How long has it been since this show has really been good? I thought Newman made banality the story of the day, but this man has taken the mundane and the banal to an art level. What did tonight's fare offer?
- The Carters have been reduced to waiting anxiously for the surgical results of a dog,whilst - dare I say it? - Whitney flirts with Woody. I like Woody, but it was less than stating the bleeding obvious that whenever a fit bloke comes within sniffing distance of a man-eater like Whitney, they'll form an inevitable pair. God, Linda Henry must have gagged a maggot to bag a line like Lady Di's just woke up from her operation; she's going to be fine. The big question is: Are the scag-end Carters going to have a big knees-up and karaoke to involve the "community" and celebrate the fact?
- Kush, proving what an emotional adolescent he is - hunkering down in his flat, scoffing cereal and watching rubbish telly, skulking and sulking because he got the big heave-ho from a woman old enough to be his mother. Oedipal much? Kush is the original boy who wanted to fuck his teacher. He reacted much the same way when Shabnam left him, with Carmel right at his elbow, fighting his corner, and generally humouring him as if he were a 12 year-old again, which he is in his mind. No wonder Denise speaks to him as if he were a recalcitrant adolescent. I'm beginning to think he couldn't deal with someone like Shabnam because she was of his own generation, and in his mind, he feels frightfully inferior to women of his own dynamic and actually prefers older women, who tend to keep him "in his place".
- The emergence of Lauren the victim. She is so self-obsessed, she doesn't see that she's being played by both Josh and Steven. So we get the same old same old - Steven doesn't trust Lauren, Josh is grooming Lauren, Max stands back and watches. Lauren, in the meantime, thinks she's in control. She's anything but. This will continue, in circular motion, to the point that it will take over, endlessly, from the the bullying storyline, whenever anyone figures out how to end that.
- Dot, amazingly, taking the side of Jack over her own grandson in his quest to regain custody of his son from a man who has no right to Matthew as his own. This is the same Dot, who was arguing, at the time of Ronnie's death, that Charlie should be notified in order that he might come for Matthew, because - her words at the time - Matthew belonged with Charlie. But the writing for Dot, as is the writing for Phil and Sharon, is all over the place at the moment.
- Ian and Jane are still making a sitcom out of Ian's diabetes scare, which has devolved into Ian channeling his inner snob and talking about private health now, something of which, I suppose, puts a bee in Sean O'Connor's civic-minded bonnet.
- Abi, proving that the only reason Donna wanted her to live in the shared house is because she's the only one of that crowd responsible enough to cook, clean and shop. Another flawed sitcom within the soap. Does that mean EastEnders is now three shows in one?
- And the continuing insult to the genuine poor and hungry that is Denise. Fifty Shades of Po-Faced and counting. It's not just the inordinate pride, it's her willful inability to see the fact that she's the architect of her own destiny. Rummaging through a bin for discarded sandwiches was one thing, but actually not being aware that you're down to your last teabag and having to re-cycle an old one, to crawling about on the floor and rooting around the sofa cushions for loose change is another. How did anyone with any modicum of common sense let this happen? And then there was the inevitable yet gratuitous argument with Carmel, which resulted in Denise walloping her. Denise does a lot of walloping these days, and yet she says she hasn't got an anger management problem. She's got a fucking common sense problem.
Does that sound like a riveting soap to you? Don't be deceived by appearances. Although it may seem that a lot is happening, nothing's really progressed at all.
The Bleeding Obvious. The Carters are a hodge-podge of nothing now, a welter of badly-kept secrets and riven with lies, fraud and deceit.
Their action tonight centred around waiting to hear if Lady Di pulled through her surgery. I'm at a loss as to why she's having surgery and why this treatment costs so much. She has aspiration pneumonia, which is usually a threat to breeds with squash-nosed faces - bulldogs, pugs and Cavalier King Charles spaniels are prime candidates; but the closest thing to surgery as treatment is suctioning her airways - fluid therapy, which doesn't usually cost more than 200 quid.
