Sunday, August 24, 2014

Another Fine Week Not - Review:- 18.08-22.08.2014


Let's not put too fine a point on it. This week sucked. It sucked so much and so bad that, had this been a week of Newman or Kirkwood episodes, people would be complaining of the horrific nature of it all.

Look, I know it's August, and most people are on holiday, so the form is for most soaps to tread water with lower viewer figures until September crops up and the nights start drawing in ... but guess what? The nights are drawing in, the weather's turned, and September is next week. Already, people are getting bored with the murder storyline. People remember that no one, least of all, the viewers liked Lucy Beale. The only thing this storyline has done is convince people what assholes Ian and Peter are.

As far as any of  the so-called supplementary storylines are concerned - you know, the ones that were meant to hold our interests until the Lucy thing hits full throttle ... like, whenever, well, the Charlie Cotton mystery is proving confusing and, at the moment, is acting as yet another long hello for Nick. And everything else, from Ian's liaison with Rainie Cross to Sharon's purported "big" storyline, has been taken over by Carters.

It took less than a year for the viewing public to suss that the Carters were simply a meaner version of the Brannings in disguise. Where the Brannings slept with each other, the Carters thrive on secrets and lies.

And family dinners.

Which brings me to something that concerns me greatly. Along with the usual problems this show has faced and is still facing, unabated, since 2007 in earnest, the bullyboi element has slithered from the woodwork.

These types range in age from 16 to 24 and are veritable Little Princes. Led to believe in a maturity they lack, they are arrogant to challenge others who have more life experience. This week, the culprits took umbrage at my mentioning of how far the show is catering to Millennials, in pushing such characters as Peter, Whitney, Lauren and Lee to the fore.

Yes, Millennials are those annoyingly shallow twentysomethings (and younger) who genuinely believe that anything which happened before their birth is unimportant and, therefore, can be disregarded - or, in the case of continuous fiction, changed to suit the storyline. The very fact that the bullybois were upset with this observation revealed them to be apt Millennials, themselves. One was even proud to take on the mantle - I wonder how proud he'll be in whatever profession he follows for his utter ignorance and arrogance to be revealed.

This led to an accusation of my being ageist. Not at all. Ageism is when you and your cronies assume that everyone who watches Coronation Street and Emmerdale is - in your words - old. When the tide is turned on you, for your ignorance, your shallowness, your preponderance for prolonging childhood well into adulthood, it isn't ageist. It shows how spoiled you are.

The worst part of this preposterous lack of critical thinking came from one of the bullybois, with a fetish for Liam Butcher, when he accused me of advocating slavery. I'll explain more about that piece of nonsense in the episode review, which happened to be the Monday episode.

Monday 18.08.2014 - We Are (Not) Family: Another Branning Beanfest


The central focus of Monday's episode was yet another Branning beanfest. They use any excuse imaginable to sit down, have a meal and then have a bust-up about it. The reason behind this debacle was Abi's exam results, which meant she was going away to Liverpool to study veterinary science.

Or did it?

Abi, as we know, didn't get the results she needed, but - as you do - she lied about it, to all and sundry, necessitating Max celebrating the first Branning ever to go to uni. Turns out she's going to Bolton, to study animal biology, which is a backdoor way of entering the veterinary profession. But that's not her only secret - the other one is that Jay, an apprentice passive-aggressive bully, intends to accompany her to uni.

Abi, needless to say, is horrified. Abi's intended all her life to go to university and has some sort of idea of what it's like - as in, it's not an extension of secondary school. It's an education in every sense of the word - living in halls the first year, getting to know people from all over the country, getting involved with courses and campus life. It doesn't mean coming home to a rancid flat and settling down in front of the telly with Jay after doing his meal.

The other source of tension at the meal - a family meal which included Max, his daughters, Carol and Dot, was Dot's invitation to Charlie.

