Busted - Review:- Tuesday 07.02.2017

This episode was much better than recent fare, largely because, as far as the Carters were concerned, there was a fair bit of action.

But first, the inconsequentials.

Yoof. I'm fast going off Sean O'Connor. The 21st Century has seen a long line of increasingly bad Executive Producers, each successive one worse than the other in some way, shape or form. John Yorke scratched the surface with problems that now have ceased to become problems and more like a way of life on the show. It started bleeding viewers with the first Lazarus rising in the form of Den. Santer staunched the flow of viewers a wee bit - with returns of old characters and DTC's special brand of sensationalism; but with each successive EP, the viewing figures get lower and lower.

O'Connor's decision to turn this thing into some sort of amalgamation of Grange Hill, Waterloo Road and Erinsborough High School, is totally wrong. Admittedly, the show is supposed to appeal to a broad range of viewers, but the fact that he has chosen to emphasise this demographic through the auspices of some of the most unlikable young characters in the show's history, played by some of the worst actors, many of whom are not even remotely close in age to the people they portray and all of whom are blatantly, and for varying reasons totally unsympathetic, makes me question his judgement.

Louise, as a character is all over the place. O'Connor and his writing room have spent the last six months giving her the dialogue and actions of a young woman on the cusp of entering her twenties, saying and doing things no fifteen year-old would even think of doing. And why not? Instead of writing for the adolescent Louise Fowler-calling-herself-Mitchell (she never ever has been "Mitchell" - who made that one up?), they have been writing for Tillie Keeper, a professional actress six months off her 20th birthday.

Now, however, they've got her back in what they think is fifteen-year-old mode, but the storyline is a hodgepodge of everything and nothing. It's about bullying, but then the bullied person becomes a totally unreasonable bully, and a liar, and a betrayer of a friend and someone for whatever reason brings up her father's near-fatal illness as an excuse to behave inappropriately. In that respect, she's no different from the majority of so-called tragic female characters on the programme who either use their pasts or elements from their past as an excuse and justification for bad behaviour- and TPTB expect us to sympathise with us.

Then there's Rebecca, the natural successor to Libby Fox in the po-faced stakes. Rebecca has two expressons - smug and smugly sullen. And neither one is attractive. When I think of Rebecca, I think of a jutting chin and a bulbous red nose. She's actually the epitome of someone who has hordes of book sense and very little common sense. As this sanguine tale seems to be an examination in various types of bullying, Rebecca being the victim of Shakil's prolonged passive-aggressive persuasion technique in trying to get her to have sex with him, resulted in his own inadvertant downfall. Had Rebecca had the common sense and foresight to delete those nude pictures of Shakil he sent her, he wouldn't be in the predicament he finds himself in today.

You have to ask youreself why she kept them? Is the that much into him that, after their split, for no reason at all, she kept them as a fond momento - instead of staring wistfully at his face each evening, she stared wistfully at his willy? Was he that good? Because her first conversation with Louise after the event led one to believe that he was pretty underwhelming, if she knew what she was looking for even to begin with. At least Libby Fox had common sense, even if she were unbearable. Rebecca has no common sense, and that makes her even more unlikable.

At the moment, she's caught between the proverbial rock (in not wanting to grass up Louise for nicking her phone and sending the picture) and the unenviable hard place (feeling guilty about Shakil hating her for what he perceives she has done). She feels sorry for him, but no one else does. 

And then, there's Shakil, himself. I can't figure out what TPTB have in mind for him. Are we supposed to feel sorry for someone who, actually, ended up being hoisted on his own petard? Because he started all this palaver by pressuring Rebecca into having sex. It was obvious from the get go that, although he liked her well enough as a mate, he didn't love her, and if thought that as she was showing willing enough in being attracted to him, he could use that attraction to his advantage. Once he'd partaken, he treated her as someone who'd provide him with sex on tap and little else. She wanted a relationship. He wanted nookie.

And finally, there are the three new teen characters, each one, in and of themselves, absolutely without any redeeming qualities. The girls, whom I call Rat's Nest and Sniggle, also played an important part in manipulating Louise into eking out revenge against Shakil for absolutely no purpose whatsoever. Shakil has done nothing to her, apart from stand gormlessly by his putrid new friend Keegan (cf: below), whilst the latter remorselessly tormented Louise. Shakil, in fact, went against the selfish wishes of that little scrote and stayed with Louise until he was certain she was safely off the bus. This is a curious example of transferance, Louise taking aim at Shakil because for some reason she feels she can't respond to Keegan's intimidation and her using the pithy excuse that this is revenge for Rebecca on Shakil for his having dumped her. Both reasons are stupid, in and of themselves, the latter being none of Rebecca's business at all, but it's some sort of daft reasoning she's using because she's being leaned on by Rat's Nest and Sniggle.

I guess this is a prime example of female bullying, but why should she even care about what these girls think? Does she desire their friendship that much? They clearly don't like her. Why is she so craven to win their approval?

The final piece of the puzzle is the incredibly hateful Keegan, a character without one morsal of redeeming quality. He's rude and hateful to everyone in the most spiteful of ways. He's enormously misogynistic - the way he goes out of his way to humiliate Louise openly is disgusting. In this episode, after the largely ineffectual Carmel warns him to stay away from Keegan (after having been unprofessionally warned about him, herself, by the head), Shakil makes a beeline for this creature in the schoolyard - because if everyone isn't avoiding Shakil like the plague, they're waving pictures of his widdle willy about and laughing. 

It turns out that we learned a bit of the background of this depraved little shit in this episode, when Shakil was whining to him - in a scene where we were introduced to the upper architectural tiers of the new school set, whilst we heard the voices of Shakil and KeeganShite conversing in a voice-over. Shakil is worried that he's always be known as the bloke in the nude pictures, until Keegan tells him he has to see that he's known for something else. It seems Keegan's reputation preceded him. He was expelled from his former school for a violent assault on a teacher which left the teacher lucky to survive with his eye intact. And, allegedly, there were other incidents which no one heard about. 

Oh, joy. A budding psychopath, who's taken the gormless Shakil under his wing.

At the end of the day, the only thing the teens are teaching us is how these kids are coming over as horrifically de-sensitised and devoid of any compassion whatsoever. And to think I hated the Moon Goons so much!

Please Stop Insulting Our Intelligence with Michelle. Unless O'Connor is about to show us how the world has become increasingly smaller and how now employers are able to snap up references via e-mail for a prospective employee and how a person's professional reputation, or lack thereof, precedes them, then stop this gratuitous storyline about Michelle thinking she can get a teaching job right now.

Just shut up about her saying that there are some desperate schools around in need of good teachers, as if she is the best of the crop, because she isn't. In fact, she shouldn't be allowed around any sort of young person, certainly not impressionable adolescent boys.

It's also an insult to assume that what Michelle got up to (un)professionally in the States would be counted for nought here, because whatever the age, teacher-student relationships, especially in secondary school, are simply not allowed. As much as in the US, schools here have a duty of care, and sexual relations between a student and a teacher is the worst sort of breach of trust.

