I gave this episode 8 out of 10, but the high points aren't what most people would expect for me. The characters who stood out for me in this episode were Denise, Shabnam, Patrick, Aleks, Marta and Roxy Mitchell.
The Beales are, indeed, a watchable family, but watchable only in their total dysfunction, their co-dependence, their total ineptitude as parents, their insufferable smugness, and their appalling personalities. To think that Ian Beale is the last man standing of that family in Walford, and his kids are some of the most abysmally entitled and unlikeable characters is beyond imagination. The self-satisfied faces sat around that dining room table, feasting off their own self-importance was a less-than-salutory lesson about what this programme has become, and I applaud DTC for his vision.
No, wait ... I'm not being sarky at all, because he honestly does get the ethos of EastEnders, and he's taken the show's original concept and turned it in on itself.
Originally, the programme was about gritty, EastEnd working-class families. There was the kindly, old doctor and the odd yuppie who got run over. Then, early in the next decade, EastEnders introduced a particular type - the middle-class professional who seemed to be the sort of person to which every inhabitant of the Square aspired - kind, jovial, friendly, an all-around good chap.
Except James Wilmot-Brown wasn't any of those things. He was a rapist. More important, he was the first in a long line of well-spoken, educated professionals in positions of trust in the community who turned out to be rotten to the core - weedy deceitful bankers (Rob and then, briefly, Fatboy's father), mad doctors (May and Yusef), unbalanced solicitors (Stella) and a serial killer who happened to be a pastor (Lucas).
However ...
The tide has turned. Now we're seeing an entire generation, the grandchildren of working class stiffs, whose parents aspire to middle class values, with all the incumbent snobbery but minus the education and the veneer of gentility which usually differentiates the middle class from the working class.Ian Beale can make all the haute cuisine meals he can, Max Branning can wear a suit and tie every day, but neither disguises the fact that both are common as muck and one is trailer trash.
Instead, we have their gaggle of sprogs and hangers-on, who would readily identify themselves as middle-class and even disdain some of their Albert Square contemporaries as chavvy, but who are rotten to the core in values, morality and outlook. Lucy was a cokehead, and I'd be willing to guess that the person who got her drugs for her didn't fall far from the tree; Lauren is a drunk and a homewrecker; Abi is a sociopathic stalker who's delusiional; Dean might own an up-market salon, but he's a rapist, the Wilmot-Brown of his generation; Whitney, the carefully-groomed teaching assistant, is an ex-prostitute and still dresses like one most of the time.
Their parents should be proud of the lot of them. They've achieved what their parents never could. They are part of the corrupt, amoral middle-class as is often depicted on the programme.
The Real Beales. Somebody smack Cindy. Seriously. Who the feck does she think she is? She's not related to any one of the people mooching about the Beale house on this day, yet she's dictating the odds about people shouting in the night and risking waking the baby about whom she doesn't give a rat's arse. Waking Beth would mean Cindy would have to haul her lazy arse out of bed and care for the child, whom she carries about like a sack of potatoes.
She's amazed that Ian only has to take the kid from her arms and she stops catterwauling.
She's just not that into you, Cindy ... Sorry, girlfriend, but even though you CHOSE to have sex with a boy you didn't even like, SHE didn't choose YOU for her mother, and she's twigged that early on ...
Seriously, a baby picks up on a person's emotions, whether they're relaxed or tense, even whether they are affectionate or not. We see Cindy holding the kid, but only because she has to do so. We don't see her cooing over her, kissing or caressing her. Just like a puppy or a kitten, a baby isn't a toy you can give back when you're tired of him or her. All Cindy seems to do is fob the kid off on Ian, Jane or whoever is around. Ian enjoys the child with the Cindy gene and is kind and affectionate to her, yet Cindy, instead of showing gratitude, treats him like shit. When she's not fobbing the kid off on any unsuspecting sucker, she's lying about on her arse staring at her Smartphone.
Yuck.
Please. Get this beeyatch off the screen. It was almost laughable that we had the two actresses on the programme who are most conscious of the camera, both swanning about at the same time today and each trying, surprisingly, to downplay each other.
