Easties Updates

2010-02-19T20:53:00.000+00:00

OK, I haven't watched this since New Year's Eve, when I was forced to see something about a gay bloke, son of her off Goodness Gracious Me. Actually, it was quite good, and despite myself I enjoyed it.

So, here's the live one, and it's all dark, which is good.

Roxi-er-Ronnie tells Ronni-er-Roxie that Archie raped JoJo Slater-Branning-err...who is JoJo married to these days? Apparently Bradley is supposed to be accused of murdering Archie? Bradley? He couldn't even murder his own Dad for sleeping with his girlfriend. Dadley and other chap help Bradley and JoJo go on the lam.

JoJo - having meaningfully gazed for some time at some BLOOD-coloured finger paintings - tries to tell Bradley Something Important, but bottles out (I think). As they're saying their goodbyes to Dadley and other bloke, the Met's finest are at the door. They scrabble around for the back door key. Yeah, because the Met are so STUPID they wouldn't have the back door covered. Meanwhile JoJo Ma is showing everybody pictures of her little angel and looking vaguely happy in the pub.

Ronni-er-Roxie asks Roxi-er-Ronnie how she could be sure...Roxi-er-Ronnie says he raped her too. Ew.

Juhneen (hooray) is looking bloody marvellous and gets shouted at by Biancaa for ruining a cake. Then she waves some keys at Babs (thought she'd gone) and accuses Babs of framing her. She seems to have acquired a cute boyfriend from somewhere.

Dot has obviously demanded that she needs to sit down all the way through this, and does her best tortured face while discussing whatever terrible secret she has with the Bealemeister. I thought Beale was banged up for the moider of Archie already?

Fil has worked himself up into a glorious strawberry hue, and smashes up Ian's living room, looking for a tin or something. Fil tells Ian that his "skank of a daughter" told him that Ian has...erm something...and errr...I'm lost.

Atkins appears to be carrying on with Fil, and has turned over a bloodstained shirt to the police. And he's got to give his best man's speech in a minute. Babs says she'll sort it out.

Oh no...I'm just seen Araminta with his shirt off...my EEEYYYYYESSS. They've decided to keep Billy busy and away from proper Acting by staging a drinking competition between him, Dasbo and assorted guests in frilly dresses.

There's red stuff everywhere in the Vic bathroom and Ronni-er-Roxie is lying on the bed. I dunno...bad period? Roxi-er-Ronnie doesn't believe her story about being raped by Archie. Oh, I'm confused. There is shouting, fighting and lots of crying, and Babs joins in the fun.

Bradley and JoJo can't take the tube out of town because the police are guarding the door. They try to take a taxi, but Bradley remembers that he's left the passports back in the house. Pity they don't work for Mossad really. The

Dot and Ian are playing 'e's dead with a family video from the Beale/Fowler video vaults. There's Ange, Shazza, the first Mark Fowler, 'Shell, Kaffee, Tweacle and Arfur. And then the video dies...

Bradley returns home in time to see Dadley and err...other bloke being taken away. He creeps away from the coppers, and...then his phone goes off. Oh no, he climbs up on a handy roof. Who'd have thought an accountant could be so fit?

Oh NOO! He's jumped! Or did he stumble on the slightly unstable mid-Victorian lead flashing.

JoJo and Dadley try to come to terms with the sight of Bradley's motionless form on the tarmac, blood draining from his cheeks and onto the road. JoJo finally says what she's been meaning to say, ever since she sat contemplating the BLOOD RED finger painting while Bradley packed...

And then George Lamb starts talking and I have to remove all sharp objects from the room.

2009-09-23T15:12:00.004+00:00

LITTLE MISS SUNSHITE

The Queen Vic is having one of those frequent non-comedy competitions they make up whenever they can’t think of enough plot for a week. This time it is a beauty contest. JoJo, Chelski, Syed’s Unwitting Beard and a few extras are taking part. Jojo does a strip tease and uses the opportunity to shower the Vic with tat from her stall, which she then sells. She also makes a stupid and out-of-character speech about how she is the queen of hearts. More like the Queen of WHATEVER. Juhneen’s Paddy Considine looking bloke goes over and says, “ I liked your speech.” Jojo: “Thanks!” Paddy: “Wanna shag?” Jojo “OK!” Juhneen pulls a hacky face.

Syed’s Unwitting Beard sings a Whitney lurve song to Syed, while everyone else is sick in their mouths a little bit. Xtian has a new slightly dozy-looking boyfriend whom he is using to torment Syed with thoughts of forbidden man-lurve. Syed (who has no neck, btw) is pretending he doesn’t care. SUB and Chelski have a tedious row.

