Dumbass Thread of the Week

I've heard it all now, especially with the Digital Spy Dumbass Thread of the Week, entitled "Liam and Whitney," some numbnutz reckoning a good storyline being a relationship developing between Whitney and Liam.

I fucking ask you.

OK, let Whitney, a victim of child abuse, become a child abuser. Because Whitney turns twenty in December, and Liam, even though James Forde is sixteen in real life, turns fourteen on Christmas Day.

Most people's birthdays seem to be falling by the wayside these days. The Masoods managed to remember Tamwar's birthday, but conveniently forgot Yasmin's second. Last year, no mention was made of Amy's birthday by either of her parents, and she turns four next month. December's birthdays include Lucy Beale (who'll turn nineteen) and Liam, who was born in the Vic, with Grant Mitchell in attendance on Christmas Day 1998.

Whitney is Liam's stepsister and has been raised to consider him a sibling. To even consider exploring a sexual relationship between the two is worse than perverted, it's fucking ignorant. But then, this is the calibre of people to whom EastEnders is currently pitching their ware. And the person who pitched this thread did so on the basis of the brief hug Liam gave Whitney on Monday. Jesus Christ, siblings can't even touch each other in greeting without someone wanting to bed them down. Also, anyone calling for a storyline involving the sexual initiation of a thirteen year-old is just plain stupid.

Whitney works best with her family, to be sure. Liam is presented as someone awkward and inarticulate, traits he inherited from his father. Shona McGarty's character is extremely unpopular at the moment, and James Forde isn't setting the world alight.

I would waste as little time as possible with either one, but I wouldn't go down the root suggested by the originator of that thread - Ohwhenthesaints.

For that, Brain of Britain, you get Dumbass of the Week award ...

It's Not a Thriller - Review: 30.10.2012

This is what EastEnders is NOT at the moment ...

That's ten minutes worth of entertainment. As far as tonight's episode went, there wasn't much, especially since it centred around Hallowe'en. It was more or less another one of the endless filler episodes which seem to dominate the landscape on the show for the moment. 

I feel as though we're watching bits and bobs of bits and bobs that fill in the blanks and spaces in wait for the next big thing to happen, and what that is is anyone's guess. Christmas, I suppose, or the Big Branningapalooza that's going to start with the car crash.

I could yawn eternally in boredom. It's now the end of October, and this is the excitiing autumn EastEnders promised us?

Chryed is winding down, and it's sad that a couple who were touted, once, as "the next big thing" devolved into glorified extras and whose leaving line is now one of the most uninteresting ever shown.

Why?

Once again, it's down to "likeability." As Nebraska, the commentator on Walford Web Kindergarten stated recently, Syed is one of the many physically beautiful characters on the show, who - whilst he's lovely to look at on the outside - is stinking rotten on the inside. He's a liar, a manipulator, a cheat and a whiny asshole who can never ever take responsiblity for his actions. He's also a vicious little tart, who doesn't love Christian.

It's interesting that Danny has known Syed all of five minutes and can read him like a book, where Christian can't. I think Christian has lived a life playing the field for years and suddenly, approaching forty, decided to settle down. Syed was the sort of pretty boy he thought he'd like to share the rest of his days. But Syed's only just come to terms openly with his sexuality, and as he blurted a few weeks ago, he felt he was too young to get married - rather, he wasn't ready. He was forced into a heterosexual relationship by his mother, who forced him to repress his sexuality; now that he's come out, he wants, basically, what Christian had for years - the ability to sow his wild oats. Instead, now, as he was forced into marriage with his only girlfriend; he's not being gently coerced into marriage with his first serious boyfriend.

The juxtaposition of Syed's situation tonight, alongside Kat's with Alfie was interesting. Both Syed and Kat are dishonest, sly, manipulative, cheaters, who are adept at shifting any blame for inappropriate behaviour away from themselves and onto the shoulders of their partners or their families.

Consider this: Kat has confessed to having had an affair, but only when Alfie caught her in her lie.She confessed because she had to, but she only confessed so much. She still lied to Alfie and told him that he didn't know her shagger. We suspect (we know) it's Derek Branning. And soon (at Christmas), Alfie will discover Kat's perfidious behaviour yet again.

Syed, on the other hand, confessed to having kissed Danny. Well, he actually intimated that they had slept together, but then he walked back that confession and settled on telling Christian that they'd kissed. In fact, Syed kissed Danny and slept with him in exchange for the loan of £500. When Danny sought Syed out the night before his wedding, had Syed called the wedding off and gone off with Danny, the debt would have been forgotten; but Danny's been spurned, and he's out to make Syed suffer.

The thing that baffles me is that 500 quid isn't a vast sum of money. Christian is self-employed as a personal trainer, and their fees aren't cheap. Now that Syed confessed to the loan, Christian could have forked over the money and that would have been the end of that. Christian must have that money to hand in his account - or he could come by it on his credit card. Instead, Syed does the Syed thing of burying his head in the sand and ignoring Danny, who reminds Syed that he won't go away until he's had his money.

So Christian steps in, learns that in Syed's case, a kiss is not a kiss, and he and Danny come to blows. I mean, real blows. Christian can pack a punch with the best of them, and he's even floored Phil, but it looks as though Danny can match punch for punch.

Gary Lucy is wasted in a guest performance. Since Chryed are leaving, there has to be a place on the Square for someone like Danny, only please don't make him Suzy Branning's son or the retconned son of April. I couldn't stand that.

The rest of the episode wasn't anything to write home about. Alfie and Roxy still have chemistry, and Kat is plainly jealous of that, and feeling the guilt that they've now been demoted from landlord status to having to submit everything past Roxy for approval. I'm glad she's feeling guilty, but I also feel her scenes with Alfie are forced. I do feel that Jessie Wallace hasn't come to grips with Kat this time around. Part of that has been the bad writing and abysmal characterisation,  but also I feel that (and maybe because of the characterisation), she's past the point of fixing. Shane Richie as Alfie has plenty of mileage, especially with Roxy; but Alfie and Kat are a spent force. She should leave, ostensibly when the identity of her shagger is found out. Alfie should kick her to the curb and move on. She's bringing him down as a character in much the same way Jack Branning brings everyone down.
So, is that the end of Denise and Fatboy, whom she addressed as Arthur tonight? I can see Arthur's side of being attracted to Denise, and I can see her wariness too. She's being realistic. Arthur's barely into his twenties, and Denise is fortysomething. It wouldn't take long before he was hankering after someone his own age. In a way, she's right to keep the relationship light and her letting him down was dignified and kind. So does that mean that Poppy is now destined to be Arthur's squeeze, especially after the contrived ghost hunt - which was nothing along the proportions the media presented it? Well, Poppy is a nice enough girl and Arthur is the Alfie of his generation.

