This was a Carey Andrews episode to the hilt - idiotic dialogue combined with a never-ending bucket of misery. A lot of people complain about Phil and Sharon hogging the limelight on this programme. I don't think they do. The rot that began on Phil and Sharon, as characters, can be traced right back to John Yorke's inability to develop these characters properly, especially after Ross Kemp left the series with respect to Steve McFadden, and in his inane decision to separate Sharon from the Mitchells and turn her into a simpering, clinging tragedy queen, fit only for crying.
The further problems with their characters stem from the lazy writers, who can't be arsed to research who these people were in the 90s and realise that what they are now aren't what they would have become, left to reality.
And if Sharon and Phil stank up the programme before, the likes of Denise, Mick and Walford yoof are doing a pretty damned good job of that right now. Maybe O'Connor decided to bring out the worst in over-exposing certain characters to show that they have no place front and centre of what's supposed to be the BBC's flagship programme, and maybe, by doing so, they make us hanker, just that little bit more, for the return of Sharon and Phil.
At the moment, EastEnders is a programme excelling in the depiction of bullies, amongst other things. Tuesday's episode, albeit weak, was an excellent example of that in many ways.
The Awful Yoof Storyline. This is definitely a storyline dealing with bullying in all aspects - not only its repercussions, but how it can define a person in a perspective that isn't representative of that person at all.
It concerns six players, in general, and actually sorta kinda represents what the show wants us to believe are the good kids versus the bad ones. The good kids are, obviously, those three who are slated to stick around for awhile, much to our chagrin. Two are legacies - Rebecca Fowler and Louise formerly-Fowler-now-Mitchell - and the other is the younger scion of the token representative Anglo-ethnic new family, Shakil.
The bad kids are represented by three stock, stereotypical cartoon characters - Keegan, the budding misogynist bully, whose specialty is targeting, humiliating and taunting women and girls (a budding rapist, if there ever were one) and two chucklehead mean girls named Madison and Alexandra - which is which, no one knows, so I differentiate them by calling them Sniggle (the Afro-Caribbean one who giggles inanely and speaks as though she needs an adenoid operation) and Snaggle (the white one who needs to comb her hair and who really looks - and probably is - twenty-five). They have no redeeming qualities and serve no purpose except to illustrate the meaning of "mean." They are, to all intents and purposes - EastEnders' older versions of Brookside's Paige and Imelda.
At various times, Shakil, Louise and Rebecca have been the targets and victims of these useful - and probably very harmful - idiots. (Remember Imelda ended up at the bottom of a pond - let's hope EastEnders isn't harvesting any more budding murderers).
However, after experimenting with Shakil and Louise as lesser victims, the show seems to have settled on the bluestockinged, red nosed Rebecca, whilst Shakil and Louise, to varying degrees, have succumbed to Stockholm Syndrome, where the bullies are concerned, the storyline depicting, in this episode, how de-sensitised, to a degree, Shakil has become and how much of a wimp Louise is, regarding the Mitchell women's propensity to stand up, sometimes foolishly, to adversity.
We now know the reason Rebecca refused to reveal the names of anyone concerned with the revenge porn link to which she'd been subjected - because she knew what the school found out, when they were called in to investigate what is, essentially, child pornography - albeit child pornography in the hands of children.
With Martin summoned to the school, it's been found that an indecent image of Shakil has been distributed around the school, and that this image was sent, originally, from Rebecca's phone. It's thought that the link distributed of her was made in retaliation. So, basically, this turns out to be Rebecca's fault, and she is cautioned. Shakil and Carmel, the poisoned dwarf, are summoned in as well. Both of the kids are, at once, victims and perpetrators. They both have committed a crime. Of course, we know that Rebecca wasn't responsible for sending the image of Shakil. That was Louise, who was being goaded by Sniggle and Snaggle and who did this for craven acceptance into their little gang of two-cum-three. Prior to this time, they'd been tormenting her because of her crush on the other boy - the stock character nice one - whom they liked. Rebecca's real crime is stupidity and not having deleted the photo of Shakil. Shakil's crime is having sent the image of himself to Rebecca in the first place, which was breaking the law.
