I've missed several episodes - starting from Thursday's so any thoughts on this episode are late in coming. We've been having some unnecessary drama in my own family with a particularly ungrateful elderly relative, so there's been no television watched in our household since - well, since last Thursday night.
I actually found myself debating whether or not to catch up on the show, if, indeed, to begin watching again at all. I found I didn't miss it, and even more importantly, I found I was dreading watching it, and after this episode, I wasn't wrong.
This episode exemplified absolutely everything that has been wrong with this show since Sean O'Connor took over. The main storyline was all about "the community's" reaction to Dot's fall, everyone gathering about the Square in solemn concern to watch as she was removed on a stretcher from the house, and for everyone to collectively catch the rough side of Sonia's tongue, as she perched on her self-righteous promontory to look down her snooty nose at everyone else and accuse them for not caring about Dot, which annoyed me to no end.
First of all, Dot is an enormously proud person. She'd rather gag a passel of maggots rather than let anyone know she was lonely or even vulnerable. Anyone who tried to show some sort of concern or compassion, catching her on an off day, would be roundly told off for even trying. Abi recently moved out, but the impression given is that Abi regularly called around to check on her. Jack is fond of her, and he and his children are often nearby. Indeed, he's just next door.
Remembering how Dot, lying on the floor in the previous episode, started ruminating about Sharon and Ian was totally out of character for her. Dot would have been concerned with her own immediate family - the Brannings - even accepting the fact that both Ian and Sharon had their own families and problems with which to contend. That was the worst sort of contrivance, and it set the scene in this episode for Sharon and Ian to suddenly show up, after having been somewhere up their own backsides - in all fairness, Ian has a health problem, himself, and Sharon's been dealing with Louise's situation- waving about a box of chocolates and suddenly wanting to cheer Dot up because her grandson had gone to Ireland. And, of course, when they showed up at the hospital, it gave the writers a brilliant opportunity to have Sonia mouth off again at Sharon, not only for "not caring" about Dot, but for "allowing" Louise almost to die from alcohol poisoning - a claim that was as untrue as it was unfounded.
Sonia is a canting bitch. She removed herself from her own daughter's life, and when that girl, taking advantage of the fact that she was sixteen, and constantly reminding her father that she was an adult who could make her own decisions, made some of the most idiotic and nonsensical decisions, which resulted, ultimately, in her getting a caution from the police for possessing indecent images of a minor. No one deserves the bullying Rebecca got,but countless numbers of women, all of whom had been there and done that (indeed, from Stacey to Tina Carter), had told her not to sleep with Shakil if she felt she wasn't ready, and she threw caution to the wind because Rebecca was an adult, who could think for herself.
It wasn't Sharon's fault that Louise's drink was spiked at an impromptu party, In fact, the party wasn't even Louise's fault.
Sonia was cagey about the reasons behind her return,and Robbie's surprise at her appearance leads one to believe that her departure from Kettering might not be all it seems. A private nursing job, with a good salary, isn't abandoned that quickly, and now she's back in Walford with no job, and hopeful of getting a flash pad off the whack of Robbie's good credit reference, and hoping to demand - not ask, but demand (and even Robbie was cognizant that she should ask) Rebecca to live with her again.
I recall the last time Sonia was in Walford, when Rebecca told her that she enjoyed living with Martin and Stacey, that they were a family and were happy. Sonia must have burned with jealousy; but also, another thing to realise: Carol always said that Sonia was at her worst when she'd lost control of her own life.That's when she tries to micro-manage and sit in judgement of everyone else.
I reckon Sonia got booted out of her plush private nursing job and has now returned to Walford without prospect.
The show of concern by everyone on the Square, including Holy Mother Denise, was almost funny. It had all the ingredients - the noisy new neighbours, whose loud music meant that Patrick couldn't hear Dot's for help (the Taylors are already Public Enemy Number One), Sonia scathing at Martin for not caring enough about Dot,when Martin's got enough on his plate, with a pregnant wife and three kids for whom to provide. She had a go at Carmel, who barely knows Dot. The reality of that situation, in real-time London in an area like that would be Dot being carried on a stretcher from her house, accompanied by Sonia, a couple of neighbours either side, may or may not have enquired about the circumstance (if, indeed, they even knew Dot at all), and another few curtain twitchers.
Life simply wouldn't have come to a stop the way it did.
The actual story surrounding this was a blatant social commentary-cum-public service announcement about the underfunded NHS - the chaotic malfunction of the hospital's computer system (hark back to the malware infection in recent weeks), which caused Dotto be "lost" in the hospital system; the beleagured and put-upon Eastern European nurse (as a statement of recent fact that immigrants for nursing jobs from Eastern Europe are down by 96% since the Brexit referendum), trying to cope with a plethora of patients forced to be retained in corridors until bed space opened up for them.