Speaking of which, Alfie was the heart of the Square yet again, dropping everything to help Carol find Tiff and Morgan - how obvious was it that Carol was going to mistake two skeleton-clad kids with masks for Tiff and Morgan. Lucy Beale could have played Skeletor without a costume.

Speaking of Lucy, here we go again ... a tale of the most unlikeable ingenues in the history of EastEnders. Lucy is a rude, little bitch who treats Ian like a piece of shit whilst she sleeps with a real piece of shit. I still cannot fathom her as anyone inclined to business acumen. It wasn't that long ago - last year, in fact -that she was confessing to Mandy that she didn't have a clue about the economics course she was studying, and I always thought it was Peter who had the business brain. She proved how fucking stupid she was tonight when she begged Turdhopper to see the bank manager with her. How much does she have to have it spelled out to her that this steroid squirt was only after the sex and a place to stay -and a chance to project his daddy issues onto her.

Melissa Suffield's Lucy was one-dimensional and cold. This Lucy is failing at a multi-dimensional level. She can't even do cold. She is totally unlikeable in her arrogance, but at eas with it, as I suspect, she's yet another actress, hired for looks, whose character has been moulded around the actress's real personality. Even Suffield came across in softer scenes with Peter and Ian better than Bywater, who's yet another crap actress, with no real experience. Her crying scene at the end, when she'd turfed the turd out, was embarrassing. And, like Jac Jossa, she gurns. When she has to express upset, her face is more gargoylish than Jessie Wallace's was when she was on botox.

Speaking of gurners, Lauren was out in full force today, albeit in a minimalist sense, accidentally on purpose assuming that Turdhopper had gone ahead with what he'd told Lauren he wanted to do and binned Lucy. Still, at least it gave Lucy the opportunity to bin him before he'd done the same to her. For that, I salute her. Oh, and I liked Morgan's revenge when Lucy got shitty and wouldn't do Trick or Treat with the kids. She deserved that. I hope when she falls, her fall is mighty, because at the beginning of the year, it was Lucy who was reminding Ian of their family ties to Bianca and her kids and saying how they should do more with and for them. Now she treats them like dog poo on a curb.

Having said that, the best - albeit small - scene in the show was the brief interchange between Carol and Ian sat at the bar of the Vic. Carol seemed surprised at the change in Ian,and I thought that those two would make a good pairing. As Ian told Lucy, he was crap at relationships, especially with the trophy blonde variety. I wouldn't be averse to seeing an Ian-Carol pairing, although it would make Ian his niece's stepfather, if he and Carol married. But, I'd just like to see them forge a good friendship with Ian helping out with his nieces and nephews. I liked that. It looked good and natural.

Speaking of unnatural, surely TPTB can see, after all the unintellible dialogue he had tonight, just how awful David Witts is. His delivery sucks. Those initial scenes with Lucy were terrible. He was barely understandable, and I watched the scenes twice. I really do think it's because he doesn't close his mouth properly, coupled with the fact that, at times, he's trying to imitate Jamie Foreman and at other times, Jake Wood. He's said he's learned from Foreman, but learning is about how to project your lines, how to make yourself the centre of a scene when you're not, it's not about imitation, and bad imitation at that. 

Last night, he was in Derek mode. Tonight, he was trying to act like Max. Whatever the hell he was doing, it didn't work. If Lorraine Newman cannot see from these scenes tonight how pathetically awful this boy is, then she doesn't deserve to be in her job. Those scenes with him tonight were, without a doubt, some of the worst ever shown - if for no other reason than he was totally and utterly unintelligible. I hope when Derek bows out or croaks, Joey's departure is imminent.

As I said in another blog, whenever EastEnders go looking for testosterone, they never find it. Epic fail. In fact, Joey, Lucy, Lauren and Twitney are so unlikeable, they really should be top of the axe list. I'd rather see a dozen Poppies than suffer thirty minutes of that lot.

And Lola with Jay and Abi, what was that all about? I thought they were taking Oscar trick-or-treating, but they end up in ghost sheets cadging drinks at the Vic? Hasn't Lola learned anyting, although the last scene with Phil was clearly meant to give  her food for thought about convincing Sharon to act for her by pretending to be Phil's fiancee. Still, Lorna Fitzgerald seems to have lost her Abi mojo since returning from her break. She's like a 12 year-old dressed up in Tanya's clothes. I think most of the youngsters need a re-think.

Verdict on this episode .....zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

In fact, this is more entertaining:-

Widdle FanBoy of the Week: *Betty*

WalfordE20 is one of the best posters on Walford Web Kindergarten. I'm surprised John the Headmaster allows him to stay. 

John's a pretty fascist sort of fellow. He's banned my name entirely on Walford Web kindergarten - how's that for tolerance and freedom of speech? You'd think JohnBoy would be more understanding and tolerant, himself - but nooooooooooooOOOOOOOOO.

He's a bit of a little dictator, our John ...

Anyway, WalfordE20 started a pretty good discussion, wondering why so many of the recent young male characters appearing on the programme were epic failures.

General consensus answer: That the recent Powers That Be are desperate to find the next Dennis or the next Sean - relatively pretty young men who could actually act - and at the same time, they are pandering to what is basically the lowest common denominator of viewer- the shallowest of teens, who don't give credence to anyone unless they are earth-shatteringly beautiful. Ergo, actors are now hired for their looks, irregardless of any acting talent or experience. More than that, characters are created with only their looks in mind, and no conceiveable character arc.

Tyler and Anthony Moon were introduced and parrotted as the latest set of bruvs, but we never really established who they were. Anthony was supposed to be the clever one, the one admired by Tyler - yet he never shook off the deer-in-the-headlights look and ended up being a dolt, with the movements of Felix the Cat in the early cartoons.

Impressions of Anthony Moon

Tyler was supposed to be a smooth ladies man, then he had a foul temper, then he was in love with Whitney, then he wasn't. No one knew. Derek even beat him up.

Several people say EastEnders is trying to recapture Dennis and/or Sean. Sean was an amalgamation of Dennis and Grant. Sean's and Grant's backstories were virtually identical. Both smacked the shit out of their daddies and then ran off to join the army. Both were psychos. But EastEnders has also been trying to resurrect another Jamie Mitchell, and more times than not, that's failed. I'm pretty certain that Jay and Abi are this generation's Jamie and Sonia.

But usually, whenever EastEnders goes looking for testosterone, they fail. (Ferreiras, anyone?)