This is a fact: In the US, had the writers bothered to research background and real laws, Michelle would have been branded a rapist, because she had sex with someone who was below the age of legal consent. The boy's parents and the school in question would have contacted the police. The parents would have done so as a matter of fact anyway because - well, wouldn't you if this were your kid? Any decent parent would have done so and wanted to see the adult swing. The school is duty-bound to support and even enjoin this enactment. They were responsible for the child's welfare. So without a shadow of a doubt, police authorities would have been called.

In EastEndersLand, I guess they think that rural Floridians, even the educated ones, simply take statutory rape lightly. Michelle got off with a smack on the wrist, in comparison to what she would have suffered in real time. (She'd be sporting an orange jumpsuit). Be that as it may, she's either arrogant or stupid or both to think that any school she approaches with a view to working in a classroom with young students, won't ask for a brace of professional references; and they'll be easy enough to garner through the wonders of the internet and e-mail. Does she think that any school in Walford or the surrounding area won't ask for references? I can tell you that they will, and even though Michelle is British, her teaching qualifications would be 100 per cent A-OK American, and a lot of British educators are still snotty enough to turn their noses up at that. But it shouldn't get that far, because Michelle has committed not only a crime, but a serious professional breach of trust as an educator.

So unless this is a story designed to show how a person's professional and personal reputation can not only be shot by a moment of madness, but pursue them across continents, literally, forever ... just shut the fuck up. Please.

Unfriending a Sibling Friend. Not only is the contrived, retconned and tacked-on situation where Denise finds she isn't Kim's sister at all amazingly pukeworthy, it simply does nothing for either Denise or Kim. In fact, it makes both of them look petty, immature and just disagreeable.

The Square has seen non-blood-related people who consider themselves siblings before - the most recent being Whitney Dean and Tiffany Butcher. They were no less sisters than they were before Whitney found out that Tiffany was no blood relation to her at all. Denise and Kim were raised as sisters. That doesn't end with this titbit being found out. If anything, this should be presented as a positive learning experience; instead, TPTB are presenting Denise, dubbed by someone as O'Connor's Shirley, as someone amazingly arrogant, obtrusive, ungrateful, stubborn and just mean.

I had to pick my jaw up off the floor when Denise said that, as Kim was her sister, she'd have eventually forgiven her attitude toward Denise and the adopted child, as well as Kim's behaviour in front of Denise's English class, because that's what sisters do ... but as Kim now wasn't her sister, she wasn't going to bother forgiving her at all.

This is another ludicrous example of asinine and immature mindset. Denise had crossed the line and had actually defended Kim against her mother's behaviour, and the ice between the two had cracked; but she finds this out, and now, it's as though everything were Kim's fault.

I don't like either one of them, but this entire storyline has done neither of them any favours. For all Denise defended Kim as a good mother, the sight of Kim repeatedly screaming at Pearl for throwing her bottle out of the pushchair and both women actually giving the increasinly dirty bottle back to the baby was totally unreal. The last bit where Auntie Denise, who hadn't been up all night with a tetchy baby, just knew exactly what to do to get Pearl to behave because, well, because Saint Denise is such a good mother, she would know what to do.

Or they could use this as a teaching situation, for Denise to show Kim how children adopted out aren't really "raised by strangers", but are raised in a situation where they are much loved and much wanted. But noooooooo ... I don't knwo what they're trying to prove with this story. Instead, I think it's something prolonged with twists and turns and silly retconned reveals, planted as a means of trying to make both Kim and Denise, especially Denise, relevant. It's Connor's attempt to plant the Fox non-sisters onto the same pedestal as formerly occupied by the now deceased Blisters.

Who knows where this storyline is going - round and round in circles as things usually do with Denise until somebody gets too dizzy, and the storyline is stopped, and she'll go back to standing around the Minute Mart, sneering, and Kim will just go poncing about Walford with her fashion accessory  daughter in a pushchair, admiring herself until the kid is about five years-old or until someone else comes up with a bright idea of what to do with Denise. Again.

You Don't Choose Your Relatives. Wow, the Carters' woes continue, with Mick, Shirley and Babe ending the episode behind bars, charged with breaking licencing laws. 

Here's the irony of the situation: Mick was genuinely innocent and protested his innocence vociferously. He's totally right - he was raised in the pub trade, this is his first venture on his own, so why would he jeopardise his future and his livelihood by breaking licencing laws? Once he got wind of Babe attempting to do that, he put a stop to it immediately. He didn't know that Babe continued dishing out alcohol with her breakfasts. OK, maybe he should have kept a closer eye on the situation, but he was distracted - Linda being away with an infirm Elaine, Lee's financial problems, his own financial problems and his secret snog with Whitney. So he took his eye off the ball. 

Now consider this: Shirley certainly knew Babe had been violating licencing laws. She simply looked the other way. In this episode, we saw Mick vociferously fight for his name and his innocence, and every word he used with the police was true. However, he managed to give the police just enough rope with which they could hang him - telling him about needing a new roof for the pub and getting caught in Babe's trap by having to acknowledge that he told her to use any means by which to raise money for the pub.

However, so much for families. The Carters are not the Mitchells or even the Brannings. Shirley's reaction to the entire ordeal was to quip, "No comment." Plead the Fifth where I come from. She knew what Babe was doing, and instead of establishing Mick's innocence and taking a blow for her son, she sought to protect her own arse in all of this. Does she think Mick knew? Seriously? Mick, in situations like that, is straight as die.

Babe, of course, sought to play the innocent old lady role - "I'm just the cook" - in Uriah Heep fashion just to land Mick in hot water literally, implying that he was having financial difficulties, but disclaiming any knowledge of their financial situation because they "wouldn't let her see the books" (when she'd been doing them, meaning the police will look and see where corners have been cut), hinting that Mick was desperate to do anything that would help his financial situation. Still, it surprises me that Shirley didn't corroborate Mick's innocence.

In the end, this solved nothing for Babe. All three were charged, photographed, hand-cuffed and put in the cells overnight. This is a criminal offence; even if it were established that Mick knew nothing about this, he'll still lose his licence. And Linda is subject to arrest as well, so shouldn't the Old Bill be getting in contact with their ilk in Watford in order to effect her arrest?

This means the Carters will lose the licence at the Vic, although I was surprised to find that Lee actually had a personal licence, meaning he can act as a manager of the premises as long as the premises is licenced to sell alcohol ... but with the licencees on charges, doesn't this mean that the Vic should be shut until such a time as someone can get a premises licence? I also suppose that this will open the door for Sharon eventually to get the licence. Whatever Max has up his sleeve, I don't envision seeing the Branning brothers running the pub. I can, however, see Sharon.

On the other side of the coin, it was interesting to note Kathy's quiet guilt about having alerted the police to Babe - specifically, Babe sabotaging Kathy's coffee machine. How that should have alerted a policeman to do an undercover stint at the pub during the breakfast trade to find that they were breaking licencing laws is beyond me. He could have simply arrested Babe for vandalism. Of course, Kathy's conflicted at seeing someone possibly lose their livelihood. Mick's done nothing to her, and she likes Tina,who's been loyal. I suppose that her fling with Buster will come out in the crossfire that will erupt when the Carters find out what she did, and Ian will certainly brag that about. He was quick enough to round all the breakfast people up to come to the café with a discount promised, and was well into encouraging all the gossip being promoted by the likes of Kush.

Oh, and Mick is going to contrive to keep all of this from Linda, ostensibly until she returns to Walford and finds her family divested of their business.