The other titbit which occurred was Lee phoned Whitney - well, a voiceless Lee phoned anyway. Did you notice how we've recently started hearing voices on the end of phone conversations - well, sometimes, when it's important. We seem to hear the voices of characters whom we know we'll see again and who are permanent (Sharon, when she was away: Phil: Mick) or when it's important to a storyline (the American voice at the end of the line when Michelle was drunk and rang Prestonovich); but the ones who don't appear to be coming back anytime soon, seem to be voiceless.
Today the Vic got Voiceless Lee, and Denise got Voiceless Libby.
Whitney rejects Lee's call, saying she can't deal with him at the moment. Why does she think he's calling? When Moose visited a few weeks ago, he intimated that Lee had already moved on and had another girlfriend. Maybe he's calling her to say that as soon as November rolls around, he'll be wanting a divorce. But really, the prime reason Whitney can't or won't deal with facing Lee at the moment is because she's too busy flirting with Woody, lapping up his "positive vibes".
The really incongruous bit about what's happening with the remaining Carters is how Mick's being kept in the dark about everything. Linda hasn't even told him she's seconded someone to manage the pub in her absence. But wait a moment ... I thought Woody was someone both Mick and Linda had known from their Watford days, who'd worked for them before. Yet Mick didn't appear to recognise his voice on the phone, and Woody let him believe he was temporary cover as Tracey was off sick. So let's take stock of what Widdle Mick doesn't know:-
1. He doesn't know that Lady Di has been ill and has had surgery.
2. He doesn't know that Linda has appointed someone to manage the pub.
3. He doesn't know that Shirley and Linda have sold the freehold of the pub,with Shirley forging Mick's signature, in order to get the necessary funding to fix the roof, pay for Lady Di's treatment and pay for Sylvie's funeral.
4. He doesn't know that the object of his desire, dirty Whitney, is making the same sort of sad doe-eyes at Woody that she made at him.
5. He doesn't know that Tracey and Sharon have been sacked.
Oo-er ... that's going to make for an angwy widdle Mick when he returns in a couple of weeks.
This segment was amazingly bad. Ted Reilly was his usual plank of wood, but even Linda Henry struggled with that incredibly mundane jab about Lady Di being the perfect patient and cracking open bubbly to celebrate the fact. No wonder the Carters had money problems.
And what was all that with Woody sitting in the Vic kitchen in sunglasses and beach gear? In fact, what was all that about able-bodied, well-muscled men sunk down in chairs and stretching lugubriously to reach a ringing phone as if it were the most tedious movement in the world to make.First we got Woody doing this, later we got the manchild Kush.
And because the fragrant Whitney, who looks as though she's worn the same dirty knickers for a week, can't be arsed to speak with the man who technically is still her husband, we now have Woody, literally telling Lee, someone he curiously doesn't know (although he knew Johnny well enough) to sod off and not bother Whitney.
Lee, mate, don't even go there.
Manchild in the Promised Land. Ever notice how whenever Kush doesn't get his way, he plays the sullen adolescent? Plays? He is the sullen adolescent. It just occurred to me that we've never actually seen Shakil, who's supposed to be a bona fide adolescent react to disappointment or rejection that way.
Kush is emotionally fourteen years old. It also became obvious tonight that Kush is the ultimate Oedipal man. He's the boy who, given Prestonovich's opportunity, he would have fucked his teacher. In fact, remember when he and Denise were attempting role play of a teacher-student nature awhile back?
It seems as if Kush's first girlfriend, some twenty years ago, was an older girl,who dumped him. It also seems that Kush pursues those sort of relationships as a reflection of his actual relationship with Carmel.
This doesn't mean he wants to fuck Carmel, although I've often wondered about her, the way she leers at him from time to time. Carmel mollycoddles him, she anticipates his every need, she treats him as her child, which he is, but as if he's still an 8 year-old boy. Her relationship with Shakil is strikingly different. She's protective of him, but she's not above shouting the odds at him, nagging him and bickering with him. Kush is the firstborn, the baby who never was allowed to grow up. Darius is the son who escaped and stays away enough that when he dips in for the odd visit, unseen by viewers, Kush is forgotten by Carmel for a moment. I wonder if Kush and Darius had the same sort of jealous, competitive relationship similar to that experienced by Jack and Max? They're closer in age to each other than either is to Shakil, and when Darius was around the other week, Kush's remarks about him had a jealous hue.
