Some Digital Spy shippers are wondering what to do about Joey now that his raison d'etre, Derek, has snuffed it. Please ... this is the truth. Derek was his raison d'etre. Derek was the reason he was created, after all. Lauren was simply his raison de baiser. Nothing more. Nothing less. One kind soul on the forum actually expostulated a premise which left me, frankly, gobsmacked:-
IMO Joey needs to be at the centre of the soap or there is the risk of him going the way of Tyler Moon.
You bloody what?
I don't know what version of EastEnders this person has been watching, but the whole problem with Tyler Moon arose from TPTB's efforts to place Tyler squarely in the centre of the soap. This time last year and until March 2012, Twitney was the go-to couple. Reams and reams of film were made and extensively shown, detailing how, from Pat's death onward, Whitney and Tyler danced around each other, mindful always of his friendship with Fatboy (her then beau) and her dalliance with him, until that uneventful Valentine's episode which sucked terribly.
The problem with Tyler Moon is basically the same problem Joey Branning has ... neither character is played by any actor with either previous acting experience or talent. Both were hired because of the fact that they were, in today's parlance, fit. They looked good and hunky with their shirts off.
When Joey arrived, we were told he was destined to be paired with Skinny Minny Bag-o-Bones Beale, that Lucy and Joey were destined to be the next power couple on the Square ... this generation's Sharon and Grant.
Reaction?
The next grand design was to pair him with his first cousin Lauren for a bit of forbidden love. TPTB pushed Joey as the resident hunk and also did a make-over job with Jacqueline Jossa, collagening and false boobing her into a replica of the current US go-to girl Jennifer Lawrence, but without a smidgeon of talent.
Jennifer Lawrence
NOT Jennifer Lawrence
EastEnders have created a rushed teenaged angst couple without any redeeming qualities. Any likeability Joey may have had flew out the window when he was wantonly rude to Ian Beale in his own home. Lauren is a lazy, entitled, sensless, compassionless, selifsh, self-obsessed, spoiled drunk. As someone else on Digital Spy opined, she seriously needs less screentime, or even the axe. But for some reason, TPTB, and in particular, Newman, seem intent on pushing her as the ingenue of the moment without any redeeming quality other than being a member of the ever-increasing Branning tribe. What's the honest truth is that, sometime about a year ago, the actress who plays her started believing her own hype and life began to imitate art. Whenever she's on screen, she's very aware of herself and of the camera. The character got a slap recently. The actress could do with the axe.
But really, the truth about David Witts and what to do with his character is the same essential truth about Tony Discipline, the actor who plays Tyler Moon: neither have any previous acting experience or talent. They were two nameless underwear models, plucked from a catalogue and plopped at the centre of the BBC's flagship programme. People need to remember what happened to Brookside once it started casting off the street and pushing the show as a vehicle for the dubious and silicone-enhanced talents of Claire Sweeney.
David Witts has no more need to be at the centre of EastEnders than the Easter Bunny does. In fact, the Easter Bunny has more right - because he'll at least show up, leave the Easter eggs and go. Witts hangs around, mumbles inarticulate dialogue which can only be understood via subtitles, hangs his head sideways and stands with his mouth agape for far longer than necessary.
If a troglodyte like that, who doesn't even bear a passing resemblance to Nigel Harman or Robert Kasinski, is to become the central young male figure on EastEnders, then the show really and truly has jumped the shark and Lorraine Newman should be taken out and smacked.
Witts likes to emphasise his "stage" experience and qualifications, but his chief claim to fame is touring in a review called WildBoyz which is basically described as British-Village-People-Visit-South-Beach. Very camp, as you can see ...
Clock Witts's party piece of standing around in the briefest of briefs.
So what exactly is Joey's place in EastEnders now that dear old Daddy has snuffed it? Well, this is the only Joey I want to see on the programme ...
Definitely more talent. Sings a bit. Cute. None of those qualities possessed by the deplorable Mr Wicks.
To all the people on Digital Spy Soaps forum getting your knickers all in a twist and saying and believing that Roxy and Alfie slept together on Christmas night, watch this again, please ... specifically, the part between the 30 and 45 second marks. Clean your ears, shut your mouths and listen up ... (This is how you learn things).
Have you done that? Fine. Now, let's recap. First of all, you probably thought they'd slept together because Roxy was in his bed, in his bedroom, wearing his West Ham shirt. Alfie appears at the door, in his dressing gown and bearing a cup of tea for Roxy. Don't assume. Listen. Roxy asks Alfie if he slept all right and motions with her hand to an unspecified area outside of the bedroom. Alfie said he did, moves his neck about and makes a joke about the couch being nice and soft. That wasn't something coy for the children's sake or for Mo's or Jean's benefits.They simply didn't sleep together. The last time Roxy stayed at the Vic, Alfie slept on the couch whilst she and Amy had the big bedroom. Probably the same thing now. One thing Alfie Moon doesn't do and that is casual sex. He may have thrown his skanky, cheating wife to the gutter where she belongs, but he is still married to her, and he realises this. Does he want to sleep with Roxy? Of course, he does. He wants her comfort and compassion and the shot to his ego she'd give. Part of that masculine ego wants to couple with Roxy in full view of Kat to give her a taste of her own medicine and to show her he's moved on. But, equally, a part of Alfie knows that wouldn't be fair to Roxy. Remember, before Alfie was Kat's lover and husband, he was, first and foremost, her friend - which is what he is now, for Roxy. Alfie still has the moral high ground here. Y'all need to pay attention.