Another thing I want to know is this ... what's happened to Ian's restaurant? There was a family lunch today, and Lauren works sporadically as a waitress at the Beales, totally destroying something that even a deficiente could ruin - bruschetta. Who's minding the restaurant? I thought Masood was fleetingly taken on as a part-time chef at one point, yet when he wasn't doing his post round, he was out limping about the Square, trying to run with Kush, who should have been minding his stall. How long has it been since we've even seen Beale's? Is it earning money? And speaking of money and the market, who's minding the Beale stall whilst Peter Posh has been away? We caught a fleeting glimpse of part of it today, when Aleks or Ben or someone stopped briefly in its vicinity, but all we saw was a couple of withered bananas, looking like a phallic symbol in dire need of viagra.
Ian is still sneaky, Cindy is still sarky, but all is happy because The Stepford Frump and Leave It to Beaver have come home. The Frump and the Beaver have gone to look at Walford High and are hoping that he'll make a good enough impression to have him as a student. Of all the Bobbies, this one is the most obnoxious.
I wanna be a businessman, like you.
Well, he's well on his way to possessing a fair amount of Ian's tact, to cast a disparaging remark about Lauren's culinary ability whilst she was sitting right there. All of this was a celebratory welcoming dinner, minus the fatted calf, for the prodigal son returning from visiting the psycho brother, from whom the entire family had distanced themselves after the fiasco of an association seven years ago. (cough, cough ... retcon ... cough, cough)
Yes, Peter was coming home. Peter was on his way ... Peter was arriving today. Did you get that? Oops, wait ... Peter missed his connection. Oh, ne'mind, he'll get the next one, and then he'll be home. Did you get that? I'll repeat it. Peter's coming home.
Jesus, repetition for emphasis can only mean one thing ... something's about to happen that concerns Peter.
But ...
Because interrupting the dinner was none other than Phil, himself, with a few home truths about Ian's parenting abilities. Pot, meet kettle. Phil and Ian both suck as parents, but Jane sucks even more for bigging up the myth of Ian being a good dad. According to Ian, Lucy, the favourite child, was like an open book to him, yet he felt he didn't even know her the last night of her life.
And here's Jane's absolutely plebeian pronouncement on children, spoken as the abysmal mother that she is:-
Children hide things from their parents.
That's when Ian makes a classic rejoinder - now listen carefully ... Bobby tries to hide things (how would you know, Ian? you haven't seen the boy since early this year, and even so, he managed to hide his trip to London from his ineffectual mother ... and Peter hides things (oooh, what?), but Lucy apparently never hid things from Ian (Steven, anyone?)
The climax and salutory ending of this piece came with The Stepford Frump, once again, treating Ian like a recalcitrant adolescent and whipping out Lucy's phone to show Ian how many loving messages she sent him, only to find an unsent message from Lucy to someone near and dear, asking for some drugs.
Hmmmm ... I wonder if Peter were unavoidably detained in Thailand for any reason ...
Ben's There, Done That. For all the shit Phil dished Ian about his lack of parenting abilities, Phil is just as bad a dad as Ian, throwing money at a newly heterosexual Ben so Ben can treat the "girlfriend" Phil's prayed for Ben to acquire.
Jay stood out in this as well, for his integrity, and Ben stood out for being the complete whackpiece that he is. I know Harry Reid's received a lot of criticism, but I like NuNuBen and his desperate lies, attempting to manipulate Jay back onside. He knows poor Jay is the real loose end of the Square without any familial connection to be found. He exists almost entirely for the crumbs of affection doled from Phil's table - once Brown, then Mitchell, now Brown again. Jay's got a conscience and a moral quotient, and he's uneasy with the secret both he and Ben are harbouring about Lucy's phone and purse, and he doesn't believe Ben for a moment when Ben said that he'd sorted everything with Ian and that Ian's ok with Ben's explanation of events.
Ben even invites himself, via The Stepford Frump, to the family meal - another nail of stupidity hammered into the Stepford Frump's eventual coffin, because Ian doesn't want Ben anyplace near him. Ian's assessment of Ben is pretty much on par with that of Jay - that Ben continues to get himself into mess after mess after mess.
In amongst all the angst of Ben and Jay is a fly in the ointment and an avenging angel. Abi is the first, and Johnny Carter the other. Abi is really one of the most delusional, naive and disgustingly smug people on the Square. Honestly, Lauren is almost more bearable than she is. All she did tonight was slink around after Ben asking him why he hadn't been returning her texts, why he'd been standing her up, almost everything.
