the reading list of which rivals a first-year uni's lit class, and is now reduced to scavenging through refuse bins in the back of her former place of employment, which will surely sully that expensive manicure which should soon be showing signs of its owner being unable to maintain their upkeep.
And throughout it all, we watch the villain of the piece slither his tentacles around whatever used to be iconic pillars of life in the Square until it crumbles. He's not even above manipulating members of his own family, including his grief-stricken brother.
All of this, I suppose, is supposed to make us more socially aware and be concerned of the plight facing us.
All it really is is badly-written, badly-researched and, for the most part, badly enacted drama about people whom a lot of us barely find likable.
The two principal male leads are, each, on extended breaks. One will leave, again, almost immediately he returns, whenever that is, because he'll have another pantomime commitment to fulfill. There are rumours abounding that the second may not even renew his contract.
The show is into a repetitive cycle of overlong, circular and repetitive storylines, when it's not heaping one storyline after another on particular characters and, in the absence of all else, continue to feature three characters, exclusively, one of whom is over-exposed, the other unlikable and the third unwatchable.
This is a relatively easy summer looming for EastEnders. There are no Olympics, no European Championships, no World Cup to necessitate fiddling with schedules, but let's watch and see how many viewers reach the end of their tether, leave for holiday and don't switch on anymore.
Who would want to tempt fate? Obviously, Sean O'Connor.
The best parts about this episode were Honey's news and young Bleu Landau's Dennis.
The Wages of Sin: Pride Goeth Before the Fall. (Sigh) ... More of this, folks...
You know, when a person quits his or her job, they have to wait 26 weeks - that's roughly 6-and-a-half months - before they can claim any type of employment benefit. The Department of Work and Pensions maintains the correct attitude that if a person is sacked from a job - as in made redundant, rather than being sacked for gross misconduct or the like, it's really not the employee's fault, and he or she is entitled to benefits provided from the monies paid into your National Insurance account - which is a euphemistic way of referring to the dole.
However, when someone voluntarily makes themselves unemployed, before the government steps in, the attitude is "you walked away from gainful employment of your own volition, now you find yourself some work, also, of your own volition".
Most people who quit their jobs realise this, and they don't let any grass grow under their feet in trying to find other employment as soon as they possibly can.
Did Denise?
No, she didn't. In fact, she didn't even remotely try. She has a house, for which she, unbelievably, managed to get a mortgage, on the basis of her minimum wage zero-hours' contract and Patrick's state pension; she has to pay gas and electric bills, and - most importantly - she has to eat.
But after losing her job, she lolligagged about, did her studying, ranted and raved about how the community - about which she had never given a rat's arse before - was going to pot, yelled at a local official, and romped the beds with Kush. A lot.
Now, she's down to her last tenner, and when she has to decide whether to eat or spend the remaining money she has on a Tube fare in order to attend her GCSE class, we're treated to some uproariously and hilariously incongruent scenes that were meant to be tragic, but just came across as being contrived, unbelievable and amazingly unsympathetic.
Denise, so desperate, she contemplates picking up Jack's discarded chips from the Tube station floor and eating them. (Did she? We'll never know). Denise, lurking about the wheelie bins in back of the Minute Mart and delving into the bin bags in search of two dodgy sandwiches Honey threw out, which had been "hanging around" the cooler section all week. (All week?! Stores usually don't display such items for more than two days before they're taken out of circulation).
What's hilarious and totally unsympathetic about this is the fact that Denise had ample time after her sacking, at least, to attempt to find gainful employment. She should have been knocking on doors around the Square or even going further afield, because, I daresay, the newspaper article about her slagging off her place of employment and assaulting a minor would have been read by many, and many employers would have thought long and hard before hiring someone whose reputation preceded them. She'd have been established as someone with a constant moan about company work and employment policies, a trouble-maker, who would just as easily lash out when provoked than not.
Instead, we saw her go about her days as if nothing had changed - drinking in the pub, having breakfast or a coffee in the café, fucking Kush, arguing with Kim, fucking Kush, blowing off Carmel, fucking Kush. Now, all of a sudden, she's reduced to scavenging through rubbish bins - the stuff of tramps from the Great Depression. Worse, she won't tell anyone about her problem.
Look, I'm skint. I can't go for that drink in the pub.
Kush offers to take her to dinner - I mean, to pay for dinner - at Fargo's, and she refuses. Why? At least, she would have got a square meal, even taken home a doggie bag. Kim invites her over for dinner, and she'd rather argue than accept a meal.