A word about Max and Jay. Regarding Charlie, I was a bit Team Max in this instance. Max invited Dot to the dinner, as Abi's grandmother and Max's stepmother. He emphasised that this was a family occasion. Max doesn't know Charlie, but Max is very touchy about his position in the family, especially since Dot seems to have inherited Jim's assessment of Max as a son. Still, at least Max never tried to poison Jim, and Dot should take off the blinkers and realise that Max's daughter tried to kill him for no real reason at all. Of course, Max felt more than a bit put out by the fact a Carol appears in a late-model Beemer, along with Dot, both of whom have been to visit Jim, courtesy of Charlie. It didn't help with Dot prissily pointing out that she'd tried again and again to get Max to visit Jim. It was still out of order for her to have included Charlie in the invitation, when the meal was at Max's house, made by Max and at Max's invitation.

I couldn't figure out Carol in that instance. When she last confronted Charlie, she indicated that she was onto his scam, whatever it was, and until the last dialogue exchange between them, I thought she'd been snookered by him as well, but something about the way she assured him at the end that she and he were "still good" led me to believe that Carol was watching Charlie like a witch - keeping her friends close and her enemies closer. Max's animosities and suspicions are more open, and when Max's securities are threatened, he gets verbally aggressive.

Dot was wrong as well in remarking that Max had brought shame to Jim's family. Shame is something that found a regular place at the bosom of Jim's family - the problem is that none of Jim's children recognise the concept of shame: Carol with four children by four different men, Jack impregnating two sisters and their cousin, Derek in prison and involved in petty crime. Yep, Max can't keep it in his trousers - his first two wives were married because they were pregnant, and he left the first for the second. He slept with the girl who had been his son's fiancée and who went onto marry him, but Jack slept with Tanya as well (and Rainie). Does Dot know, I wonder, that Jim was behind the trick of nailing his son in a coffin for a night to "cure" him of his friendship with a black child?

As for Jay, he was just as bad and presumptive as Max. At first, I thought it was brilliant that he stepped up and encouraged Abi to find another place at another uni rather than continue the preposterous lie about Liverpool. She got into Bolton to study animal biology, which does offer another route to a veterinary career. But Jay isn't doing this for Abi, he's doing this on the condition that he come with her; it's a means of escape for him, and he takes it upon himself to become the voice of Abi at the table - a bit incongruous, since all the time he kept asking if Abi were planning on telling the people around the table the truth, he kept speaking in her place.

Abi's final comment was the very epitome of Millennial self-absorption. When Max objected to Jay informing everyone that he was going to Bolton with her, Abi informed Max that this was her life and nothing to do with him. 

Really, Abi? Who's going to contribute to your tuition and your upkeep in however long it takes you to get your Animal Biology degree? Not Jay, I can assure you.


It was this incident which led to the Liam Lover bullyboi accusing me of advocating slavery. What? Yes, go figure. Because Max silenced Jay's assertion and reminded him that he, Max, was Abi's father and that the last thing she needed was Jay traipsing off after her and because Abi got into the usual huff and said that Max had nothing to do with her life, this led to the Millennials being upset at my interpretation of this event.

First, the Branning girls are the very epitome of spoiled entitlement. They have, on occasion, even exiled their father from his home and from the very Square, forbidding him to come near them, but what happens? Usually, there's a crisis - Tanya's cancer cold, for example - and dear old Dad is needed to hold down the fort. Otherwise, dear old Dad is needed to pay the bills, which neither Abi nor Lauren is equipped to do.

For Abi to say that Max has nothing to do with her life means she will declare herself independent of his support and apply for any and all kinds of student loans and get herself up to her fat arse in debt for the first ten or fifteen years of her professional life. Because Jay won't have the wherewithal to pay those fees back.

Mr LiamLover took offense at my defence of Max imposing his will on what Abi could and could not do. That isn't Max using Abi as a slave, that's Max being a parent, and LiamLover wants to do a serious, in-depth study of what slavery is and what it entails before he takes the moral high ground with me, accusing me of advocating slavery. Is Abi held at the Branning house against her will? No. Is she forced to work from dawn to dusk, starved, forbidden contact with the outside world and forbidden education? No. Is she kept in chains? No.

She's simply asked to abide by the rules Max determines if she's going to live under a roof which he owns and she doesn't. Both of those girls are over sixteen. Max can kick their arses out if he wanted. He doesn't. He could also ask them to contribute funds in the form of rent or room and board, for the family housekeeping. That's not unreasonable, but he doesn't ask that. Shit, as hard up as Bianca is, she doesn't require that of Whitney. Maybe she should.

