I watched this late Friday night initially, but had to watch it again tonight (Sunday), in order to pay attention more closely. For a Friday episode, this was very good, and all the more humourous, knowing that several prominent characters are going to be left with egg on their faces when the real guilty party behind Emma's death and the zombification of Ronnie is known.
Having heard since then about what will really be the end of such iconic characters as Nick and Dot, it made viewing just a tad bit sadder all the same. I think the running theme throughout this episode was "Losers."
Loser I: The Incredible Stupidity That Is Roxy.
I'm not talking about the kind of clothes she wears
Look at that stupid girl
I'm not talking about the way she wears her hair
Look at that stupid girl
Well, The Rolling Stones could very well be talking about our Roxy - the childwoman, who's almost 37 going on 14, who dresses like a cross between Worzil Gummidge meeting Stella McCartney and whose hair looks like it's been through a hedgerow.
Roxy's stupidity amazes me, because I'm shocked that she could even think that Phil, a member of her own family, who's pulled her out of enough shit enough times, could attempt to kill her sister, his cousin. As much as I love Roxy and like Rita Simons, her acting during the past few episodes has really been hard to watch, starting in this episode with the silly look of death she gave Sharon to the moment she slumped into her living room whereher latest slave her current boyfriend, Aleks, has been left, yet again, holding a baby that isn't his.
I know Phil's my cousin ... but I hope he's left to rot inside.
Oh, Roxy, by the time you suss that Phil's the innocent party here, Auntie Peggy will be back in town. When she hears about the 100K your sisTAHHH nicked, the first thing she'll do is stride right into that hospital, arms swinging from the elbows, rip the tubes from your sisTAHHHs body, shake her awake before smacking her across the face about the money, then she'll high-arse it to Walford, where she'll beat your sweet arse all over the Square.
I can envision the scene and hear Peggy's dulcet tones as I write ...
Call yourself a Mitchell? ..... W-e-e-e-llllll ...
Are the Blisters that frightening, I want to know, that every male they meet and with whom they become involved, suddenly decides to de-ball himself once he's actually stood up to them about something?
Charlie tells Ronnie to back off baiting his old man, and the next thing you know, Charlie is actually Ronnie's poodle. Aleks storms out of the house because of Roxy's attitude and in this episode, he's back making an abject apology for his attitude ... groveling, even. This behaviour simply enforces the Blisters' idea that they are entitled (ah, that's the operative word) to act any way they want. It's probably the way Roxy is raising the awful brat that is Amy - imagine a teacher having to discipline that?
Yes, Aleks apologises and doesn't raise any sort of fuss when Roxy announces she has to take Amy to school and then go to the hospital to commune with the spirit of the Bride of Frankenstein. Instead, he combines patrolling the market with walking a baby who is no responsibility of his.
Aleks seems to be taking most of the responsibility of caring for the baby, and I would imagine this is the way Ronnie might use CharlieBoy (and maybe that's why CharlieBoy is absconding his responsibility). That's the way the Blisters work - abysmal mothers, the pair of them. Aleks has also taken the responsibility of actually naming the child - Matthew - after a Bible quotation mouthed by Dot, what else? That gives me pause for thought ... CharlieBoy might be running from fatherhood, thinking he can't do this without Ronnie, but there's one thing he's got to do, by law, if Ronnie's not up to the occasion: register the birth. He's got 42 days in which to do this, which means the 42nd day falls on the 11th of February (the same day of Linda Henry's racial harassment trial, coincidentally), and if Ronnie's still under Dr Frankenstein's care, he'll have to man up and register Matthew ... or CJ ... or whatever they're calling him by that time.
I can understand, in a way, Roxy's childish moniker for the baby. CJ means "Charlie Junior" and sounds cool, but as Aleks says, a child should have more than just initials for names. Matthew sounds about right, although Roxy's pronouncement to her current boyfriend about her other boyfriend of old being "lovely" doesn't. If Matthew were so lovely, why did he dump you, Roxy?
Loser II: The Dirty Girl.
Ah, Kat, the eternal victim. The dirty girl is back, complete with a stranger in her bed at dawn, about whom she cares nothing, and whom she'll use to taunt Alfie, again for nothing. When Kat is miserable, everyone around her is also miserable. When Kat has to confront her past, she makes monumental judgement errors and then blames everyone else.