Then there was the obnoxious Sonia brow-beating and bullying the nurse about Dot on the one hand, and on the other, smugly taking a deep breath and admitting how much she'd missed working in a situation like that. Aside: Sonia is supposed to be an educated professional, yet I deplore the fact that she has the grammar of a guttersnipe. Good grammar is acquired through education, and once you've achieved a professional status, you are rarely heard using poor grammar, even in a casual context. It means that you are a figure to be taken less than seriously. Sonia, NuMichelle and Saint Denise all speak ignorant chav grammar, and that isn't acceptable.
There was also the predictable depiction of Dot - and this could be any elderly person having to spend some time in hospital - protesting her infirmity, and saying the standard clichéd lines any elderly person would say - worrying about who's feeding the cat, wanting to go home and declaring she needed no hip replacement operation ("nothing a good night's sleep won't mend"), commenting on how young the doctor looked, then commenting on how disrespectful the young doctor's tone was. Oh, and in the midst of all of this, we had a random doctor lecture the insipid Sonia and the ludicrous Robbie of how there were far too many patients and not enough beds due to lack of funding.
Please pass the fucking sick bucket!
In the midst of all this chaos and pandemonium, which was supposed to be reality depicted in a busy emergency room, we had Dot seeing a hen party wander by and think they were angels, attired in their white garb and wings, and even had her convince a drunken youth (i the middle of the afternoon, no less) to hand over his beer. And then there was Robbie acting like poor unfunny comedy Robbie.
This was maddening, and not in a good way, maddening enough to make you want to scream at the television and wonder who the hell approved such a trite, overbearing script?
And then there were the lesser storylines ...
Derek's Story. I was beginning to wonder if they'd retconned Derek's backstory a bit, because there was a wife and a couple of children in there. They didn't, in that respect.
Normally, this would have been a poignant tale of how Derek acquired a criminal record and spent time in prison, which was all due to an event which happened way back when the homosexual age of consent was 21 - and a 22 year-old Derek was involved with a 20 year-old man.
But it was told in such a preachy, school-masterish way (and, yes, I'm cognizant of the fact that Derek had always wanted to be a teacher), that it came across as a bad history lesson, with Derek telling the tale, and student Johnny, wide-eyed, and being totally aware of any such history. I know a lot of gays - young and old - and the young gay people I know, on both sides of the Pond, don't take today's freedom for granted. They all know the history of their struggle for equal rights and recognition. There isn't a gay male in the US of Johnny's age who doesn't know about Stonewall.
Yet Johnny seemed shallowly oblivious to the serious nature of Derek's crime during the time which it occurred.
The whole event reminded me of two things - firstly, of Cora's story of having fallen pregnant in the 60s with the child of an Afro-Caribbean merchant seaman. Many people hearing her tale couldn't comprehend, first of all, why she had to leave her family's home once the pregnancy was known,and reside in a special home for unwed mothers, and secondly, why she had to give the child up for adoption. This wasn't understood by people who have grown up - and fairly recently - in a society which accepts single women having children and which also accepts bi-racial relationships.
In the Sixites,both those things were enough to ostracize any woman.
The second thing this tale reminded me of was Laurence White's backstory in Emmerdale, because it was similar to Derek's. He was a much younger man who had a homosexual relationship with Edna Birch's husband. In that instance, it was Laurence who was imprisoned because Edna's husband was considered, as a married man, to have been the one who had been "corrupted" by the single, younger and louche Laurence.
Derek left prison, knowing he could never obtain a teaching degree, and - like his ex-partner, married heterosexually. Laurence had shock therapy to "cure" him of his "malaise" and also married.
The setting of Derek living in a grotty bedsit also had the feeling of contrivance - almost of Derek suffering for his sins - as well as an aura of people only superficially caring about him as a person, with both Patrick and Martin not being aware of where he lived. First of all, Patrick and Denise, although they liked Derek, were wary of the fact that, for awhile,Derek seemed to fancy Patrick; and why would Martin have his address? TPTB saw to it this time around that Derek only shared two sentences with Martin the entire time he was on the show. Oh, well ... at least Pauline got a mention. Pauline always seems to get a mention one way or another.
Spotted Mick. I thought I'd seen it all with Tunagate and Snakegate, but the entire Carter contribution tonight was Mick itching and Stacey discovering he was crawling in spots - literally a rash of raised hives on his neck, across his back and shoulders. Mick was itching. Hives are raised areas of skin. I realise Mick can't see the back of his neck, but he can twist his neck about or look in a mirror at the state of his shoulder.
And why should Shirley have known if Mick had chicken pox as a child? By the time Mick was out of care, Shirley was married and having children of her own.