Bradley has persuaded his glum faced girlfriend and her cute little deaf son not to move to Canadia so they can stay in Walford and watch him mope after JoJo. Good plan, glum faced girlfriend. Bradley plays scalectrix with the cute son then (SYMBOLISM ALERT) the car goes off the tracks. Bradley (SYMBOLISM ALERT – Gah!! Two lots of symbolism in five minutes!!!) then stands on it and crushes it. Cute son says “You’re not my dad! I hate you!” in sign language and runs off. Bradley proposes to Sid (aka glum faced girlfriend) in a really half arsed way so she laughs in his face and says that marriage is a patriarchal construct that’s not for her. Bradley sulks on Losers’ Bench a bit then reappears with a new Scalectrix car (SYMBOLISM ALERT) and says he wants them all to be together whatever.

Tanyah, Jane, Dadley and Bealemeister are doing a week of wife swap. WTF??? This mainly seems to involve Ian crawling round in a drunken stupor while Jane tells stories to Tanyah’s cute baby about people called Ian meeting horrible deaths. There is some controversy about whether Devil Child Peter (who has grown up into an illustration from a 1970’s girls comic) has shagged/is shagging Tanyah’s Eva Green lookin’ daughter. Drunk Ian tries to slip a Kaff’s Kaff battered saveloy to Tanyah in the middle of the night and she wakes up and screams “Eww, get off, you creep!” Devil Child Lucy runs in and sees the whole thing and laughs a satanic laugh.

Babs has whored herself out to Evil Archie to get the money to pay for Sam’s bail. No–one else would stump up, which isn’t surprising considering she scarpered to Brazil and changed heads last time she was on bail. Everyone else is like ”Muuuum, what did you do that for??” HMP Lakeland Plastics (where, yes, Sam did wear a rounders bib whenever it was visiting time! Nostalgia!) has not been kind to Sam’s gigantic hair. Bab’s shoe-horns her into a tight dress and enters her into the “Queen Vic Made Up Beauty Contest”. She then uses her Stalinist powers to make Trinidad rig the vote and announce her the winner. Well done Babs, that’ll really cheer Sam up when Archie turns you into a replicant like in that BBC promo slot of yesteryear.

Bianca and Rickay are still having problems. Whatever.

Wheelchair Lad declares himself a rival to Dasbo for Libbie’s affections. Also Whatever.

Babs goes to Archie’s Den of Evil (aka the car lot) to submit herself to his evil whims but the entire Mitchell Jr Brigade (well, Roxie, Fill, Ronnie and Billy) show up and give him a big pile of cash that Ronnie was saving up to buy another disastrous nightclub. “Keep your stinking bail money,” they say and march out triumphantly. (Babs says something boring about not being able to buy love, and family, probably, as well, before they go). Archie sits there making evil faces until Juhneen (who can smell a used £20 note from 500 yds) conveniently wanders in. Archie says “The Mitchells, we hates them forever” and offers Juhneen a big pile of money to help him make them pay, make them all pay! Juhneen fondles the money lasciviously and tries out a few evil faces of her own.

2009-09-15T11:06:00.002+00:00

THE RETURN

It’s been a while, but the other week I actually watched an episode of EE that made me want to blog about it! Yay! I don’t know how regular this will be so don’t get too carried away, dear readers, but we’ll see how it goes. The event that encouraged this Return was none other than the Return Of Sam Mitchell! Dun dun dunhhh!!! As we all know, Sam used to be a teenager played by Daniella Westbrook, but after Daniella had some well-publicised drug shame hell type goings on, Sam Mitchell was sent away ‘to Spain’ and later returned with a completely new head to be played by Kim Medcalf, who, not to put too fine a point of it, seemed less thick than Daniella and so her Sam (aka Sham) occasionally put on a Business Barbie style New Look power suit and gibbered on about “business plans” and so on. She left too after getting embroiled in the Dirty Den Comes Back From The Dead But Not For Long storyline and now Sam is back again, having transmuted back into Daniella Westbrook. WTF? Now I am just waiting for a kafka-esque storyline where Sam is pursued by a stalker played by Kim Medcalf. Come on, EE, that would be awesome!!

I haven’t watched it properly for a while but was amazed at how many old timers are back on the square – Rickay! Bianca!! Juh-neen!!! I’m not sure who some of the new ones are yet though.