His attitude to the entire affair, after having had Carmel put in an appearance at the school, is that it really isn't any big deal. That everyone does it. He can't seem to fathom the fact that he's broken a law, that this police caution will remain tagged to him and the image of him will remain on the internet for ages. His pithy reckoning to his mother is that at least he isn't taking drugs or drinking.
I'm not a fan of Bonnie Franklin, but she did a passable rant of frustration and embarrassment at the gormless twit, but it was marred at the end by her repeatedly wailing about a prospective employer possibly googling information about Shakil and coming up with a picture of his willy, and then repeating that word for extra emphasis and a stupid nod and a wink on the part of EastEnders for having the puerile gall to say the word. Actually, penis would have been better, more adult and more realistic to have used, but this is Carey Andrews, and Carmel is a childish woman, herself.
At the heart of Carmel's worried rant, however, is herself. Once again, this becomes all about her. She's worried that her ex-husband will see this as the ultimate failure of herself as a mother and her corruption of what he will describe Shakil as "a good Muslim boy." And this is a joke, because the Kazemis are Muslim in name only, and Carmel isn't a Muslim at all. Kush drinks regularly, went through a promiscuous phase, and his morals are, at best, dubious, considering his behaviour with Shabnam, Stacey and Nancy, respectively. Umar, himself, is shacked up with an Englishwoman with an Irish name, who's half his age. Falling back on religion doesn't cut any ice at all. Carmel is annoyed at how badly this will reflect on her, but there's also the worrying aspect that, as Shakil thinks this is all "normal," that we have a generation of kids who can't talk to each other, without being mean and adversarial,a and whose idea of signifying attraction to each other is to post lewd images as a chat-up line.
With Martin, the horror comes at how little he knows of Rebecca. His image of her as a serious student is dispelled when, at the end of the meeting with the head and the representatives of the police, he finds that her mock GCSE results were well below par, and that her grades have been slipping, probably from the instant that she knew the picture of Shakil had been sent in circulation. Martin's disappointment and anger are palpable, and James Bye gave a gripping performance. His disappointment isn't all about himself, although he rages at himself for being unable to see what was happening and how sly and deceptive Rebecca, in his eyes, has turned out to be.
Inevitably, Rebecca confronts Louise, and the scene where Louise is shocked in the kitchen by seeing Rebecca staring malevolently through the window at her is pretty worthy. The gist of the visit is to remind Louise that she, Rebecca, didn't send the image of Shakil to everyone, that Louise pinched her phone and sent the pictures to Sniggle and Snaggle, and now, Rebecca has to cop the blame with a visit to the police station for something that she didn't do. Louise is supposed to be her friend. The end result is less than satisfying, because whilst Louise agrees to admit to sending the picture, she tells Louise that she'll refuse to say who told her to send it or to whom she sent it. She's in thrall to Sniggle and Snaggle, who'll probably beat the shit out of her if she steps out of line.
What's been interesting about this annoying and overlong storyline, which has no place at the heart of this soap, has been the depiction of how Shakil and Louise have both been victims of intimidation and who have succumbed, to a certain degree, to the whims of their intimidators. Shakil will step up so far in his defence of Rebecca, but all Keegan has to do is glare in his direction, and he becomes as meek as a lamb. And whilst Louise can't bring herself to taunt Rebecca with the duo who loll about her house as if they own it, she can't bring herself to rebuke them either. And that's something a Mitchell woman would never do is stand by and watch a friend be remorselessly targeted by bullies - not Peggy, not Sam, not Ronnie, not Roxy and not Sharon. Never.
The Bully Within: Michelle. After the performance at the dinner table the night before, Michelle seems to be babysitting Lily, whilst making a pasta meal for Martin and Stacey, obviously to make amends for serving up watered down rotten vegetables previously, all the while rabbiting onto Dennis about being able to approach her and talk to her about anything that's bothering him - in other words, now that Prestonovich has gone (or has he?), she's willing, at last, to assume the role of adult and take responsibility for caring for Dennis and Louise in the absence of their parents.
