Thursday's and Friday's episodes were all about bad role play - the wrong storylines for the wrong actors. Someone put it succinctly: here's a show where we don't give a rat's arse about anyone anymore.
You think Thursday's episode heralded the end of the bullying storyline? Think again. Next week is Bully Week, and it sets the scene for the return of King Phil.
Adults Playing Children.That seems to be par for the course on EastEnders these days. Thursday's episode was almost all about a group of adult actors badly pretending to be adolescents in the faux climax to the seemingly endless bullying storyline.
It's almost a joke that every adolescent in this show now looks like a fully-fledged adult, from mature jawline (Travis) to sounding like a heavier smoker than Shirly (Sniggle) to needing a swift injection of botox (Snaggle) to actually looking like a middle-aged housewife (Bernadette).
This was all about the kids, when it wasn't about poor Steven Beale being sent on a wild goose chase.
It was also about Michelle being left in charge of Sharon's children again, failing miserably and then redeeming herself.
Look, everyone knows that next week - Prom Week or Bully Week - sees the bullies' ultimate revenge where something very very bad happens to someone at the prom. So, this week's revelation of what the bullies were really up to, courtesy of Shakil's open mic was a red herring.
The segment also produced some of the worst acting the show has ever seen, and please, please,EastEnders, stop giving Jasmine Byfield an opportunity to sing. She's passable,but she's no mean talent. She's a bad enough actress, with her extreme gestures, her habit of delivering her lines with her head thrown back and her chin jutting upwards and her perennially red nose, we don't need the singing as well.
The awful climax to this plot, Louise being offered the last-minute stand-in as Juliet to manboy Travis's Romeo because Snaggle couldn't be found (as she was too busy in the drama room terrorising Rebecca) was obviously the spark which ignites the bullies' revenge.
This is so tawdry. In fact, it was so bad it was laughable. This is, indeed, the worst gaggle of adolescents the show has ever produced, probably because most of them are actually adults who've forgotten how to act like teenagers or are so far removed from their era of teenagedom that either they can't remember or the writers are so daft that they haven't got a clue, themselves.
It was embarrassing. Equally embarrassing was Sonia making goo-goo eyes and coyly waving at Mr Pryce the all-purpose drama teacher.
The Wild Goose Chase and Children Portraying Adults. The Abi-Stephen-Lauren-Josh affair is a bad stab at some sort of "Fatal Attraction" scenario, badly-written and enacted by children.
Ronnie and Roxy, in a tangle over an overpossessive Jack, would have done this storyline proud, and it would have been watchable. Thursday's episode, where we saw an increasingly rattled Steven forced to play a wierd version of "Where's Waldo", chasing after a cowardly, fleeing and frightened Lauren was just too stupid to comprehend.
Obviously, I felt as if I'd missed something because the scene of Lauren, Max and Abi in the café where Kathy saw Abi "storm out" was cut or happened, as everything else does, off-screen, so I was confused from the beginning. Abi left to get Lauren's phone unlocked for New Zealand and ended up hiding it in the pub to confuse Steven.
Abi's motives were the clearest of everyone else's. She wanted Steven for herself, and she wanted Lauren out of the way. It just adds to Lauren's incipient stupidity, however, that she was so gullible that she actually believed Abi's psychology of "transferral" to convince Lauren to return to New Zealand to reconcile with Peter.
Lauren is simply a flake, in the same way Max was and is a sexual flake. She's never satisfied with the person with whom she's in a relationship. She probably tired of Steven in New Zealand and drove him to drink, then cosied up to Steven. She was beginning to get bored with Steven when she allowed herself to be attracted to a stranger whom she helpd in her father's firm. It was Lauren who bagged Whitney and went on the prowl to find Josh.
Lauren was actively seeking sexual thrills, but didn't have the moral terpitude to follow through with her actions. The fact that she would even follow Abi's advice about simply sneaking out of Walford when she was too cowardly to confront Steven just shows the lack of depth in her moral character. That Jack would even support her decision to do this just shows how rank Jack's core morality would be as well.
I cannot fathom Max's reluctance. Since he's returned, even though his daughters think him to be otherwise, he's been curiously detached from them both. It's as if he's playing the part of the doting dad, but he can't forget, really, how much they both betrayed him in their own ways. It's difficult to know Max's motives, he's been such a cypher since he's returned. I get the feeling, however, that he doesn't want Lauren involved with Josh. Max was the one, after all, who disclosed the fact that Josh was engaged.