Quite often, their male ingenue successes just happen. Jack Ryder provided incipient sexuality for teenagers, and older women wanted to mother him. Charlie Clements was a loveable geek. Charlie G Hawkins was a later version of Sid Owen's adolescent Everyman - the ordinary guy (Ricky, Darren) who got the beautiful girl (Sam, Bianca, Jodie).

Nigel Harman and Robert Kasinski were strokes of luck. People remark on Harman's success since leaving EastEnders, where he was never the strongest of actors; he returned to musical comedy, for which he was trained, as was Neil McDermott. Harman's character was likeable, through sympathetic writing; McDermott's less so because the writing had deteriorated.

At the moment, we've got shot of Anthony Moon (pronounced Annannee), but we've inherited Joey Branning, played by David Witts, who's achieved the singular result of actually making Tony Discipline look good. And why shouldn't Discipline look good when compared with Witts?

Both have smidgeons of actors' training, no actual acting experience prior to EastEnders, and came to the show by way of modeling underwear for catalogues; but by virtue of the fact that Discipline has been on the show for over a year now, he has, whichever way you look at it, got more experience than Witts.

Both men's diction is atrocious, but Witts's is particularly bad. He's said he's learning from Jamie Foreman, so that means doing very bad impersonations of what he perceived Foreman to have been like in his twenties. Joey was hired for eye candy. When he was first linked with yet another pretty face who came to EastEnders by way of modeling with no acting experience, Hetti Bywater, Joey and Lucy were touted by the PR Department as being the next power couple - the next (seriously, they said this) Sharon and Grant.

But, as weak Executive Producers from Berridge onward, have forever courted and pandered to the teenaged market, someone noticed a soupcon of chemistry between David Headupass Witts and Jacqueline I-Love-Myself-So-Much Jossa,. so now after kissing Shona McGarty in a chemistry test, he's moved onto Jossa.

The fact that both characters are eminently unlikeable makes no difference to TPTB. They're Brannings and Brannings are supposed to be cool - even if one is unintelligible and the other gurns and shouts her lines. 

EastEnders has come to this. I fucking ask you.

Into this mire, wades sweet *Betty*, who's probably at uni as I speak dazzling his professors with how narrow his mind is, who pronounces sanctimoniously the following (in response to an observation by WalfordE20:-

This is a bit of a simple way of looking at it. But I think it's wrong to criticize for this reason alone.

When originally casting the show, they doubted Wendy in the role of Pauline Fowler as she was supposed to be glamorous. Gillian Taylforth almost lost out on the role of Kathy because she looked to young for the role. And the actress who played Angie was recasted at last minute because she didn't have a look.

So if a character was to arrive in the show as some strapping hunk, and was actually as ugly as sin and getting all the girls and playing them off against one another would you really believe? So sometimes looks are important to a role, which means the problem actually lies with the characteristics and writing rather than who they are hiring.

Looks are a hell of a lot to do with casting. Do you think Leslie Grantham would have got the role of Den if he didn't have some sort of good looks and sex appeal about him?

Boy, is he wrong. 

First of all, Leslie Grantham had been hired and had actually filmed scenes as Pete Beale, when Julia Smith and Tony Holland were struck by the chemistry he exuded, and they wanted him more to the forefront of the soap. Anita Dobson, late of The National Theatre and a real EastEnder, showed the ability to play a flashy, overt type of character - it had nothing to do with looks.

*Betty* later identifies Wendy Richard as being not one of the strongest characters in the show. When Richard was cast, she was in her forties, and a national icon from her days as Walker's girlfriend in Dad's Army and Miss Brahms in Are You Being Served?. These roles weren't glamorous as much as they depicted air-headed young Cockney girls of the time, precursors (with less bling) to TOWIE. Gillian Taylforth tested best with Peter Deane, which meant calculations were done to make Kathy Beale's character as young as was legally possible to make her Pete's wife. The character Kathy is only three years older than Gillian Taylforth in real life - unlike Kacey Ainsworth's character, Little Mo, who was ten years younger than Ainsworth and four years older than Jessie Wallace, who played her older sister.

Looks are important, and there are very famous actors who are as talented as they are beautiful, but I don't see George Clooney or Michelle Pfeiffer on EastEnders, do you? Instead, I see Scott Maslen's impression of a human tree, Jacqueline Jossa gurning and Tony Discipline's smell-the-fart acting technique.

Thankfully, WalfordE20 has enough nous to put widdle *Betty* on the Naughty Step where he belongs:-

But hiring for looks alone when it's clear someone cannot act is where the problem lies. There's nothing wrong with actors having good looks and sex appeal, but if they cannot work with the most basic material then they should not be hired. 

Word up ... and something special for widdle *Betty* ...

Update: Our widdle wad tried to clarify his position and only succeeded in tying himself further into knots, wittering on about how good-looking actors have to learn to play the camera to their advantage. Last word on the subject goes to Nebraska, for one of the best and most polite smackdowns I've read:-

Sorry Betty, I understand what you're saying and I agree something needs to be done both about the narrative and writing, but why should EE train incapable actors while on major roles? I don't get it. If they're in a prominent part with storylines at the forefront, they need to already be very familiar with the tricks of the trade. If they aren't, it's the wrong casting. They might look the part but not act the part, it's a half arsed job.

I also disagree Tony improved; the only improvement I've see is that he's not given as much screen time and lines, so he's more bearable as a secondary supporting character. 

Re the bold, this nails it. The bottom line is that EastEnders has got itself into a bad habit, mostly via Bryan Kirkwood's obsession with Hollyoaks-style beauty, of hiring young, inexperienced actors entirely on the basis of their looks, with no emphasis on talent. Previously, most of the young talent came via Italia Conti of Anna Sher, and they came, via these schools, with portfolios and curriculum vitae. Acting experience. They may have started out guest-stinting on established television shows. The Tullys and Cartys of this world came via Grange Hill. The Disciplines and Witts of this world come from catalogue modelling; the Jossas come from after-school drama workshops.

It shows. We have gurners and mouth-breathers so bad that one would be forgiven for thinking they have speech impediments or that they're deaf, the way they shout their lines.

On her second point, I fully agree. Tony Discipline has become more bearable for the same reason that we put up with Laila Morse's Big Mo: TPTB have recognised these actors' limitations and have consigned them to the second tier of importance as supporting characters. We won't see Tony Discipline with bags full of dialogue and/or a major storyline for awhile, if ever. This is the least that should be done with David Witts. - the most is that both actors should be given the axe. With all the best will in the world, these boys aren't actors, and pigs will never fly.

Oh, and memo to *Betty*, the "Jake Woods and Steve McFaddens" of the world are good at playing themselves. They're not a standard by which to measure acting ability.