Pride is one thing, but there comes a time when pride crosses the thin line that separates it from someone with a singular lack of common sense and heaps of arrogance.
Poverty is certainly a timely subject in the worlds of post-Brexit Britain, Trump and Marine Le Pen, and poverty and hunger ought to be relevant topics; but Denise is not an isolated character. She's someone with strong family connections and a sister who's self-obsessed,but who is also capable of great compassion, at least, for her immediate family, and who has a wealthy husband, who'd be only too happy to make sure Denise (and Patrick) have enough to eat, if they find themselves in difficulties. Vincent would probably have even given her a job. Instead, he's offered employment to Tracey,who didn't let grass grow under her feet after summarily losing a job she'd had for almost 30 years.
We've seen the Millers, benefits' cheats, reduced to shoplifting when their benefits were suspended. We've seen Bianca accepting label-less tins for her children only to find out the contents were animal food. But these people were genuinely poor. Storylines about the plights of people like this could eke out sympathy because their plights are believable, and they were shown to be genuinely poor - misguided in their priorities,but suffering nevertheless. But this is someone who is the architect of her own misfortune, who threw away a job (from from which she was sacked previously for pilfering) wantonly and flew in the face of an old friend who was genuinely trying to help her. Rather than suffer a few lessons in anger management and accept criticism of her attitude, she flung the job away, and yet not once, until recently, did she even think to look for work.
Instead, she rang the place where she had the interview when she heard nothing, and berated the interviewer for not ringing to tell her she didn't get the job. (Pssst! Memo to Denise: In low-grade job situations like that, when they don't call, you didn't get the job. Reference Michelle, in a similar situation, who at least had enough nous to know that if she hadn't have heard from the prospective employer by a certain hour, she didn't get the job. No phone calls, demanding to know information, no beratings, just resignation. Of course, that's because Michelle, another one who's the architect of her own misfortune, is living off the Bank of Phil and Sharon; but neither Denise's well-off relatives, nor her toyboy lover with his own business, would see her starve.
And finally, a word about Kush ... has anyone noticed how literally infantilised he's become? He was always thus around Carmel, particularly when he was married to Shabnam, and Carmel was doing her creepy Kushie thing, leering at him and making him look and react like a recalcitrant adolescent. He grew up a bit after that, especially after having that home truths' lecture from Tamwar in light of the catastrophe with Nancy; but since he's been together with Carmel, the little adolescent boy act is back, all "ninja" references and such - except now, he veers from acting that way around Carmel to acting that way around Denise. Why? Because Denise often talks to him the way she would a child, to such an extent that today, when she didn't, he automatically acted as such.
This isn't the first time that EastEnders have gone about infantilising men. Jane often treated Ian like a recalcitrant adolescent. Sharon baby-talked Dennis Snr, and did the same with Phil (and is now doing much the same with Carmel). Stacey treats Martin like an idiot child. And as much as Linda was always infantilised, now everyone is protecting Mick, like the fragile flower he is.
That's one statement, but the fact is that the women who are meting out this treatment, are, themselves, so man-dependent it makes you want to gag a maggot.
The Wages of Sin: Demon Alcohol. Hands up, anyone who didn't see this storyline coming?
You knew the moment those cartoon bullies - you know, the women masquerading as fifteen year-olds - sussed that Louise's father was a recovering alcoholic and that Louise was meticulously opposed even to contemplating drinking at all, enough to lecture her irresponsible stepmother about her drunken behaviour, that they were going to plan something alcohol-related.
Well, someone's now in deep, deep shit. Cop this:-
And this:-
And, sorry, the old Sharon wouldn't have tolerated that smart-arsed remark that the offensive racial stereotype that is Sniggle, who reminds me more and more of a braying, mentally deficient mule, made to Sharon when she arrived at the Mitchell house. The old Sharon, even Phil, would have immediately put her in her sorry place and demanded respect.
And of course, Cartoon Keegan was there filming everything and laughing uproariously. I'm sorry, I don't want to know any backstories of any of these kids, because they are rampant cartoons. The less I see of any of them, the better. He has rampant, ingrained misogyny, and for a moment, I thought this episode would lead to the cartoon bullies getting Louise drunk and Keegan taking her upstairs and raping her, since he's been all out for humiliating her in the past.