Kush, the manchild, might protest at Carmel's coddling, but he secretly loves it. He loves being spoken to like a child, but puts on a public display of indifference as far as Carmel is concerned. He's really a submissive man, who seeks a dominant woman who'll figuratively put him in his place. Remember how I said that,around Carmel, he took on the air of a shy, adolescent boy? This is the boy who wants to fuck his teacher. And remember how Denise, on a good day, always seemed to talk down to Kush, in much the same way an adult would speak to a child, and Kush lapped it up.
I always thought his relationship with Shabnam frightened him. His first marriage, like that with Shabnam, basically a relationship of demographic equals, didn't last long enough for the fright to set in, but his grief manifested itself in sexual promiscuity and later evolved into him actually being something of a sexual predator, preying on vulnerable women. What frightened him about Shabnam was not that she was his equal - in many ways, she was his superior intellectually, having had the better education - but that he was jolted into accepting responsibility for her pregnancy. I still recall Carmel,when she learned of the pregnancy, actually questioning his maturity, and this was a man who was thirty years old at the time. And try as he might, during the short time he was allowed access to Arthur - and that was primarily at the insistence of Carmel - he always saw himself as "the babysitter", happily allowing Martin to do the heavywork of parenting until Tamwar told him a few home truths, and to this day, he's turned a blind eye to Arthur.
In the end, it was only when Shabnam rose above him psychologically, by walking away from his deception and his lies, that she suddenly became the adult in the room and he wanted her, even willing to take on her child, as he ran down the street after her departing car.
So maybe a relationship with a significantly older woman is what suits him. There'd be no children involved because he'd essentially be the child. So in the face of what appears to be rejection, he does what an adolescent usually does - hunkers down in his room, unwashed and undressed, gobbling junk food and watching rubbish television, feeling sorry for himself.
How long before he starts sniffing around the vulnerable cradle-snatcher, Michelle? Wouldn't that be a lovely cat fight?
Clowns to the Left of Me, Jokers to the Right. Here I Am, Stuck in the Middle with You. Two thoughts just struck me:-
1. In yesterday's episode, Steven sulked (another sulking male) about Lauren being surrounded at work by a bunch of snobby, private school-educated people.Well, Steven was, himself, a snobby,cocky, little private school-educated prick. Ian schooled him privately, until he went bankrupt and had to move into that cramped flat over the chippy, when Steven went on his hate mail rampage. ... And ...
2, Lauren was worried that Louis had chicken pox. Josh made the ubiquitous fuss over him when Steven turned up at Weyland & Co. Wouldn't it be a hoot if Superman got the Kryptonite Chicken Pox bug?
Apart from the bullying storyline, from which we got a brief respite today, this has to be the other most singular circular storyline going. Lather, rinse, repeat. Another day of Lauren traipsing off to work, learning the deceptive practices of the so-called property developers - like never apologising and seeming to know something about which you know nothing, "faking it."
It seems that Lauren is a glorified go-fer, being sent out for Josh's lunchtime fare, whilst being asked to work through her lunchtime break as well - something, which - by law - an employer can't ask an employee to do. She's also been asked to fake a financial report, something I would think a lamebrain like Lauren wouldn't have the foggiest idea about. But Josh basically told her to put any old rubbish down and if anyone queried the results, he'd take the hit.
Sure he would, and she'd have a price to pay. In between all this, he's reeling the dumbass in with the odd compliment here and there.
Nice to know that Jacqueline Jossa hasn't lost her party trick of funny voices when indignant, along with the windmill arm effect, which we got when Steven decided to mosey on over to Canary Wharf-by-Elstree with Louis in tow, just to sorta kinda remind her where her priorities lay.
She's so incredibly up her own arse that she actually thinks she's onto some sort of important job there. My guess is that she's being given the odd bit of typing along with the buttie run in preparation for another type of buttie run. She's in training to be Josh's personal sex toy - in other words, a corporate whore. The company mattress.