Here's something I don't understand. Big Mo is acting as if Alfie is toxin, telling him he's not a part of their family. Alfie has children, whose mother is Kat. And furthermore, Big Mo is actually responsible for the pickle they all are in, because she didn't pay the rent on their council house, of which she was the principal tenant. Furthermore, she was harbouring highly flammable retail merchandise on the property, which caused the premises to explode. She's the reason they were about to be evicted, and she's the reason the insurance company wouldn't pay out on a claim.
Kat is now so consumed with self-righteousness that she doesn't see that Alfie rescued her from a stupid plan that went badly wrong - because of Big Mo. The way she treats him like shit, I'd hope he'd walk away from her for good.
OK, I buy why she doesn't want Harry's money, but Harry died umpteen years ago, and the original figure of 18K (I guess it gathered interest to accrue to 19.5K) was left, originally, to Zoe, who burned the cheque. How, exactly, did they get around to finally reading Harry's will to find that the money would revert to Kat? The cheque was sent to Zoe upon the execution of the will all those years ago.She refused the legacy, so why has it taken them so long to contact Kat? Or is this something Big Mo and Charlie have concocted during Mo's visit?
Besides, Alfie and Mo are talking about 19.5K as if Kat had won the lottery. It'll give the kids a fresh start (well, it will buy them clothes and the essentials for a few years). It'll give Kat enough for a deposit on a flat (yes, but who would give her the mortgage, and also if this is only a deposit for rent, the bitch can't even scrape together rent on a flat from which she and Stacey unlawfully evicted the principal tenant). It would mean she wouldn't be made to stand in the freezing cold on a market stall forever (look, this is 19,500 quid, not 19 million).
Who does the maths on EastEnders? 19.5K isn't even a good London annual wage. It's poverty rations. Anyway, the 18K was meant to be 1000 quid for every year of Zoe's life until Harry's death.
And, yes, I understand mention of Harry causes Kat to revert to her slut days, because that's her poor self-esteem rearing its head, and I can also understand her anger at Alfie, but maybe Alfie should have got angrier at Kat for all the scars she left on him. Like Harry's scares on her, Alfie's can't be seen, but she has put that bloke through hell with her numerous infidelities, her public humiliation of him and her blatant affair with Derek, all the time using the "dirty girl" excuse for her behaviour, never accepting reponsibility, and "Harry" couldn't have been a topic of conversation throughout their marriage for her to act this way.
Sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar. This storyline has been hashed and re-hashed countless times, and I hope this is the last. The Moons need to reunite and leave Walford. The sooner the better. Kat is painful to watch, and we know exactly the trajectory this storyline will take. Go. Go now. Don't wait for DTC to tell the world you left by mutual consent. Man up and go, the pair of you.
(Break) The Stars of the Show:
Stand up, Stacey, Lauren and Sharon ... the beacons of light for this episode.
Whoda thunk that a year ago?
This Lauren, I like. She's pieced together (literally) Emma's file, and she's seen something that she didn't like about her father's behaviour. Why did he bin the file? She tried talking to Abi about it, but Abi's got such a terminal case of headuparseitis that she can't be bothered with something so trivial as her sister's concern. She can't talk to Peter, so she turns to Walford's new Pat ... Stacey.
Our Girl is a wise one. She cautions Lauren about how serious her concerns are. Once she accuses Max of murder, she can't take it back. Max, on the other hand, has been giving Lauren the usual off-the-cuff treatment. He's got bigger fish to fry and no time to talk to her, but when forced to do so by Stacey, he starts off with the usual bullying hectoring stance, shouting the odds at Lauren.
What? Do you fink I killed Lucy? Well, do ya? I may be a liar and a cheat, but I ain't no murderer.
Then he switches to contrite mode, ambling on about how Emma wanted to crack this case alone, how she'd go over everything with him again and again, but it meant nothing. Yet why does my mind go back to the night Emma cracked the case, where Max was talking to her about his affair with Lucy and blatantly lying about its end and what it meant to him.