The entire escapade has been filmed on a score of smartphones, and once the police know the names of the kids in attendance at that party, it's easy-peasy to subpaeona those phones and get all the evidence there is that Sniggle and Snaggle were behind spiking her drink, as well as there being underaged drinking in an unsupervised household as well.
And then there's Travis. Something tells me that if this leads to criminal charges, Travis would be at the forefront of giving evidence. He may have been drinking, himself, but he knew when to quit, and he was suss enough to realise that Louise was in trouble and that no one there, above all, her so-called "besties", were even looking after her.
(Of course, we all knew that Louise getting into a shit load of trouble would eventually end up with Rebecca coming to her rescue. That was a given and all).
Given the fact that Louise is still, literally, a child, and the fact that, whilst those two shitfuckers stayed totally sober, Louise probably drank the contents of an entire bottle of vodka mixed in her drinks, she's suffering from alcohol poisoning. She had never drunk alcohol before, and so even a small amount - cf: she felt strange after drinking, rather guzzling, the first drink - would have an effect. Also, she hadn't eaten, as Snaggle helpfully pointed out, which meant the alcohol irritated her stomach lining and caused her to vomit blood.
The cartoon bullies, who followed her as she became over-heated and staggered into the street, gasping for air, filmed, taunted and laughed at her, until she collapsed, had what appeared to be a small seizure and was rendered unconscious.
Also, it looks as if Ben and Jay may have been having some drinking hijinks,themselves, to allow Dennis to sneak back to the house. I get the impression that Dennis is someone not impressed by drink. Remember when Michelle and Prestonovich left him home alone whilst they went out to dinner, and he sampled some of Michelle's booze and grimaced at the taste? He was immediately in tune to something being wrong with Louise. You'd have thought Dennis must have had a phone on him and would have rung Sharon, even if he didn't know where she was - someone needs to ring her now that the ambulance is on its way.
Sharon, as we know, was sitting with Michelle in the near-empty Vic, enjoying Woody's hospitality of wine and snacks and talking about nothing - except Michelle to admit that she was jealous of Sharon and Phil contemplating buying property in Italy. (There's Steve McFadden's panto breaks explained away now forever. Sharon and Phil will just up stakes every January and wing it off to Italy, leaving Louise and Dennis under the care of Michelle or Ben and Jay or Ian or whoever happens to be around.)
This should hit home hard to Sharon, considering her behaviour the other evening with Michelle and considering that she was out boozing, again, with Michelle (and at Sharon's expense), whilst Louise was being poisoned back at home.
The plus side of this segment was that I liked seeing the actual genuine affection between Sharon and Louise, and also the rapport between Louise and Dennis, who also seem genuinely fond of each other.
You know what's missing now? The return of Hurricane Lisa to wreak vengeance on the Mitchells for her child. But that will never happen, unless SOC attempts another cack-handed re-cast.
Although NuMichelle is settling down, she still isn't Michelle for me, and she's continuously whining - tonight about the implied ageism in the fact that her main competition for the job she didn't get was from twenty year-olds. Michelle misses being twenty-five again, with her life ahead of her. When Michelle was twenty-five, she had a nine year-old daughter by Sharon's father and was pregnant by Sharon's ex-husband. The very fact that Sharon can even sit at the same table with this woman, especially after she'd raised a hand to Sharon's child, simply makes Sharon the ultimate Queen of the Doormats.
I'm still liking Woody, and the fact that he's now identifying himself with Fi's intentions, but being the ultimate diplomat in manipulating Sharon and Michelle into patronising the Vic again. Curious that Michelle, who, in her Susan Tullied youth, was a mainstay of what was then known as the Walford community, wouldn't have sullied her plimsolls if it meant breaking a boycott, even if the object of that boycott was the Vic, itself, now thought nothing of meeting Sharon in the Vic, and it was Sharon, who reminded her of the boycott.
Woody was clever in manoeuvering the situation, reminding Sharon that the boycott of the pub was actually hurting Mick and Linda, who were Sharon's friends, a remark which earned Sharon the line of the night:-
Linda's me best friend ... well, me second best friend.
That's twice now that she's referred to Linda as such, this time, in Michelle's presence. Michelle isn't Sharon's best friend. She's become Sharon's obsession - why, I've yet to fathom. This goes beyond friendship. If my best friend had slept with my father and had a child, slept with my ex- and had a child, and then smacked my own child, she wouldn't be my best friend; so I cannot understand the weird,dysfunctional attachment - especially since Michelle needs Sharon's goodwill because she's subbing her financially, which entitles her to make fun of Sharon behind her back, disabuse her hospitality in her absence and assault her children.