She's not reckoning with Steven, who's got quite a creepy past of his own on which to draw experience. Tick, tock.
Daddy Issues Again. I still like Charlie, and I'm on his side in this, and because of this, I'm at a loss to understand Dot's attitude when she found out Charlie wanted to regain custody of his son.
When Ronnie died, Dot was trying to move heaven and earth to contact Charlie to apprise him of the situation. She kept eyeing the door of the church during Ronnie's funeral, hoping he'd turn up, and she even said as much to Glenda, that Matthew needed to be with his father.
There's no doubt that Charlie was a loving and devoted father. There's no doubt as well that he was threatened within an inch of his life by Ronnie and the now-emasculated Vincent into leaving Walford and staying away. Dot even remonstrated with Ronnie about this, herself.Now that he's been apprised of the situation with Ronnie, it's only natural that he'd want to return for his son. Yer there was Dot, appalled at the fact that Charlie had actually seen a solicitor, who reckoned that he had a good case for custody.
Case? He's the child's father, and Dot would surely attest to how devoted he'd been to the child. Jack, simply, has no claim to Matthew and no rights to him. The ugliest instance about this dilemma came when Jack referred to Charlie, when speaking to Matthew as "Uncle Charlie", which was presumptuous of Jack and disrespectful of Charlie. Yes, Jack has taken Matthew in as his own, but it does creep me out when Jack refers to Matthew as being his and Ronnie's son. He simply isn't, and I wonder if he's projecting his unfulfilled grief at the loss of James. But he still has no right to Matthew.
I know there are those who will say that Matthew is settled with Jack and recognises Jack as his father, and that there are Amy and Ricky to consider, but there's another factor as well. Kids are extremely adaptable, and Matthew is only two years old. He also seemed comfortable enough with Charlie by the time they had returned from the park, and with a child that young, it wouldn't be long before he bonded with his father.
It simply annoyed me that Dot would feel so aggrieved that Charlie, one of her two surviving blood relatives, would seek to exercise his rights and is now siding with Jack for custody of Matthew. It wasn't so long ago, that Jack blessed her out for running off the road in her car with Matthew as a passenger and forbidding her access to him. She even thought that Charlie was about to kidnap Matthew, but he isn't. He'd seen a solicitor about his rights; he'd approached the situation logically. But even if he had packed Matthew up and informed Jack that they were heading off to Galway, what could Jack do? Charlie is Matthew's father, and he has rights. Besides, Charlie tapped into the fact that Jack really isn't coping at all. The house is a tip, Amy is ill, and Ricky is acting up. As much as he would never admit it, Jack was relieved when Charlie volunteered to have Matthew for the morning.
That Niggling Feeling. For me, the most significant part of the episode tonight was the fact that Ian acknowledged a feeling of unease around Max, especially at the idea that Max behaves so normally around the pair, who were largely responsible for Max being unjustly found guilty of murder and spending almost a year in prison. At least, Ian was honest enough to admit that, were the shoe on the other foot, he would never have been able to even bear being in the same room as Max.
At least, TPTB haven't forgotten that the Beales should feel extreme unease around Max; even Jane, for all her denial, looked as though she were ready to shit herself when Max wished them both good morning.
Good.
I want them to feel uneasy, amidst all their cutesy-cutesy sitcom storylines, their making a joke of diabetes, their counters filled with arugula, kale and chick peas and all their nattering about private healthcare.
More than anyone in the Square, they deserve to feel Max's wrath.
Cinderella. So now we know the real reason, which most of us sussed from the very beginning, that Donna was so desperate to have Abi move into the house share. As Abi reiterated to Max, Donna was a bigger pig that either of the boys. Abi is the only person in the house who cleans, especially the kitchen, or who does any shopping - paying for everything, herself, I would imagine. Donna certainly is a pig, simply taking whatever she likes from the fridge; but this is now in serious Newman Tunagate territory, with the incipient storyline in this unfunny sitcom being Pro-biotic YoghurtGate.
Donna wanted a cook and a cleaner, and everyone in the house wanted an extra rent and someone principled enough to clean the toilet.