Max isn't out of the woods as a suspect yet. Not for me.
And Sharon ... I'm loving the new Ma Mitchell, and I'm not wrong in thinking that the old Ma Mitchell would give her an approving wink. Sharon's got Ben clocked, but I thought that Phil had told Ben he was removing him as Power of Attorney and why he was doing so. Sharon reads Ben like a book, and she would. He's got that arrogant readability that Grant had and which Sharon read so well.
She takes Ben's insults and stays cool about it, although I'm disappointed in Jay's not being more forthcoming with Sharon, after reiterating to Ben that Sharon was right to do things the way she does. The old ~I ain't a grass~ line is a bit laboured now. If Jay were seriously concerned about what Ben was up to, especially after he found out, he'd have told Sharon. This is Phil's livelihood, after all. As well, what Sharon said to Ben should have been heeded, because it reiterated what Jay had said about people in the prison and the screws, with scores to settle with Phil. He's imprisoned, accused of murder; any whiff of further illegal activities, and the authorities have made their case stronger. Ben can't see that, because he's thinking he's clever enough to score big time money to secure Phil's release on bail.
The scene between Sharon and Max was the highlight of the episode. This was the Sharon of old, and I thought Letitia Dean and Jake Wood bounced well off each other. Max's facile lies spoke just the opposite of what he actually does believe, or else he wouldn't be plotting what he's plotting. Sharon suspects something, and Max vehemently denies Sharon's suspicions. Why would he believe Phil had tampered with the car's brakes? That was too pleb a style for Phil Mitchell? Besides, Ronnie was family.
If he can mouth all those platitudes, he can believe them. After all, it wasn't that long ago that Max was in prison, accused of something he didn't do.
If Sharon's climbdown was sincere, she'll soon wise up. I can't believe that DTC, a man who loves the Mitchells, would allow the Mitchells to do anything but triumph in this misguided action of Ben's. After all, the Brannings are the loser family here, and Ben is always going to be the loser Mitchell, moreso than Billy could ever be.
Loser III & IV: BOGOF Branning and Ben.
Buy One Get One Free. Ben and Max make a good combination of losers. Ben is pig ignorant of any sort of business acumen, and Max is a bully and a sleaze.
Ben's arrogance is disgusting. He whines that Sharon gives him no respect as a businessman, but he has never been a businessman. Another thing he's never been is a mechanic. It was made blatantly obvious from the days of Tap Dancing Ben (Santer) to sociopath Ben (Kirkwood) that Ben had no aptitude for mechanics or for anything which Phil treasured - football or boxing. In fact, he was hopeless.
So now, we're to believe that Ben is working full-time at the Arches. His ego is soaring at the moment, his arrogance manifested against Sharon, whom he considers ignorant and clueless, whereas Jay recognises that it's Ben who hasn't got a clue. Ben's plan is to score big on making enough money to get Phil out on bail, thus proving Sharon's ethics wrong. He's blatantly disrespectful to her, and he must realise the scope of what Phil told him at the prison - that he only gave him power of attorney for Phil's businesses whilst Phil was suspecting Sharon of scamming him. Now that that had all been cleared, Phil wanted Sharon in charge of things. After all, she's the proven businesswoman.
Phil doesn't want you in the Arches. I don't want you in the Arches.
Brilliant line from Sharon, which pegs precisely Phil's realisation of Ben's liitations. As for the shaving of mileage, which Ben thinks is so clever and would garner him some "big money," both Jay and Sharon are right. Phil's been through enough trouble in the past with dodgy motors, and now is not the time to draw attention to the Arches. Jay wants no part of this, and Sharon is given short shrift by Ben, who thinks he knows better, and who's followed around by the appalling Abi, who's just as rude to Sharon as Ben, and who fancies herself important as the girlfriend of someone she considers to be a "CEO."
She's as stupid as Ben, thanking Max for "helping Ben" outsmart Sharon. Ben, himself, is stupid for signing that paper, and for not twigging that a transfer of business to another company is exactly what Max said. Ben has signed over ownership of The Arches to Max. If this is Max's idea of revenge, believing Phil to be responsible for Emma's death, I want to be around when the truth is out who really is responsible, and also when Phil is released from prison and comes looking for Max ... and Ben.