He's just not that into you, Abi. He's GAY!!!!
Johnny the Avenging Angel knows that, and he's constantly on at Ben to acknowledge his sexuality, which Ben is now adamantly denying yet again. He wants to please Phil, and so he tells him the one thing he wants to hear, inadvertantly getting the idea from Abi, herself, who satisfyingly assumes Jay's mood with her is because she's now the girlfriend of Ben. Abi is so pleased with herself, she reeks; she doesn't even realise that Ben is giving her the brush-off.
Jay is absolutely right in assessing that Phil is allowing himself to be controlled, once again, by Ben, but his insistence that Phil ask Ian what the problem with Ben was became one grand fiasco.
Pig in the Middle. Aleks's secrets are catching up with him. Well, at least Marta knows now, even if Roxy doesn't. Roxy is about to get shafted (in the wrong sort of way) again. Last time, her man left her at the altar for his ex. This time, the man's ex isn't even his ex, she's still the wife about whom Roxy knows nothing.
Aleks determines the life and livelihood of all who work on the market. It pays to consider how he trumped up the loss of Alfie's stall, whilst doing nothing when Peter is absent for weeks on end, and Kush jogs around the market. Then, there's Roxy, offering him the distraction of fixing a lightbulb in her bedroom that's getting "too hot."
Honesty. Denise is hungover, but I don't agree with Patrick about Denise speaking ill of Lucy. Denise spoke the truth and even moreso when she described this year as being the year from hell for her. She was being lied to by Ian as long ago as last Christmas, he's treated her appallingly. The only person on whom Denise can depend and who loves her truly, is Patrick, and she decides to spend the day with him, putting up Christmas decorations.
Instead, some jobsworths from Head Office show up at The Minute Mart, there to do a stock report. Denise's honesty in showing up at the store only made a minor situation worse. She lost her job, and reaches for a glass of wine.
Sometimes, honesty isn't the best policy.
I bloody love Denise, a character of integrity, who's now being subtly maligned by the atrocious Beales, who were intent on hiding the evidence she literally dug up, in order to protect Ben from returning to prison. They'll doubly hide it now when another does of amorality hits closer to home. Denise is worth a dozen of The Stepford Frump.
Good episode.
The Beales are, indeed, a watchable family, but watchable only in their total dysfunction, their co-dependence, their total ineptitude as parents, their insufferable smugness, and their appalling personalities. To think that Ian Beale is the last man standing of that family in Walford, and his kids are some of the most abysmally entitled and unlikeable characters is beyond imagination. The self-satisfied faces sat around that dining room table, feasting off their own self-importance was a less-than-salutory lesson about what this programme has become, and I applaud DTC for his vision.
No, wait ... I'm not being sarky at all, because he honestly does get the ethos of EastEnders, and he's taken the show's original concept and turned it in on itself.
Originally, the programme was about gritty, EastEnd working-class families. There was the kindly, old doctor and the odd yuppie who got run over. Then, early in the next decade, EastEnders introduced a particular type - the middle-class professional who seemed to be the sort of person to which every inhabitant of the Square aspired - kind, jovial, friendly, an all-around good chap.
Except James Wilmot-Brown wasn't any of those things. He was a rapist. More important, he was the first in a long line of well-spoken, educated professionals in positions of trust in the community who turned out to be rotten to the core - weedy deceitful bankers (Rob and then, briefly, Fatboy's father), mad doctors (May and Yusef), unbalanced solicitors (Stella) and a serial killer who happened to be a pastor (Lucas).
However ...
The tide has turned. Now we're seeing an entire generation, the grandchildren of working class stiffs, whose parents aspire to middle class values, with all the incumbent snobbery but minus the education and the veneer of gentility which usually differentiates the middle class from the working class.Ian Beale can make all the haute cuisine meals he can, Max Branning can wear a suit and tie every day, but neither disguises the fact that both are common as muck and one is trailer trash.
Instead, we have their gaggle of sprogs and hangers-on, who would readily identify themselves as middle-class and even disdain some of their Albert Square contemporaries as chavvy, but who are rotten to the core in values, morality and outlook. Lucy was a cokehead, and I'd be willing to guess that the person who got her drugs for her didn't fall far from the tree; Lauren is a drunk and a homewrecker; Abi is a sociopathic stalker who's delusiional; Dean might own an up-market salon, but he's a rapist, the Wilmot-Brown of his generation; Whitney, the carefully-groomed teaching assistant, is an ex-prostitute and still dresses like one most of the time.