Nothing happening here.
Fifty Shades of Po-Faced.
I feel singularly uninvested in this ridiculous umpteenth Denise-is-starving storyline, featuring Sean O'Connor's obvious favourite.
For everyone who always lobbied for Diane Parish to get more screen time, well ... be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.
This storyline is a slap in the face (pun intended) to anyone who actually really is poor, or suffering financially or frequenting food banks with final demands for payment of bills piling up on the table.
Denise is the author of her own situation. She quit a job in a fit of pique and entitlement, and rather than immediately seeking alternative employment as quickly as possible - someone as suss as Denise would know that, having voluntarily left her job, she wouldn't be entitled to any sort of unemployment benefit for a period of about six months - she lollled about, went to the pub, ate in the café, carried on studying for her GCSE's and fucked Kush.
She lives in a large terraced house, which would probably be worth upwards of 500k,and she and Patrick - on the strength of a minimum wage zero hours contract and a state pension - managed to have a mortgage on the property. Go figure that retcon.
She's gone from scavenging in rubbish bins to scrounging for the last, used teabag in the house to make her tea, and scrabbling around sofa cushions and under furniture for loose change, only to have Dennis pop up with a request for sponsorship money.
Meanwhile, Carmel, the Poison Dwarf, is gunning for her hide for daring to dump poor, ickle Kushie. She resorts to selling her jewelry, copping a fiver for her Big D - I never understood the sentimental significance of that bit of bling, but she certainly has a lot of expensive-looking bling on at least six of her fingers. She actually wears a gold half sovereign ring, and they are worth a fair bob. She could have sold any one of those, so nope, sorry, I have no sympathy for poor, starving, self-inflicted poverty-stricken Denise, suffering for her education, when she needn't be.
How many times does it have to be reiterated? As Kim said yesterday,she should have spent these past weeks, looking for a job. People go on about why Vincent never offered her bar work in The Albert, look ... she poo-poohed the idea of helping Kush on the stall, she'd never deign to stand behind a bar and pull a pint.
A person can have all the book sense in the world, but without a modicum of common sense, you have nothing, and Denise seems to have taken leave of hers. It also shows just how singularly Luddite the local yokels of Walford are being depicted, thinking that Denise's GCSE elevates her to the realm of the cultural effetes. The course, itself, is vastly over-hyped in this show. It's more akin to a uni course than a normal GCSE, and Denise's vastly inflated ego was inflated even more with everyone kow-towing to her perceived knowledge during the Christmas show.
The confrontation between Carmel and Denise was gratuitous and pointless. It was just a rough excuse to have Carmel demand answers for Denise's behaviour, whilst TPTB bang a gong by showing the audience the real answer for Denise's behaviour, as the camera, at odd artsy-fartsy angles, shows us all the super-cheap basic brands of food Denise has purchased with the five quid she received for her bling. Is her pride and arrogance really that huge, especially when Carmel actually does remind her of some basic home truths she told Carmel, herself, when she binned her friendship off in favour of fucking Kush.
Carmel is Kush's mother. Even before Denise became attracted to Kush, she knew how invested Carmel was with all of her sons, especially Kush. Why wouldn't she fight his battles? What parent, good or bad, on that Square wouldn't fight their child's battles? Dot, Pauline, Pat, Kathy, Martin and Stacey, even Ian Beale, Shirley, and Denise, herself, was willing to put an innocent man in prison to protect Chelsea's lazy skanky arse.
As much as I dislike both these women, Carmel's remark about Denise giving away her last child rang true - part of the reason she gave the child up for adoption was so she could be free for some time for herself, and just look at the mess she made. The wallop she gave Carmel is just proof of her anger issues. She's really angry at herself, for making, yet again, poor judgement calls. She needs to face up to that responsibiltiy before accepting responsibility for anything else.
More than anything, the over-exposure of Denise has only served to emphasize just how many negative qualities this character has, especially how singularly ungrateful she is for any show of care or concern for her by others. She really is one nasty woman.
When her 778th storyline is finished (hopefully soon), I hope she's backburnered for a long, long time. Talk about overkill.
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