This is what I mean by short-term remedy. Diederick Santer had it down to an art. The show's been bleeding viewers, seriously, since 2003. I don't give a rat's ass what a particular over-enthusiastic Digital Spy shipper, quoting audience figures and pushing viewing times, has to say about the show and how great it is. Everything said in that respect reeks either of being on the BBC payroll or wanting to be part of what he would deem the EastEnders' experience. I also don't buy into the cutesy PR plant on the same forum with the same agenda, which is to big up the show no matter what. These people are hucksters. P T Barnum would have made sure they were given a goodly supply of snake oil. The show's been on a downward spiral for a long time. Up to the plate steps Santer. He's got to staunch the flow. Maybe if he stops the thing from bleeding out, he can turn its health around, but to staunch the flow means a quick-fix solution that gets bums on seats. So he employs two short-term devices:- bringing back popular former characters and sensationalist storylines. Sometimes they work - Ricky and Bianca worked, Clare Bates didn't. Sometimes they don't - the Stax reveal was good, the burial alive of Max was something best forgotten, along with the obvious symbolism of being effected over the Easter weekend of 2008, with the incumbent symbolism of rising from the grave and all that. He creates a precedent. Santer gave us Ricky, Bianca and Carol as we remembered them; Kirkwood gaves us a mutant Alfie and Kat. And a brief sighting of David Wicks, with David's and Carol's teenage shag behind the bike sheds being turned into the second coming of Frank and Pat. He also burned down the Vic, blew up the B and B, swapped a dead baby for a live one, and had Heather killed with a picture frame by mad, bad Ben Mitchell, the tap-dancing psychopath. He expands the Brannings until the family and its attachments reach into every aspect of Square life. He expands the teens, so that now their diverse couplings become things of a serious nature. He kills off a long-established and much-loved matriarch and gives us a Branning replacement, once removed, complete with fag smoke and whiskeyed breath, wheezing and bullying her way around the neighbourhood and asks that we accept her. This is not EastEnders. This is BranningVille, and, believe me, BranningVille makes Pottersville look pleasant. The entire year of 2012 has been inconsistent - at best mediocre, at worst downright bad. There are characters so devoid of warmth, purpose and compassion who've hogged the screen and in whom we've been begged to invest something, that it becomes impossible to do so, and people turn off. Writing is lazy, circular, with no end objective, retconning almost at will and moulding new characters to fit the personalities of the actors who play them - most of whom have little or no professional experience and very little talent. The premise of the Christmas storyline has basically been the revelation of two "surprises" and the death of a character who was, arguably, the most unliked character ever created on the show. We knew Derek was going to die, we just didn't know how. Anyone using more than one braincell could have sussed that Kat's Shaggerman was Derek and that Max's major secret was that he was married to someone other than Tanya. Yesterday, because of these revelations, EastEnders won the ratings' battle. How they sustain the aftermath of all these things will determine if it deserves to win the war, itself. Don't listen to the shipper and his various incarnations on Digital Spy. Shippers gonna ship. Or the PR bod who skips about and uses musical analogies, playing the part of a dizzy teacher awarding grades and sounding like Aunt Bluebell on acid.
Watch the damned show and think, especially if you're a long-term viewer. The public fund this through a stealth tax. We shouldn't let anyone, not the professional shippers nor Lorraine Newman and her writing room get away with dishing us any old tripe and then try to tell us that public perception of this programme is positive. Grab them by the short and curlies and shake! Because tonight's Boxing Day episode was back to the same old same old. When I find myself beginning to doze during an episode of EastEnders, something is wrong. Not with me, but with EastEnders. And for the record, the Shipper-in-Chief of EastEnders on Digital Spy assumes that Downton Abbey is a show aimed only for women or elderly people. That is an insult to everyone who watches that programme and an insult to his perceived intelligence. Downton Abbey boasts two ex-cast members from Coronation Street and Emmerdale. I see no one, upstairs or down in that production who is an alumni of EastEnders. Think about that. OK, let's get Max Branning's marital history straight. An 18 year-old Max Branning gets his girlfriend Rachel up the duff and marries her. Bradley is born. Max is now a married man. When Bradley is six, Max dallies with 18 year-old ex-drug addict and incipient alcoholic hairdresser Tanya Cross and gets her up the duff. Result? Max has to abandon Rachel and Bradley in order to marry Tanya. Tanya is a woman who thought nothing of going after another woman's husband. Hold that thought. Max is a serial cheater, and he cheats on Tanya. Each time he's caught, he assumes the Max Branning sad face
and apologises to Tanya, each time offering her an increasingly more expensive present. When Max is caught sleeping around with the ex-girlfriend of his son, who subsequently marries his son, Tanya kicks him out, and sleeps with the local psycho in order to get him to help her kill Max. At this point, Tanya becomes as bad, morally, as Max. She attempts to bury him alive, relents and rescues him, agrees to some time apart, but then shacks up with Jack the Peg, Max's brother. They spend a year taunting and publically humiliating Max before trying to skip the country, illegally, with Max's kids. That's when Lauren, Max's oldest daughter tries to kill him. Both these murder attempts have since become jokes within the Branning family. Eventually, Max and Tanya reconcile, but when he goes tits-up financially, she leaves him and within a couple of months, has latched onto a gormless younger builder with a fat wallet and an even fatter wotsit. They divorce, and Tanya marries gormless Greg. Tanya is now married to another man, and Max is single. Within weeks, Tanya starts sleeping with Max. If all the Tanya-shippers never believed her to be as amoral as Max, they do now. When she finds out she has cancer, she keeps it a secret. A big secret. In doing so, she pushes Max away, after gormless Greg finds out about her affair, but she does so in a way in which she allows her daughters to believe that the affair was all Max's fault. Tanya never takes responsibility for anything she does. Tanya and Lauren order Max to leave Walford. Max is still a single man. At some point during the three months he is absent from Walford, Max marries Kirsty. However,when he's called back by Jack for a family crisis and finds out about Tanya's illness, he decides to abandon Kirsty. OK, Tanya married in April 2011. Max married sometime between August-October 2011. This would mean that Tanya could not divoced Greg before April 2012, and Max could not initiate divorce proceedings until August, September or October 2012. So Tanya and Max, for the better part of the year, were two people, married to others, who were living together. Except that Max never told Tanya he was married. Another secret, but then secrets are the Brannings' way of life. It has to be assumed that Tanya and Greg got a divorce, because at some point in the year, she ceased to call herself Tanya Jessop and became Tanya Cross again. We now know that when Max visited the mysterious council house with an evelope of money and wanted, but didn't, knock on the door, that he was delivering a wodge of dosh as a sweetener in order to get Kirst to sign the divorce papers, also enclosed. That scene occurred around September 2012, so that was accurate. After that, we got increased demands from Derek that "their friends" wanted more money in order to give Max what he wanted. We know know also that Derek was scamming Max and Kirsty at the same time. Last night, Tanya accused Kirsty of being one of "those women who sneak around after other women's husbands." Sorry, but that isn't true. That applies to Tanya, in both instances with Max. The first time around, originally, she didn't know about Rachel; and this time around, she didn't know about Kirsty. So somehow, this is all Max's fault, when Tanya lied and kept a secret from him about her illness, drove him away and it happened that he, a single man, fell in love and married this woman? More of this I'm-a-victim-it's-not-mah-fault shit. This time, Tanya-style, aided and abetted by Cora the Bora. There, you go, Cora, wineglass in one hand in the morning and fag-end in the other, encouraging your daughter to nab another woman's husband, just so she can break the bank in financing yet another white wedding. How many times has Tanya's hymen been psychologically and surgically sewn back together again? And here's Cora the Bora again, bullying up to Kirsty, who was talking to Abi - it's obvious that Max told Kirsty all about his family back in Walford - well, at least, his daughters. There goes the old lag again, looking down her nose at Kirsty the Exotic Dancer (when Cora the Bora's daughters have slept around with various men, have been drug addicts and are near-as-dammit alcoholics, as well as one being a marriage-wrecker) and issuing empty threats. You go girl. Followed by Tough Tan, who gives Kirstly the ultimatum of leaving town of her own volition or Tanya will put an end to her.