Anyway, it turns out that Rickay was sent to Brazil to launder some money for the Mitchells or something, and while he was there he met Sam who persuaded him to bring her home. Apparently Sam met some bloke in a bar who persuaded her that her crimes (preverting the course of justice re Dead Den) would have been like totally forgotten about by now. As I said, this Sam is thicker than we are used to. You can tell she lived in Brazil because she is covered in fake tan and wears scanty outfits in retina-searing combinations of orange and fuschia. Also her hair is gigantic and back combed to hell - she looks like Angie Dickinson! - and her teeth are so white that in some shots they actually look as though they are made of metal! Yikes! Her faintly goblinish aspect and wide range of sour expressions are still the same as ever though, thank God.

Babs is pleased to see her of course, but they are worried she will be collared by the filth, so she is supposed to be in hiding. Sam’s idea of hiding is to go down to the bar of the Vic and dance on the table in a vaguely robotic fashion. They make her hide properly while Fill talks to his brief. It turns out that she is still wanted and so will have to go back to Brazil (though clearly this is not going to happen). She decides to make the most of it and annoy as many people as possible before going back though – she annoys Roxie by impugning her motherhood skills and calls her baby retarded (possibly). She annoys Ronnie by aiming her breasts at Ronnie’s simple minded oaf of a boyfriend/husband or whatever. Ronnie and Roxie pretend they have known her for ages, even though they hadn’t been invented yet when Sam was last in it.

She annoys Jay by being a bit flirty with him (and giving him her undies – which (a) EWWW!! and b) is probably illegal in paedopocalypse UK) and then telling him to “leave me alone, you stupid childy child”, the next minute. She annoys Silent Tracy because obviously she is going to end up working at the Vic and thus giving her even less shifts/screen time/chances to say “I’ll go and change the barrel” once every two years. She annoys Archie, by just existing apparently. She annoys Bianca in classic fashion by immediately mesmerising Rickay with her barely concealed funbags and luminous teeth. By the end of two episodes they are engaged. Pat and Wuh Wuh Whitney* tell Bianca that she has to fight for her lurve, so Bianca goes to the engagement party to suck her teeth and look disapproving and ends up calling Sam “a peroxide chav”. Sam calls Bianca a “ginger mug” (V poor repartee. Must try harder) and bam – they are pulling hair and whaling at each other in classic fashion. Mreowww! Wuh Wuh Whitney is also annoyed as she is going to steal Rickay from Bianca and also deprive Wuh Wuh Whitney of the only father figure she knows who doesn’t indulge in Wrong Touching and call her a Dirty Whore all the time.

There is a classic montage of the people what Sam has annoyed, all staring thoughtfully at the their mobile phones, considering grassing her up. We never find out who makes the call, but before long a very tall detective and some shorter uniforms show up. Sam (wearing a heinous bacofoil batwing jacket she must have stolen off La Roux) runs away. She steals a car from the Arches, not realising that cars are taken to the Arches because THEY DON’T WORK. FAIL!!!! She makes it to the tube station on foot when some cops grab her and Sam screams “Nooo! nooo!! nooooo!!!!” while crying really badly and pulling unfortunate faces. “Someone grassed up my dortah!” hisses Babs, wig spinning with wrath. It is, as they say, ON.

In other news:

Juhneen has hooked up with a handsome young man who looks a bit like Paddy Considine. They are victimising Chelsea by having Paddy Approxidine rob her and then pretending to be nice to her. Juhneen expresses her gratitude by surprising Paddy whilst reclining naked, clad only in a pile of grubby £20 notes. I’m sure it isn’t the first time.

Minty has a love interest played by Josie Lawrence; a Guardian-reader type hippie with a kaftan woven of muesli and a son in a wheelchair, who is played by a real life bloke in a wheelchair. EE = bringing the issues!

Duhnise has acquired a love interest played by that handsome black bloke who has been in lots of other things. He has an annoying badly acted stage school kid, whose mother is decomposing in a shed in the allotment if the well-directed flies/vomitting scene means what I think it does. Ruh roh.

* this, of course is a reference to Bring It On, one of the Greatest Films Ever!!

2009-06-17T11:39:00.000+00:00

Ummm...hello...is there anybody there?

This is Sarah. Mark and I are no so busy that we can't even manage our own blogs, let alone Easties or TVD.

However, I do have some good news: the lovely Patrick has asked if he can take over Easties Updates, so we've said that he can, with our blessing.

Take it away Patrick

2008-04-11T12:59:00.000+00:00

THE APPRENTICE: WAITER! THERE'S A LOSER IN MY SOUP!
The producers have surpassed themselves. Every target of watercooler hatred is here. The dickhead sales managers; the "project managers" who spend their time in meetings or writing motivational speeches, and Vicky Pollard's cousin!