But when Michelle doubles down on telling him he can talk to her about anything, he gives her the uncomfortable surprise of her life:-
You mean if I ever see you having sex with Preston or something? Has he gone to see his mate in Manchester now?
So Dennis reveals what he has seen, and we get to see not only how emotionally immature Michelle is, but also how nasty she is, being caught on the back foot - or rather, with her back to the wall, figuratively, and her knickers down around her ankles.
You have to remember who Dennis is. He's Dennis Rickman's son, Den Watts's grandson, and he's been raised by his stepfather, Phil Mitchell. All of them are no slouches, and they'd be the first people in line to milk someone's weakness to their own advantage. He even ends his stark revelation to her by suddenly reverting to what he really is, a young boy, and asks if they can have pizza instead, even politely adding "please." You can see and hear Den Watts and Phil Mitchell using the same tactic of revelation and then capping it off with a bit of snarky charm.
However, the best scene of the episode comes after dinner, when Dennis confronts Michelle by saying he's going to call his mother now. In this scene, we get to see the real Michelle, how desperate, how hypocritical and how fucking nasty she's become. She plays a bit of reverse psychology by getting the phone, suggesting a three-way conversation with Sharon and suggesting that they start the conversation by talking about "acceptable behaviour".
You what? She's playing the teacher card here, but Dennis isn't a recalcitrant student. He's the son of her best friend to whom his mother has entrusted his care. She's brought a stranger into the household, she's watched this stranger use her niece sexually, she's even slept with this stranger, a person younger than her own son and was careless enough to be caught in flagrante in the front room by this child, this ten year-old. And she wants to discuss "acceptable behaviour", implying that Dennis is the one in the wrong because he saw her doing something she she shouldn't have been doing with someone with whom she shouldn't have been doing it in Dennis's home? This is someone who's playing the role of the adult, encouraging him to come to her with problems and dilemmas. This child has done nothing more than tell her the truth of what he's seen, and she's using his childhood, his age, her advantage as a seemingly responsible adult to imply that he is in the wrong, much less to filch on him to his mother about how he's misbehaved?
Moreover, she then threatens the kid by warning him never to come between a woman and her best friend and almost gloating to him that his mother knew all about Preston anyway, that she and Sharon have no secrets.
That's fucking rich.
To begin with, Michelle kept two humongous secrets from Sharon - the fact that Vicky was Den's child (and then she kicked off righteously when Vicki overheard Sharon discussing the fact that Sharon was her sister to Grant) and the fact that Grant fathered her son, something Sharon only found out by reading a drunken letter Michelle had sent to Peggy, which arrived after Peggy's death.
Of course,she told Sharon about Preston, but she probably hasn't told her that he rocked up in Walford and that she's been entertaining him, sexually and otherwise, financing him with money Sharon left for housekeeping Dennis and Louise, that she allowed him the run of the house and that he's been bedding Michelle and Michelle's niece upstairs, most probably in Phil's and Sharon's marital bed.
Secondly, where the hell does Michelle get off, thinking, much less implying to this child that her friendship with his mother is the single most important thing in Sharon's life and that he shouldn't dare to come between them? Dennis is Sharon's son, the only child she'll ever have and the one she thought she'd never have. He is the single most important thing in her life. Remember her emphasizing this to Shirley, that Dennis was the most important thing in her life to her, dearer to her than Phil, even, certainly dearer to her than faux Gavin, the reason for her falling out with him, coming from Gavin striking the child.
If Michelle were on dying on one side of the road and Dennis were the same on the other side, Sharon would move heaven and earth to rescue Dennis, without even a backward glance at Michelle. Michelle certainly would prioritise her children over Sharon at one time. Now that she's sacrificed her children for a middle-aged moment of madness, a sex crime, does she seriously expect Sharon's total loyalty to come before Sharon's child? Does she think Sharon would giggle and condone Michelle's behaviour, simply because they shared a joke about Michelle being a "cradle snatcher?"