The Eternal Victim. Whitney makes me sick, the way she always casts all the blame for her marital predicament on what she perceives as Lee's inadequacies. She goes on and on about how everything is his fault, but in her whine to Lauren, she failed to disclose the one thing that niggles her the most about Lee. He isn't MIck. Nope, she's not telling anyone about their little secret snog.

Kudos to Lauren, who seems to have grown up somewhat for handing Whitney her arse and telling her to talk to Lee about the next thing that annoys Whitney so much - that Lee makes precious little money at his job. It seems as if she's more annoyed about that than annoyed at the fact that he was lying to her about the amount, although by the time she confronted him, she made it seem that what annoyed her was his lying. Did Lee ever lead her to believe that he made more than he actually did, or did she make that whole thing up in her mind? I'm not sure.

So now we know that Lee makes a small basic - probably minimum wage, and gets emoluments via commission through sales. And that he's been pulling a massive sickie lately because he hates the job so much, something which doesn't impress Princess Whitney so much. I sense we're getting near the end of Lee, but I also sense that as vulnerable as Mick will be right now, I can't see him not sleeping with Whitney.

The Brannings. I like Glenda, but I can't see what Max has against her. 

What Glenda says in that house goes.

That remark and his disparaging the cake she obviously bought when her own creation fell in the oven. She seems to be urging Jack to do the right thing - getting him to get the kids back to school, urging him to have some time for himself, and then hiding the fact that Amy, overcome by everything that's happened since the New Year has resulted in her bedwetting. She's forged a bond with Amy, and surely that's good.

I just hope Jack doesn't end up bedding his mother-in-law.

As for Max, what was that remark about asking where Stacey's husband was, whilst he played plumber. Martin has a job. I get it that they are mates, but Stacey wants to avoid getting overly close to him as this could impede upon Martin's perception of their relationship. After all, Max and Stacey certainly have form, and now that she's aware of his self-harming, with all good intentions, she might inadvertantly cause problems with Martin. The last thing I want to see is a resurrection of Stax, but then again, I put nothing past this EP.

Good episode.

The Children's Hour - Review:- Monday 06.02.2017

On a scale of 1 to 10, I gave this episode a 6, but only for the overtly contrived secret Sean O'Connor dropped in the lap of the lamentable Fox sisters, as a means of an obvious lesson learned in blood relation as opposed to one who was adopted and also as another means of keeping new tragedy queen Denise at the forefront of the action, gurning, disapproving and showing general ingratitude. 

I don't like the direction EastEnders is taking.

The Boring Brat Pack. The more I hear about the teens being brought to the forefront of the show, the more I question this decision by Sean O'Connor. With the increasing scenes being done in and around a school set, it's beginning to look more like a 21st Century version of Grange Hill or a re-make of Waterloo Road.

This is the flagship show for BBC1. It's not a niche soap, and I also object because the so-called youth are being played by people who are pushing, if not over twenty, and look it. They are either drama school kids or just plain bad or even too arrogant or ignorant to consider the scope of the dramatic roles they play. The actor cast as the atrociously cruel and misogynistic Keegan has gone on record as saying that if the viewers hate Keegan, then that's OK with him.

Really? Is this guy just dense or is he simply too arrogant to realise that there are, indeed, characters whom the audience "love to hate." These are people like Janine or Ian Beale, generally unpleasant people, but people who, nonetheless, in their own way, entertain the audience. Possibly because, underlying their unpleasantness, the audience knows them well enough to know that there's another layer which might hold the reason or rationale for this untoward behaviour.

Then, there are characters who are simply unpleasant and unlikable, and Keegan is one of them. He's not a "cheeky charmer" as Carmel unwittingly described him tonight. He might present this face to her, but he's cold, mean-spirited, lacking in compassion, cruel, misogynistic and simply appalling.

"Cheeky charmer" Carmel calls him. Well, here is a cheeky charmer; from the 1950s American series Leave It to Beaver, I give you Eddie Haskell, who always put a smarmy good side forward when speaking with his best mate's mother. Away from dealing with parents, he was cocky and mildly insolent, but funny.

Keegan is just mean and unpleasant.

This was all about the repercussions of Louise's senseless act of sending the nude pictures of Shakil to literally everyone in the school, as some sort of weird revenge for Shakil having de-flowered the insipid Rebecca and dumped her.

I don't think this is a contrivance for us to feel sorry for Shakil; for me, it's just a cautionary tale of what happens when children muck about with sex. Seriously. Tonight we heard Shakil utter the same line that Tina said to Rebecca when she, herself, was thinking about sexting Shakil, in response to him sexting her.

Those pictures are out there forever. For all to see.

I don't think we're supposed to feel sorry for anyone in this sordid tale; at least, I don't feel sorry for any of them. Remember that this whole sorry tale evolved from Shakil pressuring Rebecca into having sex. At the time, we weren't even sure that Shakil even liked Rebecca; he only seemed intent on losing his virginity. He called Rebecca "frigid", and whilst he said he was willing to wait until she was ready to sleep with him, he suggested that they sext each other, and started the ball rolling by sending her pictures of him in the nude. Later, although she didn't want to do this, she made pictures of herself, although she didn't send them.

All of this stuff and bother is the result of Rebecca's scatty behaviour and also Shakil's after they slept together. She wanted his undying love. He wanted a shag, although he still wanted to be friends.

Where this gets complicated is where Louise is in this predicament. I don't think even the most idiotic and shallow girl would have failed to recognise that, during the accident with the bus, Shakil put himself out and actually got Louise to safety. I think a lot of her bad feeling toward him is more to do with the fact that he stood by gormlessly whilst Keegan taunted and bullied her. 

That's another situation this storyline has highlighted - the very offensive misogynistic bullying of Louise by Keegan. There's genuine hatred there, even today, he swore total revenge on her and Rebecca for what he perceived they had done to Shakil. Then add to the equation the two teenaged doltish girls - the Afro-Caribbean and the one with the rat's nest hair - who've horned their way into Louise's sphere of influence and tag along like a warped Shakespearean chorus, making snide comments from the sidelines about everything - Shakil, Rebecca, the fight between Shakil and the other boy (obviously about the size of Shakil's wotsit and male pride) which was filmed by Rat's Nest, and even Carmel and Carmel's appearance when she showed up at school, summoned by Shakil's teacher.

The entire thing ends with silly Rebecca in tears and those around her not understanding, in their basic Luddite brains, why she still seemed concerned about Shakil's well-being and his reputation after this (as much as fearing for the fact that Shakil would know that the pictures were sent from her phone and, thereby, effectively ending any chance of a reconciliation between her and Shakil).

It also presents us with Rebecca's dilemma. Louise betrayed her, yet when confronted by Shakil about having sent the pictures and when she tells him it wasn't she who sent them, she refuses to divulge that Louise was the culprit. There's the inability of the silly girls to understand why Rebecca wouldn't be pleased with Shakil's humiliation as revenge for having dumped her, and then there's the totally incongruous remark made by Louise, after she lied to the teacher, implying that Shakil had started the fight for no reason, when Rebecca called her out for lying, Louise remarked,

You want my dad to die and you let Shakil get away with this?!