Nope, Walford ain't big enough for Kirsty and Tanya (much less Cora the Bora), but we know that Kirsty ain't going nowhere, and it's Tanya who leaves. In fact, judging on that scene alone, my money's on Kirsty. And if anyone's the victim here, it's she. She married Max in good faith. He as good as abandoned her. She hadn't seen him in more than a year and had only one communication from him. She has better grounds for divorcing him than he does her. Max,who owns his amorality but also owns the fact that he is in possession of a conscience and can experience guilt, is in a quandry - and this is one of the reasons why the Brannings are moral cowards. Max could push money and divorce papers through a letterbox and trust Derek to fanagle proceedings which would convince Kirsty to sign the papers. Max would then be free to marry Tanya. No fuss, no seeing Kirsty again and remembering that he'd actually fallen in love with her - or at least fallen for her when he was vulnerable and emotional. He would never have to look her in the face again or hear of the fact that when he abandoned her, she was pregnant with his child and aborted it. He'd have Tanya and live happily ever after. Similarly, Jack can drop kids all over three countries. He can send a cheque a month and doesn't have to see any of their faces. It gives him moral approbation enough to bed woman after woman, including playing happy families with his latest shagfest's fatherless child and allow him to call himself a good father because he financially supports the children he never sees and scarcely thinks about. Once again, another Branning moral coward. And Derek, who spent years sending birthday card after birthday card to Joey, only to have them returned, and eventually bribed Alfie into taking Joey Jim's heirloom watch, only to have it shoved back in his face. This is why Derek found it so difficult to deal with his son - harder on the face-to-face bit. The Brannings are moral cowards in a way the Mitchells could never ever hope to be. Max is in a quandry. He knows he has to make it good to Tanya - not because he particularly loves Tanya. He finds her comfortable and familiar. A port in the storm in between forays into infidelity. Max really loves Stacey. She's the only woman for whom he was willing to say goodbye in a New York minute to his children and swan off with her for places unknown as she fled Walford, a murderer. She was the only woman for whom he allowed his son to be branded a criminal. Still, he's on uncertain ground with Kirsty. Because of the aborted child, and because Max possesses a conscience. He knows deep down that he's done wrong by her; he also knows that Kirsty does, indeed, get Max, probably in a way Tanya never really has. The fact that Kirsty knew enough about Abi to identify her as "the one who wanted to be a vet" or "the one with the brains" indicated that Max and Kirsty had, at least, talked, which is something that Max and Tanya never do. Max's and Tanya's co-dependent relationship is based on sex and comfort. Max gives Tanya good sex and material comfort - nice house, good job, a semblance of middle class aspirations. Tanya offers Max stability and the comfort of the little wife at home until he becomes bored and strays again. But it's not a relationship based on honesty or communication. If Afia, who'd only been married to Tamwar a matter of weeks, ascertained that Max and Tanya as a couple were on a hiding to nothing, then there's nothing left of them, not even the children. Tanya undermines Max's parenting, and - where Max had formerly bonded with Abi - they now sink all their parental resources into the most ungrateful, spoiled and entitled child in the universe - Lauren. I would imagine that Kirsty does, indeed, get Max and that she's more than a match for him in various ways. This is going to be interesting, if TPTB can sustain it. Keirston Wareing is an up-and-coming actress of note, a BAFTA nominee. She's not going to want to stick around and be eternally identified as "Kirsty on EastEnders." She'll burn bright and brief, but she'll match Jake Wood in a way Jo Joyner, journeyman actor, never could. I found the aftermath of Derek's death seedy and hypocritical, just like the Brannings. Max, again, is feeling his conscience twinge - it must be going into overdrive, with Kirsty's appearance and Derek's death. Jack, surprisingly, is playing Mr Wooden Indian, revealing nothing and keeping strong for the sake of holding it together. The Mouth-Breather was in full lock-jawed mouth-agape mode tonight, and in full transferral of guilt mode, blaming Max's wife's appearance for Derek's death, when Derek's death came from a myriad of reasons - his situation with Kat (his own fault), Max's perceived betrayal and rebellion (again, this was Derek's fault for having blackmailed Tanya) and it was Derek who brought Kirsty to Walford. Now that Derek's dead, his daughter has acquired a new name. She's gone from being "MahAliceMahAngel" to being "Aaa-aassss" in Joey-ese. Joey spent two minutes trying to comfort "Aaa-aasss" before she went beserk and threw him out of the house. Maybe she didn't like being called an ass. Kudos to the unintelligible one, however, for putting that thoroughly selfish and unpleasant little bint, Lauren, in her place. What a thoughtless little piece of shit to sit down beside someone, obviously in the throes of grief, and remark blithely that within two weeks' time, everything would be back to normal. She is pathetic. She doesn't even deserve Mr Mouth-Breather. Once again, I reiterate that the Brannings could be pared down to just Max, Abi and Carol, and no one would miss the other hangers-on. Carol was great tonight, providing strength in comforting words and fortitude in cups of tea, remembering the fact that the Brannings have buried children before parents - referencing Billy, James and Bradley - but totally unaware of the deceit Derek had vested upon her also. At least, it was established beyond a shadow of a doubt tonight, that the Brannings believed they watched Derek die, although that time lapse looked as though Derek was dead as he hit the ground. This will be another timeless point of debate as much as Barry Evans's death was and is still. Over at Moon Manor, otherwise known as the Queen Vic - pardon me, but was there some editing here? Because I'm sure the spoilers said Kat overhears Alfie asking Roxy to move in, or am I mistaken? I don't like Kat's 2010 reincarnation much, but I like her even less when she's involved with the Brannings. Roxy loves Alfie, and Alfie is still playing the honourable card and sleeping on the couch. Kat sleeps around, yet on two separate occasions, Alfie has offered accommodation to Roxy, and has yet to sleep with her. I actually liked the scene with Mo and Jean in the kitchen and the fact that Mo considers Alfie family enough to protect him when he's emotionally vulnerable. I don't think either Jean or Mo - and Jean was once Roxy's mother-in-law, remember - think Roxy would take advantage of Alfie, they just recognise that he needs time to heal from Kat's betrayal before entering into any other relationship. I love the idea of Alfie and Roxy, that she's a warm, generous and loyal woman, who loves the bones of him, but I hate knowing that Newman is setting this up as a device to eventually reunite Alfie and Kat, when Kat should just bugger off and go. The comedy vignette, yet again, was provided by Kim, who managed to sleep through Christmas Day and awake on Boxing Day with no hangover effects, after downing two pitchers of Big Mo's punch. Not funny, but it was good seeing Shirley interact with Denise and the two sharing a laugh, as well as the return of Patrick, and the subtle beginning of Zainab's leaving line. Also, how the mention of poor fatherless "Aaa-aass" prompted Shirley to remember to ring Carly, Zainab to ring Shabnab and Denise to give a mention to Libby and Chelsea. And Kim got her Christmas. Other highlights of tonight's episode:-
Amy spoke, but off-camera.