Carol Returns to a Parallel Universe - Review: 29.10.2012

Take it away, Red Hot Chili Peppers ...

And that episode was? And the purpose of the duff-duffs was?

Exactly.

Another "Adventure in BranningVille," a place so changed even one of its own kind, returning, doesn't recognise it. Think of what it's like for those of us viewers, Carol, who've watched since the show's inception - or at least, since the 90s.

This was another Branning encapsulation, obviously meant as a started episode to the beginning of the downfall of Derek. Hey, maybe there could be a spin-off for Derek, a take-off on the old Chris Rock sitcom, once popular in the States. This could be called, "Everybody Hates Derek." Because they do, ya know. Maybe his eventual downfall could be accompanied by a theme song of his own. How about ... The Doors ...

This is the End, My Friend, sung by the original Lizard King and dedicated to his oily pretender. Derek's pretty much like a lizard, when he isn't being like a toad, that is.

Anyway, it was good to see Carol back, even if her return did mean we get to see Typical Stage School Tiff, who will soon have to contend, mugging for the camera with Typical Stage School Dennis. That should be a treat. Thank goodness, this writer sought to play down Tiff's insouciantly precocious remarks, which are neither cute nor funny.

However, she did discover the existence of Alice lurking in her bedroom, which now - with Carol's return - means that the Pat Butcher abode now officially assumes the identity of The Tardis House, now that we don't see the inside of the Slater Hotel anymore.

Let's see ... were there four bedrooms when Pat was alive? Pat in one bedroom, with Carol on a camp bed; Ricky and Bianca in another; Tiff and Whitney in a third, and Morgan and Liam in the fourth. Since Carol and the kids departed, there seems to be one less bedroom, because when Alice moved in, Derek had assumed Pat's old room, Whitney the Walford Mattress had moved Tyler in with her in Ricky's and Bianca's old bedroom, and Alice was told she could stay but would have to, on occasion, share a bedroom with Tiffany. I guess the boys' room stayed empty. Now, Carol and Co are back, we've got Derek in Pat's room, Whitney and Tyler in another, Alice and Tiff in a third and the boys in their usual room. Oh dear, Carol's without a bed.

Lindsey Coulson was the star of the programme tonight, and I suddenly realised how much I missed her, basically because she's head-and-shoulders above most of the other actresses in the show, bar Diane Parish and - on a good Branningless day - Letitia Dean. It was mildly amusing seeing her flit about Walford finding out what had changed in the months since she'd left.

High point was her visit to Jack, who, funny enough, was left on babysitting duties with Fauntleroy Den, who has the mumps, it seems. For Carol to return and find Jack playing happy families with Sharon and Dennis, especially since Carol had never known Sharon as anything but Sharon Mitchell and referred to her as that - well! All I can say was what a great piece of continuity - because Carol and Alan were living in Walford when Sharon was married to Grant and carrying on with Phil. Indeed, they were at the forefront of the partying at the Vic the night Sharongate was revealed ... for those of you who never experienced it, here's the big reveal:=
(Please note Carol and Alan dancing) ...

Not only was the Jack-and-Carol scene a great piece of continuity, it was a great piece of foreshadowing. Sharon Mitchell ... a portent of things to come?

The low point tonight (well, one of the low ones) was Lucy's shitty attitude toward Carol when she walked into the cafe, asking for Ian. Of course, Carol doesn't know anything about Ian's breakdown, which happened subsequent to her departure. Lucy was bloody rude, and there was no call for that. Ian knew the circumstances under Carol left, although it was a bit cheeky of Carol to assume, even with Ian, that Bianca would automatically get her job back, after the way Bianca spoke to him right before she left. Also, it would do for Lucy to remember that, after all, Bianca is her cousin, and Carol, indirectly, an extended family member.

Another piece of continuity tonight was Sharon's attire. She was famous for her ueber-short mini-skirts in the days when she palled around with, married and cheated on the Mitchell Bruvs, and her style was much the same again tonight, especially ironic in the scene where she visits Phil, only to notice he's been rummaging through old pictures of him and her from their youthful heyday. The picture of him and Sharon was right about the time they were sleeping together when she was married to Grant. Another example of continuity and foreshadowing mingled together.

The Sharon and Phil interaction tonight, as well as the shit that went down between Bag o'Bones, the Walford Mattress and Lauren LipGirl, AKA Wannabe Katniss, can only be classified as EastEnders-Attempts-RomCom-Again-And-States-the-Bleeding-Obvious-Epic-Fail.

First, the good bit: Yes, we know Sharon understands why Phil wants Lexie. Deep down, she knows what Phil's planning and that it's all about Phil and his rebuilding and re-branding a family unit around him. She may even suspect - in fact, I'm sure she knows - that this is all an elaborate design, as well, to re-capture Sharon's love and affection as well. Phil and Sharon, both, are doing an elaborate piece of kabuki theatre, dancing about each other - Phil, trying his old family reasoning, tugging on her heartstrings at something she understands as much as he does; Sharon, playing hard to get, to the point of whoring herself out to Jack the Peg Branning, Walford's human penis ...

in a futile effort to convince Phil, and herself, that she's moved on; yet something keeps Phil buzzing around Sharon, and something keeps Sharon buzzing around Phil. This buzzing can continue, especially if it means Letitia Dean moves away from that awful caricatured, perma-tanned, big-haired, bad impersonation of a sex kitten she assumed every time she was around that wooden-top otherwise known as Scott Maslen. McFadden and Dean are a pleasure to watch in scenes together, and if TPTB are moving for a Sharon and Phil reunion, even if it be at the expense of Jack, who's immensely unpopular, then so be it.

Speaking of unpopular, we are still subjected to three of the most unlikeably ingenues sniping over a steaming turd ...

Lauren showed what an unlikeable, little bitch she was tonight, but the other two weren't much better. Bag'o Bones Beale was so craven that she actually took Joey the Turd back and forgave him his indiscretion of kissing Whitney the Walford Matress (a cushion for the pushin' compared to Lucy), which angered Lauren - although Lauren the Lip didn't see how much Turdhopper was trying to avoid Bag o'Bones as he left the house. (Pardon me, but that looked like a drop of birdshit on the shoulder of his shirt). Whitney, on the other hand, was clearly jealous that Lucy and Joey were an item once again (she thinks), and Lauren was jealous, as Turdhopper said, that she was the only one of the three girls whom he hadn't kissed.

I'd die a million deaths before I'd suck a piece of shit or risk getting splinters in my mouth from Frenching a piece of wood. But, then, Lauren is pretty much of a headuparseitis sort of selfish character. And we know the way this is going also.

