I gave that episode a resounding 8 out of 10. I would have given it a 9, but for the Moons circular motions and the neverending story of Stan's death, featuring the Carters.
Mostly, it was an episode about a couple of husbands being less than honest with their wives. I suspect the third culprit in the equation, Stan, is being less than honest about himself with Cora too.
If this episode did anything in terms of male characters - bone of contention with me since 2010 - it showed two of the show's best actors, Shane Richie and Steve McFadden, do justice to their characters.
Phil.
I've said this before, and I'll say it again. Phil and Sharon go back way over twenty years. He should know her by now - what she'll endure, how she'll react to certain situations, and, above all, what she's prepared to take off the Mitchells.
If Phil's offhand methods are intended to make Sharon feel some sort of smidgeon of guilt for losing the Arches, he's got another think coming. Openly accusing her of not handling family matters well at all in his absence was an absolute hoot. Ben looked uncomfortable when Phil levelled that accusation at Sharon (but then, Ben looked increasingly uncomfortable throughout the episode, and that had nothing to do with Sharon), but Sharon kept schtum. Phil accusing Sharon of the family being all over the place was also a joke.
To begin with, Roxy and Billy jumped ship as soon as Phil was charged with cutting the brakes on the wedding car, never even stopping to think that Phil would do something like that to a member of his family. So that had nothing to do with Sharon.
The funniest - as in "funny peculiar" - part of Phil's method at getting the family onside was that his only recourse was to buy their loyalty. Throw wodges of big notes at them with the instruction to go on various shopping sprees and a promise that there was more where that came from.
The bastard at that family reunion was clearly dumbass Abi. When she discovers that Ben still really is gay, I hope she leaves the show. She's such an entitled little bitch and a rude one at that, horning her way into the Mitchell household, preening in front of Jay; and she wonders why Phil blanks her, why he doesn't consider her "family". Well, Abi, there could be the matter of your dad holing up in The Arches, which he scammed off Phil courtesy of your gay boyfriend, but there's also the fact that Phil'salways blanked you, for the insignificant little bitch that you are.
Actually, Abi deserves to be a Mitchell - but a Mitchell of the hanger-on variety, a sort of lesser version of Roxy without the heart and the appeal. She's so shallow that she honestly believes that she's now a part of the Mitchell family simply because Phil tossed her a share of the dubious profits, which she had to give back to Sharon, much to her chagrin.
Scenes of the night, in this storyline, were, obviously the ones between Steve McFadden and Letitia Dean, as well as Steve McFadden and Jake Wood.
McFadden and Dean, when written correctly, bounce off each other with electric chemistry. I enjoy Sharon at the bosom of the Mitchells, and I enjoy her the most when she's standing up to Phil and demanding answers from him. He's clearly annoyed because he thinks Sharon was responsible for losing The Arches and whatever else happened in his absence. She's annoyed because he disappeared for a month, came back with loads of money and the only reason he can give her is that he got a loan from Grant.
A couple of niggles here:
- Phil had a bail hearing and got bail. He's not yet had the charges of Ronnie's attempted murder and Summerhayes's actual murder dropped, or at least we've heard nothing of that. If he be still at liberty on bail, the first thing he'd have had to have done was surrender his passport and report to the local copshop at various times. Phil's been abroad. How could that be?
and
- There we go again, with Sharon referring to her "real" mother, but initially simply as her mum.
I could have done with you here when my mum died.
Even Phil was confused by that one, but it was a plot device, the introduction by which Sharon went onto explain to Phil that she'd been searching for her birth father and why. Carol Hanley's death struck a chord with Phil. The change in his face was almost imperceptible, but you can tell that Phil almost knew what was coming next. There was an underlying ripple of tension when he comforted her and listened to her relate how and why she thought Pete Beale may have been her father - she'd obviously told him that the solicitor said that her birth father was from the Walford area.
Well, the truth is self-evident: Phil knows who Sharon's father is, which is why he said with total compunction and compassion, when Sharon opined that she only wanted to belong someplace, he sincerely said that Sharon belonged with him.
There's something about the money and Gavin Sullivan and Kathy. That was almost made evident in his encounter with Billy, who queried the origin of the money, only to have Phil reiterate the lie about Grant (after cluing Grant in on the lie). Billy knows very well it's about Kathy, but Phil reiterates that Kathy is dead, and it may be best for everyone forever if she stayed that way.
I am more than convinced now that Gavin Sullivan is Sharon's father, that she'll find him and with him, Kathy.
The other great scenes in that storyline were between McFadden and Wood, a sort of psychological showdown between two "family" men, except that Phil's got a fair family around him and Max is on the downswing. Phil's psychological niggle at Max by showing him a pair of spectacles (adult specs at that) and implying that he had Oscar was worth Max's discomfort. I was hoping the climax of the scene between them would come with Max telling Phil that Ben signed The Arches over to him, but I suppose that's tomorrow's business.