Shit won't hit the fan hard enough, because I keep reminding myself, as Max smirks, that the Brannings are always losers, and DTC loves the Mitchells.
Having heard since then about what will really be the end of such iconic characters as Nick and Dot, it made viewing just a tad bit sadder all the same. I think the running theme throughout this episode was "Losers."
Loser I: The Incredible Stupidity That Is Roxy.
I'm not talking about the kind of clothes she wears
Look at that stupid girl
I'm not talking about the way she wears her hair
Look at that stupid girl
Well, The Rolling Stones could very well be talking about our Roxy - the childwoman, who's almost 37 going on 14, who dresses like a cross between Worzil Gummidge meeting Stella McCartney and whose hair looks like it's been through a hedgerow.
Roxy's stupidity amazes me, because I'm shocked that she could even think that Phil, a member of her own family, who's pulled her out of enough shit enough times, could attempt to kill her sister, his cousin. As much as I love Roxy and like Rita Simons, her acting during the past few episodes has really been hard to watch, starting in this episode with the silly look of death she gave Sharon to the moment she slumped into her living room where
I know Phil's my cousin ... but I hope he's left to rot inside.
Oh, Roxy, by the time you suss that Phil's the innocent party here, Auntie Peggy will be back in town. When she hears about the 100K your sisTAHHH nicked, the first thing she'll do is stride right into that hospital, arms swinging from the elbows, rip the tubes from your sisTAHHHs body, shake her awake before smacking her across the face about the money, then she'll high-arse it to Walford, where she'll beat your sweet arse all over the Square.
I can envision the scene and hear Peggy's dulcet tones as I write ...
Call yourself a Mitchell? ..... W-e-e-e-llllll ...
Are the Blisters that frightening, I want to know, that every male they meet and with whom they become involved, suddenly decides to de-ball himself once he's actually stood up to them about something?
Charlie tells Ronnie to back off baiting his old man, and the next thing you know, Charlie is actually Ronnie's poodle. Aleks storms out of the house because of Roxy's attitude and in this episode, he's back making an abject apology for his attitude ... groveling, even. This behaviour simply enforces the Blisters' idea that they are entitled (ah, that's the operative word) to act any way they want. It's probably the way Roxy is raising the awful brat that is Amy - imagine a teacher having to discipline that?
Yes, Aleks apologises and doesn't raise any sort of fuss when Roxy announces she has to take Amy to school and then go to the hospital to commune with the spirit of the Bride of Frankenstein. Instead, he combines patrolling the market with walking a baby who is no responsibility of his.
Aleks seems to be taking most of the responsibility of caring for the baby, and I would imagine this is the way Ronnie might use CharlieBoy (and maybe that's why CharlieBoy is absconding his responsibility). That's the way the Blisters work - abysmal mothers, the pair of them. Aleks has also taken the responsibility of actually naming the child - Matthew - after a Bible quotation mouthed by Dot, what else? That gives me pause for thought ... CharlieBoy might be running from fatherhood, thinking he can't do this without Ronnie, but there's one thing he's got to do, by law, if Ronnie's not up to the occasion: register the birth. He's got 42 days in which to do this, which means the 42nd day falls on the 11th of February (the same day of Linda Henry's racial harassment trial, coincidentally), and if Ronnie's still under Dr Frankenstein's care, he'll have to man up and register Matthew ... or CJ ... or whatever they're calling him by that time.
I can understand, in a way, Roxy's childish moniker for the baby. CJ means "Charlie Junior" and sounds cool, but as Aleks says, a child should have more than just initials for names. Matthew sounds about right, although Roxy's pronouncement to her current boyfriend about her other boyfriend of old being "lovely" doesn't. If Matthew were so lovely, why did he dump you, Roxy?
Loser II: The Dirty Girl.
Ah, Kat, the eternal victim. The dirty girl is back, complete with a stranger in her bed at dawn, about whom she cares nothing, and whom she'll use to taunt Alfie, again for nothing. When Kat is miserable, everyone around her is also miserable. When Kat has to confront her past, she makes monumental judgement errors and then blames everyone else.