For the record, Lauren and Joey have zilch chemistry, because both of them are fucking awful actors, especially David Witts. I just realised tonight how much he's trying to imitate Jamie Foreman's Derek way of talking, but at least the viewer understands Foreman, because when he's speaking dialect, he enunciates clearly. He is actually a trained actor. Witts, on the other hand, can't close his mouth properly ad his words come out mostly as exaggerated  vowel sounds and grunts - the Ow-Ow-Ow sound being prevalent.

But, damn, we had a first tonight - we got two for the price of one: Joey and Tyler in the same episode (but not the same scene). Let's hear their theme song, folks ...

I can so envisage them in this monotoned line from the song - Tyler and Joey together: "Ve go into the club ... und ve begin to dance. Ve are ze showroom dummies."

This is an awful storyling, awfully boring about awful characters and portrayed by awful actors. Once again, these young people offer nothing positive, except that hey were hired for their looks and nothing else, in order to cater to the type of viewer who values looks and nothing else.

Syed's and Christian's storyline drones to its inevitable end, having been relegated to the backburner in favour of the family TPTB all want us to love: the Brannings. Tamwar's quest for a job and Mas's return to full-time postmannery were but fillers.

The pub scene with Alfie and his slutty wife made it ever so obvious that Derek is Shaggerman - the way he leered at Kat, the way she alternated from being shameful to giving him banter, and then the rose left on the bar. Anyone still thinking that Shaggerman is Max or Jack should disabuse themselves of that notion right now. All roads lead to Derek, and this episode was establishing (to Carol and to us) just how unpopular Derek is to everyone in Walford.

I just wish someone would realise how unpopular Joey, Alice, Lauren, and Jack are as well.

Lauren Branning and Her Alter Ego Jacqueline Jossa

Current topic of discussion on Digital Spy now is a thread wondering how and why Jacqueline Jossa went from hero to zero in the short space of one year's time.

Yes, this time last year, Jossa was being feted and fanned as the "next big thing" EastEnders had to offer; besides that, she was - how shall we say it? - hot. Guaranteed to have every pubescent school boy (and several older) wanking under the sheets at night with fantasies of Jossa or Jossa as Lauren.

Besides that, EastEnders even gave her a ready-made boyfriend in real life, in the form of Tony Discipline; and they are now about to pair her with another hunk of beefcake wood male fantasy figure for teenagers, that eminent thespian (not), David Witts.

Some commentators have reckoned that it's bad writing and pejorative storylines that are doing Jossa harm, as her character really isn't very likeable, and this is true. Lauren embodies all the worst aspects that Max and Tanya share - their selfishness, their whineyness, their inability to accept responsibility for their actions, their sense of entitlement, their hypocrisy, and their addictive personalities.

Like her mother, she is a budding drunk. Like her father, she's totally amoral, except she doesn't own that - she blames her father for it. She treats both her parents, especially Max, like shit. She is an attempted murderer who should be languishing in some juvenile detention centre, playing bitch to some bully dyke and fearing a time alone in the shower. She is lazy, having quit school on a whim, but she's not encouraged either to work, by her parents, or to find something that might spark her interest. Her interests lie in partying and getting drunk, wanting to be treated like an adult, but expecting her parents to support her financially.

She is the total embodiment of everything pejorative about young people today - shallow, materialistic, selfish, devoid of compassion, disloyal, self-obsessed, narcissistic.

But the other reason I think that Jossa's proving a bomb right now is that the actress, after winning her gong last year, began to believe the hype surrounding her. Within a short time, art became life, and it doesn't help that the teens and older teen characters on the programme are written to suit the characters of the actors who portray them, mostly.

Therefore, Jacqueline Jossa is really being Jacqueline Jossa when she's portraying Lauren Branning. Just like her contrived squeeze, Tony Discipline, is really being Tony Discipline when he's pretending to be Tyler Moon. It's all these kids know, as they've had precious little, if any, acting training.

It also doesn't help, as another commentator remarked, that Jossa shouts all her lines. She's not the first, nor the last actor on the programme to do this - Kellie Shirley made that her signature when she portrayed Carly Wicks the first time. Scott Maslen and Rita Simons do it regularly. And so does Jossa.

Do these people not realise that the sound stage isn't actually a stage per se? Microphones abound. But Jossa takes it one step further and continuously uses exaggerated facial expressions, to the point of gurning, to emphasise a point. It's off-putting, amateurish and just bad.

Jasmyn Banks apart, who's relegated to portraying a drip, the younger characters have had substandard or not enough dramatic training and really ought to go back to school for some extra training.

And some lessons in not being too blase about what they consider to be their own entitlement.

Whitney the Walford Mattress

Is Digital Spy opening a kindergarten like Walford Web? Because the little tweenie fan with the faux cool name IzzyinTheHouse is trying to justify Whitney's rancid behaviour.

Look, no one denies that she suffered, and suffered greatly, from being sexually abused as a child. No one denies that, because of that, she confused sex with love and affection - something that it's not.

But like the countless other female (and one male) victims on the show, instead of receiving counselling or learning from what happened to her, she and they behave inappropriately and when they are caught out, instead of assuming responsibility for their actions (an adult reaction), they play the victim card, cite whatever happened to them in the past as the cause of their behaviour and blame the person closest to them for the incident.

Thus, Kat is always a dirty girl and Alfie's inattention is why she misbehaves. Whitney, on the other hand, is "special" because of her abuse, and that gives her the right to treat nice boys, who genuinely like her, like shit and chase after bad boys who'll take what she offers on a plate and then dump her. I could go on and list others, but that would take too long.

Anyway, IzzyinTheHouse objects to Whitney's whoredom and presents her own flawed and illogical take on the situation:-

Billie: she did have quite a good relationship with him that lasted a while?

Tod: not sure who he is lol

Conor: again quite a long relationship ... If only he hadn't been sh*gging her granny 

Peter: don't remember this so can't comment

Fatboy: they parted well, she thinks of him as just a friend

Tyler: she is still with.

She's had 5 genuine relationships where she wasn't being molested/manipulated! She was born in 1982 which makes her 20-21. Having 5 boyfriends for 21 is not exactly whorish now is it!

Really, this logic and reasoning is so inept, I wonder, has this person even finished school. Bit by bit ...

Billie: she did have quite a good relationship with him that lasted a while?

Tod: not sure who he is lol

Firstly, let's get things in order here. Izzy obviously has a low attention span, because Todd was Whitney's first boyfriend post-Tony. He was the nice, rather gormless kid who worked for Ricky for awhile and dated her quite awhile. She wanted to have sex with him immediately, but he told they should really wait until it was right for him and for her.