Finally, the hilariious part of this entire escapade was pathetic Abi, purring with self-satisfaction and rubbing up against Ben like the cat who got the canary, only to have Ben continue to get messages and pictures of hunky guys off some gay internet dating site.
I cannot wait until Abi finds out that, instead of Ben's girlfriend, she's been his beard.
And finally ... really, Roxy? You underestimate Sharon's ability with Phil, and you will soon be shaking in your little Anna shoes, when Ronnie-Elsa wakes up fully from her long, icy sleep. By the way, who's minding the Mitchell-Cotton baby? The child is almost three months old, and I thought six months was the lower age limit at nurseries. EastEnders should do better at remembering children.
Speaking of children ...
Cindy Speaks the Truth.
Jesus Christ ... I actually liked Cindy tonight. Yes, in all of her hair-tossing, camera-conscious glory, she was absolutely spot on, standing up to the deluded Beales who are smug enough to believe that they can adopt Beth and raise her in the house with Cindy there every day.
Cindy is adamant. She wants the child adopted, for whatever reasons, and I would imagine that a hefty amount of that reasoning is that she wants her child well away from Ian and Jane ... especially Jane.
It's obvious now that Ian is the passive member of that couple, with Jane stoking the lead. All it took was an accidental conversation with Sharon to convince Ian that he had to have Cindy-gened Beth to compensate for the scut-job of parenting he's done with the rest of his family.
Kudos to Cindy for having none of that, after Jane subtly insuring that Ian swallow his pride and pay the fine of sixty quid that they incurred for keeping Bobby out of school for a month whilst away. Hang on ... doesn't Ian have a criminal record for theft from back in 2009 when he stole Archie's laptop with the incriminating evidence of his sex tape with Janine?
Cindy well knows the dysfunction and the horror being hidden in that house, and she's right to want none of it for her daughter.
The bend sinister came with creepy psycho Bobby the Basher earwigging again, and making the threat that Cindy couldn't go away, that Lucy was dead and Peter had gone away, they simply couldn't allow Cindy to leave.
This is dangerous ground, especially since Bobby will soon twig that it's the matter about Beth that might make Cindy leave. Using his convoluted child psychopathy, Bobby could very well begin to harm Beth if he blames her for Cindy's departure ... or worse.
Remember the book about Kevin. The protagonist, first, injured his sister, and then he killed her.
The Interminable Story of Stan's Bed.
Stan's been reduced to a battle about a bed, Mick trying to have a crap, and Tina, who's back dressing like a five year-old with bunches in her hair. She bounces around like a rubber ball crossed with an overgrown puppy, skipping here and there and wanting to take care of Stan (meaning: her rancid girlfriend is a nurse, who could just simply keep on nursing Stan. Perks of the relationship, I suppose.
With two you get egg roll, however, and with Stan coming back to the Vic, so Cora, his fiancée, is moving in with him. Does Stan know? I doubt it. There was a reason why he didn't want to go spend his last days/months in the company of Cora. I've no doubt he loves her, but there'll come a time, with the end near, when he'll have to call in his debts, and I'm betting Stan is still married to Sylvie.
Alfie.
If Alfie needs to man up, Martin needs to man up more. Rather than tell Ian the truth, Martin let Ian believe that Alfie had let Ian down and that he, Martin, was doing Ian a favour. I don't know why Martin and/or Alfie simply doesn't tell Ian the truth about Martin's circumstances and let him have the stall.
Mo's right to a great extent. Ian gave the stall to Alfie to run, and Alfie should be front and centre about himself and Kat - although I took exception to Ian lecturing Alfie about absconding his duties to provide for Kat and their children. However, once Ian did find out about Martin's situation, he'd have dumped Alfie from the stall. After all, Martin is family.
Mo's job as fixer was only ever going to be discovered. Alfie objected to what she'd done in taking the money for herself, but in the end, he took what she left him in order to help her out on the stall.
Several truths were outed tonight - that Alfie missed Kat, that Kat missed Alfie and that they were a good team. The most important truth was Alfie actually saying he wasn't going to lie to Kat anymore, after she told him that whilst she loved the compassionate Alfie, she was on edge about the conman Alfie. (Alfie should have said that whilst he loved the compassionate Kat, he hated the dirty girl who cheated regularly. Two can play that game.)
So in the end, he told her about Mo; and it transpires that not only Mo, but also Stacey and now Alfie know about Harry's money, which goes up in smoke (again) with the burning of Mo's mattress.