But then, EastEnders was always big on dysfunctional relationships.
And finally, this segment served up just how pitifully naive Louise was. I actually felt quite sorry for her. As someone else pointed out, she's so desperate to think of these girls as her friends, on the one hand, because she's seen what they were capable of and has gauged their meanness in their treatment of Rebecca, and on the other hand, it's been implied that if she were not accepted by these girls as one of them, she'd have no friends.
For all she's lived with an alcoholic father, she's quite sheltered, and she genuinely believed this was going to be a sleepover, even going to the trouble of baking a cake for Sniggle the deficiente Donkey's birthday. The callous way that bitch threw out the remark that some boys in the kitchen had "demolished" the cake, would have resonated with Louise, were she not being plied with drink by the equally ludicrous, lined-faced Snaggle.
Snaggle, another twentysomething, acts like someone portraying the way a teenager should behave, with her phony, little wide-mouthed smiles and her giggle and jumping up and down. The school uniforms don't help.
However, the cartoon bullies, Keegan included, who continuously filmed the whole ordeal, are in deep shit now. Because they've committed a crime.
Come on, Sean O'Connor, you researched Helen's and Rob's tale enough, let's see some legal action rid the screen of these walking shitsacks. I can hear their cries now about the whole thing being "just a joke". Well, the joke they played on Louise was far worse than anything they did to Rebecca. I hope the judge has a laugh when they're being sent to YOP.
The Wages of Sin: Vengeance Is Mine Saith the Lord Max. It's a slow burner, but I'm enjoying Max's manipulations. It dawned on me watching this episode, that Max is getting back at everyone and everything who's wronged him in his life.
Now we see the way is paved for the return of Charlie Cotton, however brief that stay may be. Of course, Dot hasn't been in contact with Charlie, although she's tried, especially when Ronnie died, but Max the Maker of Miracles, can in his magic job, trace Charlie.
Somehow, the chat with Dot - and Dot, along with Carmel, has become yet another of Max's useful idiot - he manipulated into insinuating that the difficulties Jack was experiencing came from having one extra kid around, a kid who just happened not to be his kid. Max even admitted to Dot that he, himself, would have trouble dealing with that situation. Of course, Dot knows full well that Jack and Matthew have bonded and that Jack loves the child as his own. Matthew is his last link to Ronnie. Now, Max has subtly planted the idea in her head that maybe it's time Charlie reappeared to reclaim his son, something, surreptitiously, Dot's wanted all along - but mainly, she's just wanted Charlie to come back.
(I actually really like Charlie, and I look forward to his return).
Of course, Max would have a long-buried bone to pick with Jack. Jack was his father's favourite, and Jim often played Jack off against Max. Jack also didn't lift a finger or voice any support for Max when he was unjustly imprisoned; in fact, he was heard to say that Max being imprisoned was exactly what he deserved.
For all he may have been reluctant at first, I think he's also now fully on board with Lauren being apart of his revenge. He's not forgotten how Lauren betrayed him. Remember his final words to her when he was being taken away by the police?
You're dead to me.
He's setting Lauren up for a mighty fall, and she's silly enough to fall for it. She was wittering away in the pub about her new salary, and dutiful Max advises her to save. She won't,but she should begin to pay Ian some rent. I would say that Max was exactly the reason Lauren got the job - you got the impression that he okay'd Josh's intention to hire her, and then got cold feet before being put back in his place. Also, Josh's hiring Lauren is a good way of ensuring Max is kept on side.
This is going to be very interesting.
Was it on the strength of that, alone, that he got EastEnders? I admit, he had his task cut out for him because the fanbois Treadwell-Collins and Lamb had treated the show as if it were their own private toy and, thus, inflicted any manner of sensationalist fan fiction onto the viewing public. The streets crawled with murderers, the show's oldest and most-established characters were entwined in a soul-destroying storyline from which none of them will ever recover. Even Dot killed her son.
O'Connor's task was to normalise EastEnders again, but he's taken on making it his personal crusade to depict the show as a victim of globalisation and corporate take-overs, the sort of which rips apart the heart of the so-called "community."