Seriously, what exactly does Phil's illness have to do with Shakil's naked pictures?  I get it that in the general scheme of things, they are chicken shit compared to the prospect of losing a parent, but there are so many facets to this silly storyline that there are really too many to fathom - the stupidity of sexting, especially regarding people who, although they are sixteen, are still emotionally children; the stupidity of getting involved physically when you're not emotionally mature enough to deal with that sort of relationship - teenaged boys are horny; not every teenaged boy is Mick Carter; and the lesson for Louise to think about your actions before you effect them, especially showing a bit of gratitude someone's way when they've helped you.

This is a mess, and it doesn't help that these "teens" are unlikable, smug and doltish, played by inadequate actors. This lot of teens make the Moon Goons and their satellites look pleasing.

It's an ill wind Sean O'Connor blows this way when he seeks to emphasize these woeful teens.

Just a Little Niggle about Michelle ... In this world of globalisation, consider this: Michelle obviously got a teaching qualification in the US, because she certainly didn't have one from here; and if she did, even in bogwater Florida (which is along the Panhandle), the US pre-Trump, pre-DeVos curriculum would require that she get US qualifications. 

The idea that Michelle teaches English is as laughable as Denise getting an English degree. Neither - well, not Michelle in her original incarnation - could string a sentence together without a glaring grammatical error. Be that as it may, Michelle wants to get a job, at first, as a supply teacher - obviously, with a view to going into teaching full-time.

As with anything, she'll need references, and in the world of e-mailing, Skyping and electronic communication, it wouldn't be that hard to get references from her former job within a matter of minutes. Technically, Michelle is a sex offender; actually, she committed statutory rape, as the legal age of consent is 18 in Florida, so technically, she's a rapist. Seriously. 

However, she's lucky that, unrealistically, her crime wasn't reported to the police. (This was an ALTERNATE FACT presented by TPTB and the writing room, because in real time, the school and/or the parents in question would have contacted the police forthwith. However, she'll still need a reference; and school-to-school, an educator will be duty-bound to reveal to any other potential educational employer exactly why Michelle's contract was terminated without notice.

She's living in fucking Cloud Coo-CooLand if she thinks she'll be able to get a job in education here! What the fuck does she think, that because the kid was 16 or 17 in the US and because the legal age of consent here is 16, that it won't matter? That the authorities in the UK would just say, Tsk, tsk, what happens in the US stays in the US?

Because at the end of the day, Michelle was in a position of trust, and she abused that trust and abused a student. I want to see the show own up to this, especially since they've gone out of their way to demolish totally the character of an original and one of the most iconic characters on the show.

Of course, you know things will go tits up with Michelle looking after Louise and Dennis, especially Dennis. At any rate, the sex offender secret has to come out sooner or later. Besides, Phil had a great line of foreshadowing on hand, when Sharon suggested that Michelle shadow her shifts at the Vic, because she'd left Mick in the lurch at the last minute. Michelle poo-poohed the idea, turning her nose up at the suggestion.

Michelle: I'm a teacher, why would I want to pull pints in a pub?
Phil: Because you're out of work?

By virtue of that line alone, you know Michelle will end up ... pulling pints in the pub. And she should.

On the other hand, it was nice to see Sharon and Phil happy with each other for once and looking forward to going off on an extended holiday.

The Continuing Troubles of Mick Carter. It never rains but it pours for the Carters now. We knew things would go from bad to worse when Mick woke up to find Sylvie in bed with him. 

Sylvie is a trying character, and once again, I'm not sure if we're supposed to laugh at her or cry with her. There was one remark made tonight - as there is every few months - about finding a home for Sylvie, a suggestion which was poo-poohed by Tina, who farms Sylvie out ad hoc to whichever relative seems to have some sort of time to spend with her. 

Today, however, it's not Mick. Mick is still missing Linda, and now it seems he's fallen out with her. He's hoping that she will return home, once she sees Elaine settled in rehab. Somehow, he thinks all the mishaps happening at the pub, specifically the leak in the roof, might be rectified simply by her presence. Or maybe, finding out that he's uninsured for wear and tear, he hopes Linda can worry and nag some roofer into replacing the roof at a fraction of the cost or whatever. Or perhaps he wants her home, because confronted with that snog he enjoyed with Whitney, he sees Linda as a protective shield against any temptation he might feel with Whitney hanging around like a bad smell.

But Linda isn't coming home. In fact, she's sticking with Elaine for the rehab, and when Mick starts whining about the pub, Linda reminds him that her priority at the moment is her mother; and Linda is right. This is spoiled brat Mick now acting out. Why doesn't he run to Mummy now? He only does so in order to get Shirley to take Sylvie off his hands, something Shirley definitely finds distasteful. Mick resents that Linda's mother, ill and recovering from a stroke, deserves Linda's primary attention, rather than coming home to deal with cowboy roofers and to shield him from a predatory daughter-in-law.

Mick is still keeping secrets. Let's count them: his debt (which Babe suspects), the roof being uninsured (again Babe suspects), the snog with Whitney (no one suspects); and sooner or later, these secrets will implode. When Mick is conflicted, he turns inward upon himself and makes everything about himself. Today he was so conflicted and upset that he refused point-blank to take his son to an important seminar, because fings weren't going ickle Mick's way.

Mick is the ultimate manchild, and with Lee leaving, he'll probably come unstuck and end up sleeping with Whitney. It's far-fetched, but his initial scene, waking up to Sylvie being in his bed, could have been foreshadowing that vulnerable Mick will succumb to Whitney in Linda's absence. Of course, Whitney being Whitney, the eternal victim, will make it all Mick's fault.

The Carters, themselves, don't know they're about to lose their licence.

Sisters Are Doing It for Themselves. Well, that was a turn-up for the books. Leave it until Grandma Medusa's last day in the Square, ply her with some rum and sit back and watch the inadvertant truths come pouring out of her mouth.

All it took was a couple of snifters for her to start telling Kim a few home truths about herself. Actually, for all Denise defended Kim as a "good mother," the real truth is that she isn't. It's obvious that Vincent does all the chores around the house whilst "Princess" Kim sits on her ample arse, perfecting her style. She uses the excuse of cuddling Pearl in bed in the morning to force Vincent to serve her breakfast in bed, consisting of chocolate spread on toast, and then, like the big kid she is, she makes a mess with the chocolate all over the bed. 

Pearl is a fashion accessory, and I always find it amusing and yet worrying that the kid, easily the cutest infant on the show, always looks bloody terrified whenever she's within spitting distance of Kim. Still, I could understand the natural inclination of Denise to take up for Kim in the face of Grandma Medusa's incessant criticising.

But fueled by rum, when Denise's defence became too much, Granny accuses them of ganging up on her and blurts out an inconvenient truth - that Denise and Kim actually aren't sisters.

You what?

is this a re-write or something? Apparently, it turns out that Denise's "uncle" - brought Denise home as a baby. No one knew who her mother was. Wait a moment ... by "uncle", did she mean some random man living with Grandma Medusa at the time, or did she mean Granny's actual brother? Was Denise his child? If so, he must have known who her mother was, and that would mean that Ada/Emerald knew that Denise's father was her brother or whatever. So what was all that searching around the Five Hectors all about?