Here's something I don't understand. Big Mo is acting as if Alfie is toxin, telling him he's not a part of their family. Alfie has children, whose mother is Kat. And furthermore, Big Mo is actually responsible for the pickle they all are in, because she didn't pay the rent on their council house, of which she was the principal tenant. Furthermore, she was harbouring highly flammable retail merchandise on the property, which caused the premises to explode. She's the reason they were about to be evicted, and she's the reason the insurance company wouldn't pay out on a claim.
Kat is now so consumed with self-righteousness that she doesn't see that Alfie rescued her from a stupid plan that went badly wrong - because of Big Mo. The way she treats him like shit, I'd hope he'd walk away from her for good.
OK, I buy why she doesn't want Harry's money, but Harry died umpteen years ago, and the original figure of 18K (I guess it gathered interest to accrue to 19.5K) was left, originally, to Zoe, who burned the cheque. How, exactly, did they get around to finally reading Harry's will to find that the money would revert to Kat? The cheque was sent to Zoe upon the execution of the will all those years ago.She refused the legacy, so why has it taken them so long to contact Kat? Or is this something Big Mo and Charlie have concocted during Mo's visit?
Besides, Alfie and Mo are talking about 19.5K as if Kat had won the lottery. It'll give the kids a fresh start (well, it will buy them clothes and the essentials for a few years). It'll give Kat enough for a deposit on a flat (yes, but who would give her the mortgage, and also if this is only a deposit for rent, the bitch can't even scrape together rent on a flat from which she and Stacey unlawfully evicted the principal tenant). It would mean she wouldn't be made to stand in the freezing cold on a market stall forever (look, this is 19,500 quid, not 19 million).
Who does the maths on EastEnders? 19.5K isn't even a good London annual wage. It's poverty rations. Anyway, the 18K was meant to be 1000 quid for every year of Zoe's life until Harry's death.
And, yes, I understand mention of Harry causes Kat to revert to her slut days, because that's her poor self-esteem rearing its head, and I can also understand her anger at Alfie, but maybe Alfie should have got angrier at Kat for all the scars she left on him. Like Harry's scares on her, Alfie's can't be seen, but she has put that bloke through hell with her numerous infidelities, her public humiliation of him and her blatant affair with Derek, all the time using the "dirty girl" excuse for her behaviour, never accepting reponsibility, and "Harry" couldn't have been a topic of conversation throughout their marriage for her to act this way.
Sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar. This storyline has been hashed and re-hashed countless times, and I hope this is the last. The Moons need to reunite and leave Walford. The sooner the better. Kat is painful to watch, and we know exactly the trajectory this storyline will take. Go. Go now. Don't wait for DTC to tell the world you left by mutual consent. Man up and go, the pair of you.
(Break) The Stars of the Show:
Stand up, Stacey, Lauren and Sharon ... the beacons of light for this episode.
Whoda thunk that a year ago?
This Lauren, I like. She's pieced together (literally) Emma's file, and she's seen something that she didn't like about her father's behaviour. Why did he bin the file? She tried talking to Abi about it, but Abi's got such a terminal case of headuparseitis that she can't be bothered with something so trivial as her sister's concern. She can't talk to Peter, so she turns to Walford's new Pat ... Stacey.
Our Girl is a wise one. She cautions Lauren about how serious her concerns are. Once she accuses Max of murder, she can't take it back. Max, on the other hand, has been giving Lauren the usual off-the-cuff treatment. He's got bigger fish to fry and no time to talk to her, but when forced to do so by Stacey, he starts off with the usual bullying hectoring stance, shouting the odds at Lauren.
What? Do you fink I killed Lucy? Well, do ya? I may be a liar and a cheat, but I ain't no murderer.
Then he switches to contrite mode, ambling on about how Emma wanted to crack this case alone, how she'd go over everything with him again and again, but it meant nothing. Yet why does my mind go back to the night Emma cracked the case, where Max was talking to her about his affair with Lucy and blatantly lying about its end and what it meant to him.
Max isn't out of the woods as a suspect yet. Not for me.