This week, evil ginger stringbean Ms Celeriac is first to the emailer phone (yes, I did used to work with someone like her, and the feeling was mutual), and gleefully passes on SirAlan's summons to the 4th floor of the Tate - some crazy metaphor about regeneration. SirAlan wants the candidates to "regenerate" the urban pub trade, with a day of gastropubbery in Islington. I note that La Celeriac appears to wear one of her nasty air-hostess type scarves even to bed. Does she have really awful prison style neck tattoos or something?

Strangely shiny mandroid Ian the Notloser is appointed project manager for the boys team - sorry, Renaissance. Kevin, who gets more like a walking Little Britain sketch every week, announces that he has eaten in a few Italian restaurants, so why don't they have an Italian evening. Refa says: "Yah! And let's all talk with Italian accents!" Quick! somebody call Boris Johnson and get this man onto his PR team! Notloser makes Kevin the head chef, because apparently he opened a jar of Dolmio once.

The Posh boys leap into action and go off to design their menus. Oh yes, the menus. Kevin discusses the menus with the kitchen adviser (appointed so that they don't poison the punters and sue SirAlan). Kitchen Adviser tries not to smirk as Kevin says: "Ummm...spaghetti bolognese...and carbonara....and mushrooms, baked in the oven...with salt and pepper...and perhaps we could puree that...yeah, I've had that dish in a restaurant." Sgt Simon's face falls. And LEE McQUEEN ISN'T HAPPY, (that's the rough one that Mark fancies, though Mark fancies him a little less now that LEE McQUEEN has started referring to LEE McQUEEN in the third person and threatening to Hulk-Smash every five minutes) and he tells NotLoser so in no uncertain terms. Well, he has a point: they've got posh menus, but ummm...no food. NotLoser tells Kevin to wave a spatula around or something while they sort out the menus.

The girls are going Bollywood because International Car Dealer Sara is Asian. (Venomous Claire sulks that curry is too "niche" - WTF, is she a time traveller from the 1960s or something??? and Saira later correctly points oiut htat she often wants to tell Claire just to shut the fuck up) Trouble is, she doesn't know how to cook, and buys the wrong spices. The kitchen adviser points this out to her, and she tries to bamboozle him with some flannel about cooking proper curries. The resulting proper curry looks a little like regurgitated tripe, and tastes worse. The girls split into two teams. Celeriac and the sales ladies flog tickets for a fiver each around Islington. Mercifully, they don't have to resort to flashing their knickers and snogging tramps like in previous years. Sara and Plump girl spend the afternoon learning to cook. By evening time, they're producing something edible, and the punters appear to have a good time, despite Celeriac and Lindi assuming that the customers want to be their bestest friends, and this will lead to more tips. Boy, these girls love their tips. The evening ends with some "Bollywood dancing" from a bloke they appear to have dragged out of the kitchen of a local tandoori house. The researcher who dug this one up deserves a medal.

I'm not quite sure what's happening with Lucinda here. Every shot of her makes look like she's about to break down in tears, and her outfits get slightly more bizarre with each episode...

There's trouble in the boys' kitchen. Yep. All that time spent on poshifying the menus, and they...ummm...forgot to go the cash and carry. So it's a supermarket sweep for jars of Dolmio, really expensive pizza bases, cheese and stuff. Sgt Simon tries his best not to cry, and shouts at NotLoser about logistics instead. Unlike the girls, the boys do open for lunch, but lots of peopel complain that their bolognese is nasty and bland. LEE MCQUEEN has to let them have it for free, and he's still not happy!

Head Chef Kevin seems to have got on the wrong reality show, and thinks he's on Masterchef. He demands ciabatta for the bruschetta, and Simon nearly does break down. Just before service begins, the boys get an inspirational chat from Kevin, and then out they go to sell spaghetti. About half way through the evening there's a problem: they run out of food. Simple, says Head Chef Kevin; he cuts a pizza in half and puts it on two plates, until the look of utter disgust from the customer sends fey Michael Sophocles scampering back into the kitchen.

No, this isn't Masterchef, this is Little Britain, isn't it? (More Komedy Kevin moments: (1) Trying to pass off coffee as a desert. Yes, and why don't you offer a glass of orange juice as a starter too! (2) Saying he would be happy to pay £4.95 for a bowl of soup in Guildford. Because that's the way Kevin rolls... in Guildford)

Well, back in the boardroom, Nick and Margaret report that the girls made less money, but managed not to blow most of their budget in Morrisons, and are therefore the winners.

