Did You See That

Just a couple of thoughts that occured to me recently….

I noticed Darren is in trouble with his girlfriend, Libby, for keeping a naughty magazine under his bed. Not long ago his character was an internet entrepreneur. Don’t you think he would be able to get plenty of material on there without needing to keep magazines under his bed?! Seems like lazy writing to me, and why has he given up making a packet online anyway?

Talking of lazy writing, aren’t Heather and Hazel, now left I assume, both incredibly similar in that both characters use a pop singer as their reference point for almost everything else. Heather always refers to “George” (Michael). And Hazel looked to “Dolly” (Parton) for her inspiration. It’s not really believable for one character, but for two it’s just a bit pathetic to use the same writing device.

Let me preface this post by saying that I love Heather on Eastenders and think it’s great that they feature characters of a larger figure, but…. I saw this Cabbage Patch Kid and can’t help but think it looks like a dead ringer for Heather…. what do you think?

The Beeb is currently running a funny trailer for Eastenders, with the returning Bianca and her 4 kids taking the role of the “Jackson 5″ and performing “Want You Back” in Walford Market. They achieve a rare feat - getting Phil Mitchell, Sean Slater and Chelsea to actually smile. Seeing Phil smile is a bit unnerving and I’d sooner he gave em a clip round the ear and told them not to dance on his patch.

Deano Wickes got out of prison last night on Eastenders, and he seemed to have a right cob on. Ok, so he’s been in prison, he’s had “everything” done to him in there, his Dad has died and his sister has gone off travelling around the world, so he’s entitled to be a bit moody but this was a completely different Deano. It wasn’t that long ago he was out for Kevin’s funeral and he didn’t seem quite as messed up as last night, so he either had a very bad last month inside, or Eastenders writers were indulging in their favourite trick of completely changing a character’s personality - remember when Minty was an evil landlord offering to take sex as payment from Janine?

So as I was saying, Deano wasn’t best pleased. He went rount to Shirley’s and had her pay for a prostitute, sorry, “escort”. Then he went over to the Vic and headbutted Sean Slater (hang on, wasn’t Sean the victim of Deano’s crime - how’s that for victim support?) and then gave Shirley a bit of a roughing up before making his way into the night and out of the Square for good.

I’d have to say, observations about his personality transplant aside, Matt Di Angelo did a good job acting the part (finally) and was more believable as a hard-nut than Sean who just seems a bit gormless these days.  No wonder Sean is leaving too - they’ll have him clowning around with Minty and Garry if he stays too much longer.

Sorry, but are we supposed to take this story line seriously?

Ian Beale has been the victim of a campaign of terror which has involved emails from his dead wife, a coffin being delivered to his house, a photoshopped image of her in the square and then tonight, being led a merry dance to a block of flats where a mannuquin was dressed as a hoodie. The whole thing has been absolutely absurd.

Eastenders has taken a hammering in the ratings over the year, especially when it goes head to head with Emmerdale, and this kind of nonsense doesn’t suggest to me that they are anything like back on the right road to recovery.

Anyway, finally Ian found out who was behind the mysterious goings on tonight. He seemed to know who it was but the face wasn’t recognisable to viewers. I’ve always suspected it would be Steven Wickes but I guess that will be confirmed soon enough.

The suspense is killing me.

Well, Stella’s bullying ways were exposed in last night’s Eastenders when  Ben  managed to tell his dad that all was not well. The blood seeping through his shirt was a major clue also. And after a few laps of the snooker table, and Stella trying to pin it all on Ian, Phil finally twigged that Stella was nuts.

As Ben poured his little heart out, Peggy asked if she had abused Ben in other ways. “No, nothing like that” said Ben, showing an impressive understanding as to what was being alluded to for one who had previously confused his dad’s pep talk on puberty with the idea that getting ritually bullied and tortured was normal for little boys growing up.

Phil - egged on by Peggy’s rallying cry, “make her pay” - tracked Stella down to a disused factory (in a city of 7 million people, it’s still amazing how useful an A-Z can be) before cornering her on the rooftop. Stella’s last words were “watch me, daddy” before plummeting to her death on the bonnet of her wedding car. It reminded me of the climax to the fantastic political drama, “House of Cards”, in which Mattie Storin asked Francis Urqhuart, “Can I trust you Daddy?”, before he threw her to her death.

But did Stella jump or was she pushed? In a little Eastenders mystery, the vital scene wasn’t shown, but we saw Phil looking at his hands. Was he looking at the hands of a killer? Or making a mental note to buy some Fairy washing up liquid? I’m sure well find out soon.

Well, I tried Eastenders and there was some rubbish with Dot agonising over Pauline’s ashes, and I switched over to Emmerdale to see Marlon and Ely doing an armed robbery on a bookies, and then Marlon getting shot in the process.

Emmerdale won hands down for me!

The thing I love about Emmerdale at the moment is that the writing seems excellent. The dialogue and the acting seems spot on and so natural for many of the characters.

Eastenders is just dull, dull, dull. Of course we all love Dot Cotton, but when she gets a storyline of her own, it just seems to drag on and bore you to tears.

Ok, one problem with Emmerdale I forgot to mention at the time: They recently had a pageant to celebrate Emmerdale’s history. They seemed to forget it was originally Beckingdale and only renamed after the plane crash!!?

That Ben Mitchell’s a clever little kid.

Despite being the victim of a campaign of terror from Stella, and having had more Chinese burns than a human rights protestor, he still managed to get Ian Beale and Phil Mitchell to shake hands in Eastenders and seemingly end their feud. His clever conciliation service took the form of jumping between them and screaming STOP IT STOP IT.

I say drop the kid off in the Gaza strip and let him do his thing there. Their need is greater than ours.