Aaron Sidwell and Bleu Landau carried both these episodes. Steven's unravelling was one of the most intense scenes in recent history on this show. His unconditional love of Lauren is tied to his desire for acceptance and inclusion in the Beale dynamic. His return, his devotion to her and his bonding with Peter's son was all a calculated effort to show Ian that he, the non-son, is really the good son. It was done as a plea for redemption for his behaviour from a decade before. Steven, more than anything, wants to belong, He's a biological Wicks who isn't a Wicks and a non-Beale with the Beale surname who wants to be loved and accepted as Ian's son. Yet Ian cannot bring himself to do this. He'll harbour his own for over a year, a boy who committed murder and who crippled his stepmother, but he's reluctant to accept Steven, a boy whom he raised, as his own.
Faced with losing Lauren, his world is falling apart,which brings me to this weird angry-sex relationship he has with Abi. For a start, Lorna Fitzgerald is way too immature an actress to play this part. Abi, presenting herself as "not a nice person" (a line delivered in a cringeworthy attempt to sound sexy and failing)? Abi has never been a nice person. She's always been jealous and resentful of Lauren, thinking that she had an exclusive place in Max's affections, without realising that her father owed extra time to his other daughter as well, even though she tried to kill him. Lorna was great as a child actress, basically doing what she knew how to do; but Abi is never the new Janine, never a smidgeon of Janine,and Abi and Steven are no more Janine and Michael Moon as they are Kate and Wills or Posh and Becks.
Fitzgerald still looks and sounds like a 12 year-old, and tarted up with false eyelashes and a sophisticated hairstyle or reclining, wrapped in a bedsheet on a sofa, post-coital, she looks like any paedophile's dream.
What Abi and Steven have is consensual rape. He vents his anger with Lauren on Abi sexually. Abi reminds him what a "bad boy" he really is (when Steven is trying to sublimate that part of him which he actually hates and which he sees as denying him access to his family dynamic), and he releases his frustration sexually on her. She thinks this is love, and she's confused each time he gets up, puts his trousers on and scurries back to Lauren. When she attempts to cajole affection for him, comparing her ministering to his needs with Lauren's ineptitude, that doesn't work. The goading arouses him sexually, but nothing more than that.
Abi is Steven's dirty little secret, and it will eventually explode. She did, however, give him food for thought in testing Lauren's resolve.
In the meantime, all it took to convince Lauren of the riight thing to do was the ubiquitous chat with Stacey, who basically told her to do whatever made her happy. Lauren thinks she's in love with Josh, who subsequently tells her that he's broken with his fiancée, and that he loved her so much, he'd rushed to Walford to talk her out of resigning. So, does that mean he's going to take Lauren and Louis in, himself? Because the Beales will send her packing. But I guess that reassurance gives her hope until ... we unpack the old "I've got an incurable brain tumour and I'm dying" storyline. This time from Steven.
Who remembers Pauline's little white lie and how that ended for her?
More Bullying. The Keegan-Bernadette-Dennis-Wills storyline was a sucky contrivance with two purposes. The first and foremost was the redemption of Michelle.
It's not above Keegan bullying and frightening children like Dennis and William. I can readily believe he'd do that. Keegan preys on women, girls and children because they are no threat to him. However, Dennis's misplaced revenge showed the chutzpah of his father and grandfather. To her credit, Bernadette was trying to stop Keegan from reacting to the kids, and simply got in the way of their revenge. She wasn't bullied, per se, although she thought she was.
Her reason, given to Norwegian Ronnie, for destroying Jane's flowers was so contrived it made me sit up and blink my eyes - she wanted to destroy something beautiful. You what? But Norwegian Ronnie made everything good with Jane and a judgemental Kathy and now she's part of the Walford in Bloom movement. Next thing, she'll be knitting booties,and Norwegian Ronnie's bagged a room of her own at Jack's (before she moves into his bed).
I actually thought that it would be Tom who would walk into the Mitchells' with Michelle and chase Keegan off. Keegan runs from any encounter with any sort of male - be it Kush or Derek, and we know that Tom has a temper, which made it all the more unreal that he turned tail and scarpered when Michelle told him to get out.