The reaction of Kim, Big Mo, Jean and Roxy when Kirsty entered the pub saying she was meeting her husband, and the husband turned out to be Max Branning.
Shirley calling Zainab "Zabnab."
Boxing Day becomes a filler episode. Christmas and Boxing Day with no Mitchells and no Beales. Let's hope 2013 becomes more Branningless.
Just a word about EastEnders winning the Christmas ratings' war. It means nothing. Most people, apart from the two obvious shippers on Digital Spy forum who always cream their knickers at the mention of the title of the programme, will readily agree that the show has been, mostly bad-borderline-mediocre for the better part of the year. Most people, again, apart from the EastEnders' shipping forecast duo, will readily admit that the poor quality of the programme resulted in a combination of too many Brannings, too many unlikeable teens, the monster that had become Kat, Derek and generally poor writing, even poorer continuity and lazy research. Yet EastEnders got enough bums on seats on Christmas Day and Christmas Eve to win the ratings' war. How? Simples. There was no big build-up to anything happening at Christmas - not the Branning wedding, not the Shaggerman reveal, and we all knew Derek was leaving. Still, as late as a week ago, we were being subjected to meaningless dross and boring, badly acted filler episodes, with Ian Beale largely non-existent, the Mitchell baby custody storyline reduced to irrelevance and Sharon gagging to be Tanya's BFF and Jack's shagbuddy. However, TPTB let it be known that not only was the most unpopular character in Walford history to be rendered toast on Christmas Day, but also two secrets were to be revealed - Shaggerman's identity (we'd already guessed) and Max's secret activity during the three months he was away from Walford in 2011 (we guessed that too). We wanted to see if Alfie had the balls to humiliate Kat with her deception. We wanted to see if we really were right that Max's secret involved some involvement - i.e., marriage - with another woman. And, since TPTB were keeping it close to their chests how Derek would croak, we wanted to see what novel idea the writing room developed. He died of a heart attack. As the great P T Barnum once said, there's a sucker born every minute. So EastEnders have won the ratings' war. Here's one in the eye for Emmerdale's live episode, and another for that upstart Katherine Kelly winning best actress when we all should have been voting for that eminent thespian Jessie Wallace. It. Means. Nothing. It means nothing if the show, it's EP and her writers cannot sustain the quality writing, developing characterisation and sustained interest in the aftermath emanating from Alfie and Kat's split, Max's new wife's arrival on the Square and Derek's death. Already the beginning of the year is heralding the departure of a major EastEnders' character (Zainab), and January is chokka with too many Brannings and too many teens. The actress who's just arrivedi in the role of Kirsty Branning is a vastly experienced serious actress who has a couple of BAFTA nominations under her belt and who has worked with Ken Loach. This can only be good for the show. However, it can only be the reverse, when watching her obvious experience and talent against the catalogue artiste and WildBoyz alumnus that is David Witts, the desperate wannabe poor man's Jennifer Lawrence that is Jacqueline Jossa and the unbearable lightness of being that is Hetti Bywater. Compare and contrast. EastEnders is not an actors' studio or an actors' workshop. it's the flagship programme of the BBC funded by remit of the stealth tax known as the licence fee. I've no objection to my licence fee funding the appearances of such talent as Ms Wareing's Kirsty Branning. I have every objection to my licence fee funding money for nothing when no-marks and talentless youth get paid five figures to portray themselves. EastEnders winning the Christmas ratings' war means its work is cut out for it in 2013. It better provide.
For all the additional bums on seats EastEnders attracted on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, one thing and one thing only proves that Newman and Co are blatantly pandering to the distaff end of the viewer spectrum - the tweens, the teens, the fanbois and cheerleaders who are incapable of sustained critical thinking; and the reason TPTB are doing that is, simply because, with this demographic, they can't go wrong, and it allows Newman and her writing room to feed their own egos with regards to certain characters, who are no longer sustainable. Pardon me for thinking that the licence fee we pay, which allows Newman and her cronies to make very comfortable salaries, means we get some sort of entertainment in return. The soap genre has always operated on the premise that unpopular characters are shown the door, somehow, especially if they don't decided to go of their own accord. Now, we're told that a formerly iconic character, who - since her heralded return in 2010 - has been nothing less than poison in the eyes of most viewers, is about to be redeemed, repaired and reunited with her long-suffering screen spouse, even though viewer opinion wants her gone. It didn't take long for Bryan Kirkwood to re-introduce Kat and Alfie back in September 2010, for viewers to suss that something was seriously wrong with Kat. When the couple left the show in 2005, Kat's character arc had been completed; she had been to the depths of despair and self-hatred, had been raised and redeemed by Alfie's love, lost it and fought like a tigress to regain his love, trust and affection. As a reward, Kat and Alfie were given their happy ending. A couple left Walford together and in love. Yet when the pair returned in September 2010, Kat was pregnant after an affair with Alfie's cousin. She was seen not only physically assaulting Alfie in public (a scene done for comedic purposes), but also slapping her way around the Square with Stacey in tow, being rude to people in businesses, causing havoc on the market. Kat wantonly encouraged Stacey to break up Janine's marriage because Janine's husband had fathered a child on Stacey in a one night stand of which Stacey remembered nothing. She flaunted herself flagrantly in front of Alfie, pinched Ryan Molloy's bottom and insinuated publically that Alfie was less than a man. During the throes of the babyswap, she treated him worse than a piece of shit. After having her son restored to her, she convinced herself for some reason that Alfie either didn't love her or wasn't paying enough attention to her, so she indulged herself with a quick shag in the alleyway with the brewery deliveryman. Subsequently, she confessed this to Alfie, who forgave her yet another indiscretion. Since 2010, the one person to whom Kat has shown any sort of love, compassion and understanding is Jean, and this is often manifested in scenes where Kat gives Jean a bath after any number of Jean's interminable breakdowns. Alfie is seen, more often than not, caring for their son, whilst Kat's off clubbing with Kim or comforting Jean. After Kat's confession of infidelity with the deliveryman, she failed to apologise for her misdeed. Instead, she rationalised that this was, simply, the way she was. She was, in her words, a "dirty girl." In other words, because she had been sexually abused as a child by her Uncle Harry, this was the way she was, she couldn't change and Alfie and everyone else would just have to accept that, from time to time, she'd have to have a quick bang from someone other than her husband. Actually, she went on, it wasn't really her fault, since Alfie didn't pay her adequate attention. The cult of the victim is rife at EastEnders, and it's strongest amongst various female characters. Because of some event in their past, this is used as a reference point and explanation for any and all inappropriate behaviour, for which they can never be blamed because of something else that happened to them. In the middle of 2012, we were fed the PR blurb by TPTB that Kat was about to enter into an exciting new storyline, and the public would be invited to play along with the guessing game. She was going to have a mystery lover, and we had to guess