Ian takes poor Sgt Simon (for insubordination and scowling) and Kevin into the boardroom. Siralan seems to have a little man crush on Sgt Simon, and wants to see what else he can do. I'm sure he can do lots of things, Siralan. Lots of sexy sexy things! Kevin actually manages to make himself look a lesser prick than Ian, but makes up for it back at the house after Ian is let go. Oh well, Ian, at least you learnt a new word, eh?

Next week: Lucinda cries! Alex looks sulky! The boys shout! and LEE MCQUEEN IS as yet undecided about his mood.

2007-05-20T19:31:00.000+00:00

THE FINAL COUNTDOWN: DEATH! SPLASH! HORROR!
Now, one of the things I forgot to tell you on Friday was that Yolande discovered that @@'s internet nonce was in fact Dasbo. So taken was she by the romantic fool's crazy technological shenanigans that she arranges a special lunch for Dasbo and @@, so that they can talk together. Dasbo declares his love in the time-honoured way of the teenage male: "Urrgh...like ya donneye? Hmph...". @@ is not impressed, and suggests he tries to express his feelings using the medium of...Scrabble. Now, many people have been wooed over a game of Scrabble, but I'm guessing not many East End teenagers. Yolande leaves them working out how many swear words begin with Q, and whether or not they can fit them on a triple word score, and joins TriniDad in the pub. She's all smug about her cupid work until TriniDad observes that the Dolescum track record on teenage pregnancies is hardly exemplary. Yolande: worried.

But you don't want to know about that, you want to know...who dies? Well, we return to the car. DC Peter is unconscious - well that's an easy half hour for all of us. Ben says his head hurts, and the grown-ups seem OK. Strangely, Billy was not catapulted through the windscreen at 50mph, and Fill sends him for help. As it is our last post, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that Hertfordshire has no mobile phone coverage at all. Billy trudges along until he spots a car, and runs toward it. The driver, seeing Billy's bloodstained head, thinks she has stumbled on the set of 28 Weeks Later, and speeds away.

Meanwhile DC Peter has convulsions (fine jerking there, DC Peter). Fill drags the Bealemeister out of the car, and they bicker. Except that the mechanic forgets that the car's brakes might not be in the best condition after somersaulting over a fallen tree, and the car putters down the hill, turns left at the bend, and slides gently into a handy lake. Fill immediately dives into the water. Suddenly I am reminded of the plight of the manatee. He manages to pull Ben to safety, and Ian manages not to say: "Don't bother with the gimp, save the Aryan and his pure seed!" Fill goes back for DC Peter, and pulls him out too.

Bradley and JoJo are friends again, and discussing her married boyfriend in the pub. JoJo gets a text from Dadley, which Bradley intercepts; but cleverly (unlike most EE strumpets) she doesn't list him in her phonebook as "Dadley- the married man wot I am shagging", so Bradley is none the wiser.

At the hair-patting salon, Fairy Bobby is wreaking havoc with the straighteners, the staff want to go home, but Babs orders fresh supplies of alcohol and demands more facepacks all round. DC Lucy looks slightly constipated and reaches for the phone. I think this is supposed to be that famous twinly intuition. Ian makes a pact with God for the life of his beautiful blonde boy. God doesn't tell him he's got the wrong number.

That's all folks. Thanks for reading.

2007-05-18T14:29:00.000+00:00

THE FINAL COUNTDOWN PTIII: SCOUTING FOR BOYS

It's morning on Albert Square, and the Bealemeister has forced the bodysnatched Devil Child Peter to spend the night with him under canvas on Loser's Bench. It must be some tribute to his standing in the community that the local coppers didn't burn the tent down and cart him off to the cells, or maybe he claimed that he was a persecuted minority or something. PJane stands with her hands on her hips and shakes her head, before noting that a night in a tent with Fill Mitchell is infinitely preferable to the sight of Babs getting her wig patted all day. She also tells them that their tent has mildew. Ian tells DC Peter to get the tent dried at the launderette, and try not to get bodysnatched on the way.

Wee Ben is bouncing around the house, packing sleeping bags and trying not to look pleased at the thought of a Cruestella-less weekend. He even refuses to kiss her goodbye! Cruestella says nothing, but her eyes say that he will pay. Oh yes. He will pay.

Billy comes along for some unspecified reason, and is plonked in the back with the boys. Ian bigs up DC Peter's running ability (must be all those pagan sacrificial ceremonies) and manages to imply that Ben is doomed to failure in life because he's deaf or something. Billy too, is upset by Ian's social darwinism, but Fill knows that it's all about survival of the fattest, and merely turns puce.