I guess the stage is set for the suicide bid. Again.
The Mitchells held that episode for me. More, please.
Mostly, it was an episode about a couple of husbands being less than honest with their wives. I suspect the third culprit in the equation, Stan, is being less than honest about himself with Cora too.
If this episode did anything in terms of male characters - bone of contention with me since 2010 - it showed two of the show's best actors, Shane Richie and Steve McFadden, do justice to their characters.
Phil.
I've said this before, and I'll say it again. Phil and Sharon go back way over twenty years. He should know her by now - what she'll endure, how she'll react to certain situations, and, above all, what she's prepared to take off the Mitchells.
If Phil's offhand methods are intended to make Sharon feel some sort of smidgeon of guilt for losing the Arches, he's got another think coming. Openly accusing her of not handling family matters well at all in his absence was an absolute hoot. Ben looked uncomfortable when Phil levelled that accusation at Sharon (but then, Ben looked increasingly uncomfortable throughout the episode, and that had nothing to do with Sharon), but Sharon kept schtum. Phil accusing Sharon of the family being all over the place was also a joke.
To begin with, Roxy and Billy jumped ship as soon as Phil was charged with cutting the brakes on the wedding car, never even stopping to think that Phil would do something like that to a member of his family. So that had nothing to do with Sharon.
The funniest - as in "funny peculiar" - part of Phil's method at getting the family onside was that his only recourse was to buy their loyalty. Throw wodges of big notes at them with the instruction to go on various shopping sprees and a promise that there was more where that came from.
The bastard at that family reunion was clearly dumbass Abi. When she discovers that Ben still really is gay, I hope she leaves the show. She's such an entitled little bitch and a rude one at that, horning her way into the Mitchell household, preening in front of Jay; and she wonders why Phil blanks her, why he doesn't consider her "family". Well, Abi, there could be the matter of your dad holing up in The Arches, which he scammed off Phil courtesy of your gay boyfriend, but there's also the fact that Phil'salways blanked you, for the insignificant little bitch that you are.
Actually, Abi deserves to be a Mitchell - but a Mitchell of the hanger-on variety, a sort of lesser version of Roxy without the heart and the appeal. She's so shallow that she honestly believes that she's now a part of the Mitchell family simply because Phil tossed her a share of the dubious profits, which she had to give back to Sharon, much to her chagrin.
Scenes of the night, in this storyline, were, obviously the ones between Steve McFadden and Letitia Dean, as well as Steve McFadden and Jake Wood.
McFadden and Dean, when written correctly, bounce off each other with electric chemistry. I enjoy Sharon at the bosom of the Mitchells, and I enjoy her the most when she's standing up to Phil and demanding answers from him. He's clearly annoyed because he thinks Sharon was responsible for losing The Arches and whatever else happened in his absence. She's annoyed because he disappeared for a month, came back with loads of money and the only reason he can give her is that he got a loan from Grant.
A couple of niggles here:
- Phil had a bail hearing and got bail. He's not yet had the charges of Ronnie's attempted murder and Summerhayes's actual murder dropped, or at least we've heard nothing of that. If he be still at liberty on bail, the first thing he'd have had to have done was surrender his passport and report to the local copshop at various times. Phil's been abroad. How could that be?
and
- There we go again, with Sharon referring to her "real" mother, but initially simply as her mum.
I could have done with you here when my mum died.
Even Phil was confused by that one, but it was a plot device, the introduction by which Sharon went onto explain to Phil that she'd been searching for her birth father and why. Carol Hanley's death struck a chord with Phil. The change in his face was almost imperceptible, but you can tell that Phil almost knew what was coming next. There was an underlying ripple of tension when he comforted her and listened to her relate how and why she thought Pete Beale may have been her father - she'd obviously told him that the solicitor said that her birth father was from the Walford area.
Well, the truth is self-evident: Phil knows who Sharon's father is, which is why he said with total compunction and compassion, when Sharon opined that she only wanted to belong someplace, he sincerely said that Sharon belonged with him.
There's something about the money and Gavin Sullivan and Kathy. That was almost made evident in his encounter with Billy, who queried the origin of the money, only to have Phil reiterate the lie about Grant (after cluing Grant in on the lie). Billy knows very well it's about Kathy, but Phil reiterates that Kathy is dead, and it may be best for everyone forever if she stayed that way.
I am more than convinced now that Gavin Sullivan is Sharon's father, that she'll find him and with him, Kathy.
The other great scenes in that storyline were between McFadden and Wood, a sort of psychological showdown between two "family" men, except that Phil's got a fair family around him and Max is on the downswing. Phil's psychological niggle at Max by showing him a pair of spectacles (adult specs at that) and implying that he had Oscar was worth Max's discomfort. I was hoping the climax of the scene between them would come with Max telling Phil that Ben signed The Arches over to him, but I suppose that's tomorrow's business.