the man from five suspects - the three Branning brothers, Ray Dixon and Michael Moon. Ne'mind that Kat's husband had done nothing to deserve such behaviour, we were actually, subtly, being asked to condone wanton adultery by a married woman as if this were her entitlement. We were asked to treat it like a guessing game. Then, we were promised that the identity of Shaggerman would be revealed in the autumn. And what? Soap structure dictates that whenever someone is unfaithful in a major, predominant soap couple, if the couple are separated, someone leaves the show - usually, the guilty party. As Kat was the wife of the landlord of the Vic - in pre-Kirkwood days, this meant the Alpha male of the Square - this demanded public revelation, humiliation, ritual shunning and a departure from Walford. It happened in Sharongate, when Sharon, Walford's original Princess, was baited, berated and shunned by the local yokels, led by none other than Pauline Fowler. Why? For cheating on her abusive husband, Grant Mitchell, with his brother Phil, who was engaged to be married to Pauline's ex-sister-in-law, Kathy Beale. It happened to Pat in November 2005, when her affair with Frank Butcher was revealed. In the pub. On bonfire night. By Peggy, who was then married to Frank. Pat got a resounding smack from Peggy. Frank (Mike Reid) left the Square for the last time, and Pat was treated like a pariah. Why should Kat be any different? Indeed, the longer the affair prevailed, the more unpopular Kat became. And make no mistake, Kat was as much the instigator of this affair than Shaggerman - openly and insidiously flirting with all and sundry, who - heretofore - hadn't given her the time of day, ending with a shadow seeking her out in the Vic's kitchen, only to be met with opened legs by Kat, who was next seen looking curiously and lasciviously satisfied and hiking down her skirt. There followed another tryst in the alleyway, another in the cellar of the Vic, and then countless meetings in the Bedbug Bedsit, which Shaggerman had leased, including one all-night session. Shaggerman would call, and Kat would answer. When Alfie eventually found out, Kat confessed as much as that she had been having an affair, but not with anyone Alfie knew. And with that, she whisked him away on holiday, leaving the pub to ruin and promising him never to stray again. Until the next time. Now we're seeing what a convenient ploy the Shaggerman mystery was. Derek always and only was the most obvious choice. Viewers knew his character was leaving at Christmas, so someone would leave the Square. We knew for certain when Jack became unbelieveably more involved with Sharon, the latest Branning appendage, and Max dealt with his impending wedding to Tanya. Derek, an unpopular character, was being phased out and his unlikeability was increased. As Newman proclaimed in her Digital Spy interview, her vested and personal interest in redeeming Kat, the blank slate offered by the fact that viewers were only allowed to see Kat's affair from a blatantly sexual viewpoint, made it easy for Newman and her merry men and women to retcon the entire story, after the reveal of Derek's identity to Alfie, portraying him as the obsessed, possessive stalker of a lover who controlled, manipulated and even forced poor, pitiful Kat into a relationship, threatening to tell Alfie everything if she stopped sleeping with him. She even told Alfie the night he caught her at the bedsit that Derek actually forced her from the beginning to have sex with him. Now, either she's wantonly lying, which means we have a further expose' to reveal; or the whole damned kerfuffle has been retconned in order to save Jessie Wallace's character. I suspect the latter, but Ms Newman would be well advised to remember that anytime a man forces a woman to have sex, that's rape. So now we're being asked to invest in poor Kat, the rape victim again, tossed out onto the cold Walford street by Alfie, who's unwilling to listen to yet another poor-me story, with Kat even begging him to hit her, only to be picked up by Derek and held virtual prisoner to his love whims. He lies to her and manipulates her into believing Alfie was unwilling to listen to her pathetic voicemail, finishing the affair with Derek - and why should he? he's been told the same thing so many times before - until when she finds out the actual truth of what Derek revealed to Alfie, she's even willing to watch Derek die. Newman's words were that there were miles more to go with Alfie and Kat, that they were meant to be together and that Kat would laugh again. That Christmas 2013 is the tenth wedding anniversary of Alfie and Kat is significant. That poor pitiful Kat is about to be reduced from Queen Vic landlady to scrubber and toiler cleaner is also significant - I think the Christians call it atonement for one's sins. That she's about to have ruckus after ruckus with Roxy is yet something else of importance. Even now, fora participants on Digital Spy and Walford Web kindergarten are surmising that Alfie and Kat should remain apart as friends (WTF?), that Alfie and Roxy should remain at the Vic whilst Kat couples with Michael as they "have so much chemistry" (errr, not as the only two women with whom Michael Moon has shown any chemistry at all have been Ronnie Mitchell and Janine Butcher, his wife, who has yet to return). People need to wake up and think. If Alfie and Kat are to be separated definitely, someone has to leave; and that someone is Kat. Alfie has been given a shot in the arm and the chance of further character development by pairing him with Roxy, a woman who genuinely loves him. Kat is, effectively, isolated, starting on the long path to lagdom, which will see her emulate Shirley in ten years and Cora the Bora in twenty. Anytime a couple split and remain on the Square, there's the eventuality that they will re-connect, and the prevalent question becomes will-they-or-won't-they-and-if-so-when. Think Max and Tanya. Think Mas and Zainab. The former is the established yo-yo couple. The latter the new pretender to the title; but Tanya and Zainab are leaving, so Alfie and Kat remaining on the Square leaves them the obvious successor to becoming the couple who reunite only to split within a couple of years, caught in a hamster's web of ever decreasing circles. Best it's recognised now. 2013 will be the year of the Kat-Alfie-Roxy Kabuki theatre, which will result in the Moons reuniting just in time for their tenth anniversary. I can live with that. It's bound to happen and was ever going to happen the moment Lorraine Newman stated that Kat was going nowhere. The actress won't leave of her own volition, since she was sacked at the end of her first tenure and damned lucky to be asked back for a second stint. The only way she'll go is if she's sacked, and that remains to be seen how successful a con Newman can shift on the viewers to get them firmly behind Team Kat. The one thing I can't live with, however, is the attempt by Newman and Co to make Kat the victim in this sordid, little story. Derek no more made her sleep with him than she wanted to do so, herself. The voicemail played by Derek to Alfie indicated that entirely. There's simply too much of the victim cult circulating about Walford now, and the best thing Newman can do is put a stop to it - first of all, by Kat admitting her fair share of responsibility in her association with Derek, and apologising sincerely to Alfie - not for getting caught, but for treating him like a prize piece of shit. And if that means Alfie has to watch her skanky arse like a hawk for the rest of her sorry life if he takes her back, she's not entitled to any protest. A turn-up for the books, however, would be for Alfie to reject Kat entirely and for Newman to have the balls to wield the axe on a character that EastEnders created and destroyed without reason to the point that she's beyond repair. I just don't know what annoys me more about the Christmas storyline - Kat's self-pity and rebirth as the self-perpetuating victim, the barefaced brass and disrespect of the production crew in asking the viewers to believe this pap, or the insipidity of various viewers who are now cooing "poor Kat." Spare me.