That was in poor taste, but I daresay Sharon never fathomed that Michelle would bring this boy into the Mitchell house in hers and Phil's absence, take advantage of their hospitality and then threaten her son?
The real joke of all of this was Michelle reminding Dennis that she, Michelle, was the adult. This line came across as more of Michelle reiterating to herself that this is what she was, reminding herself of that fact, yet mindful of the fact that a child had caught her out in what was gross misbehaviour on this side of the Pond and an out and outright crime on the the other side. For the moment, Dennis seems cowed, and this is an unfair and nasty advantage that Michelle played; but he fires back the final salvo as a warning, asking if they could use her laptop to buy new trainers for him. She refuses, but somehow, I don't think Den III, stepson of Phil will stop at that.
Were I Dennis, however, rather than playing the ubiquitous game of blackmail that the show seems to love and overuse, I'd have simply called Sharon and told her what was going on. Michelle says Dennis has no proof, but I have every reason to believe that Sharon would have believed her son.
Michelle is an awful, craven woman. How to destroy a legend, by Sean O'Connor.
The Bully on the Back Foot: Mick. This segment of the episode showed the Carters at their ugliest, especially Mick, who's cornered now and desperately feeling sorry for himself because he's facing a jail sentence and he's got no money.
For the life of me, I can't see how he hasn't been raking in the readies. The Vic is the community local, not a niche bar like The Albert. In fact, the owner of The Albert and his wife spend more time in the Vic than in their own concern.
He's refusing to take Linda's calls, ashamed to let her know what a mess he's made of things. The odd thing about all of this, as he pours his heart out on the roof of the Vic and in its kitchen, drunk and morose, to the woman he really wants to shag, that he has actually become Lee at the moment when Lee realised that he wasn't the man he was supposed to be in everyone's eyes.
In harshly criticizing Lee, Mick has, in fact, become Lee; and maybe that's why he was so awful to him, because he knew, deep down, that Lee's perception of him was all wrong, that he wasn't the strong, providing family man whom everyone admired. In fact, Lee was his father's son. Mick had built this image of himself up in his mind - actually, it had been built up by Linda, and he bought into it. He was able to live up to that image as long as Linda was around. She was his audience.
Now she's looking after her mother, and the resentment he feels for what he perceives to be a singular act of disloyalty comes flooding out in his rooftop confession to Whitney. Linda has gone and left him to fall apart. It matters not that Elaine took him in when he'd knocked up her daughter, who was only a child like him, who'd raised him as her own son and given him a job, a trade and taught him responsibility; Elaine is irrelevant. Linda should just leave her to her own devices and return to him. He has this belief now that Linda would right the wrongs that have been inflicted on him ... by Lee, because he's still blaming Lee as well. He doesn't want Linda to find out what Lee did. You know, I'll bet Lee has already contacted Linda and told her everything.
What's really frustrating Mick, I think, besides the money panic, is the fact that he's really horning after Whitney, who can't hide her true feelings, no matter how much she dresses up the fact that she loves being a part of the Carter family and is forever grateful to him ... and to the added Linda. One wonders if Linda would be so keen to have Whitney hanging around, especially seeing the way she behaves around Mick?
Shirley susses immediately what's happening when she interrupts an intimate moment of Mick cuddling Whitney on the roof of the Vic.
What annoyed me most about Mick, however, was how he was mean and surly during the scene of Sylvie's birthday party. Both he and Shirley in this segment constantly referred to Sylvie as "it" and made derogatory remarks about her inability to fathom whose birthday it was. That was mean, selfish and cruel; but then Mick has always been The Little Prince of the Carters, the manchild. Contrast his behaviour to the priggish Johnny, who quoted ethics about the sanctity of life, when Shirley told him she wanted to be killed if she ever had dementia. Johnny, like Tina, is patient with Sylvie.