Teenagers go o a drunken rampage in the home of a young girl whose father almost lost his life to alcoholism. They spike her drink and film her veering out of control, vomiting bile and blood, and laughing about it, many of those scenes, undoubtedly making it online. This is the de-sensitised price of friendship these days. Her stepmother and her shallow, callow sexual predator of a best friend, a woman who's committed statutory rape in another country, sit in a near-empty pub (again, another victim of the break-up of society), swilling free wine and bemoaning the fact that they're middle-aged and pushing fifty. And the local gobshite, who voluntarily quit her job after being called on the carpet for her attitude and temper, instead of instantaneously trying to find other employment, spends weeks romping the bed with a man young enough to be her son, and "studying" for a GCSE course, the reading list of which rivals a first-year uni's lit class, and is now reduced to scavenging through refuse bins in the back of her former place of employment, which will surely sully that expensive manicure which should soon be showing signs of its owner being unable to maintain their upkeep.
And throughout it all, we watch the villain of the piece slither his tentacles around whatever used to be iconic pillars of life in the Square until it crumbles. He's not even above manipulating members of his own family, including his grief-stricken brother.
All of this, I suppose, is supposed to make us more socially aware and be concerned of the plight facing us.
All it really is is badly-written, badly-researched and, for the most part, badly enacted drama about people whom a lot of us barely find likable.
The two principal male leads are, each, on extended breaks. One will leave, again, almost immediately he returns, whenever that is, because he'll have another pantomime commitment to fulfill. There are rumours abounding that the second may not even renew his contract.
The show is into a repetitive cycle of overlong, circular and repetitive storylines, when it's not heaping one storyline after another on particular characters and, in the absence of all else, continue to feature three characters, exclusively, one of whom is over-exposed, the other unlikable and the third unwatchable.
This is a relatively easy summer looming for EastEnders. There are no Olympics, no European Championships, no World Cup to necessitate fiddling with schedules, but let's watch and see how many viewers reach the end of their tether, leave for holiday and don't switch on anymore.
Who would want to tempt fate? Obviously, Sean O'Connor.
The best parts about this episode were Honey's news and young Bleu Landau's Dennis.
The Wages of Sin: Pride Goeth Before the Fall. (Sigh) ... More of this, folks...
However, when someone voluntarily makes themselves unemployed, before the government steps in, the attitude is "you walked away from gainful employment of your own volition, now you find yourself some work, also, of your own volition".
Most people who quit their jobs realise this, and they don't let any grass grow under their feet in trying to find other employment as soon as they possibly can.
Did Denise?
No, she didn't. In fact, she didn't even remotely try. She has a house, for which she, unbelievably, managed to get a mortgage, on the basis of her minimum wage zero-hours' contract and Patrick's state pension; she has to pay gas and electric bills, and - most importantly - she has to eat.
But after losing her job, she lolligagged about, did her studying, ranted and raved about how the community - about which she had never given a rat's arse before - was going to pot, yelled at a local official, and romped the beds with Kush. A lot.
Now, she's down to her last tenner, and when she has to decide whether to eat or spend the remaining money she has on a Tube fare in order to attend her GCSE class, we're treated to some uproariously and hilariously incongruent scenes that were meant to be tragic, but just came across as being contrived, unbelievable and amazingly unsympathetic.
Denise, so desperate, she contemplates picking up Jack's discarded chips from the Tube station floor and eating them. (Did she? We'll never know). Denise, lurking about the wheelie bins in back of the Minute Mart and delving into the bin bags in search of two dodgy sandwiches Honey threw out, which had been "hanging around" the cooler section all week. (All week?! Stores usually don't display such items for more than two days before they're taken out of circulation).
What's hilarious and totally unsympathetic about this is the fact that Denise had ample time after her sacking, at least, to attempt to find gainful employment. She should have been knocking on doors around the Square or even going further afield, because, I daresay, the newspaper article about her slagging off her place of employment and assaulting a minor would have been read by many, and many employers would have thought long and hard before hiring someone whose reputation preceded them. She'd have been established as someone with a constant moan about company work and employment policies, a trouble-maker, who would just as easily lash out when provoked than not.
Instead, we saw her go about her days as if nothing had changed - drinking in the pub, having breakfast or a coffee in the café, fucking Kush, arguing with Kim, fucking Kush, blowing off Carmel, fucking Kush. Now, all of a sudden, she's reduced to scavenging through rubbish bins - the stuff of tramps from the Great Depression. Worse, she won't tell anyone about her problem.
Look, I'm skint. I can't go for that drink in the pub.
Kush offers to take her to dinner - I mean, to pay for dinner - at Fargo's, and she refuses. Why? At least, she would have got a square meal, even taken home a doggie bag. Kim invites her over for dinner, and she'd rather argue than accept a meal.