Let me allow myself a moment of self-congratulation. As I had predicted Derek would be Shaggerman, I also predicted, from the moment Tanya originally proposed to Max in the portacabin of the car lot - the time that Max refused her - that Max was married. I even predicted that a child would be involved - and, indirectly, there was a child, who was aborted (but then again, this is EastEnders, so maybe Kirsty Branning is lying). Still, you heard that from me first. I've never scored a hattrick. Nice feeling. This was a good enough Christmas episode - mostly because of a secret being revealed (which always gets bums on seats) and also because there was a death of a major character, bringing the total of major character deaths on EastEnders to three within a year - Pat, Heather and Derek. I daresay if Derek had worked out the way Bryan Kirkwood had planned - which was seeing Derek take over as Walford's Alpha male as Phil Mitchell disappeared over the horizon - we wouldn't have been seeing such an episode this Christmas. But Derek turned turned out to be, arguably, the most unpopular character on the programme in recent history - probably in all of the show's history. Never before have I seen a character more universally disliked by viewers. Derek was introduced as a scary hardman - scarier than Jack Dalton and Jonnie Allen combined, so scary that Pat ran screaming down the street from him. Then, as he occupied more of the screen, people were scratching their heads and wondering what frightened Pat so much about this overblown bantam rooster. The final straw with Derek (and, by extension, with the Branning takeover) came on New Year's Day last year, when Pat died. An episode which should have shown various people with a tangible history associated with Pat - Dot, Ian, Ricky and Bianca, David, Carol - saying goodbye to an close relative and friend, morphed into an advertisment for the Branning Show, with Derek managing to threaten a dying woman, and with Max and Tanya, who hadn't said anything of note to Pat since December 2008, suddenly invading her space and making her death all about Tanya's cancer cold. The ensuing two weeks and Pat's funeral were more about the Brannings' vendetta against David Wicks than about any sort of rememberance for Pat. That sucked. Derek was supposed to be a very major rival to Phil Mitchell, yet Phil, in the throes of a heavy cover-up of his son's killing of Heather, still managed to treat Derek with disdain. Derek rarely took on his own pay-grade. He terrorised the gormless Moons and an old man, Patrick. He bullied little girls like Lucy Beale. The one dynamic which would have made an interesting study was the backstory between him and Michael Moon. Michael took a beating for his brothers' stupidity, and I wasn't alone in thinking that the aftermath of the beating, which took place in The Arches, had the eerie feel of a male rape about it - Derek primping himself as he breathed heavily into the mirror as Michael, bloodied and subdued, moaned in the background. Rape is a crime of control, and this had every inkling of someone exuding control over another human being. Still, EastEnders suddenly dropped all reference to a backstory between Michael and Derek, and instead chose to announce - to announce - that they were introducing a new aspect to Derek's character, Derek the family man. To that end, his children would be introduced, and he would be shown in softer scenes interacting with various family members. This "announcement", in and of itself, was a tacit admission of failure on the part of the character and the people who created him. Most producers who create their signature characters have a contingency plan in the event that the character doesn't wash the first time around, but such plans are of the subtlest kind. People were tiring of being fed an incessant diet of the Slaters, and in particular, Kat, when John Yorke devised and introduced the now-famous "you're-not-mah-muvvah" storyline, which turned the character on the proverbial dime and made her instantly popular and sympathetic. The same with Stacey Slater, who was viewed as a mouthy delinquent until we were introduced to a week with her and her seriously bi-polar mother, Jean. Nowadays, with this crew, subtleties like that aren't exactly subtle. We're asked to forgive the fact that Lola is an amoral little chav spiv, without an honest bone in her body, who'd steal anything not tied down, simply because she gives birth in public, in a fast-food joint. That's bad enough, but to actually announce a change in direction for a character like Derek smacks of "OK, ya didn't like gangsta Derek, now try Daddy Derek." Once it was announced that Jamie Foreman's contract expired at the end of October, people sussed that a Christmas departure was on the cards. Not only that - the Shaggerman mystery made it patently obvious that the culprit would be Derek. A married woman was cheating on her husband with one of five men. Someone would be leaving Walford at the end of this fiasco, and the easy money was on Derek. Another thing that was, at one and the same time, both clever and cheap about Shaggerman was that by making the affair storyline of a "whodunnit" nature, by only filming Kat about to couple with a shadow on the wall, or lying satiated on a bed whilst a naked foot disappears into the bathroom, or showing her caressing a detached hand, effectively made the affair storyline a veritable blank slate - meaning that, after the eventual reveal, the writers could make whatever they wanted of the affair. It would have been just as easy to have written a hindsight storyline about Kat really loving Shaggerman and leaving with him as it would be to write the thing in the direction it's going now - that the affair was one of obsession, control and manipulation on Derek's part and, yes, Kat is the poor, pitiful, dirty girl victim again. The affair wasn't her fault. Derek made her, which is euphemistic for saying that Derek raped her, that it was a continuous rape, that he made her do it again and again by threatening to tell Alfie, when we, the viewer, know that in every instance - especially the first when Kat literally welcomed Shaggerman into the kitchen of the Vic with opened legs - that Kat was up for this and in a big way. Yet this has become the ultimate retcon in a long line of retcons (a way of life in EastEnders these days) simply because Jamie Foreman was leaving, his leaving was going to be as unpleasant as possible, and because Lorraine Newman has made it her remit to repair Kat as a character, and reunite her with Alfie as redeemable. The fact that so many viewers are buying into this con (cf: the "hypocrites" thread on Digital Spy Soaps Forum, where many of the commentators are actually coming up with ways in which Roxy, who's never broken up a marriage nor slept with a married man, is somehow the worst sort of slut in comparison with Saint Kat, who was made to cheat on Alfie by big, bad Derek. Go figure), is proof of the success of lazy writers when confronted with a viewing public who collectively do not possess the ability to think critically. So, we've had a little more than a year of Derek. Enough of this preamble. How did the episode fare? Well, as one-off viewing, it fared well enough. As I've said, I'm no fan of Simon Ashdown and his parallel Branning universe, but he's a good writer. The main remit of this episode was (a) to effect Derek's death and (b) to reveal Max's secret, something that was so damned subtle in its presentation throughout the year that if you blinked, you just might miss the fact that Max had a secret he was hiding from Tanya. Two things ... if you have watched EastEnders as long as I have, or even if you haven't but were the tiniest bit astute, you'd have surmised that Derek wasn't going to be killed. Dying doesn't mean a person is killed. People die in their sleep, like Lou Beale did all those years ago. Derek wasn't going to be killed simply because we've had two deaths in the past three years which were whodunnits in various ways - Archie's 2009 death and Heather's murder, which really was a whodunnit in reverse. Derek was going to die, the only thing we were left wondering was what, exactly, was going to be so terrible about it. And. secondly, that Max's secret was only, ever and always going to involve a woman. All of Max's secrets have been women-centric - cheating on Rachel with Tanya, cheating on Tanya with Stacey, cheating on Vanessa with Tanya and now, trying to marry Tanya whilst married to Kirsty. Let's rock'n roll. I've Got a Secret.