Billie turns up for Bianca's and Ricky's wedding one day, and that very afternoon - after knowing Billie for a grand total of 2 hours, she dumps Todd and goes to bed with Billie.

As for her good relationship with Billie, she helped him harbour the gun his ex-girlfriend used to shoot Jack. When Billie joined the army, a couple of months after arriving, he ditched Whitney ... as you do.

By the way, Ashley Kumar, who played Todd, was Shona McGarty's real-life boyfriend at the time. She seems to collect them. Life imitating art?

Conor: again quite a long relationship ... If only he hadn't been sh*gging her granny 

Peter: don't remember this so can't comment

Once again, let's get this in order. She knew Peter Beale before she knew Connor. She got together with Peter, like instantly, the night Billie came home and died. She slept with Peter that night because Billie seemed to ignore her and stayed with him in the wake of Billie's death.

Then she started eyeing up Connor. By the way, that relationship was short and sick. Connor was shagging Carol, but their reactions were tempered by grief for Billie - although, I don't expect Izzy to be able to understand that. Whitney virtually offered it up on a plate to Connor, after unceremoniously dumping Peter Beale at his birthday party, when he wanted to buy her a ring. Connor wasn't interested, but Bianca saw Whitney pushing herself on Connor and warned Connor off, telling him Whitney had been abused and really didn't need some lightweight like Connor in her life - especially since Connor was fencing Phil Mitchell's stolen goods.

Whitney defied Bianca and started sleeping with Connor. Connor blatantly used her. He was seriously interested in Carol, but he was a young lad, and when a lad is offered booty, he takes. The relationship was sordid, disrespectful as she openly slept with Connor in Pat's house when her younger brother and sister were around, and sick. It also lasted only a few weeks, before Connor had sex with her in the Arches, after she offered herself, and then he dumped her, whereupon she played the victim card, crying to Max, Carol and Bianca that - wah-wah-wah- Connor had sex with her and dumped her.

Once again, she dumps a nice bloke for someone who uses her.

Fatboy: they parted well, she thinks of him as just a friend

Tyler: she is still with.

What planet are you on? She allowed Fatboy to buy her any number of expensive presents, including a car; and he had just booked a weekend in Paris for them, when - after several snogs with Tyler - she chose to dump Fatboy publically on Valentine's Day at the R and R. She thought that if she got him a job as an occasional DJ there, it would make up for the loss. Later, after she'd been with Tyler awhile, she thought nothing of asking Fatboy to sub her a loan so she could go out drinking with Lauren and Lucy, but then took the money, changed her ming, stayed in and fucked Tyler.

Pssst .. only a whore does that.

And, yeah, she's still with Tyler. Just. Didn't she confess that she can't stop thinking about her "brief encounter" with Joey?

As I said, only a whore does that.

She's had 5 genuine relationships where she wasn't being molested/manipulated! She was born in 1982 which makes her 20-21. Having 5 boyfriends for 21 is not exactly whorish now is it!

Babycakes, a relationship is something that lasts more than a couple of months at most. Out of all of those, it's safe to say, the only genuine relationship Whitney's had has been with Tyler, and she's mentally cheating on him at the moment.

Oh, and Izzy, work on the maths. Whitney was born in 1992. She will turn twenty in December. She turned sixteen in December 2008, which lessened Tony King's interest in her then as she was of the legal age of consent. Whitney's association with boys of her own age demographic began properly in 2010. Having five boyfriends, and sleeping with two of them before you even knew their surnames is pretty sluttish.

Me, I'm still laughing at your reckoning that Whitney was born in 1982 and claims to be only twenty-one. Please, go back to school, and whilst you're there, learn to think critically.

Sharley Shiron Shite

There's a tiny little scene from Thursday's episode of EastEnders which is causing major ructures with about 6 people on Twitter and one major troublemaker on Digital Spy Soaps forum.

Here's the clip in question, and the questionable bit occurs around the 2:57 mark. Watch and listen carefully. As Fox News says, you decide:-

In a nutshell, Phil and Sharon are having a confrontation because of Phil's request that Sharon pretend to be his fiancee in order to aid in his attempts to gain custody of Lexie, his granddaughter. Sharon refuses, and Phil laments, in a stressed voice, "What do you want me to do, Sharon?"

The conflict on Twitter and DS - really one person making a mountain out of a molehill - is down to the fact that Phil, who often speaks rapidly when he's nervous, stressed or just in a general bullying mode, said Sharon's name very quickly, and some people - well, one in particular - thought he mistakenly called Sharon "Shirley."

He didn't.

Steve McFadden and Letitia Dean are probably the most professional actors in the current bunch of losers fronting EastEnders at the moment. You have to think the production staff have nous too. If McFadden had mistakenly said "Shirley" instead of "Sharon," the director would have called a halt to the filming and the shot would have been re-taken.

But as the late John Belushi would have said, "But nooooOOOOO ..."

At least not as far as the infamous Moaning Lisa is concerned. You see, Moaning Lisa is party to a surreptitious, subtle and secret storyline which sees Phil secretly pining for Shirley. So much does Phil miss Shirley that he cannot get through the day without thinking of her every hour on the hour. He's upset more about Shirley's absence than he is about Ben being in prison. His guilt at betraying Shirley over covering up Ben's part in Heather's death makes him pine for her uncontrollably. So much was Shirley in his thoughts that he referred to Sharon mistakenly as Shirley, and Sharon was just too pig shit thick to comprehend it.

If that isn't enough, Phil will couple with Sharon only because Shirley isn't around to save him from her clutches, and Phil will only shag Sharon because the delectable Shirley isn't on hand to tempt him with her sexy boots. But never fear ... in MoaningLisaLand, Shirley will swoop down on Walford like an avenging angel and rescue Phil from Sharon's clutches. Phil will then dump Sharon, reunite with Shirley, take in Lola and her baby and live happily ever after. Because Shirley's not only the love of Phil's life, she's an icon, you see.

Only ... she isn't. But explaining that to Moaning Lisa is like talking to a brick. So convinced is she that Phil and Shirley's woes are the single greatest love story going on the programme at the moment that she hijacks practically every thread where the name "Phil" or "Sharon" appears. Ne'mind that the thread might be about the boil on Phil's arse or Sharon's latest hairstyle, Mona will make damned certain that the thread descends into a whirlwind of chaos with her imposing her impossible lovelorn theories on the forum and going over the same old same old repeatedly, demanding to know why others can't see how thoroughly besotted Phil is with Shirley.

Any pushback is met, not on the forum, but on Twitter with her referring to anyone disagreeing with her as being "fucking idiots."