Pride is one thing, but there comes a time when pride crosses the thin line that separates it from someone with a singular lack of common sense and heaps of arrogance.
Poverty is certainly a timely subject in the worlds of post-Brexit Britain, Trump and Marine Le Pen, and poverty and hunger ought to be relevant topics; but Denise is not an isolated character. She's someone with strong family connections and a sister who's self-obsessed,but who is also capable of great compassion, at least, for her immediate family, and who has a wealthy husband, who'd be only too happy to make sure Denise (and Patrick) have enough to eat, if they find themselves in difficulties. Vincent would probably have even given her a job. Instead, he's offered employment to Tracey,who didn't let grass grow under her feet after summarily losing a job she'd had for almost 30 years.
We've seen the Millers, benefits' cheats, reduced to shoplifting when their benefits were suspended. We've seen Bianca accepting label-less tins for her children only to find out the contents were animal food. But these people were genuinely poor. Storylines about the plights of people like this could eke out sympathy because their plights are believable, and they were shown to be genuinely poor - misguided in their priorities,but suffering nevertheless. But this is someone who is the architect of her own misfortune, who threw away a job (from from which she was sacked previously for pilfering) wantonly and flew in the face of an old friend who was genuinely trying to help her. Rather than suffer a few lessons in anger management and accept criticism of her attitude, she flung the job away, and yet not once, until recently, did she even think to look for work.
Instead, she rang the place where she had the interview when she heard nothing, and berated the interviewer for not ringing to tell her she didn't get the job. (Pssst! Memo to Denise: In low-grade job situations like that, when they don't call, you didn't get the job. Reference Michelle, in a similar situation, who at least had enough nous to know that if she hadn't have heard from the prospective employer by a certain hour, she didn't get the job. No phone calls, demanding to know information, no beratings, just resignation. Of course, that's because Michelle, another one who's the architect of her own misfortune, is living off the Bank of Phil and Sharon; but neither Denise's well-off relatives, nor her toyboy lover with his own business, would see her starve.
And finally, a word about Kush ... has anyone noticed how literally infantilised he's become? He was always thus around Carmel, particularly when he was married to Shabnam, and Carmel was doing her creepy Kushie thing, leering at him and making him look and react like a recalcitrant adolescent. He grew up a bit after that, especially after having that home truths' lecture from Tamwar in light of the catastrophe with Nancy; but since he's been together with Carmel, the little adolescent boy act is back, all "ninja" references and such - except now, he veers from acting that way around Carmel to acting that way around Denise. Why? Because Denise often talks to him the way she would a child, to such an extent that today, when she didn't, he automatically acted as such.
This isn't the first time that EastEnders have gone about infantilising men. Jane often treated Ian like a recalcitrant adolescent. Sharon baby-talked Dennis Snr, and did the same with Phil (and is now doing much the same with Carmel). Stacey treats Martin like an idiot child. And as much as Linda was always infantilised, now everyone is protecting Mick, like the fragile flower he is.
That's one statement, but the fact is that the women who are meting out this treatment, are, themselves, so man-dependent it makes you want to gag a maggot.
The Wages of Sin: Demon Alcohol. Hands up, anyone who didn't see this storyline coming?
You knew the moment those cartoon bullies - you know, the women masquerading as fifteen year-olds - sussed that Louise's father was a recovering alcoholic and that Louise was meticulously opposed even to contemplating drinking at all, enough to lecture her irresponsible stepmother about her drunken behaviour, that they were going to plan something alcohol-related.
Well, someone's now in deep, deep shit. Cop this:-
To spike a drink means to put alcohol or drugs into someone's drink without their knowledge or permission. ... Drink spiking is illegal, whatever the intent. This means that slipping alcohol or drugs into a friend's drink as a joke is against thelaw. People who spike drinks can be charged, fined or jailed.
And this:-
Drink spiking may be done with the intent of stealing from the victim, assaulting the victim or as a prank.
Whatever the reason, drink spiking is illegal and can result in a maximum of 10 years in prison for anyone who is found guilty.So there you have it. Sniggle and Snaggle have committed a full-on, in-your-face fucking crime. They can be arrested, jailed, prosecuted and tried. Louise knows, and Travis knows, and everyone at that impromptu party knows that Sniggle and Snaggle sneaked drink in and spiked Louise's drink. Sharon wants to get her arse in gear, go to the police and get Ritchie Scott to put the fear of hell and YOP into these girls.