It's Christmas Day, and Max has all kinds of secrets. The Brannnings wouldn't be the Brannings if they weren't keeping secrets from each other. Just to recap Branning history:-
Max never told Tanya he was married to Rachel.
Max never told Rachel he was seeing Tanya.
Max never told Tanya he was seeing Stacey.
Max never told Stacey he was scarpering to Spain with Tanya.
Max never told anyone, much less the police, that Tanya tried to bury him alive.
Tanya kept a secret from Max about Lauren trying to kill him.
Max kept his financial collapse a secret from Tanya.
Max kept the fact that Stacey Slater had killed Archie Mitchell a secret.
Tanya kept the fact that she was shagging Max a secret from Greg.
Max kept the fact that he was shagging Tanya a secret from Vanessa.
Tanya kept her cancer a secret.
Max kept his recent marriage a secret.
The Tanya-Max marriage is one based on sex,secrets and lies. The secrets and lies are the foreplay which forms the basis of their sex lives. One keeps a secret from the other; the other finds out, and there's angry sex. They lie to each other, get caught and there's make-up sex. The entire basis of their married life. In fact, their very relationship is based on the classic lie of a married man, playing away from his wife, and it continues thus.
Max's good secret is that he's planning a surprise wedding for Tanya, after Lauren spoiled the original one by ripping up a wedding dress which, frankly, wasn't cheap. Instead of being punished for the spoiled, entitled brat that she is, she's treated to mollycoddling, excuses and apologies on the part of her parents, and she's handed her boyfriend bedpartner cousin wrapped up in Christmas paper with Max's blessing today.Max has arranged for the registrar to wed him and Tanya today, even bought - at the last minute and off-the-rack - a wedding dress for Tanya, considering that she collects white weddings ... and if you can't have a white Christmas, you can always have a white wedding ...
Of course, all this is against the backdrop of a huge Branning family Christmas, with all the trimmings and all the relatives abound, including Carol and the Butcher-Jacksons, Jack (originally minus Sharon, the Branning appendage), Abi, Lauren, Alice - and for some reason, Jay and Tyler. I understand Jay is Abi's boyfriend and that Tyler and Whitney are a couple; but Jay has just reconciled with Phil - went out of his way to reconcile with Phil, so you'd think Jay would want to be sat around the Mitchell table, relishing the fact that Lexie was home. If Sharon did a split shift, he could well have done one also.
I can understand Tyler is with Whitney, but he is also Alfie's cousin,and his brother was breaking bread with Alfie. Whitney could easily have spent the day with the Moons, but there you go. Cora the Bora is there, and later Joey shows up. The more the merrier, with Derek making his last (literally) appearance as Head of the Family, with his new squeeze, Kat.
First things first. I feel no sympathy for Kat, and scant patience for any viewer who's come around to the view being propagated by Ms Newman of "poor, pitiful Kat the victim." Kat was willingly and wantonly unfaithful to her husband, and it wasn't the first time. Now what's being sold the viewers is that she was coerced into a relationship with Derek, which is one of the biggest piles of steaming bullshit about these days.
Still, Derek is where he should be, and Kat's there to witness the Branning meltdown.
Yuck. Tiff is back and scurvier than ever. She's the only person at the table who even shows friendly to Derek, but there's enough time for her to get in one of her classic the-writers-think-it's-cute-and-precocious lines about Derek being a mug, when the line, itself, is openly rude. If any other child at any other table openly referred to an older relative as being a "mug," then she'd be sent from the table; but we are asked to indulge this singularly unpleasant child. I didn't miss her, and I'd willingly sacrifice Bianca forever to rid the show of thisTitian-haird Chuckie.
It's also evident that the Brannings are less-than-pleased to see Kat amongst them - something which is both hypocritical and at the same time serves as a measure of guilt they feel. It's probably a modicum of selfishness as well - Max and Jack bore Alfie no ill will, and Jack is Michael Moon's business partner; still, they'll want a place to lift a pint, and the fact that they seem to be associated with a sibling who was responsible for the break-up of the Moon's marriage might grate a bit. Kat sat at their table on Christmas Day might give out the message that they condoned this sort of thing.
Still, respect for Kat is scant at that table, and she's throwing herself a self-pity party, especially after having been not allowed into the pub to deposit Tommy with Alfie, by gatekeeper Jean. Respect for Derek is even scanter, with Max being deliberately off-hand with him.
Alice was just miserable.
The kitchen scene where Max and Jack ganged up on Derek gave a clue that Max must have clued Jack in on the cards Derek held against Max. Actually, the episode, itself, gave off a good air of tension throughout - possibly because people were waiting for the secret to be revealed and waiting to see how Derek died. In this respect, TPTB did a good job of sending out some subtle red herrings - Derek in touch with the mystery person, who texted that (s)he was on his/her way, followed by the Moons' snow scene with a large car driving onto the Square - only to find that this is the registrar. In point of fact, there were continual callings around the Brannings - the registrar, Derek and Kat, Joey turning up - before the shit hit the fan and we were all introduced to Kirsty.
The moment TPTB let slide back in the spring that whatever Max got up to in Manchester would be revealed at Christmas, I knew it would involve a woman. The moment Tanya proposed to Max in the car lot and demanded he set a date, as soon as Max demurred, I knew his secret was that he was married, which made sense - and this struck a strangely congruent note between Max and Derek in two separate incidences in tonight's episode.
When Derek and Kat were having a conflab, and Kat told Derek she still wanted to be with her family - Alfie and Tommy. Derek told her, point blank, that the decision she made to continue the affair with him was down to her. She had blown her chances with Alfie, and that was down to no one but her. Of course, tied up with this was Derek's lie that Alfie had laughed in his face at what Kat thought was the last voicemail telling Derek that she was through with hiim (whether or not that would have made any difference to Alfie is debatable).
Further on, Max was actually right in telling Tanya that she, indirectly, sent him into the arms of Kirsty. Tanya did, indeed, send Max away from Walford. When she found out she had cancer, she not only told him she didn't love him, she allowed Abi and Lauren to believe that it was Max who had seduced her into cheating on Greg. This lie resulted in the girls both demanding that Max leave the area. Well, he did; and we heard the state into which he got himself, when he met Kirsty, who - apparently, was in a bit of a state, herself - and they connected.
So there you go: If Tanya had been honest with Max about her cancer from the getgo, there'd have been no lush-haired stripper with beestung lips on Max's doorstep, introducing herself as his wife on Christmas Day.
What a deliciously brilliant actor Jake Wood is. You just know that, as much as Max purports to love Tanya, that is one co-dependent relationship. He loves her security and feels a bond to her because they have three children together; but one can't help but remember that Max was prepared, two years ago, to leave his children on Christmas Day, walk out on Vanessa, his then-partner, to run away with Stacey Slater.