Finally, the hilariious part of this entire escapade was pathetic Abi, purring with self-satisfaction and rubbing up against Ben like the cat who got the canary, only to have Ben continue to get messages and pictures of hunky guys off some gay internet dating site.
I cannot wait until Abi finds out that, instead of Ben's girlfriend, she's been his beard.
And finally ... really, Roxy? You underestimate Sharon's ability with Phil, and you will soon be shaking in your little Anna shoes, when Ronnie-Elsa wakes up fully from her long, icy sleep. By the way, who's minding the Mitchell-Cotton baby? The child is almost three months old, and I thought six months was the lower age limit at nurseries. EastEnders should do better at remembering children.
Speaking of children ...
Cindy Speaks the Truth.
Jesus Christ ... I actually liked Cindy tonight. Yes, in all of her hair-tossing, camera-conscious glory, she was absolutely spot on, standing up to the deluded Beales who are smug enough to believe that they can adopt Beth and raise her in the house with Cindy there every day.
Cindy is adamant. She wants the child adopted, for whatever reasons, and I would imagine that a hefty amount of that reasoning is that she wants her child well away from Ian and Jane ... especially Jane.
It's obvious now that Ian is the passive member of that couple, with Jane stoking the lead. All it took was an accidental conversation with Sharon to convince Ian that he had to have Cindy-gened Beth to compensate for the scut-job of parenting he's done with the rest of his family.
Kudos to Cindy for having none of that, after Jane subtly insuring that Ian swallow his pride and pay the fine of sixty quid that they incurred for keeping Bobby out of school for a month whilst away. Hang on ... doesn't Ian have a criminal record for theft from back in 2009 when he stole Archie's laptop with the incriminating evidence of his sex tape with Janine?
Cindy well knows the dysfunction and the horror being hidden in that house, and she's right to want none of it for her daughter.
The bend sinister came with creepy psycho Bobby the Basher earwigging again, and making the threat that Cindy couldn't go away, that Lucy was dead and Peter had gone away, they simply couldn't allow Cindy to leave.
This is dangerous ground, especially since Bobby will soon twig that it's the matter about Beth that might make Cindy leave. Using his convoluted child psychopathy, Bobby could very well begin to harm Beth if he blames her for Cindy's departure ... or worse.
Remember the book about Kevin. The protagonist, first, injured his sister, and then he killed her.
The Interminable Story of Stan's Bed.
Stan's been reduced to a battle about a bed, Mick trying to have a crap, and Tina, who's back dressing like a five year-old with bunches in her hair. She bounces around like a rubber ball crossed with an overgrown puppy, skipping here and there and wanting to take care of Stan (meaning: her rancid girlfriend is a nurse, who could just simply keep on nursing Stan. Perks of the relationship, I suppose.
With two you get egg roll, however, and with Stan coming back to the Vic, so Cora, his fiancée, is moving in with him. Does Stan know? I doubt it. There was a reason why he didn't want to go spend his last days/months in the company of Cora. I've no doubt he loves her, but there'll come a time, with the end near, when he'll have to call in his debts, and I'm betting Stan is still married to Sylvie.
Alfie.
If Alfie needs to man up, Martin needs to man up more. Rather than tell Ian the truth, Martin let Ian believe that Alfie had let Ian down and that he, Martin, was doing Ian a favour. I don't know why Martin and/or Alfie simply doesn't tell Ian the truth about Martin's circumstances and let him have the stall.
Mo's right to a great extent. Ian gave the stall to Alfie to run, and Alfie should be front and centre about himself and Kat - although I took exception to Ian lecturing Alfie about absconding his duties to provide for Kat and their children. However, once Ian did find out about Martin's situation, he'd have dumped Alfie from the stall. After all, Martin is family.
Mo's job as fixer was only ever going to be discovered. Alfie objected to what she'd done in taking the money for herself, but in the end, he took what she left him in order to help her out on the stall.
Several truths were outed tonight - that Alfie missed Kat, that Kat missed Alfie and that they were a good team. The most important truth was Alfie actually saying he wasn't going to lie to Kat anymore, after she told him that whilst she loved the compassionate Alfie, she was on edge about the conman Alfie. (Alfie should have said that whilst he loved the compassionate Kat, he hated the dirty girl who cheated regularly. Two can play that game.)
So in the end, he told her about Mo; and it transpires that not only Mo, but also Stacey and now Alfie know about Harry's money, which goes up in smoke (again) with the burning of Mo's mattress.
I guess the stage is set for the suicide bid. Again.
The Mitchells held that episode for me. More, please.
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