The simple fact of the matter is that when you live, rent-free, in accommodation provided for you by your parents or anyone else, you adhere to the rules they specify. In fact, when you rent from a landlord, you do the same - otherwise, you get thrown out. That's not slavery, Mr LiamLover, that's common sense and decency.

The final image of Max left alone at the Branning table, toasting himself, was priceless. Still, two Brannings are onto Charlie's deception.


Tuesday 19.08.2014 - Frets


This was a Daran Little episode, and that surprised me, because it seriously wasn't good, and Little is just about the best there is writing for EastEnders at the moment. Because it was so bad,I genuinely couldn't remember what happened, so I had to watch the episode again.

It was about a lot of "frets." That doesn't mean it was about Jay suddenly getting the idea of being a sidewalk busker and shopping for a guitar. It doesn't mean someone's about to worry over a particular situation, as in "fretting" over something, although it could mean just that, the way Abi is fretting over going to Bolton or Bianca is fretting over Whitney seeing Lee or Max is fretting over Charlie Cotton or the way I'm fretting over the fact that EastEnders seems to have lost its way again.

Nope, it's "fret" as in "threat" and line of the night goes to Lee Carter who challenged Bianca's t-h-r-r-r-e-a-t to do him harm if he hurt Whitney with the repost:-

Izzat a fret?

The tension in the tale was twofold and concerned mostly Patrick's situation in relation to Ian's
fear of Patrick exposing Ian as a kerb-crawler to Denise, thus revealing his infidelity with Rainie Cross. The rest of the tension was provided by Max's suspicions of Charlie Cotton.

First, Patrick's situation.

Rudolph Walker is playing a blinder in this situation, without uttering a word. His facial expressions are so eloquent, that it's easy to feel Denise's dilemma as almost palpable. 

It's true. Patrick has no one, and the other hero of the piece is Masood, who's vocal tones spoke volumes regarding the contempt in which he holds, not Ian, but Anthony, Patrick's son, assessing that Anthony's cheque for two grand he wrote is the value he puts on his father's life. Masood understands Denise and what she's going through, and why is it that I see a Masood-Denise relationship on the horizon?

Denise refuses to be swayed by Ian's arguments, which have the prima facie appearance of being concerned about Denise and how she would fare as Patrick's carer, but it's Dot again  - and Dot was being surreptitiously presented as someone presuming bad judgement as good in this episode - who manages to convince Denise that Ian's way is the best way.

Dot was at her hypocritical, unlikeable best in this episode, meaning she was immensely pukeworthy. She's an elderly woman who played the martyr in looking after her stroke-ridden husband, whom we're supposed to believe she visits every day. Dot is quick to quell any notion of Denise taking care of Patrick.

You'll die before he will,and that's something you don't want to hear.

I thought her manner pithy and abrupt with Denise. It almost seemed that she was apprising that what was good enough for Jim to suffer, so should Patrick.

She was in the same sort of judgemental mode with Max, who's suspicious of Charlie, seeming to horn his way into the Branning family, uninvited. Dot's vision of Max is clouded by Jim's disdain for him, and she doesn't stint in calling him out on what she refers to as his "sordid affairs." With bad grace, she accepted his apology, without acknowledging her own presumption in bringing along someone to a family dinner who had no invitation and nothing to do with Abi or Max at all.

Still, Max is the second Branning family member to suss that something is not quite right about Charlie, and Charlie feels it as well. However, he's got a trump card, seeing Max's intimate little conversation with Stella Crawford Emma Summerhayes, easily the flakiest and most inane copper the show has ever had. What a shame Jack isn't around to suss Charlie's claims also. Instead, we have Emma, how did a background check on Charlie, only to find that he isn't what he says he is all along.

The other vignette presented a horror spectacle - the first mention of Ryan Malloy.



Thursday 21.08.2014 - The First FacePalm Episode



Daran must have had a bad week when he wrote Tuesday's and Thursday's episodes. Just some observations, amongst the obvious face palm moments.