Dadley reassures Tanyette no. 1 that nothing will change when Tanyette no.3 comes into the world, and offers to go to the scanning session with Nurse Tanyah. He calls JoJo to babysit. JoJo tries to point out that most mistresses don't have to babysit their lovers' offspring while said lover buggers off to the hospital with his pregnant wife, but agrees to babysit anyway. Tanyette no. 1 says: "Oh no, not JoJo, she's common." Dadley says that JoJo has been through a lot: dead dad, mad mum, irritating brother, two ginger boyfriends...and that the Tanyettes should be nice to her. The Tanyettes look thoughtful and later interrogate JoJo about her dead dad. Tanyette no. 2 bursts into tears and says that her life would end if their dad left them. JoJo looks 'troubled'.

Enough of that. Back to the camping. Once we have all got over the sight of Ian Beale in shorts (put it away, Patrick), we find them in a field somewhere in Herts. Fill wants to know where the pub and satellite sports channels are, but Beale says they're doing it the Iron man way, with real fires, wiping their bums with nettles and making flagpoles out of two bits of bamboo and some string. Fill groans and gets the tent out. Ben says he wants to sleep with DC Peter so that they can torture dormice together or something. Only the Beale tent has shrunk in the wash, so they can't get it to go up properly. DC Peter and Ben have been watching far more Ray Mears than is healthy for young boys and set about making a shelter out of old tree bark and discarded Tescos bags. While they're hunting for wood or rabbits or something, Fill gets a campfire going and cooks some sausages.. Only he does it too close to the tent and...DEATH CAMP INFERNO HORROR!...nahhhh...the Mitchell tent burns down, taking the sausages with it.

So far, so pathetic. Meanwhile, at the hairpatting salon, Toddler Bobby has decided to dress up as a fairy princess, prompting raised eyebrows from Babs, and continuing bitchiness, especially when Fairy Bobby starts chucking moisturiser at Bab's wig. The one time they need a psychotic child torturer, and Cruestella buggers off to do some lawyering or whatever she does these days.

Fill packs up to go home, but Ben pouts and says his dad didn't want to go camping all along, and now he's ruined it, and he hates him, and hates everyone and wishes he was dead etc. Back in the car, Ian starts on the verbal and Fill drives like a normal country person would drive - about 20 miles over the speed limit. More shouting. Oh no! A tree has fallen into the road (as they do on perfectly nice, sunny, wind-free days). Fill swerves to avoid it, and the Range Rover somersaults about 40 ft along the tarmac and goes crash. Oh noes! Who will survive the DEATH CRASH HORROR?!

2007-05-17T11:04:00.000+00:00

THE FINAL COUNTDOWN PT II: WHEN TWO TRIBES GO TO BORE
After Monday night’s vague enjoyableness (maybe I am kidding myself and just have fond memories of Mickney falling over a lot) not much happens on Tuesday.

The Tanyettes find out about Tanyah’s be-bunned oven and bicker, carry on and act authentically bratty. Dadley takes out a big life insurance policy on himself and Nurse Tanyah jokes about greasing the stairs so she can make a claim. I hope that isn’t foreshadowing as any fule kno that the only way to kill your husband on EE is to batter him with a novelty canine-themed doorstop.

GADawn hangs around outside the cop shop waiting for her precious Mr Smarmypants to be released. Meanwhile Chez Dolescum, Keef and Mickney start squawking about how Smarmy is an evil wife batterer who can never darken their doors again. When GADawn finds out she tells them all to shut up and hustles Smarmy into the kitchen. I am finding GADawn wholly dislikeable at the moment, even when Dr Fox is pushing her down flights of stairs. Smarmy goes to see Dr Fox at the surgery but she summons Naomi and Smarmy runs away at the sight of strapping black lesbian. He goes back when Naomi has left and Dr Fox is all “so what are you going to do? Hit me again?” Smarmy makes an evil/ambiguous face. Hmm, maybe EE is trying to mess with our expectations and make Smarmy the baddy, but I think the message the audience is going to get is more like “No wonder he’s beating his wife when she’s so crazy!” And this is the same show that once ran a v good wife beating storyline with Psycho Trevor and Drippy all those years ago. Sigh.