And, sorry, the old Sharon wouldn't have tolerated that smart-arsed remark that the offensive racial stereotype that is Sniggle, who reminds me more and more of a braying, mentally deficient mule, made to Sharon when she arrived at the Mitchell house. The old Sharon, even Phil, would have immediately put her in her sorry place and demanded respect.
And of course, Cartoon Keegan was there filming everything and laughing uproariously. I'm sorry, I don't want to know any backstories of any of these kids, because they are rampant cartoons. The less I see of any of them, the better. He has rampant, ingrained misogyny, and for a moment, I thought this episode would lead to the cartoon bullies getting Louise drunk and Keegan taking her upstairs and raping her, since he's been all out for humiliating her in the past.
The entire escapade has been filmed on a score of smartphones, and once the police know the names of the kids in attendance at that party, it's easy-peasy to subpaeona those phones and get all the evidence there is that Sniggle and Snaggle were behind spiking her drink, as well as there being underaged drinking in an unsupervised household as well.
And then there's Travis. Something tells me that if this leads to criminal charges, Travis would be at the forefront of giving evidence. He may have been drinking, himself, but he knew when to quit, and he was suss enough to realise that Louise was in trouble and that no one there, above all, her so-called "besties", were even looking after her.
(Of course, we all knew that Louise getting into a shit load of trouble would eventually end up with Rebecca coming to her rescue. That was a given and all).
Given the fact that Louise is still, literally, a child, and the fact that, whilst those two shitfuckers stayed totally sober, Louise probably drank the contents of an entire bottle of vodka mixed in her drinks, she's suffering from alcohol poisoning. She had never drunk alcohol before, and so even a small amount - cf: she felt strange after drinking, rather guzzling, the first drink - would have an effect. Also, she hadn't eaten, as Snaggle helpfully pointed out, which meant the alcohol irritated her stomach lining and caused her to vomit blood.
The cartoon bullies, who followed her as she became over-heated and staggered into the street, gasping for air, filmed, taunted and laughed at her, until she collapsed, had what appeared to be a small seizure and was rendered unconscious.
Also, it looks as if Ben and Jay may have been having some drinking hijinks,themselves, to allow Dennis to sneak back to the house. I get the impression that Dennis is someone not impressed by drink. Remember when Michelle and Prestonovich left him home alone whilst they went out to dinner, and he sampled some of Michelle's booze and grimaced at the taste? He was immediately in tune to something being wrong with Louise. You'd have thought Dennis must have had a phone on him and would have rung Sharon, even if he didn't know where she was - someone needs to ring her now that the ambulance is on its way.
Sharon, as we know, was sitting with Michelle in the near-empty Vic, enjoying Woody's hospitality of wine and snacks and talking about nothing - except Michelle to admit that she was jealous of Sharon and Phil contemplating buying property in Italy. (There's Steve McFadden's panto breaks explained away now forever. Sharon and Phil will just up stakes every January and wing it off to Italy, leaving Louise and Dennis under the care of Michelle or Ben and Jay or Ian or whoever happens to be around.)
This should hit home hard to Sharon, considering her behaviour the other evening with Michelle and considering that she was out boozing, again, with Michelle (and at Sharon's expense), whilst Louise was being poisoned back at home.
The plus side of this segment was that I liked seeing the actual genuine affection between Sharon and Louise, and also the rapport between Louise and Dennis, who also seem genuinely fond of each other.
You know what's missing now? The return of Hurricane Lisa to wreak vengeance on the Mitchells for her child. But that will never happen, unless SOC attempts another cack-handed re-cast.
Although NuMichelle is settling down, she still isn't Michelle for me, and she's continuously whining - tonight about the implied ageism in the fact that her main competition for the job she didn't get was from twenty year-olds. Michelle misses being twenty-five again, with her life ahead of her. When Michelle was twenty-five, she had a nine year-old daughter by Sharon's father and was pregnant by Sharon's ex-husband. The very fact that Sharon can even sit at the same table with this woman, especially after she'd raised a hand to Sharon's child, simply makes Sharon the ultimate Queen of the Doormats.
I'm still liking Woody, and the fact that he's now identifying himself with Fi's intentions, but being the ultimate diplomat in manipulating Sharon and Michelle into patronising the Vic again. Curious that Michelle, who, in her Susan Tullied youth, was a mainstay of what was then known as the Walford community, wouldn't have sullied her plimsolls if it meant breaking a boycott, even if the object of that boycott was the Vic, itself, now thought nothing of meeting Sharon in the Vic, and it was Sharon, who reminded her of the boycott.