1. Lola



... is one of the most honest and sincere characters on the show, and it amazes me that the collective likes of Peter, Dean and Lauren look down their noses at her. Who are they? A moocher and a deadbeat, a wimp who went to prison for trying to frame an innocent man and an attempted murderer who slept with her cousin. Lola was brought up in care, the daughter of a known thief. Peter's father is a serial monogamist who treats his wives like skivvies and has a penchant for prostitutes. Dean doesn't know who his father is, and his mother is a functioning alcoholic who abandoned him as a baby. Lauren's mother, grandmother and aunt are alcoholics and/or drug addicts; her aunt is a prostitute; her father is a serial adulterer, and her family is basically scrubbed-up trailer trash. Yet Lola offends Peter's effete middle-class sensibilities, she's too common to work in Dean's trendy upmarket salon, and he takes pleasure in telling her. And Lauren barely acknowledges her. She wasn't offended by the way Dean spoke to Lola; that was all about the way he spoke to Peter. Peter is using Lola as a means of spying on Lauren and her new-found boyfriend, Dean. Dean is using silly Lauren as a means of attempting to make Linda jealous, and that sucks too. Lauren is silly enough to think that a man closer in age to 30 to Lauren's naive barely twenty, is seriously interested in her enough to want to date her after "getting the milk for free." He even reiterated as much to her.

2. Lauren and Whitney



...were the very epitome of self-obsessed shallowness, in that brilliantly contrived scene when they sat, side-by-side, at the Branning kitchen table, talking at each other. Lauren is supposed to be Whitney's friend, but she was nothing but smug in the way she prissily went on about her "date" with Dean, who - in case Whitney didn't realise - was seriously "fit." Whitney could only give a choked assessment of Lee's fitness and remark about how afraid she was of continuing this relationship.

3. Whitney and Lee in a farcical scene.

Whitney: You've been in the army. You've had thousands of girls. I don't wanna be just another girl.
Lee: I want what my parents have. I wanna get married young and have kids.
Whitney (euphemistically): Oh, all right then, let's go to bed.


Whitney said Lee "dumped" her for Lucy. Sorry? I thought it went like this: Lee met Lucy and slept with her the same day. Lucy binned him, saying she was seeing someone else, Lee flirted with Whitney, Lucy saw him snog her and showed friendly again. Lee slept with her, and the rest is history. He kissed Whitney. They were never an item, and the ease with which Lee transferred his suddenly deep affections he felt for Lucy to Whitney makes me suspicious of Lee's emotional maturity.


The fact that Lee is ready to settle down with whatever girl happens to pass his way and catch his fancy also tells me how mature emotionally he is. He knew Lucy less than a week, yet he slept with her twice. He knew nothing of her background, her family, the events in her past which made her turn out the way she was, and yet, had she lived, he'd have been giving this dialogue to her. Instead, he's telling Whitney, a girl about whom he still knows nothing except that she was at one time a prostitute.

The Carters really are children who begat children.

4. Emma Summerhayes


is seriously dumb. Flakey and dumb. Charlie is a confident enough liar to suss her naivete and take advantage of her Achilles heel - the fact that she's bonking Max, who is (as she parrotted repeatedly) a suspect in a murder investigation. She is the next Stella Crawford. Now Charlie knows her sordid little secret, and so does Jay. And surely if Charlie were "special ops" and they're so ingrained in secret police activity, he wouldn't be revealing that piece of information to a detective constable on "normal duties".

5. So Charlie's a caretaker (specialist bog cleaner) in a care home for the elderly. He complains about a low wage, which is accurate because care workers do get pitiable wages. Yet he swans about in a late model Beemer. How, precisely? Oh, and he's a thief.

This was the biggest twist in a tale which I think has a lot to do with Lucy's murder.

6. Upswing? Nick is back and watching from afar. Downswing? It would also appear that "Simon Parker" (otherwise known as Ryan Malloy) may be on the way back to Walford also, judging by Whitney's social media message. Puke. 

Friday  22.08.2014 - The Second FacePalm Episode



Yet more of the same Newmanesque shite. People wonder why the young people are disliked so much in this programme. Friday's episode offered plenty of examples why.

1. Whitney, Lauren and Peter. Go. Go now. I know Lauren is leaving. I just hope the actress takes to motherhood like a duck to water and retires gracefully. This week was a perfect example of why whoever goes onto be a future Executive Producer should never ever ever ever move either Whitney or Lauren front and centre of the programme.