Will this mean that Denise is going on a search for her birth mother to find out who she, Denise, really is? Is this the next introspective journey? Or is it a contrived lesson for Kim to learn about Denise, not being related to her in any way, but still being her sister, and Denise being someone who was farmed out to be raised by strangers, only to have those strangers becoming real and loving family? Is this an indirect lesson about adoptive relationships versus blood relationships? I hope so. I hope it's not a callous excuse for Denise to demand the return of her child, because that horse has fucking bolted and it should stay that way.

So now the Fox sisters, SOC's Blisters, become even more dysfunctional, and we'll have to suffer po-faced Denise at her worst, drinking herself to oblivion, telling Patrick and Kim that she doesn't know "who she is" and using this as an excuse to be generally unpleasant to anyone and everyone from Carmel to Honey, because this, like all her other dramas, is always only ever about Denise.

A Confederacy of Dunces - Review:- Thursday 02.02.2017

Jesse O'Mahoney isn't one of my favourite writers on the show, but I enjoyed this episode, even though parts of it angered and annoyed me.

Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

The Trouble with Sharon and Phil. I blame John Yorke. The problem with Sharon and Phil, or rather, the problem with the way their characters are depicted, date back to Yorke's tenure. 

I realise that there are some viewers whose cognizant memories of the show begin with Yorke's reign, and they refer to this as "the Golden Age" of the show. Believe me, it's not. Yorke put into play many of the problems which plague the show today, but chief amongst them were the mis-representation of Sharon's and Phil's characters.

Yorke was faced with the dilemma of developing Phil, always the nicer of the Bruvs, beyond Grant after Ross Kemp's departure. Instead of veering Phil in a new direction, he had him fall off the wagon again, develop an obsession with Steve Owen's squeeze and, basically, just tacked the bad bits of Grant's character onto Phil.

With Sharon, he did worse. Sharon was the first of the big-name, iconic characters to make a return, but people forget that Sharon left Walford with her head held high. She'd faced down the Mitchells, after having been betrayed by Phil to appease Grant, and she left. In fact, she did more than just leave, she left Grant Mitchell crying in the middle of the street.

Sharon had always been a strong female character who repeatedly bounced back from adversity. She returned to Walford a man-dependent tragedy queen with an even more tragic secret - the fact that she left Walford pregnant with Grant's child, which she aborted. The abortion went wrong (highly unlikely) and she was left infertile; but a few years down the line, when Nigel Harman's character was killed off, TPTB threw a sop to the Shannistas and allowed Sharon to have a miracle baby. She left Walford again, but this time in a welter of tragedy, and also pregnant.

Since her return in 2012, however, something hasn't been right about her character; and since Bryan Kirkwood's era, something's been wrong with Phil's character as well.

I blame the writers. Phil, even with his tack-on of Bad Grant, at least had a modicum of compassion. Since he got together with Shirley, that went out the window. It's been mooted that Peggy, Sharon, Kathy, Kate all acted as anchors to temper Phil's excesses, but Shirley actually let his inner bad run wild - and she ran with it.

The acute fact about Sharon's situation is that not one of the people in the writing room understand the character at all. Many only know Shannis Sharon, a precursor of Ronnie before the psychopathy emerged; but those of the writers who remember her 80s and 90s character, seem lost in a fog of what to do with her now that she's reached middle age.

Treadwell-Collins and O'Connor are going with John Yorke's assumption that Phil was the real love of Sharon's life and that Sharon was the girl who got away from Phil, the standard by whom he measured every successive wife and girlfriend he had. DTC eventually pairing them together should have been the end of a long process and a charismatic couple.

Instead, they've become a chore to watch. Sharon is all over the place. She's allowed herself to suffer a beating at the hands of thugs hired by Phil, she's tolerated him cheating on her - not once, but twice. He's fanagled her business and livelihood from her. He holds her at arms; length, treats her like and unwanted stepchild, and actually has to be told by Michelle Fowler to grow the fuck up and learn to appreciate his wife.

Sharon, because of the Fox-Mitchell unintentional baby, is living in fear that Phil's obsession with blood kin will outweigh any sort of commitment he's made to her. She explained to him in painstaking eloquence why adoption was just as valid as natural kinship, yet she offered him the option of fighting for his child and said she would support him - because that's what you do when you love someone. Phil reconsidered his claim, but now he's got a new interest. We're watching him suffer from Survivor's Guilt and want to involve himself with the widow of a man he barely knew and her grasping young son just because he got a liver, and the man in question didn't.

I could totally understand Phil going stir crazy in the house, whilst convalescing from what was a very serious operation, indeed. I could also understand Sharon's uncertainty about what he wanted. I genuinely believe she thought he wanted to leave to be away from her, and for the most part, I wondered that also, because of the off-hand way in which he treated her throughout the episode.

As with Whitney and Lee, I don't think these two really love each other. Phil, ultimately, only loved himself and Peggy - and Peggy's was a love-hate situation at best of times. I think he loved the idea of Sharon, but now he's got her, he doesn't know how to contain her. There have been times when they've been rowing, when Sharon will bring Grant into the equation, remarking about how Grant would have done this or that differently. And that's Phil's uncertainty. Because I think he knows, deep down, that Grant was the love of Sharon's life, and whilst she loves Phil, it's nowhere near the way and of the same intensity that she loved Grant.

I suppose this trip to "somewhere hot" for a few months heralded the beginning of Steve McFadden's panto break and some time off for Letitia Dean. They won't surface again until March, and I won't miss them. A lof have discussion has gone on about the relevancy of Sharon and Phil to the programme as it is at the moment. 

They've never been more relevant. With all the hoohah going around about how the show is going to put more emphasis on the younger faux-adolescent characters, at a time when this group is the most unlikable group of teenagers in the show's history, the older characters balance things out. The problem is, just as the writers are crap at representing teenagers, they're equally crap at representing Sharon and Phil, who they were in the 90s and who they are today. Coronation Street is brilliant with long-standing characters over the ages, but somewhere along the line, EastEnders has lost its way.

Sharon needs to bag the Vic licence when the Carters fuck it up. Putting her back behind the bar of the Vic, not as a barmaid, but as someone with a vested interest in the place where she was brought up from a small child, would do a lot to enhance her character and to imbed her identity back into the show. Phil needs to forget the missing Mitchell or the greedy little boy who's lost his dad. He's been given a second chance with raising a child in the form of Dennis. Adopt the kid and be a father.

The Trouble with the Adults Playing the Teenagers. No matter how much you scrub her face clean of make-up, dress her in a school uniform and re-style her hair like a little girl's, Tillie Keeper will always look twenty-five years old. (Yes, I know she'll be twenty this year, but she even looks older than that.) 

The girl who plays Rebecca is simply just bad. Not just bad, but awful. She's an older adolescent, whose bodyline is already taking on the contours of an adult, and she annoys me the way she has to deliver every line of dialogue by throwing back her head and jutting out her chin, with a funny peculiar semi-smile on her face. 

It simply makes her look smug. And that makes her look unlikable..

There are no words for Shakil.

We're finally getting down the the real nitty-gritty of what this storyline is all about and what it has been about since the year dot ... revenge porn. This started, when? Back in the early autumn, did it not? Here we are, literally, on the cusp of spring, and we finally have this storyline moving on.

It's been so boring that one could be forgiven for not seeing, on one level, how much it's a story about betrayal in friendship, as much as the unintelligible rationale of plain meanness that some kids exhibit.