Woody was clever in manoeuvering the situation, reminding Sharon that the boycott of the pub was actually hurting Mick and Linda, who were Sharon's friends, a remark which earned Sharon the line of the night:-
Linda's me best friend ... well, me second best friend.
That's twice now that she's referred to Linda as such, this time, in Michelle's presence. Michelle isn't Sharon's best friend. She's become Sharon's obsession - why, I've yet to fathom. This goes beyond friendship. If my best friend had slept with my father and had a child, slept with my ex- and had a child, and then smacked my own child, she wouldn't be my best friend; so I cannot understand the weird,dysfunctional attachment - especially since Michelle needs Sharon's goodwill because she's subbing her financially, which entitles her to make fun of Sharon behind her back, disabuse her hospitality in her absence and assault her children.
But then, EastEnders was always big on dysfunctional relationships.
And finally, this segment served up just how pitifully naive Louise was. I actually felt quite sorry for her. As someone else pointed out, she's so desperate to think of these girls as her friends, on the one hand, because she's seen what they were capable of and has gauged their meanness in their treatment of Rebecca, and on the other hand, it's been implied that if she were not accepted by these girls as one of them, she'd have no friends.
For all she's lived with an alcoholic father, she's quite sheltered, and she genuinely believed this was going to be a sleepover, even going to the trouble of baking a cake for Sniggle the deficiente Donkey's birthday. The callous way that bitch threw out the remark that some boys in the kitchen had "demolished" the cake, would have resonated with Louise, were she not being plied with drink by the equally ludicrous, lined-faced Snaggle.
Snaggle, another twentysomething, acts like someone portraying the way a teenager should behave, with her phony, little wide-mouthed smiles and her giggle and jumping up and down. The school uniforms don't help.
However, the cartoon bullies, Keegan included, who continuously filmed the whole ordeal, are in deep shit now. Because they've committed a crime.
Come on, Sean O'Connor, you researched Helen's and Rob's tale enough, let's see some legal action rid the screen of these walking shitsacks. I can hear their cries now about the whole thing being "just a joke". Well, the joke they played on Louise was far worse than anything they did to Rebecca. I hope the judge has a laugh when they're being sent to YOP.
The Wages of Sin: Vengeance Is Mine Saith the Lord Max. It's a slow burner, but I'm enjoying Max's manipulations. It dawned on me watching this episode, that Max is getting back at everyone and everything who's wronged him in his life.
Now we see the way is paved for the return of Charlie Cotton, however brief that stay may be. Of course, Dot hasn't been in contact with Charlie, although she's tried, especially when Ronnie died, but Max the Maker of Miracles, can in his magic job, trace Charlie.
Somehow, the chat with Dot - and Dot, along with Carmel, has become yet another of Max's useful idiot - he manipulated into insinuating that the difficulties Jack was experiencing came from having one extra kid around, a kid who just happened not to be his kid. Max even admitted to Dot that he, himself, would have trouble dealing with that situation. Of course, Dot knows full well that Jack and Matthew have bonded and that Jack loves the child as his own. Matthew is his last link to Ronnie. Now, Max has subtly planted the idea in her head that maybe it's time Charlie reappeared to reclaim his son, something, surreptitiously, Dot's wanted all along - but mainly, she's just wanted Charlie to come back.
(I actually really like Charlie, and I look forward to his return).
Of course, Max would have a long-buried bone to pick with Jack. Jack was his father's favourite, and Jim often played Jack off against Max. Jack also didn't lift a finger or voice any support for Max when he was unjustly imprisoned; in fact, he was heard to say that Max being imprisoned was exactly what he deserved.
For all he may have been reluctant at first, I think he's also now fully on board with Lauren being apart of his revenge. He's not forgotten how Lauren betrayed him. Remember his final words to her when he was being taken away by the police?
You're dead to me.
He's setting Lauren up for a mighty fall, and she's silly enough to fall for it. She was wittering away in the pub about her new salary, and dutiful Max advises her to save. She won't,but she should begin to pay Ian some rent. I would say that Max was exactly the reason Lauren got the job - you got the impression that he okay'd Josh's intention to hire her, and then got cold feet before being put back in his place. Also, Josh's hiring Lauren is a good way of ensuring Max is kept on side.
This is going to be very interesting.
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