Now, he's torn between Tanya and Kirsty. It would be so easy for him to brush Kirsty off, but you knew from those months ago, when he pushed the envelope full of money (and divorce papers, we now know) through her door, that he really wanted to see her as well; now, knowing that she was pregnant and aborted his child, brings another type of bond.He really felt for her and still has some sort of feelings for her. Max is a man who hates hurting people.
I don't think he inteded wilfully marrying Tanya whilst remaining married to Kirsty. He was being scammed by Derek. He genuinely thought he was free of his latest wife. Jake Wood put out the standard PR line that we'd all be shocked by Max's secret. I wasn't. Max mudering someone, that would be shocking; but I knew that Max's secret would involve a woman and that it would probably mean that within the three months Tanya had exiled him from Walford, when he was still divorced from her and a single man, he fell in love and married.
I actually liked Kirsty, and I'm hoping she becomes more of a fixture on the scene after Tanya leaves for whatever reason. We know she works in a bar (doesn't everyone?), which means she could be on hand for shifts at the Vic or in the R and R. She's also a thirtysomething - a demographic that's sadly lacking, and she'll probably end up sleeping with Jack the Peg ... you know ... Jack, with his extra leg?
We know all about Jack's extra leg.
Other observances: Cora the Bora was subdued and sober. Someone remembered that Christmas Day was Liam's birthday. And whilst I'm not a fan of Tanya's in anyway, red is certainly Jo Joyner's colour, and she should wear her hair the way she had it for her forty-third weddig.
Downside: (Sigh) ... Joey and Lauren. You cannot tell me that Max is OK with this relationship, but there you go - Max will do anything to ensure his daughters' are happy, and that entails condoning sexual relations with a very close relative. This couple, easily the most unlikeable ingenue couple in the show's history have no chemistry, no connection and no talent.
They bantered about in the street, shared the same roof for a week and screwed around on the sofa, and they're in love? Do me a favour. And as a New Year's resolution, please, EastEnders, please do something about David Witts's constantly slack-jawed, hanging-open mouth. It's unattractive and it looks awful; and since he's started the habit, we've had to suffer Jacqueline Jossa catching flies too.
Last year it was Twitney; this year, they're overdosing us on Not-Sweet-but-Awful-Loey. Wield the damned axe.
Man in the Moon Magic
Contrast the 18-person feast at the Brannings with the ragtag Moon affair, with Alfie at the height of heartache, making things good and proper for Tommy and his assorted friends and relatives. Jean cooked the feast, Mo was in attendance - both signaling their disapproval of Kat. Michael and Scarlett were there, Roxy and Amy.
I'm always amazed at Shane Richie's easiness with the little boy who plays Tommy.The kisses on demand and the way he responds to Richie, shows the viewer that, like Steve McFadden and Jake Wood, Richie is a person who's easy around children. Alfie is true to his character in this incident, putting the happiness of others before his own heartache. He promised Tommy snow at Christmas, and in a scene which harkened back to his wedding to Kat, he delivered, with Kat surreptitiously eyeing the events from behind a BranningVille curtain.
I am totally in the Roxy-Alfie camp. Roxy is a woman with a big heart, effectively isolated from her family and with few friends in the Square. She genuinely loves Alfie, although I'm not sure he loves her. She was honest with her feelings, but he needs time on his own to adjust to his new status and to find himself and his footing again.
I thought the dialogue in his scene with Kat tonight was honest and raw. Credit to Ashdown for having Alfie not only confess how much he'd loved Kat, but how much he felt now he couldn't help her - not after (and he said it) Derek and Harry. Harry!
I knew that was coming, only I didn't know when. So now the link between Derek and Harry has been established. It's been verbalised and not by Kat, but by Alfie. Kat linking Derek to Harry would be another sleight of hand trick to reinforce the "dirty girl" image. Alfie, on the other hand, by referencing Derek and linking him indirectly to Harry and what happened between Harry and Kat, by remonstrating with himself for not being able to "help" Kat in whatever turned Harry into the Derek situation, effectively exonerates Kat from any responsibility of ever acknowledging her inappropriate behaviour, whilst at the same time, it doesn't shift the blame to Alfie. It just has him acknowledge that Kat's personal history is perhaps more than she can deal with and more than he can cope with. He's ready to move on, he say; but he says that more to convince himself, than to convince her.
And thus begins the redemption of Kat and the eventual reunion of Kat and Alfie... You heard it here first, this time next year, their tenth wedding anniversary ... and if you don't believe me, remember I called Derek Shaggerman first and I said Max was married.
It's what Newman wants. I feel sorry for Roxy being left the third wheel in all of this.
Other observations: Amy didn't speak, but she threw a sprout.
The End of Derek
We were introduced to Derek as a scary gangsta-type to rival Phil Mitchell. We've seen Derek as the petty down-puncher, bullying little kids who offended his Alice; we've seen him as the over-protective father, the manipulator.
In the past few weeks, we've come to see him as a sad, pathetic man, intent on getting the respect he deserves from his siblings who would kowtow and bow to his authority as head of the family. Now all the machinations he undertook to achieve that status imploded.
The final confrontation between Derek and Max was visceral and good. Max has, curiously, always been the Branning who not only owns his own amorality, but also stands apart from the sheer meanness and moral lassitude of his brothers and his father. Jim was a virulent racist; Max was locked in a coffin overnight as punishment for having a black friend. Tonight we found out that Derek was behind that trick.
It was never any secret that Max was always cited as the runt of the litter. Jim and Derek were racists and dishonest, Jack was a bent copper and probably involved with some of Derek's shady deals; but Max distanced himself from this lot. Max was the one brother who stood up to the old man and he stood up to Derek. Jack, in this instance, was just making up the numbers. At the end, the only thing of which Derek could accuse Jack was of having a pill-popping girlfriend. What happened to the insinuation that Jack knew how to hide a body?
There's one more post-death revelation to come, which will kill off the last remaining support Derek has in the family - when Carol finds the letter from David he hid from her.
So, DelBoy got unceremoniously chucked from Max's house, with Kat as a witness, only to have a heart attack across the street. When Joey managed to utter his only intelligible word upon seeing Derek's distress (well, "dad" is only one syllable), Kat calls him back, and the three men and this woman watch Derek die, although I doubt anything could have been done for him.
Curiously, Jamie Foreman's arm-gripping death scene amused me, and reminded me of something out of the old I Love Lucy show from many years ago ...
I felt that Foreman hammed it up at the end, but based on what he'd said since leaving, about the scripts and the circular nature of his storylines, like his character, I felt that Foreman just didn't give a damn.
Don't get me wrong. The episode was good, but neither Max's secret nor Derek's death were any great shocks.
Let's just see now how Max deals with the mess named Kirsty, the newest Mrs Branning.