I've had my fill of Lauren's funny voices, off-kilter delivery and windmill arm movements, all of which were on display tonight. Both Jossa and McGarty are lazy actresses, and McGarty's delivery is smug and mumbling. Maybe I'm in a minority, but I was more interested in Whitney's lethal acrylic nails than anything she might have to say.

Quite frankly, I'm not interested in the slightest in the silly romances concerning these people, and someone is thinking they're mighty clever thinking up complicated scenarios like this surrounding them, when the storylines aren't complicated, just silly and boring.

Lola likes Peter likes Lauren likes Dean. We all know Dean's modus operandi,but Lauren doesn't. She's filled with the notion that Dean, an older man and an entrepreneur, would think her worthy of a serious relationship. Peter the Moocher and Deadbeat was in full Tim-Nice-but-Dim mode tonight, especially in the restaurant scene. Looking after the family business is a chore to Peter as if flipping burgers is so beneath him, and he doesn't have the common sense to know that when two people are dining and there are several tables for two and one seating four, you don't seat two people at a table for four. The whole dynamic between him and Lauren was just puerile in the extreme, especially the ketchup scene.

Surely, those naff teeshirts are kept, in bulk, at the restaurant. It would have been far more sensible for Lauren to have gone into the ladies and changed her teeshirt to a clean one. Instead, she stomps off in high dudgeon, after promising Ian to work and help people out. This is what I mean when I say her character is the epitome of Millenial entitlement!

How many of us who work can afford to storm off in a self-righteous huff when something doesn't go our way at the workplace? Well, Lauren can. And who the hell would want to dine at Beales, after listening to Lauren snipe at Peter like a fishwife?

The hilarious part of this vignette was Lauren's obvious conceit with regard to what she thinks Dean thinks of her (hint: she thinks he thinks a lot of her, whereas for Dean, she's a warm body and a recepticle of the seed he'd rather be planting in his Auntie Linda). I loved it when Dean disabused her of the notion that he was giving Lola a trial because of Lauren. He wanted to see for himself how good Lola was, and he handed Lauren her arse about her own propensity to judge others.

Peter the Moocher and Deadbeat continues to be self-serving snob and an all-around jerk. The disdainful way he remarked about the work in the restaurant being simply "flipping burgers" (followed by his inability to unlock the restaurant door) was awfully condescending. And who was on the fruit and veg stall, pray tell? The income from all these working-class fixtures - a greasy spoon cafe, a burger joint, a fruit and veg stall, a chippie -will pay for the sort of middle-class lifestyle which Peter snobbily affects.

Whitney is doing what she does best - making decisions and judgements to which she isn't entitled. On Bianca's expert assessment that Stacey won't be released from prison anytime soon, Whitney contacts "Simon Parker" on her social media page - Simon, being none other than that wet, drip murderer of a brother of hers. (God, I hated the way she whispered, "He's on the run.") I hope he's on the run from the wrath of Janine.

Whitney has put a picture of Lily on her social media page. Really, Whitney? You had no right to do that, without the permission of either Lily's mother or the people acting in loco parentis, who are the Moons. Anticipating Stacey's long incarceration, Whitney reckons that Lily needs her father - both of her parents being murderers - and so she contacts Ryan.

What an arrogant, little self-righteous gobshite! This is not Whitney's call to make. Stacey entrusted Lily's custody, first to Jean and then to Alfie and Kat - not to Whitney, and for obvious reasons. The only rights Ryan has to Lily are the rights which Stacey affords him. Whatever Whitney thinks has nothing to do with what Stacey wants, and when Stacey returns, I hope she beats Whitney's arse for her arrogance, and I guess that means we are going to see one of the drippiest male leads since the Moon Goons and Callum Monks. I've just realised that DTC's last tenure not only gave us Ryan the Wet, but also Callum Monks and Danny Mitchell. Please tell me we can't expect to see a hattrick of jerks?