How Whitney managed to fanagle the poker money from Jack is anyone's guess, but we got to see how TPTB are drip-feeding Max's sinister plot bit by bit. In this episode,we learned that Max's little office job is really working for the mysterious man played by Simon Williams and that his "boss" would be interested in a prime piece of real estate like the Vic.
Let's hope there isn't too much time between the Max drip-feeds.
The further problems with their characters stem from the lazy writers, who can't be arsed to research who these people were in the 90s and realise that what they are now aren't what they would have become, left to reality.
And if Sharon and Phil stank up the programme before, the likes of Denise, Mick and Walford yoof are doing a pretty damned good job of that right now. Maybe O'Connor decided to bring out the worst in over-exposing certain characters to show that they have no place front and centre of what's supposed to be the BBC's flagship programme, and maybe, by doing so, they make us hanker, just that little bit more, for the return of Sharon and Phil.
At the moment, EastEnders is a programme excelling in the depiction of bullies, amongst other things. Tuesday's episode, albeit weak, was an excellent example of that in many ways.
The Awful Yoof Storyline. This is definitely a storyline dealing with bullying in all aspects - not only its repercussions, but how it can define a person in a perspective that isn't representative of that person at all.
It concerns six players, in general, and actually sorta kinda represents what the show wants us to believe are the good kids versus the bad ones. The good kids are, obviously, those three who are slated to stick around for awhile, much to our chagrin. Two are legacies - Rebecca Fowler and Louise formerly-Fowler-now-Mitchell - and the other is the younger scion of the token representative Anglo-ethnic new family, Shakil.
The bad kids are represented by three stock, stereotypical cartoon characters - Keegan, the budding misogynist bully, whose specialty is targeting, humiliating and taunting women and girls (a budding rapist, if there ever were one) and two chucklehead mean girls named Madison and Alexandra - which is which, no one knows, so I differentiate them by calling them Sniggle (the Afro-Caribbean one who giggles inanely and speaks as though she needs an adenoid operation) and Snaggle (the white one who needs to comb her hair and who really looks - and probably is - twenty-five). They have no redeeming qualities and serve no purpose except to illustrate the meaning of "mean." They are, to all intents and purposes - EastEnders' older versions of Brookside's Paige and Imelda.
At various times, Shakil, Louise and Rebecca have been the targets and victims of these useful - and probably very harmful - idiots. (Remember Imelda ended up at the bottom of a pond - let's hope EastEnders isn't harvesting any more budding murderers).
However, after experimenting with Shakil and Louise as lesser victims, the show seems to have settled on the bluestockinged, red nosed Rebecca, whilst Shakil and Louise, to varying degrees, have succumbed to Stockholm Syndrome, where the bullies are concerned, the storyline depicting, in this episode, how de-sensitised, to a degree, Shakil has become and how much of a wimp Louise is, regarding the Mitchell women's propensity to stand up, sometimes foolishly, to adversity.
We now know the reason Rebecca refused to reveal the names of anyone concerned with the revenge porn link to which she'd been subjected - because she knew what the school found out, when they were called in to investigate what is, essentially, child pornography - albeit child pornography in the hands of children.
With Martin summoned to the school, it's been found that an indecent image of Shakil has been distributed around the school, and that this image was sent, originally, from Rebecca's phone. It's thought that the link distributed of her was made in retaliation. So, basically, this turns out to be Rebecca's fault, and she is cautioned. Shakil and Carmel, the poisoned dwarf, are summoned in as well. Both of the kids are, at once, victims and perpetrators. They both have committed a crime. Of course, we know that Rebecca wasn't responsible for sending the image of Shakil. That was Louise, who was being goaded by Sniggle and Snaggle and who did this for craven acceptance into their little gang of two-cum-three. Prior to this time, they'd been tormenting her because of her crush on the other boy - the stock character nice one - whom they liked. Rebecca's real crime is stupidity and not having deleted the photo of Shakil. Shakil's crime is having sent the image of himself to Rebecca in the first place, which was breaking the law.