@@ is all set to meet her Cyber-nonce. She tries to borrow some clothes from Chelski but Chelski says no and calls her “Ugly Betty”. @@ borrows them anyway (even though she looks stupid) and gets Yolande to braid her hair up. @@ then takes her sad little picnic to the park and there are some “tension building” hedge-cam shots of the nonce staring at her through a shrubbery. Yolande and the Bennetons are all “ohs noes, Where has @@ gone? She is probably being abducted by paedophile scum right now!!” but it just turns out to be Dasbo, who couldn’t think of another way to say he lurved @@. Awww. @@ runs off in a strop.

DVDLi makes Mickney put on a suit and practise being charming to ladies and then is all jealous when he does it. Oh whatever. Wake me up when he’s chained to a barrel with Atkins or Pat approaching him with a strap-on.

Dot does her peace brokering thing and arranges a tea party for the Mitchell/Beale feud to be resolved. Fill is very late and Ian prints out a list of all the Mitchell wrongdoings which he wants them all to sign so he can scan it and put it on his myspace page or something. They are all bickering (or else standing in the background saying “rhubarb rhubarb”) until Ben remembers that the whole row was over an unpaid for saveloy at the caff and an unpaid for drink at the Vic. They try to get comedy mileage out of the word “saveloy” but my heart is dead to such blatant pandering. Ben offers to pay for the items if it will make the madness stop. Ian and Fill are shamed into making up, shake hands on it and then the blokes and kids agree to go all camping together and the women agree on a mass hair-patting session. As they all leave, the Bealemeister makes a face like “Yes, Mitchell, we’ll go camping! Camping in HELL!!!”

2007-05-15T14:36:00.000+00:00

THE FINAL COUNTDOWN PT 1: PIMP MY SPIDE
Dr Fox makes squirrelly faces and pops more pills. She has got a black eye but I’m not sure if Smarmy gave it to her or she has been busy with the felt tip pens. She phones in sick and sits in a corner rocking and thinking about her barren womb, before putting on a severe black suit/dress thing and going to the pub. Naomi pops out of the plot cupboard long enough to see her, and ask what’s wrong. Dr Fox says she walked into a door ahem ahem and then starts crying. Naomi insists that she kalls the kops. They get a young Asian copper we have never seen before who goes to question Smarmy. Smarmy and GADawn are all indignant like “what is that crazy bitch up to now?” Smarmy is dragged off to the police station while Dr Fox watches and says “gibber gibber” and GADawn is all “Why I oughtta…” and tries to run over and batter her.

@@ is supposed to be revising but instead is spending all her time in one of those “chat rooms” on the “internets” that the young people seem to enjoy so much these days. Yolande sticks her oar in for some reason and is worried that her chat-friend is one of those cyber-nonces like on Chris Morris. @@ says that she is sure that he is a nice boy her own age and agrees to meet him. We see a back shot of the mystery paedo and it could possibly be Dasbo but it’s hard to tell for sure.

The maryjane is not growing well in the plot cupboard so DVDLi wants to pimp Mickney’s ass out to the matrons of Walford. Mickney is not eager to spend his working days with a ball gag in his mouth and gets a job at the Kwik E Mart with Trini Dad instead. He accidentally throws away a load of non expired yogurt (DVDLi tricks him into it – apparently Mickney is too thick to convert months into numbers…) and then has a hilariously shit sequence of accidents that ends up destroying half the stock. Back to the man-whoring for Mickney.

Nurse Tanyah and Dadley discuss the baby and also getting out a business loan. Exciting!

The Mitchell slash Beale feud rumbles towards its Tragic! Deadly! Conclusion! Wow, it’s like Romeo and Juliet but retarded. Cruestella tries to apologise directly to DC Lucy but Pjane sees her and tells her to get lost. Cruestella runs home and cries like a big gimp – not so easy picking on someone over the age of 10, eh Stel? – so Babs goes and has a row with Pjane and accuses her of being an unfit mother or something. Pjane tells Babs to do one and says “Oooo! I’m really scared!” in a sarcastic voice when Babs threatens her with something. Later on Ian goes to the laundrette and discovers that Phoney has shrunk all his woolly jumpers – he takes this as a sign of Mitchell eviltude, rather than Phoney’s incredible stupidity and has a huge row in the laundrette with Fill, Billy, Babs and Pjane. Dot wheels out a few biblical homilies and squeals ”Think of the children!” Just as Stupid Plot Baby and Baby Janet both start crying. Yes, think of the children as they – spoiler – plummet to the bottom of the canal in a deadly death crash horror of death!!!!!

2007-05-15T12:43:00.000+00:00

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT

I am sorry to say that after 610 posts and 5 years of blogging that Sarah and I have decided to call it a day. Though we have had a lot of fun over the years, we both have busy lives and other writing projects and are struggling to muster much enjoyment in watching/writing about the show as the quality continues to decline.