And Sharon ... I'm loving the new Ma Mitchell, and I'm not wrong in thinking that the old Ma Mitchell would give her an approving wink. Sharon's got Ben clocked, but I thought that Phil had told Ben he was removing him as Power of Attorney and why he was doing so. Sharon reads Ben like a book, and she would. He's got that arrogant readability that Grant had and which Sharon read so well.
She takes Ben's insults and stays cool about it, although I'm disappointed in Jay's not being more forthcoming with Sharon, after reiterating to Ben that Sharon was right to do things the way she does. The old ~I ain't a grass~ line is a bit laboured now. If Jay were seriously concerned about what Ben was up to, especially after he found out, he'd have told Sharon. This is Phil's livelihood, after all. As well, what Sharon said to Ben should have been heeded, because it reiterated what Jay had said about people in the prison and the screws, with scores to settle with Phil. He's imprisoned, accused of murder; any whiff of further illegal activities, and the authorities have made their case stronger. Ben can't see that, because he's thinking he's clever enough to score big time money to secure Phil's release on bail.
The scene between Sharon and Max was the highlight of the episode. This was the Sharon of old, and I thought Letitia Dean and Jake Wood bounced well off each other. Max's facile lies spoke just the opposite of what he actually does believe, or else he wouldn't be plotting what he's plotting. Sharon suspects something, and Max vehemently denies Sharon's suspicions. Why would he believe Phil had tampered with the car's brakes? That was too pleb a style for Phil Mitchell? Besides, Ronnie was family.
If he can mouth all those platitudes, he can believe them. After all, it wasn't that long ago that Max was in prison, accused of something he didn't do.
If Sharon's climbdown was sincere, she'll soon wise up. I can't believe that DTC, a man who loves the Mitchells, would allow the Mitchells to do anything but triumph in this misguided action of Ben's. After all, the Brannings are the loser family here, and Ben is always going to be the loser Mitchell, moreso than Billy could ever be.
Loser III & IV: BOGOF Branning and Ben.
Buy One Get One Free. Ben and Max make a good combination of losers. Ben is pig ignorant of any sort of business acumen, and Max is a bully and a sleaze.
Ben's arrogance is disgusting. He whines that Sharon gives him no respect as a businessman, but he has never been a businessman. Another thing he's never been is a mechanic. It was made blatantly obvious from the days of Tap Dancing Ben (Santer) to sociopath Ben (Kirkwood) that Ben had no aptitude for mechanics or for anything which Phil treasured - football or boxing. In fact, he was hopeless.
So now, we're to believe that Ben is working full-time at the Arches. His ego is soaring at the moment, his arrogance manifested against Sharon, whom he considers ignorant and clueless, whereas Jay recognises that it's Ben who hasn't got a clue. Ben's plan is to score big on making enough money to get Phil out on bail, thus proving Sharon's ethics wrong. He's blatantly disrespectful to her, and he must realise the scope of what Phil told him at the prison - that he only gave him power of attorney for Phil's businesses whilst Phil was suspecting Sharon of scamming him. Now that that had all been cleared, Phil wanted Sharon in charge of things. After all, she's the proven businesswoman.
Phil doesn't want you in the Arches. I don't want you in the Arches.
Brilliant line from Sharon, which pegs precisely Phil's realisation of Ben's liitations. As for the shaving of mileage, which Ben thinks is so clever and would garner him some "big money," both Jay and Sharon are right. Phil's been through enough trouble in the past with dodgy motors, and now is not the time to draw attention to the Arches. Jay wants no part of this, and Sharon is given short shrift by Ben, who thinks he knows better, and who's followed around by the appalling Abi, who's just as rude to Sharon as Ben, and who fancies herself important as the girlfriend of someone she considers to be a "CEO."
She's as stupid as Ben, thanking Max for "helping Ben" outsmart Sharon. Ben, himself, is stupid for signing that paper, and for not twigging that a transfer of business to another company is exactly what Max said. Ben has signed over ownership of The Arches to Max. If this is Max's idea of revenge, believing Phil to be responsible for Emma's death, I want to be around when the truth is out who really is responsible, and also when Phil is released from prison and comes looking for Max ... and Ben.
Shit won't hit the fan hard enough, because I keep reminding myself, as Max smirks, that the Brannings are always losers, and DTC loves the Mitchells.
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