His attitude to the entire affair, after having had Carmel put in an appearance at the school, is that it really isn't any big deal. That everyone does it. He can't seem to fathom the fact that he's broken a law, that this police caution will remain tagged to him and the image of him will remain on the internet for ages. His pithy reckoning to his mother is that at least he isn't taking drugs or drinking.
I'm not a fan of Bonnie Franklin, but she did a passable rant of frustration and embarrassment at the gormless twit, but it was marred at the end by her repeatedly wailing about a prospective employer possibly googling information about Shakil and coming up with a picture of his willy, and then repeating that word for extra emphasis and a stupid nod and a wink on the part of EastEnders for having the puerile gall to say the word. Actually, penis would have been better, more adult and more realistic to have used, but this is Carey Andrews, and Carmel is a childish woman, herself.
At the heart of Carmel's worried rant, however, is herself. Once again, this becomes all about her. She's worried that her ex-husband will see this as the ultimate failure of herself as a mother and her corruption of what he will describe Shakil as "a good Muslim boy." And this is a joke, because the Kazemis are Muslim in name only, and Carmel isn't a Muslim at all. Kush drinks regularly, went through a promiscuous phase, and his morals are, at best, dubious, considering his behaviour with Shabnam, Stacey and Nancy, respectively. Umar, himself, is shacked up with an Englishwoman with an Irish name, who's half his age. Falling back on religion doesn't cut any ice at all. Carmel is annoyed at how badly this will reflect on her, but there's also the worrying aspect that, as Shakil thinks this is all "normal," that we have a generation of kids who can't talk to each other, without being mean and adversarial,a and whose idea of signifying attraction to each other is to post lewd images as a chat-up line.
With Martin, the horror comes at how little he knows of Rebecca. His image of her as a serious student is dispelled when, at the end of the meeting with the head and the representatives of the police, he finds that her mock GCSE results were well below par, and that her grades have been slipping, probably from the instant that she knew the picture of Shakil had been sent in circulation. Martin's disappointment and anger are palpable, and James Bye gave a gripping performance. His disappointment isn't all about himself, although he rages at himself for being unable to see what was happening and how sly and deceptive Rebecca, in his eyes, has turned out to be.
Inevitably, Rebecca confronts Louise, and the scene where Louise is shocked in the kitchen by seeing Rebecca staring malevolently through the window at her is pretty worthy. The gist of the visit is to remind Louise that she, Rebecca, didn't send the image of Shakil to everyone, that Louise pinched her phone and sent the pictures to Sniggle and Snaggle, and now, Rebecca has to cop the blame with a visit to the police station for something that she didn't do. Louise is supposed to be her friend. The end result is less than satisfying, because whilst Louise agrees to admit to sending the picture, she tells Louise that she'll refuse to say who told her to send it or to whom she sent it. She's in thrall to Sniggle and Snaggle, who'll probably beat the shit out of her if she steps out of line.
What's been interesting about this annoying and overlong storyline, which has no place at the heart of this soap, has been the depiction of how Shakil and Louise have both been victims of intimidation and who have succumbed, to a certain degree, to the whims of their intimidators. Shakil will step up so far in his defence of Rebecca, but all Keegan has to do is glare in his direction, and he becomes as meek as a lamb. And whilst Louise can't bring herself to taunt Rebecca with the duo who loll about her house as if they own it, she can't bring herself to rebuke them either. And that's something a Mitchell woman would never do is stand by and watch a friend be remorselessly targeted by bullies - not Peggy, not Sam, not Ronnie, not Roxy and not Sharon. Never.
The Bully Within: Michelle. After the performance at the dinner table the night before, Michelle seems to be babysitting Lily, whilst making a pasta meal for Martin and Stacey, obviously to make amends for serving up watered down rotten vegetables previously, all the while rabbiting onto Dennis about being able to approach her and talk to her about anything that's bothering him - in other words, now that Prestonovich has gone (or has he?), she's willing, at last, to assume the role of adult and take responsibility for caring for Dennis and Louise in the absence of their parents.