Their parents should be proud of the lot of them. They've achieved what their parents never could. They are part of the corrupt, amoral middle-class as is often depicted on the programme.
The Real Beales. Somebody smack Cindy. Seriously. Who the feck does she think she is? She's not related to any one of the people mooching about the Beale house on this day, yet she's dictating the odds about people shouting in the night and risking waking the baby about whom she doesn't give a rat's arse. Waking Beth would mean Cindy would have to haul her lazy arse out of bed and care for the child, whom she carries about like a sack of potatoes.
She's amazed that Ian only has to take the kid from her arms and she stops catterwauling.
She's just not that into you, Cindy ... Sorry, girlfriend, but even though you CHOSE to have sex with a boy you didn't even like, SHE didn't choose YOU for her mother, and she's twigged that early on ...
Seriously, a baby picks up on a person's emotions, whether they're relaxed or tense, even whether they are affectionate or not. We see Cindy holding the kid, but only because she has to do so. We don't see her cooing over her, kissing or caressing her. Just like a puppy or a kitten, a baby isn't a toy you can give back when you're tired of him or her. All Cindy seems to do is fob the kid off on Ian, Jane or whoever is around. Ian enjoys the child with the Cindy gene and is kind and affectionate to her, yet Cindy, instead of showing gratitude, treats him like shit. When she's not fobbing the kid off on any unsuspecting sucker, she's lying about on her arse staring at her Smartphone.
Yuck.
Please. Get this beeyatch off the screen. It was almost laughable that we had the two actresses on the programme who are most conscious of the camera, both swanning about at the same time today and each trying, surprisingly, to downplay each other.
Another thing I want to know is this ... what's happened to Ian's restaurant? There was a family lunch today, and Lauren works sporadically as a waitress at the Beales, totally destroying something that even a deficiente could ruin - bruschetta. Who's minding the restaurant? I thought Masood was fleetingly taken on as a part-time chef at one point, yet when he wasn't doing his post round, he was out limping about the Square, trying to run with Kush, who should have been minding his stall. How long has it been since we've even seen Beale's? Is it earning money? And speaking of money and the market, who's minding the Beale stall whilst Peter Posh has been away? We caught a fleeting glimpse of part of it today, when Aleks or Ben or someone stopped briefly in its vicinity, but all we saw was a couple of withered bananas, looking like a phallic symbol in dire need of viagra.
Ian is still sneaky, Cindy is still sarky, but all is happy because The Stepford Frump and Leave It to Beaver have come home. The Frump and the Beaver have gone to look at Walford High and are hoping that he'll make a good enough impression to have him as a student. Of all the Bobbies, this one is the most obnoxious.
I wanna be a businessman, like you.
Well, he's well on his way to possessing a fair amount of Ian's tact, to cast a disparaging remark about Lauren's culinary ability whilst she was sitting right there. All of this was a celebratory welcoming dinner, minus the fatted calf, for the prodigal son returning from visiting the psycho brother, from whom the entire family had distanced themselves after the fiasco of an association seven years ago. (cough, cough ... retcon ... cough, cough)
Yes, Peter was coming home. Peter was on his way ... Peter was arriving today. Did you get that? Oops, wait ... Peter missed his connection. Oh, ne'mind, he'll get the next one, and then he'll be home. Did you get that? I'll repeat it. Peter's coming home.
Jesus, repetition for emphasis can only mean one thing ... something's about to happen that concerns Peter.
But ...
Because interrupting the dinner was none other than Phil, himself, with a few home truths about Ian's parenting abilities. Pot, meet kettle. Phil and Ian both suck as parents, but Jane sucks even more for bigging up the myth of Ian being a good dad. According to Ian, Lucy, the favourite child, was like an open book to him, yet he felt he didn't even know her the last night of her life.
And here's Jane's absolutely plebeian pronouncement on children, spoken as the abysmal mother that she is:-
Children hide things from their parents.