This was a truly bad episode,but does that really surprise anyone?
I actually found myself debating whether or not to catch up on the show, if, indeed, to begin watching again at all. I found I didn't miss it, and even more importantly, I found I was dreading watching it, and after this episode, I wasn't wrong.
This episode exemplified absolutely everything that has been wrong with this show since Sean O'Connor took over. The main storyline was all about "the community's" reaction to Dot's fall, everyone gathering about the Square in solemn concern to watch as she was removed on a stretcher from the house, and for everyone to collectively catch the rough side of Sonia's tongue, as she perched on her self-righteous promontory to look down her snooty nose at everyone else and accuse them for not caring about Dot, which annoyed me to no end.
First of all, Dot is an enormously proud person. She'd rather gag a passel of maggots rather than let anyone know she was lonely or even vulnerable. Anyone who tried to show some sort of concern or compassion, catching her on an off day, would be roundly told off for even trying. Abi recently moved out, but the impression given is that Abi regularly called around to check on her. Jack is fond of her, and he and his children are often nearby. Indeed, he's just next door.
Remembering how Dot, lying on the floor in the previous episode, started ruminating about Sharon and Ian was totally out of character for her. Dot would have been concerned with her own immediate family - the Brannings - even accepting the fact that both Ian and Sharon had their own families and problems with which to contend. That was the worst sort of contrivance, and it set the scene in this episode for Sharon and Ian to suddenly show up, after having been somewhere up their own backsides - in all fairness, Ian has a health problem, himself, and Sharon's been dealing with Louise's situation- waving about a box of chocolates and suddenly wanting to cheer Dot up because her grandson had gone to Ireland. And, of course, when they showed up at the hospital, it gave the writers a brilliant opportunity to have Sonia mouth off again at Sharon, not only for "not caring" about Dot, but for "allowing" Louise almost to die from alcohol poisoning - a claim that was as untrue as it was unfounded.
Sonia is a canting bitch. She removed herself from her own daughter's life, and when that girl, taking advantage of the fact that she was sixteen, and constantly reminding her father that she was an adult who could make her own decisions, made some of the most idiotic and nonsensical decisions, which resulted, ultimately, in her getting a caution from the police for possessing indecent images of a minor. No one deserves the bullying Rebecca got,but countless numbers of women, all of whom had been there and done that (indeed, from Stacey to Tina Carter), had told her not to sleep with Shakil if she felt she wasn't ready, and she threw caution to the wind because Rebecca was an adult, who could think for herself.
It wasn't Sharon's fault that Louise's drink was spiked at an impromptu party, In fact, the party wasn't even Louise's fault.
Sonia was cagey about the reasons behind her return,and Robbie's surprise at her appearance leads one to believe that her departure from Kettering might not be all it seems. A private nursing job, with a good salary, isn't abandoned that quickly, and now she's back in Walford with no job, and hopeful of getting a flash pad off the whack of Robbie's good credit reference, and hoping to demand - not ask, but demand (and even Robbie was cognizant that she should ask) Rebecca to live with her again.
I recall the last time Sonia was in Walford, when Rebecca told her that she enjoyed living with Martin and Stacey, that they were a family and were happy. Sonia must have burned with jealousy; but also, another thing to realise: Carol always said that Sonia was at her worst when she'd lost control of her own life.That's when she tries to micro-manage and sit in judgement of everyone else.
I reckon Sonia got booted out of her plush private nursing job and has now returned to Walford without prospect.
The show of concern by everyone on the Square, including Holy Mother Denise, was almost funny. It had all the ingredients - the noisy new neighbours, whose loud music meant that Patrick couldn't hear Dot's for help (the Taylors are already Public Enemy Number One), Sonia scathing at Martin for not caring enough about Dot,when Martin's got enough on his plate, with a pregnant wife and three kids for whom to provide. She had a go at Carmel, who barely knows Dot. The reality of that situation, in real-time London in an area like that would be Dot being carried on a stretcher from her house, accompanied by Sonia, a couple of neighbours either side, may or may not have enquired about the circumstance (if, indeed, they even knew Dot at all), and another few curtain twitchers.
Life simply wouldn't have come to a stop the way it did.
The actual story surrounding this was a blatant social commentary-cum-public service announcement about the underfunded NHS - the chaotic malfunction of the hospital's computer system (hark back to the malware infection in recent weeks), which caused Dotto be "lost" in the hospital system; the beleagured and put-upon Eastern European nurse (as a statement of recent fact that immigrants for nursing jobs from Eastern Europe are down by 96% since the Brexit referendum), trying to cope with a plethora of patients forced to be retained in corridors until bed space opened up for them.