But when Michelle doubles down on telling him he can talk to her about anything, he gives her the uncomfortable surprise of her life:-
You mean if I ever see you having sex with Preston or something? Has he gone to see his mate in Manchester now?
So Dennis reveals what he has seen, and we get to see not only how emotionally immature Michelle is, but also how nasty she is, being caught on the back foot - or rather, with her back to the wall, figuratively, and her knickers down around her ankles.
You have to remember who Dennis is. He's Dennis Rickman's son, Den Watts's grandson, and he's been raised by his stepfather, Phil Mitchell. All of them are no slouches, and they'd be the first people in line to milk someone's weakness to their own advantage. He even ends his stark revelation to her by suddenly reverting to what he really is, a young boy, and asks if they can have pizza instead, even politely adding "please." You can see and hear Den Watts and Phil Mitchell using the same tactic of revelation and then capping it off with a bit of snarky charm.
However, the best scene of the episode comes after dinner, when Dennis confronts Michelle by saying he's going to call his mother now. In this scene, we get to see the real Michelle, how desperate, how hypocritical and how fucking nasty she's become. She plays a bit of reverse psychology by getting the phone, suggesting a three-way conversation with Sharon and suggesting that they start the conversation by talking about "acceptable behaviour".
You what? She's playing the teacher card here, but Dennis isn't a recalcitrant student. He's the son of her best friend to whom his mother has entrusted his care. She's brought a stranger into the household, she's watched this stranger use her niece sexually, she's even slept with this stranger, a person younger than her own son and was careless enough to be caught in flagrante in the front room by this child, this ten year-old. And she wants to discuss "acceptable behaviour", implying that Dennis is the one in the wrong because he saw her doing something she she shouldn't have been doing with someone with whom she shouldn't have been doing it in Dennis's home? This is someone who's playing the role of the adult, encouraging him to come to her with problems and dilemmas. This child has done nothing more than tell her the truth of what he's seen, and she's using his childhood, his age, her advantage as a seemingly responsible adult to imply that he is in the wrong, much less to filch on him to his mother about how he's misbehaved?
Moreover, she then threatens the kid by warning him never to come between a woman and her best friend and almost gloating to him that his mother knew all about Preston anyway, that she and Sharon have no secrets.
That's fucking rich.
To begin with, Michelle kept two humongous secrets from Sharon - the fact that Vicky was Den's child (and then she kicked off righteously when Vicki overheard Sharon discussing the fact that Sharon was her sister to Grant) and the fact that Grant fathered her son, something Sharon only found out by reading a drunken letter Michelle had sent to Peggy, which arrived after Peggy's death.
Of course,she told Sharon about Preston, but she probably hasn't told her that he rocked up in Walford and that she's been entertaining him, sexually and otherwise, financing him with money Sharon left for housekeeping Dennis and Louise, that she allowed him the run of the house and that he's been bedding Michelle and Michelle's niece upstairs, most probably in Phil's and Sharon's marital bed.
Secondly, where the hell does Michelle get off, thinking, much less implying to this child that her friendship with his mother is the single most important thing in Sharon's life and that he shouldn't dare to come between them? Dennis is Sharon's son, the only child she'll ever have and the one she thought she'd never have. He is the single most important thing in her life. Remember her emphasizing this to Shirley, that Dennis was the most important thing in her life to her, dearer to her than Phil, even, certainly dearer to her than faux Gavin, the reason for her falling out with him, coming from Gavin striking the child.
If Michelle were on dying on one side of the road and Dennis were the same on the other side, Sharon would move heaven and earth to rescue Dennis, without even a backward glance at Michelle. Michelle certainly would prioritise her children over Sharon at one time. Now that she's sacrificed her children for a middle-aged moment of madness, a sex crime, does she seriously expect Sharon's total loyalty to come before Sharon's child? Does she think Sharon would giggle and condone Michelle's behaviour, simply because they shared a joke about Michelle being a "cradle snatcher?"
That was in poor taste, but I daresay Sharon never fathomed that Michelle would bring this boy into the Mitchell house in hers and Phil's absence, take advantage of their hospitality and then threaten her son?