When Phil initially rang Sharon for moral support, shortly after Shirley left with Carly - something Phil orchestrated, not for Shirley's own good, but for the fact that her constant threats to grass him up and her general hanging around lapping up any possibility that Phil would tell her he loved her and really, really mean it (when she had then suddenly realised brutally that he didn't give a penny about her) were getting on his nerves - there was a scene where he scrolled down his contact list on his mobile until he found Sharon's number.

The eagle-eyed viewer saw that the name "Shirley" had been deleted from the list. In MonaLand, that scene became "Phil stares longingly at his mobile phone, missing the fact that Shirley's name no longer appears there. He's upset that he deleted it, so he rings Sharon."

(I know. Go figure).

Mona is obsessed with Shirley and Phil getting together forever, even though everyone knows that this isn't going to happen. Steve McFadden, the real star of EastEnders, has said that he wants Sharon and Phil to be a couple and what he says pretty much goes. I have a feeling, anyway, that Dean was brought back in order to re-establish the Mitchells as the core family on the Square and to have her grow into the matriarch role heretofore occupied by Pam St Clements's Pat - St Clement, herself, was only a couple of years older than Dean is now when she began her tenure as Pat.

But the problem here is that Mona is obsessed to the point that she is trolling any and all threads even tangentially about Phil, Sharon or Shirley and many that aren't remotely about any of them. It's got so bad, as one commenter said, that people are hesitant even to mention Shirley's name, because they know that Mona the Flying Monkey will descend upon them with a wrath.

She is a troll, and her trolldom is reinforced by the fact that the contrarian KnowNothing, catsmeow and the matron saint of trolls, vald, regularly defend her inane points.

Mona, Catsmeow and Vald in Coven

But that's not the only thing Mona's infamous for. She sets up faux Twitter accounts, attacking herself, and then points to them as evidence of people bullying her, when she, in fact, is the bully. She revels in getting her so-called enemies banned from various fora, when, in her heinous and many-faceted, albeit cack-handed attempts at cyber bullying, it is she who is actually breaking a law. She's a mean-spirited little bitch, and I applaud the fact that more and more commentators on Digital Spy are calling out her callousness, stupidity and rudeness. I only hope someone reports her one day and one of the dozy moderators on Digital Spy kicks her sorry arse into cyber-oblivion, where she can salivate in the corner and obsess on Shirley regaining Phil's affection someday the twelfth of never.

Check out the Thursday episode thread on Digital Spy for a totally mind-blowing hijacking of a thread and the most revealing case of illogic ever witnessed anyplace. If the Digital Spy mods cannot see what was done by Mona totally disrupting that thread, then they're blind and don't deserve the jobs they have.

Inbreds Have Low Intellect - Review 26.10.2012

Before Cora was a drunk, she was Granny Goodwitch, and Patrick was a sugar bear.

What the hell is EastEnders trying to prove? How bloody awful it can get? If it's trying to hit rock bottom, hoping to rise like a phoenix from the flames of its destruction (or the flames from LipGirl and Turdhopper crashing Derek's car into a storefront next month), it's hoping for a lot. I guess they're hoping hope floats ... like shit.

Which is pretty much what this episode was, because anything the increasingly cancerous Brannings inhabit is one big, rank, steaming pile of hot turds, and this was one of those episodes where they spread their tentacles across almost everything and everyone. I was half expecting the despondent Derek to turn up, weeping, at Masood's Eid feast.

This episode had to be a first, however. We actually had a scene with three certifiable alcoholics, one representing each generation, present and accounted for - Cora, Tanya and Lauren.

What a desperate old piss artist Cora is, and now we see where Tanya gets her victim attitude and her penchant for casting blame on someone other than herself. Cora is not only a thankless old drunken lag, she is also an abysmal mother, a liar and certainly not deserving of the matriarchal status certain low-information viewers and various of TPTB want her to attain.

She's pissed off so she gets pissed and blames Rainie, who's actually taken control of her life by joining AA and getting sober. One thing Alcoholics Anonymous teaches is getting the recovering alcoholic to remove himself or herself from the source that triggers their downward-spiral behaviour. Cora's behaviour and Tanya's attitude made Rainie drank - Tanya, playing Middle Class Lady Bountiful throwing crumbs from her laden table to Rainie and expecting gratitude, whilst Cora encouraged Rainie's excesses, knowing that they would inevitably cause trouble, in order for her to clear up the mess and tell Rainie how awful she was.

I remember two things about Rainie's sojourn before when Cora was present - the scene where they'd found that Greg had sold the house over their heads to Janine, when Cora encouraged Rainie to get drunk and paint graffiti all over Janine's walls, and Rainie's last episode, where Cora read her the riot act in the wake of Tanya's cancer cold about how Rainie always made everything about her, when we've all seen that it's Tanya who's got to be the showpiece. And lest we forget, it was Tanya who led Rainie to her life of addiction and indulgence. But then, shit wouldn't stick to the fragrant Yummy Mummy, would it?

And so, Cora, after having been told some righteous home truths about her behaviour, instead of acting like the responsible adult and treating that as an epiphany moment worth serious consideration, goes on a binge and ends up hanging out and hung over at Patrick's, and even in the stone cold sober light if day, she lies through her teeth, not only to Patrick but to Tanya and LipGirl about what happened - that her drunkeness was all Rainie's fault - you know how Rainie is - it was Rainie  who ripped up the bridesmaid's dress in a fit of drunken jealousy, when it was really Cora who did so in a fit of petulant rage at being told what's what by a daughter who'd moved on and removed herself from the source of the problem. So Cora carries on wallowing in a vat of enormous self-pity and righteous indignation, casting herself as the victim whilst casting aspersions on her daughter's character. What kind of mother, what kind of matriarch does that? 

Oh, for the days of Pat Evans!

Now ... did everybody enjoy the teenage angst saga? Apart from the widdle kiddies sharing one brain cell, no one else did. The Whitney-Lucy-Lauren-Lusting-after-a-piece-of-shit Joey storyline is one of the most abysmal ones in the history of the programme.

I'm inclined to agree with Walford Web Kindergarten's resident Janus, Nebraska, in that Lauren has surpassed Tanya's level of extreme unlikeability. She is shallow, selfish, self-obsessed and as amoral as her collective dysfunctional family. In Thursday's episode, she referred to Lucy's dad as having "gone bonkers," when Lauren and the viewers want to remember that Lauren, herself, tried to kill her father, that her own mother tried to kill him in the most horrific way, yet to Lauren, Ian Beale is "bonkers."