Shakil actually saved Louise's life. He stayed on the wrecked bus, in what could potentially have been a dangerous situation, with no thought of his own safety, until he was sure she was off the bus and back into safety. Yet she's never once thanked him for what he did. Instead, she's screamed at him from the outset, derided him and bullied the hapless Rebecca into breaking with him entirely. For some reason, known only to her and to the Luddite girls whose very existence and behaviour encourages the overt and aggressive misogyny of their immediate peers, specifically Keegan, Louise and the two grifter girls from the drama club, seem to think Shakil has some sort of punishment due him.

For what?

For saving Louise's life? That's perverse. For popping Rebecca's cherry? That's between him and Rebecca. Why, I can't fathom; but it's resulted in Louise nicking Rebecca;s Smartphone long enough to send the naked pictures of Shakil to her two new wannabe mates, so they can make this go viral. Thing is, these pictures were sent from Rebecca's phone, sent to her by Shakil, who'll think that she did this.

I can't help thinking that the pictures of Rebecca, which she took of herself and didn't send, will also re-surface somehow. There was a reason for that scene with Tina all those months ago,when Tina reminded her that once pictures of herself were "out there," that's where they stayed.

On another level, it's also a story about bullying, and it's Louise who's getting bullied on all fronts. She's bullied remorselessly by that teenaged psychopath, Keegan, yet another and the youngest of a gaggle of characters displaying overt misogyny - his aim at bullying Louise is to humiliate her appallingly. On the other side, she's also being manipulated and bullied by the rancid two girls who are hanging around her. It was they who coerced her into stealing Rebecca's phone for the purposes of sending those pictures of Shakil.

According to Keeper, the show is moving these people front and centre. It's obvious now that this entire ordeal we've been suffering with them - the virginity storyline and all of the yawnworthy rubbish in its wake, has the ultimate aim of a story about revenge porn. Emmerdale did the same sort of storyline between BFFs Liv and Gaby within a matter of a few episodes. That's all it merits. EastEnders is BBC 1's flagship programme. It's not a niche soap about the teenybob set. Get a grip.

The Trouble with the Carters. Quite simply, the ranks are being depleted fast. Nancy left almost a year ago. Babe's and Lee's characters are being axed - although I suspect we'll see Lee again within a year sporting a new head - and Linda is away, at least, until the spring. That leaves, officially, Mick, Johnny (a non-presence), and dirty Whitney in the pub. Shirley, Tina and the insufferable Sylvie are peripheral to the action and function as a unit in and of themselves.

Until Linda returns, where does that leave the thwarted passion of Mick and dirty Whitney?

That's the least of his problems, however. Time was, everything Mick touched turned to gold; then his wife was raped, and everything after that went rancid. His position as Big Daddy was exposed as a fraud. He and Linda were two kids, stunted emotionally in adolescence, playing house. She grew up after the rape; he regressed.

Now, after being with the same woman since he was fourteen and a child, he's suddenly and inadvertantly bumbled into a full-on snog and attraction to his son's wife, who is badly in need of a bath, but still Mick finds her sexy in some way. Add to that, the fact that he's in serious financial trouble - not so much for having bailed Lee out of a jam, but for taking out a loan from a shark in order to bring Linda and Elaine back to Walford for Elaine's recovery; but not in the Vic, everything's going tits up. From inadvertant racism via Sylvie's silly Chinese entertainment on Tuesday, we arrive at the fact that there's not one, but two substantial leaks in the roof at the Vic.

Enter Alan, a man whom Ian Beale recognises as a rogue builder, and this on the morning after the Chinese debacle, when people are avoiding the Vic's breakfast buffet like the plague (hence the warning to Kathy that there was a queue extending around the block.)

There was a whiff of Breakfast Wars and dirty tricks emanating from Ian's side of the equation, with the appearance of the rogue builder and Ian's inexplicable presence, allegedly asleep at a table in the Vic early in the day of this episode, only to wing it back home and disclose to Kathy and Jane that Alan the builder would hit Mick for a lot of money and then do a shoddy job. At it was, Mick was told that they needed a new roof - which they'll probably find isn't covered by whatever insurance that they have.

I suspect Ian was there to keep an spy-eye out on just how badly the competition was doing. But he wasn't the only person watching the Carters in this episode. The undercover policeman who's discovered Babe's serving booze out of hours on the premises was back and being served alcohol as well.

The clock's begun to tick for the end of their tenure, or at least their being the licencees of the pub, I surmise.

The Trouble with Denise (and Kim). This vignette was obviously a showcase of Diane Parish's showpiece - her telling-off talent, because that's what Denise does best, aside from making snide faces. 

You really want to shout, Change the damned record, why don't you!

Same shit, different day, except with a pecuniary and distasteful scene of utmost cruelty. I was thinking O'Connor was fashioning the Fox sisters into yet another co-dependent siblinghood of weak sibling being utterly dependent on the stronger sibling, but I'm not sure what I think of this set-up.

First of all, I'm now confused about the age difference between Denise and Kim. Tameka Empson is a rising forty, so we can assume that Kim will turn forty this year. Denise is the same age as Ian, Sharon and Michelle - forty-seven. With all the best will in the world, Denise could only have brought Kim up from the time she was at least sixteen, which would have meant that Kim was nine, and what nine year-old would refer to her sixteen year-old sister as "mummy."? Anything under than the age of sixteen would have branded Ada/Emerald/Grandma Medusa an abandoning mother and would have put her daughters under the auspices of Social Services.

Besides, and here's another mathematical miscalculation along the line of the Carter subsequent re-writes, Denise was supposed to be some sort of teenaged party animal, living in some squat with Lucas and giving birth to Chelsea when she was barely out of her teens - Chelsea is older than Stacey Fowler, so when would Denise have had time to play "sister-mummy" with Kim?

I do wish that successive EPs with their pet characters and pet agendae would stop re-writing characters' backstories to suit themselves. This is treating the audience as ignorati, and we're anything but. In fact, although Kim has always been presented as selfish, irresponsible and feckless, herself some sort of ueber party-girl who, initially, ran after the likes of Fatboy and drank for England, there was never any hint of any sort of dysfunctional co-dependency with Denise.

Kim was lazy and impetuous, but what O'Connor's pulled out of his hat for the pair of them seems like a poor attempt to re-create Ronnie and Roxy without the psychopathy. It ain't working.

Up until this episode, we were getting tired of same scene different day with Kim banging on about Denise's baby being brought up by strangers. This episode presented a different tack. It was a degree course in stating the bleeding obvious - you knew Kim had something up her sleeve when she was playing nice and inviting Denise to dinner. Grandma Medusa knew, Vincent knew, but no one thought to confront Kim about it.

The one thing that struck me in all of this was the incredible strand of cruelty in both sisters. Months ago, we had Denise acting just as shittily toward Libby when she chose to have an abortion (a contrived tale if ever there was one - what adult returns home to announce to her mother that she was having an abortion? You get on with it. It's your life, but not po-faced Libby). Now we have Kim the bully, taking umbrage with the fact that Denise chose to go to her class - her GCSE class - instead of breaking bread with someone who's barely spoken to her for weeks, and then only to harangue, bully and guilt-trip her?