The fact that such a loser character as Ryan Malloy got so many mentions this week can only mean one thing - that a return is imminent. I get the fact that Ryan was supposed to be what Sean and Dennis were, but wasn't. He was a wimp and a wet. A pisspoor sex symbol who brought out the worst in Janine and absolutely destroyed any vestige of character Stacey had left. Besides all that, he's played by a meh actor who lacks the appeal of a lost puppy. Neil McDermott is doomed to walk in the shadow of more capable actors - taking up the limp noodle reins left by a blazing Robert Kazinsky, dumbing down Lord Farquaad in Shrek after the brilliant performance by Nigel Harman and wimping down Mr Darcy in Pride and Prejudice after the divine David Oakes.

When I think of the return of Neil McDermott and Ryan Malloy, I hear this ...



By the way, did I detect a spark between Dean and Lola?

2. The Ubiquitous Carter Scene. Line of the night goes to Linda about Whitney: 

She thinks Whitney's a sensible, down-to-earth, nice girl. Lee's face when she said that was an absolute picture. Who's going to tell Linda that Whitney is an ex-prostitute and a girl who has a reputation of binning nice blokes for the latest bad boy, who comes along? Other than that, what was the point of that shower of Linda inviting the exercise class who didn't show? The ubiquitous Carter scene, reminding us that they were still ... there.


3. Ian is still not a nice man. He isn't, and he has Patrick over the proverbial barrel. Ian thought on his feet, when he saw the fear and desperation in Patrick's eyes about going to a care home. He insinuated a brilliantly cruel piece of emotional blackmail by agreeing, in front of Patrick and Denise to Patrick being brought into their home for his care. Ian didn't have to say a word to Patrick. His look, over Denise's shoulder, was nothing short of a threat and a dare to Patrick to say anything, this reiterated after his assurance to Patrick that he "loved Denise to bits". (He doesn't. He loves her because she's the only woman standing who'll put up with his bad behaviour). He even invites Patrick to tell Denise everything (reverse psychology). Ian isn't doing this out of the goodness of his heart or out of concern for Denise and/or Patrick. He's doing it to protect his sordid little secret.

4. Surprise surprise. Just when we were wondering who kept phoning Phil, up pops Rainie, installed in none other than Heather's old flat, and Phil's been paying her rent. Remember that Phil and Rainie have all sorts of history. Does this mean that there'll be a total of three women lusting after Phil now?


5. The Talented Mr Cotton. The janitor who drives a top-of-the-range Beemer, pays off a stranger's £6k debt, and hands a serious wadge of cash to Les Coker. The plot thickens. Mrs Doyle was great in her part, but are we to believe that Nick has consistently returned to Yvonne, who was obviously his first wife, in between dalliances with Zoe, his second wife, and Sandy, his third?

Most interesting here was Nick's cryptic text to Charlie: 

What's going on here? Did Nick devise some sort of elaborate plot which would entail faking his death, only to have Charlie go maverick on him? Why? This cannot be a scam on Dot for money; she has none; and then there were those two calls Nick made to Dot when she was away, which Poppycock took. What were their significance? Has Nick been involved with this from the getgo, or has he only just found out?

One thing for certain, and that's the fact that Charlie is a psychopath, a seasoned liar and a thief, who's adept at covering his tracks and even psychologically manipulating his mother into enabling his behaviour. Interesting that Yvonne was desperate to keep Charlie with her, but in the end, Charlie returned to Dot. Pyschopaths obsess over certain people and things - Michael over Scarlett, Ronnie over Roxy, Dot's the Grandma Charlie's never known - a thirtysomething man so strongly attached to his new-found grandmother? Charlie's an opportunist, who sees Max (who is another person who's onto him) suspicious of him, and now he hopes to cleave close to Dot as a shield against the wrath and suspicions of Max and Carol.

We also saw how angry in a flash Charlie can get when crossed, as Yvonne pointed out tonight. So, is that the last we'll see of Yvonne? Has she gone? Will Nick find her? Is she even alive now, for I am still convinced that Charlie had something to do with Lucy's death?

Charlie Cotton is easily the most interesting character to come out of this year's storyline. He may not have been intended to be thus, but he is. I wouldn't want him to be a long-term character, and I would imagine that the truth would be out sometime between now and the 30th, which would - yes - devastate Dot, but I'm interested in seeing what Nick's part or non-part in this ruse is.

Oh, yes, Ian and Denise almost running into Charlie the Janitor ... contrived and expected. 



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