These three are arguably the three worst ingenues to ever appear on EastEnders. Whitney (and is it me or is Shona McGarty getting fat?) is simply disgusting - as disgusting as Lucy, both showing concern about some beefed-up dickbrain who doesn't give a rat's ass about either of them. Lucy provided a roof, rent-free, and sex on a plate. Whitney wants a piece of the action, and Lauren wants Whitney to back off and Lucy to dump Turdhopper so she can sample a little incest with an inbred.

As for Joey the Turd, I am sorry, but please, can someone, someplace in EastEnders' management not renew David Witts's contract? He should be an lesson to anyone tempted to hire someone simply on the basis of looks with no previous acting experience or ability. Not only was tonight's storyline embarrassing in its utter awfulness, it was made worse by Witts's inability to act at all. The writing was amateurish, the acting level even worse. His bleating in the park reminded me of this sound ...

I really think his every scene should be prefaced by this warning ...

As for Jacqueline Jossa, as I'm certain that the part of Lauren has been built around her totally amazingly self-centred personality, I seriousy think she should stop trying to look like Jennifer Lawrence in the futile hope that someone will think she is as talented as Lawrence. More specifically, she should stop taking off Lawrence's look when she portrayed Katniss in Hunger Games. Jossa should ever be so lucky as to have that talent. And she should wash her greasy hair.

I'm waiting for the storyline where Lucy, Lauren, Whitney, and Tyler all end up with an STD, caught from Joey. If there were a tragedy to befall Walford tomorrow and this quintet were obliterted, I wouldn't grieve.

By the way, how fucking stupid is Joey? He was carrying around an expensive Smartphone in his pocket and didn't think to use it to call someone - like Max - to tell them what had happened and why he hadn't returned to work? 

What's Found Inside Joey's Head - Shit for Brains

Even worse than all of this was TPTB's obvious last-ditch effort to make the viewer feel sorry for Dewek. Dewek wanted so, so badly to be Max's best man; and Max really didn't promise him, he just said he was the best man, not the Best Man.

Instead, we find out that Jack has been chosen for that honour. Why? Well, according to Max, Jack was the natural choice because, well, because Dewek was banged up inside for all those years and Jack was - Max's words - always there.

Yep, that's right. Jack was always there - stealing old Jim's dad's war medals and blaming the theft on Max, moving in with Max's wife and planning on taking her and Max's kids to France, agreeing with Max's murderous wife that she didn't really go far enough in rescuing him from her attempt to bury him alive ... yeah, Jack was always there. 

And all that was followed by the maudlin attempt to evoke a pity party for Dewek as he tearfully read his best man's speech to the assembled portraiture of Jack and Max on display. I miss that house being filled with pictures of Ricky, Diane, Janine and various Butchers. It's an absolute disgrace that Brannings should be living in a house that Janine Butcher owns. I hope she hammers their asses for rent.

And, by the way, for the clever clogs who can't do the maths on the Branning siblings' ages due to Dewek being nine when Max was born, it works out. Max is forty-three, Derek is fifty-two. Carol is fifty (not sixty-two as some dumbass on Digital Spy reckons). As she was fourteen when Bianca was born, this means, rightly, that Bianca is thirty-six. Pay attention to the latest Branning retcon.

I agree with someone on Digital Spy who remarked the other day how much they enjoy Sharon's interaction with Phil as opposed to her hanging off Jack Branning's lips, which is all she ever seems to do in her capacity as Branning support player. Even in scenes where she was with Jack whilst Phil was there (like tonight in the pub), it was so obvious that her affinity with Jack is totally forced. 

My take?

She's attracted to Phil. Phil is a constant in Sharon's life. He's someone who's always come up trumps for her at her lowest point. And she's always been drawn to the Mitchells, even when she was married to Saint Dennis the Murderer, she trusted Phil with certain knowledge that she wouldn't dare entrust to Dennis. It was Phil and Grant who convinced Sharon that Chrissie was Den's murderer; she never once listened to Dennis's suspicions. And it was to Phil whom Sharon turned this last time when her life was in a mess. This shit with Jack - this SHACK - is Sharon's efforts trying to move on and show her independence from Phil. She reads Phil like a book and he does the same with her. 

Consider her reaction when she sussed tonight that Phil had rung her from "Ben's" phone. Sharon was mildly annoyed - her reaction was the typical world-weary reaction of a wife whose husband tried to pull one over on her. Had that been Tanya reacting to Max or Zainab to Masood, there would have been hell to pay, but Sharon took it in her stride.

And Phil knew exactly what he was doing when he told Jimmy to put Sharon down on the application form as his fiancee, with the foreshadowing remark that they were going to spend the rest of their lives together. Of course, they will. Phil knows that Sharon could never ever be associated with a lightweight, dysfuncitonal bent copper piece of white trash like Jack Branning. And Sharon knows that he knows.

Watch this space, and please, don't cry for Jack the victim. Maybe this will spur him onto visit his son - you know, Phil's nephew, Richard? If Sharon had stayed married to Grant or if she marries Phil, she'll be Richard's aunt.

I loved that last scene more than any tonight. Oh, and Jimmy the Brief would be a welcome addition to the permanent cast. He's the right age group and a quirky character - the irony of him being the family settlement brief in Ritchie Scott's firm, having had a marital break-up, himself, wasn't lost.

Finally, the Masoods. Earlier this week, it was a Star Warsfest. Tonight it was all about Kevin Costner and Field of Dreams. If you build it, they will come - the gist being, if Masood fixed a feast for Eid, Syed would find his way home. And so he did. And Syed, who - as Mas pointed out - bankrupted his family, is forgiven yet again, and Syed never once apologised.

Once again, Mas is de-balled.

Final Thought: What a welcome sight seeing Ian again tonight, and he's clearly not well. Learning that Ben had a son unsettled him, moreso because it brought him closer to Phil Mitchell's world and reminded him how closely Ben was linked to that world.

Still, I don't like the way Lucy barks orders at him, and although he's clearly not up to helping to care for his new niece, he's been deputising as Sharon's au pair whilst she frolicked with Jack the Peg for the past few weeks.

Update: Someone whom I won't mention on Digital Spy witters on and on about Phil's obsession with Sharon being about control, just like all Phil's relationships ... big epic wrong.

Phil has only ever respected one woman in his life, and that's Sharon. Sharon is, actually, his equal - certainly not Shirley, whom he didn't respect at all and none of the aforementioned Mrs Mitchells. The only other woman with whom he had comparable respect was Pat. With Sharon, it's respect mingled with love; and Sharon trusts Phil. It's Phil to whom she always turns. They're playing each other at the moment, with Jack Branning as the tool, which is pretty apt and pretty amusing.