So what does Kim do? She barrels down to the place where Denise is in the middle of her GCSE class, after her tutor, unknowingly, announced to the class that she'd given birth, only for Kim to empty Denise's cache of breast pads onto the desktop and announce to the class that Denise had given her baby up for adoption to be, yes, "raised by strangers."

Because, of course, Kim is the mouthpiece for EastEnders' rage at the machine which entails that some women do, indeed, put their child up for adoption, for the child's benefit, yet Denise's assertion that she's bettering herself is educationally is the equivalent, in Kim's eyes, of their mother toddling along after the first fit piece of male flesh which came along during their young lives.

So now, as Denise points out to Kim, this has all become a story about Kim, and Kim's transferral of abandonment issues onto Denise. I don't get this co-dependency storyline. It's like Ronnie and Roxy have come back to inhabit the bodies of Denise and Kim. Kim lived well away from Denise in her successive relationships. Kim was away living with creepy Dexter and running a restaurant, far enough away that she hardly visited Denise. It was Denise who sought her out each time a relationship failed.

It's that re-write, re-boot, whatever you call it, that bothers me about this storyline, apart from its incessant repetitiveness. Neither Denise or especially Kim has come out of this storyline smelling of roses. Instead, they're both varying degrees of foetid.

And is Denise that stupid to think that all people will judge her harshly for putting her child up for adoption? Not everyone is like Kim or even Phil Mitchell. Especially not her educated and cultured tutor, who is urging her to pursue a degree in English. Just one problem with that - Denise is only doing GCSE level, and she'll need an A-Level or two before she thinks about uni, unless it's the Open University. And if she's studying English, even English lit, someone is going to have to give her some remedial work in improving her appalling grammar.

Mediocrity Central - Review:- Tuesday 31.01.2017

How not to gain new and returning viewers:- After an exceptional week of episodes, just get Katie Douglas to write two of the episodes in a three-episode week. If last night's episode was bad, this one was worse. It was a big, hunk of steaming shit which accomplished nothing, and the worrying thing is that, Max apart, the storylines we appear to be being offered are circular and offensive (Denise, Kim), boring and uninteresting and fronted by unlikable characters (Rebecca, Louise, Shakil), uninspiring and stereotypical (the Carters) or simply repetitive and insulting (Phil and Sharon).

The only thing keeping me going with this shower is wanting to know what Max's game is and who his benefactor is. But they appear to have dropped that storyline like a hot potato, and by the time it's resumed, half the viewers will have forgotten about it, and the other half simply won't care.

But, hey ... as long as we have Bad-Dialogue Katie on the payroll, we're all right.

Phil Is a Cock, and Sharon Should Smack the Shit Out of Him. There, I said it. He's a selfish, self-centred cock who doesn't give a damn about Sharon. Think about this: Eric treated Peggy like a piece of shit. He drank, he cheated on her and he beat her repeatedly. Yet it was Peggy who suffered from Stockholm Syndrome, and who ended up preaching the Mantra of Mitchell until her dying day. 

Sharon's destined for the same thing. Phil thinks nothing of her. He spends a night canoodling with her - at Michelle's suggestion (and, face it, he shouldn't need a suggestion off the back of a woman whom he hates to be kind and attentive to his wife). Phil is a classic coward. He's the Alpha Male who really isn't an Alpha Male. In fact, he's a chicken hawk, a mummy's boy who doesn't know what to do without his mother around to poke and prod him here and there. He's petulant and petty, reminding me of the ultimate ManBaby in the most powerful position in the world, attended by his craven acolytes, Farage and Piers Morgan. 

When Phil was ill and being carted off to the operating room, when it was thought he might not even survive the operation, the last thing he called as he was being wheeled from the room was to tell Sharon how much he loved her. All it took was his release from hospital to forget all of that and start treating Sharon, at best, like the fixtures and fittings, at worst like a bastard at a family reunion.

Nothing's changed with Phil. The moment Sharon walks out of the room, he's on the phone, and you know that dippy Black Widow Antoinette, doing a bad impersonation of a cross between 'Allo Allo's Yvette and Fawlty Towers' Mrs Peignoir, was on the other end of the line. 

Phil's now suffering from Survivor's Guilt; he's also suffering from Interminable Cock Syndrome and Headuparseitis, laced with a strong dose of stupidity. He thinks that a luxury manicure on top of a night of middle-aged sex will rock Sharon's boat.

That's insulting to Sharon.

The saddest thing about this situation is watching Sharon literally beg for Phil's acceptance, love and approbation, to worry at the thought of his slightest absence meaning that he's gone off her or that he doesn't love her. Maybe, deep down, she knows that he doesn't; and I have to say that I think the catalyst for this recognition on Phil's part was him learning of the existence of Denise's baby.

Until Sharon told him, I think Phil was genuinely satisfied with Sharon and looking forward to adopting Dennis. However, since that incident, we haven't seen Phil interacting with Dennis at all - in fact, we've not even seen Dennis. Instead, we've seen Phil be drawn by his guilt at surviving liver failure, into the fatherless, husbandless web of Antoinette and spoiled brat, Aaron.

Obviously, Antoinette has had a change of heart, considering the last time she showed herself around the Mitchells, shouting the odds, and quite rightly, about Phil giving her son a wad of money to buy the trainers he whined about (along with the games console and the trip to Orlando). My guess is that there was something in the message Phil either left on her phone or around her house - apparently, he's determined to look after her and Tony's son. This is Tony, a man Phil only knew for a matter of months.

To his credit, at least he was honest with Sharon about where he went when he disappeared, and she wasn't happy about that; but within minutes, the fragrant Antoinette is rocking up on the Mitchell doorstep, whining about Tony being dead, and ho she now had to be mother and father to Aaron (nudge, nudge, wink, wink).

I don't blame Sharon for being annoyed and telling that white lie about Jack coming over, reminding Phil that Jack is family and needs their emotional support more than this grifting stranger and her whining, snotty little kid. And Sharon is right - their situation is not Phil's responsibility. Had Phil died, I doubt Tony would be around the Mitchell household every day, drying Sharon't tears and playing footie with Dennis. I'm glad she told him that she was glad Tony had died, because if he hadn't, then it would have been Phil who died.

I don't think Phil even appreciated that. After his little bonding session with Ben and Jay, he gave his blessing to Ben leaving home and moving in with Jay, Phil returns home and makes some cryptic remark to Sharon about things changing around the Mitchell household. 

I totally understand where Sharon's coming from. First, she witnessed Phil pointedly cutting her and Dennis out of his will, implying that Sharon and Dennis mattered not at all because they weren't blood Mitchells, ne'mind the fact that his death would leave them with nothing. Then she found out about Denise's child, and that's what's really worrying her. She remembers all too well how Wicksy abandoned her to be with Cindy and their son, but Sharon's middle-aged, with a young child, herself, and she's actually sacrificed her integrity to stay with Phil, even granting a deathbed promise to Peggy. 

She's worried now that Phil's dwelling on the "lost Mitchell" and worried that the child will materialise again and that he'd go off with Denise and worried that he blames her. Once he's contained her fears on that account, now he proposes to play Daddy and Provider to two veritable strangers over the loss of a man who, had he not been ill, he'd never have known. Last night, Phil was pledging himself to Sharon and Dennis and tonight he's saying he owes something to the widow and son of a man no one knows from Adam.