EastEnders is hitting rock bottom.
You think Thursday's episode heralded the end of the bullying storyline? Think again. Next week is Bully Week, and it sets the scene for the return of King Phil.
Adults Playing Children.That seems to be par for the course on EastEnders these days. Thursday's episode was almost all about a group of adult actors badly pretending to be adolescents in the faux climax to the seemingly endless bullying storyline.
It's almost a joke that every adolescent in this show now looks like a fully-fledged adult, from mature jawline (Travis) to sounding like a heavier smoker than Shirly (Sniggle) to needing a swift injection of botox (Snaggle) to actually looking like a middle-aged housewife (Bernadette).
This was all about the kids, when it wasn't about poor Steven Beale being sent on a wild goose chase.
It was also about Michelle being left in charge of Sharon's children again, failing miserably and then redeeming herself.
Look, everyone knows that next week - Prom Week or Bully Week - sees the bullies' ultimate revenge where something very very bad happens to someone at the prom. So, this week's revelation of what the bullies were really up to, courtesy of Shakil's open mic was a red herring.
The segment also produced some of the worst acting the show has ever seen, and please, please,EastEnders, stop giving Jasmine Byfield an opportunity to sing. She's passable,but she's no mean talent. She's a bad enough actress, with her extreme gestures, her habit of delivering her lines with her head thrown back and her chin jutting upwards and her perennially red nose, we don't need the singing as well.
The awful climax to this plot, Louise being offered the last-minute stand-in as Juliet to manboy Travis's Romeo because Snaggle couldn't be found (as she was too busy in the drama room terrorising Rebecca) was obviously the spark which ignites the bullies' revenge.
This is so tawdry. In fact, it was so bad it was laughable. This is, indeed, the worst gaggle of adolescents the show has ever produced, probably because most of them are actually adults who've forgotten how to act like teenagers or are so far removed from their era of teenagedom that either they can't remember or the writers are so daft that they haven't got a clue, themselves.
It was embarrassing. Equally embarrassing was Sonia making goo-goo eyes and coyly waving at Mr Pryce the all-purpose drama teacher.
The Wild Goose Chase and Children Portraying Adults. The Abi-Stephen-Lauren-Josh affair is a bad stab at some sort of "Fatal Attraction" scenario, badly-written and enacted by children.
Ronnie and Roxy, in a tangle over an overpossessive Jack, would have done this storyline proud, and it would have been watchable. Thursday's episode, where we saw an increasingly rattled Steven forced to play a wierd version of "Where's Waldo", chasing after a cowardly, fleeing and frightened Lauren was just too stupid to comprehend.
Obviously, I felt as if I'd missed something because the scene of Lauren, Max and Abi in the café where Kathy saw Abi "storm out" was cut or happened, as everything else does, off-screen, so I was confused from the beginning. Abi left to get Lauren's phone unlocked for New Zealand and ended up hiding it in the pub to confuse Steven.
Abi's motives were the clearest of everyone else's. She wanted Steven for herself, and she wanted Lauren out of the way. It just adds to Lauren's incipient stupidity, however, that she was so gullible that she actually believed Abi's psychology of "transferral" to convince Lauren to return to New Zealand to reconcile with Peter.
Lauren is simply a flake, in the same way Max was and is a sexual flake. She's never satisfied with the person with whom she's in a relationship. She probably tired of Steven in New Zealand and drove him to drink, then cosied up to Steven. She was beginning to get bored with Steven when she allowed herself to be attracted to a stranger whom she helpd in her father's firm. It was Lauren who bagged Whitney and went on the prowl to find Josh.
Lauren was actively seeking sexual thrills, but didn't have the moral terpitude to follow through with her actions. The fact that she would even follow Abi's advice about simply sneaking out of Walford when she was too cowardly to confront Steven just shows the lack of depth in her moral character. That Jack would even support her decision to do this just shows how rank Jack's core morality would be as well.
I cannot fathom Max's reluctance. Since he's returned, even though his daughters think him to be otherwise, he's been curiously detached from them both. It's as if he's playing the part of the doting dad, but he can't forget, really, how much they both betrayed him in their own ways. It's difficult to know Max's motives, he's been such a cypher since he's returned. I get the feeling, however, that he doesn't want Lauren involved with Josh. Max was the one, after all, who disclosed the fact that Josh was engaged.