Then there was the obnoxious Sonia brow-beating and bullying the nurse about Dot on the one hand, and on the other, smugly taking a deep breath and admitting how much she'd missed working in a situation like that. Aside: Sonia is supposed to be an educated professional, yet I deplore the fact that she has the grammar of a guttersnipe. Good grammar is acquired through education, and once you've achieved a professional status, you are rarely heard using poor grammar, even in a casual context. It means that you are a figure to be taken less than seriously. Sonia, NuMichelle and Saint Denise all speak ignorant chav grammar, and that isn't acceptable.
There was also the predictable depiction of Dot - and this could be any elderly person having to spend some time in hospital - protesting her infirmity, and saying the standard clichéd lines any elderly person would say - worrying about who's feeding the cat, wanting to go home and declaring she needed no hip replacement operation ("nothing a good night's sleep won't mend"), commenting on how young the doctor looked, then commenting on how disrespectful the young doctor's tone was. Oh, and in the midst of all of this, we had a random doctor lecture the insipid Sonia and the ludicrous Robbie of how there were far too many patients and not enough beds due to lack of funding.
Please pass the fucking sick bucket!
In the midst of all this chaos and pandemonium, which was supposed to be reality depicted in a busy emergency room, we had Dot seeing a hen party wander by and think they were angels, attired in their white garb and wings, and even had her convince a drunken youth (i the middle of the afternoon, no less) to hand over his beer. And then there was Robbie acting like poor unfunny comedy Robbie.
This was maddening, and not in a good way, maddening enough to make you want to scream at the television and wonder who the hell approved such a trite, overbearing script?
And then there were the lesser storylines ...
Derek's Story. I was beginning to wonder if they'd retconned Derek's backstory a bit, because there was a wife and a couple of children in there. They didn't, in that respect.
Normally, this would have been a poignant tale of how Derek acquired a criminal record and spent time in prison, which was all due to an event which happened way back when the homosexual age of consent was 21 - and a 22 year-old Derek was involved with a 20 year-old man.
But it was told in such a preachy, school-masterish way (and, yes, I'm cognizant of the fact that Derek had always wanted to be a teacher), that it came across as a bad history lesson, with Derek telling the tale, and student Johnny, wide-eyed, and being totally aware of any such history. I know a lot of gays - young and old - and the young gay people I know, on both sides of the Pond, don't take today's freedom for granted. They all know the history of their struggle for equal rights and recognition. There isn't a gay male in the US of Johnny's age who doesn't know about Stonewall.
Yet Johnny seemed shallowly oblivious to the serious nature of Derek's crime during the time which it occurred.
The whole event reminded me of two things - firstly, of Cora's story of having fallen pregnant in the 60s with the child of an Afro-Caribbean merchant seaman. Many people hearing her tale couldn't comprehend, first of all, why she had to leave her family's home once the pregnancy was known,and reside in a special home for unwed mothers, and secondly, why she had to give the child up for adoption. This wasn't understood by people who have grown up - and fairly recently - in a society which accepts single women having children and which also accepts bi-racial relationships.
In the Sixites,both those things were enough to ostracize any woman.
The second thing this tale reminded me of was Laurence White's backstory in Emmerdale, because it was similar to Derek's. He was a much younger man who had a homosexual relationship with Edna Birch's husband. In that instance, it was Laurence who was imprisoned because Edna's husband was considered, as a married man, to have been the one who had been "corrupted" by the single, younger and louche Laurence.
Derek left prison, knowing he could never obtain a teaching degree, and - like his ex-partner, married heterosexually. Laurence had shock therapy to "cure" him of his "malaise" and also married.
The setting of Derek living in a grotty bedsit also had the feeling of contrivance - almost of Derek suffering for his sins - as well as an aura of people only superficially caring about him as a person, with both Patrick and Martin not being aware of where he lived. First of all, Patrick and Denise, although they liked Derek, were wary of the fact that, for awhile,Derek seemed to fancy Patrick; and why would Martin have his address? TPTB saw to it this time around that Derek only shared two sentences with Martin the entire time he was on the show. Oh, well ... at least Pauline got a mention. Pauline always seems to get a mention one way or another.
Spotted Mick. I thought I'd seen it all with Tunagate and Snakegate, but the entire Carter contribution tonight was Mick itching and Stacey discovering he was crawling in spots - literally a rash of raised hives on his neck, across his back and shoulders. Mick was itching. Hives are raised areas of skin. I realise Mick can't see the back of his neck, but he can twist his neck about or look in a mirror at the state of his shoulder.
And why should Shirley have known if Mick had chicken pox as a child? By the time Mick was out of care, Shirley was married and having children of her own.
This was a truly bad episode,but does that really surprise anyone?
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