I can understand Sharon craving Ben's presence around the house. He's her tool for insuring Phil remains on side. She really needs to rise up from this situation, kick his fat arse into touch and leave him. And although Michelle means well, she has her own problems, and it won't be long before her constant nagging at Phil to buck up will rub him the wrong way too.

Too Many Cooks Spoiling the Broth. It's a big mistake for Stacey to let Carmel have access to Arthur. Kush had stepped back, willingly, and until this time, he'd forbidden Carmel to do so. But now she's buying present after present for him. Martin is raising him. For all intents and purposes, Martin is his father. The child has Martin's surname. 

Give Carmel and inch, and she naturally thinks she's entitled to a mile. (By the way, did anyone clock how appallingly awful her first lines of dialogue were? I mean who talks that way to workmen?) Her entitlement was evident the way she barged her way into the Beales and invited herself to have lunch with Jane and Stacey, just so she could offer commentary about the way Stacey was bringing up Arthur.

I think Martin feels insecure enough with Max hanging about - and where the hell is Max? By the time the re-introduce him, half the audience will have forgotten what's happened and the other half won't care. Martin is insecure enough about Max, just think how he'll react with Carmel hanging about like a bad smell; and if this is a storyline leading into male infertility, that will drive down Martin's self-esteem altogether.

Round and Round the Garden with Denise. Again. I am sorry, but I still maintain that Denise is irrelevant. The previous producer couldn't even finish a storyline he started with her; now this producer sends her spinning in circles, round and round, the same scene being replayed in a different setting each day. They should put her and Kim on a loop, and save the BBC some money.

Once again, we have Kim pouting about Denise's baby "being raised by strangers." Once again, we have Denise looking guilty, insecure and fragile, and everyone around her treating her as if she were some sort of delicate flower who must be nursed and nourished. I thought it hilarious that she went into work, expecting to "get her head down" and do some reading - meaning that she'd slope behing the counter with her head in a book whilst Honey did all the legwork. I thought it rich that Honey was rewarded with the classic Denise sneer when she informed Denise that she had to go out that morning for a meeting with Janet's teacher.

The story of the rats and the pile-up of rubbish bags on the Square is something else that's getting old too. Where I live, we have fortnightly rubbish collections. We also live near a canal - a natural breeding spot for rodents, and we have no rats. In case the residents of Walford haven't cottoned onto something, here's a hint: There's such a thing as an amenity tip. A dump. It's quite simple to use. You simply load the rubbish in a black bin bag, put it in the boot of your car and off you go to the dump. 

But nooooooo ... Sean O'Connor has to use this as some sort of contrivance catalyst for the rest of the storylines. The day of the crash, Honey was seen chasing a rat out of the Minute Mart. Well, that does give the stereotypically brash, young area manager the speculation that if they have rats coming into the story - and not the human variety - it does say something for the overall hygiene. And so we have the story of noble, put-upon Denise, slaving away in the store and eventually dressing down her superior for his lack of manners. (Pot, meet kettle).

But generally, all this storyline has devolved into is fifty different ways we can watch Kim snub Denise, fifty different ways we can see Denise lift her head and say she's a better person than Denise and fifty different ways Grandma Medusa can tell Denise that Kim will "come around," because, after all, Denise almost died.

Change the record. At least, po-faced Libby returned to Oxford. Hooray!

I'm tired of the same old same old in this instance, I'm tired of the subject of this adoption, I'm tired of the egregious theme EastEnders promotes of adoption being a bad, bad thing. That's irresponsible and untrue. But then this storyline is typical of all of Denise's storylines - they either fall at the first hurdle and aren't continued; or they go around and around and around doing the same old same old until they're dropped suddenly. This storyline, in particular, hasn't done a tired character any favours at all; in fact, it's only served to emphasise Denise's worst character points.

It Was the Best of Times, Now It's the Worst of Times. Wow, the Carters go from hero to zero with Sean O'Connor. Somebody doesn't like them. Since O'Connor took over, they haven't had too great a time. Like Denise, they seem to be stuck in a rut with this storyline of Lee's depression and Mick's inappropriate attachment to Whitney.

Add money problems to the mix, hence the various forays into theme nights at the pub or, as was in evidence on Tuesday, a quiz night. For all Mick's condemnation of Lee's debt, now he's up to his eyeballs as well, but his luck is on the downswing at the moment.

Johnny's uni mates and his lack of culinary skill ruined Italian night. Chinese night was a big success, thanks to Mick's Thai friend who specialised in Chinese cuisine as well as others. The inference when Panit first appeared - a Thai cooking a Chinese buffet - had veiled racial overtones at best (all Orientals looking alike, anyone?), but Tuesday's episode fell further down the slippery slope. 

Why Tina pressed Mick about Sylvie doing some dance routine from her long-forgotten youth as some sort of Grade Z "exotic" dancer was beyond me. Who wants to see a little old lady in her late seventies, suffering from dementia, doing a specialty routine. As things turned out, she started off singing a song which may have been au fait with the punters in the 1950s (ending the routine with the Goons' Ying Tang song, which had nothing to do with Chinese, but just enough to reinforce the stereotypical racism implied in the pidgin song pronunciation of Sylvie's performance), but it went down a bomb in the 21st Century.

People were offended enough to flee the pub in distaste.

But that wasn't the last of Mick's problems. Sitting in the kitchen, he notices that the roof of the Vic has a major leak and is dripping a big pool onto the kitchen floor. Rather than take a call from Linda, however, Mick elects to take it on the chin, even using the insipid phrase to Babe about promising Linda he'd "keep the home fires burning." FFS, this is a leak in the roof, not the Blitz.

Look, it's on the cards that the Carters are going to lose the Vic. Rather than Max and the Mystery Man taking this over and doing whatever it is they'll have to do, I'm hoping Sharon takes over the licence and the Carters remain to manage if for her. Danny Dyer's only recently signed an extended contract, and like Shane Richie, I can't see him functioning or staying outside of running the pub.

The Return of the (Drunken) Native. A significant amount of Lauren's dialogue - in fact, almost all of it, in this episode centred around reminiscences of Tanya. I found it telling that one of Lauren's lasting memories of Tanya was her getting drunk and getting thrown out of a pub quiz with Max for shouting out the answers.

Tanya is one of a legion of characters in the Square who have serious drink problems. In fact, after Shirley, I'd say she was the closest thing to a female alcoholic on the Square, except Tanya, like her mother, is a functioning alcoholic, and like Cora, she always had a drink in her hand to add to the buzz throughout the day. Remember her amazingly over-large wine glass?

There were Tanya reminiscences, Lauren remarking that it had been a long time since she'd seen Tanya, in fact - has Tanya ever seen her grandson? And of course, now Max is back in the area, what could be more original than re-uniting EastEnders' ultimate dysfunctional co-dependent couple? Because the only thing anyone could think of doing with Max is getting him back together with Tanya. I thought he'd turned her pathetic little attempt at a reconciliation down a couple years ago. I don't miss her and her bitchy, little material girl ways; but I guess the work's winding down for Jo Joyner, and the school fees must be kicking in.

Rather than bring back old characters, especially the show's signature yo-yo couple, I want to see O'Connor introduce new characters. With Babe going, could Panit be the new cook at the Vic, because that's the last thing Ian Beale would want to see in Walford - genuine competition?

Woeful episode.