That's when Ian makes a classic rejoinder - now listen carefully ... Bobby tries to hide things (how would you know, Ian? you haven't seen the boy since early this year, and even so, he managed to hide his trip to London from his ineffectual mother ... and Peter hides things (oooh, what?), but Lucy apparently never hid things from Ian (Steven, anyone?)
The climax and salutory ending of this piece came with The Stepford Frump, once again, treating Ian like a recalcitrant adolescent and whipping out Lucy's phone to show Ian how many loving messages she sent him, only to find an unsent message from Lucy to someone near and dear, asking for some drugs.
Hmmmm ... I wonder if Peter were unavoidably detained in Thailand for any reason ...
Ben's There, Done That. For all the shit Phil dished Ian about his lack of parenting abilities, Phil is just as bad a dad as Ian, throwing money at a newly heterosexual Ben so Ben can treat the "girlfriend" Phil's prayed for Ben to acquire.
Jay stood out in this as well, for his integrity, and Ben stood out for being the complete whackpiece that he is. I know Harry Reid's received a lot of criticism, but I like NuNuBen and his desperate lies, attempting to manipulate Jay back onside. He knows poor Jay is the real loose end of the Square without any familial connection to be found. He exists almost entirely for the crumbs of affection doled from Phil's table - once Brown, then Mitchell, now Brown again. Jay's got a conscience and a moral quotient, and he's uneasy with the secret both he and Ben are harbouring about Lucy's phone and purse, and he doesn't believe Ben for a moment when Ben said that he'd sorted everything with Ian and that Ian's ok with Ben's explanation of events.
Ben even invites himself, via The Stepford Frump, to the family meal - another nail of stupidity hammered into the Stepford Frump's eventual coffin, because Ian doesn't want Ben anyplace near him. Ian's assessment of Ben is pretty much on par with that of Jay - that Ben continues to get himself into mess after mess after mess.
In amongst all the angst of Ben and Jay is a fly in the ointment and an avenging angel. Abi is the first, and Johnny Carter the other. Abi is really one of the most delusional, naive and disgustingly smug people on the Square. Honestly, Lauren is almost more bearable than she is. All she did tonight was slink around after Ben asking him why he hadn't been returning her texts, why he'd been standing her up, almost everything.
He's just not that into you, Abi. He's GAY!!!!
Johnny the Avenging Angel knows that, and he's constantly on at Ben to acknowledge his sexuality, which Ben is now adamantly denying yet again. He wants to please Phil, and so he tells him the one thing he wants to hear, inadvertantly getting the idea from Abi, herself, who satisfyingly assumes Jay's mood with her is because she's now the girlfriend of Ben. Abi is so pleased with herself, she reeks; she doesn't even realise that Ben is giving her the brush-off.
Jay is absolutely right in assessing that Phil is allowing himself to be controlled, once again, by Ben, but his insistence that Phil ask Ian what the problem with Ben was became one grand fiasco.
Pig in the Middle. Aleks's secrets are catching up with him. Well, at least Marta knows now, even if Roxy doesn't. Roxy is about to get shafted (in the wrong sort of way) again. Last time, her man left her at the altar for his ex. This time, the man's ex isn't even his ex, she's still the wife about whom Roxy knows nothing.
Aleks determines the life and livelihood of all who work on the market. It pays to consider how he trumped up the loss of Alfie's stall, whilst doing nothing when Peter is absent for weeks on end, and Kush jogs around the market. Then, there's Roxy, offering him the distraction of fixing a lightbulb in her bedroom that's getting "too hot."
Honesty. Denise is hungover, but I don't agree with Patrick about Denise speaking ill of Lucy. Denise spoke the truth and even moreso when she described this year as being the year from hell for her. She was being lied to by Ian as long ago as last Christmas, he's treated her appallingly. The only person on whom Denise can depend and who loves her truly, is Patrick, and she decides to spend the day with him, putting up Christmas decorations.
Instead, some jobsworths from Head Office show up at The Minute Mart, there to do a stock report. Denise's honesty in showing up at the store only made a minor situation worse. She lost her job, and reaches for a glass of wine.
Sometimes, honesty isn't the best policy.
I bloody love Denise, a character of integrity, who's now being subtly maligned by the atrocious Beales, who were intent on hiding the evidence she literally dug up, in order to protect Ben from returning to prison. They'll doubly hide it now when another does of amorality hits closer to home. Denise is worth a dozen of The Stepford Frump.
Good episode.
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