The real joke of all of this was Michelle reminding Dennis that she, Michelle, was the adult. This line came across as more of Michelle reiterating to herself that this is what she was, reminding herself of that fact, yet mindful of the fact that a child had caught her out in what was gross misbehaviour on this side of the Pond and an out and outright crime on the the other side. For the moment, Dennis seems cowed, and this is an unfair and nasty advantage that Michelle played; but he fires back the final salvo as a warning, asking if they could use her laptop to buy new trainers for him. She refuses, but somehow, I don't think Den III, stepson of Phil will stop at that.
Were I Dennis, however, rather than playing the ubiquitous game of blackmail that the show seems to love and overuse, I'd have simply called Sharon and told her what was going on. Michelle says Dennis has no proof, but I have every reason to believe that Sharon would have believed her son.
Michelle is an awful, craven woman. How to destroy a legend, by Sean O'Connor.
The Bully on the Back Foot: Mick. This segment of the episode showed the Carters at their ugliest, especially Mick, who's cornered now and desperately feeling sorry for himself because he's facing a jail sentence and he's got no money.
For the life of me, I can't see how he hasn't been raking in the readies. The Vic is the community local, not a niche bar like The Albert. In fact, the owner of The Albert and his wife spend more time in the Vic than in their own concern.
He's refusing to take Linda's calls, ashamed to let her know what a mess he's made of things. The odd thing about all of this, as he pours his heart out on the roof of the Vic and in its kitchen, drunk and morose, to the woman he really wants to shag, that he has actually become Lee at the moment when Lee realised that he wasn't the man he was supposed to be in everyone's eyes.
In harshly criticizing Lee, Mick has, in fact, become Lee; and maybe that's why he was so awful to him, because he knew, deep down, that Lee's perception of him was all wrong, that he wasn't the strong, providing family man whom everyone admired. In fact, Lee was his father's son. Mick had built this image of himself up in his mind - actually, it had been built up by Linda, and he bought into it. He was able to live up to that image as long as Linda was around. She was his audience.
Now she's looking after her mother, and the resentment he feels for what he perceives to be a singular act of disloyalty comes flooding out in his rooftop confession to Whitney. Linda has gone and left him to fall apart. It matters not that Elaine took him in when he'd knocked up her daughter, who was only a child like him, who'd raised him as her own son and given him a job, a trade and taught him responsibility; Elaine is irrelevant. Linda should just leave her to her own devices and return to him. He has this belief now that Linda would right the wrongs that have been inflicted on him ... by Lee, because he's still blaming Lee as well. He doesn't want Linda to find out what Lee did. You know, I'll bet Lee has already contacted Linda and told her everything.
What's really frustrating Mick, I think, besides the money panic, is the fact that he's really horning after Whitney, who can't hide her true feelings, no matter how much she dresses up the fact that she loves being a part of the Carter family and is forever grateful to him ... and to the added Linda. One wonders if Linda would be so keen to have Whitney hanging around, especially seeing the way she behaves around Mick?
Shirley susses immediately what's happening when she interrupts an intimate moment of Mick cuddling Whitney on the roof of the Vic.
What annoyed me most about Mick, however, was how he was mean and surly during the scene of Sylvie's birthday party. Both he and Shirley in this segment constantly referred to Sylvie as "it" and made derogatory remarks about her inability to fathom whose birthday it was. That was mean, selfish and cruel; but then Mick has always been The Little Prince of the Carters, the manchild. Contrast his behaviour to the priggish Johnny, who quoted ethics about the sanctity of life, when Shirley told him she wanted to be killed if she ever had dementia. Johnny, like Tina, is patient with Sylvie.
How Whitney managed to fanagle the poker money from Jack is anyone's guess, but we got to see how TPTB are drip-feeding Max's sinister plot bit by bit. In this episode,we learned that Max's little office job is really working for the mysterious man played by Simon Williams and that his "boss" would be interested in a prime piece of real estate like the Vic.
Let's hope there isn't too much time between the Max drip-feeds.
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