Aaron Sidwell and Bleu Landau carried both these episodes. Steven's unravelling was one of the most intense scenes in recent history on this show. His unconditional love of Lauren is tied to his desire for acceptance and inclusion in the Beale dynamic. His return, his devotion to her and his bonding with Peter's son was all a calculated effort to show Ian that he, the non-son, is really the good son. It was done as a plea for redemption for his behaviour from a decade before. Steven, more than anything, wants to belong, He's a biological Wicks who isn't a Wicks and a non-Beale with the Beale surname who wants to be loved and accepted as Ian's son. Yet Ian cannot bring himself to do this. He'll harbour his own for over a year, a boy who committed murder and who crippled his stepmother, but he's reluctant to accept Steven, a boy whom he raised, as his own.
Faced with losing Lauren, his world is falling apart,which brings me to this weird angry-sex relationship he has with Abi. For a start, Lorna Fitzgerald is way too immature an actress to play this part. Abi, presenting herself as "not a nice person" (a line delivered in a cringeworthy attempt to sound sexy and failing)? Abi has never been a nice person. She's always been jealous and resentful of Lauren, thinking that she had an exclusive place in Max's affections, without realising that her father owed extra time to his other daughter as well, even though she tried to kill him. Lorna was great as a child actress, basically doing what she knew how to do; but Abi is never the new Janine, never a smidgeon of Janine,and Abi and Steven are no more Janine and Michael Moon as they are Kate and Wills or Posh and Becks.
Fitzgerald still looks and sounds like a 12 year-old, and tarted up with false eyelashes and a sophisticated hairstyle or reclining, wrapped in a bedsheet on a sofa, post-coital, she looks like any paedophile's dream.
What Abi and Steven have is consensual rape. He vents his anger with Lauren on Abi sexually. Abi reminds him what a "bad boy" he really is (when Steven is trying to sublimate that part of him which he actually hates and which he sees as denying him access to his family dynamic), and he releases his frustration sexually on her. She thinks this is love, and she's confused each time he gets up, puts his trousers on and scurries back to Lauren. When she attempts to cajole affection for him, comparing her ministering to his needs with Lauren's ineptitude, that doesn't work. The goading arouses him sexually, but nothing more than that.
Abi is Steven's dirty little secret, and it will eventually explode. She did, however, give him food for thought in testing Lauren's resolve.
In the meantime, all it took to convince Lauren of the riight thing to do was the ubiquitous chat with Stacey, who basically told her to do whatever made her happy. Lauren thinks she's in love with Josh, who subsequently tells her that he's broken with his fiancée, and that he loved her so much, he'd rushed to Walford to talk her out of resigning. So, does that mean he's going to take Lauren and Louis in, himself? Because the Beales will send her packing. But I guess that reassurance gives her hope until ... we unpack the old "I've got an incurable brain tumour and I'm dying" storyline. This time from Steven.
Who remembers Pauline's little white lie and how that ended for her?
More Bullying. The Keegan-Bernadette-Dennis-Wills storyline was a sucky contrivance with two purposes. The first and foremost was the redemption of Michelle.
It's not above Keegan bullying and frightening children like Dennis and William. I can readily believe he'd do that. Keegan preys on women, girls and children because they are no threat to him. However, Dennis's misplaced revenge showed the chutzpah of his father and grandfather. To her credit, Bernadette was trying to stop Keegan from reacting to the kids, and simply got in the way of their revenge. She wasn't bullied, per se, although she thought she was.
Her reason, given to Norwegian Ronnie, for destroying Jane's flowers was so contrived it made me sit up and blink my eyes - she wanted to destroy something beautiful. You what? But Norwegian Ronnie made everything good with Jane and a judgemental Kathy and now she's part of the Walford in Bloom movement. Next thing, she'll be knitting booties,and Norwegian Ronnie's bagged a room of her own at Jack's (before she moves into his bed).
I actually thought that it would be Tom who would walk into the Mitchells' with Michelle and chase Keegan off. Keegan runs from any encounter with any sort of male - be it Kush or Derek, and we know that Tom has a temper, which made it all the more unreal that he turned tail and scarpered when Michelle told him to get out.
EastEnders is hitting rock bottom.
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