We'd both like to thank everyone for reading and for commenting over the years. We will still keep posting stuff at TV Dinners (see link to the right) and may even cover EE there, if we ever feel like it.

Before we go, we are going to cover Aqua-Fill Death Crash Special Week with a separate post for each night, just like the old days. Then we will each write a bit on what we have especially liked/hated over the years and then we will ride off into the sunset.

Enjoy the final week and thanks again.

Mark and Sarah xx

2007-05-15T12:39:00.000+00:00

SOMETHING KINDA "OW"!

Smarmy and Dawn have one day to get out of their love shack – Smarmy goes to draw out some money to get a deposit on a new place but Dr (Crazy like a) Fox has already emptied their joint account. She says she did it to help Smarmy so he would realise that GADawn is just a gold digging vixen. Meanwhile Dole Scum Keef has some money of Dawn’s (benefits or something, I dunno) but he has spent it all on cans of Special Brew. The love birds have to move in Chez Dole Scum. Later on GADawn has a dramatic confrontation with Dr Fox and the Dr pushes her down a flight of stairs. Heh.

The baby is OK and Dr Fox is all contrite and tearful, not wanting to be grassed up to the fuzz. She pops some pills (yes, Dr Fox, that’s all you need with your robust mental state – more drugs!!) and asks Smarmy round to patch things up. She gives him a list of their assets so they can share them out but then starts putting sexy moves on him. Smarmy notices that the nursery is still set up and there is a big circle on the calendar marked “the day my baby is born, bwa ha ha.” He realises that Dr Fox is still loony tunes and has to fight his way out of the apartment.

Dasbo and @@ fall out over Gus (??? Does Dasbo fancy him too, I don’t know…) and then @@ starts chatting online to a mystery boy. This will be Important For Later.

There is flu going round and Bradley, a Tanyette and Tanyah all succumb to it. JoJo looks after Bradley but is then annoyed when Duckface barges in with a klingon wordsearch book or something for Bradders to do. JoJo hassles Dadley to divorce Nurse Tanyah and move in with her. He arranges a rental of a showflat with horrid tan coloured fur wallpaper (that’s what it looked like to me) and gives her a vomtastic yellow nightie thing to wear. It is Dadley’s birthday and Jojo demands that she spends the evening with Dadley in the Fur Flat. Hateful Dadley engineers a row so he can ditch Tanyah and re-explore joJo’s ladygarden, even though Tanyah has cooked a nice meal and bought him a watch and made a cake etc. Tanyah is understandably annoyed and goes on a rampage of suspicion – finding evidence that Dadley is playing away. She marches down the street (past JoJo, who makes an excellent “gulp!” face) and starts laying into Carly, even though Dadley was just trying to sell her insurance. Of course, if I found my partner was cheating on me, I’d be more interested in talking to my partner than the bit on the side, but what would I know? I’m not a badly written soap opera character. In the aftermath, Tanyah announces that she’s pregnant. Gasp!

They have a discussion and Tanyah wants to get an abortion as she doesn’t trust Dadley. Dadley tells a story about how when he was a kid, Jim beat up a black mate of his and then locked him up in a coffin! Don’t ask me. Tanyah accepts this bizarre anecdote as an excuse for his shiftiness and they agree to keep the baby. Meanwhile, Bradley finds the telltale yellow nightie and JoJo says she is seeing some other married bloke who in no way resembles Dadley, oh no.

Ian complains to some Polish (though the accent is more like French/Boratistani) builders that they are too noisy. They tell him to sling his hook so he goes into dickhead overdrive and starts filming them for his dossier to the council and refusing to serve them at the caff. They mock him by taking photos of him with their phones and later have a five way gang bang with Parkwife.
The tiresome feud between Ian and Fill continues re the late license application. Fill gets the Polish Builders to brick up Ian’s gate so Ian pours cement down the Vic toilets so they have to shut the pub and get plumbers in. When Ian refuses to pay for the damage, Fill goes round and tries to drown him in a bowl of washing up (“Fairy liquid may be kind to your hands, but has does it feel on your FACE, Beale!!”). Fill is rescued by Pjane, or possible baby bobby, all of whom are harder than Ian. The womenfolk get involved too when Cruestella sees DC Lucy drinking alcopops in the park with a bunch of hoodies and grasses her up to PJane, who tells her to mind her own business. They spend a lot of time telling each other that this isn’t finished yet – no, it’s finished next week with a shocking Death Crash Tragedy tm every soap mag ever.

2007-05-09T22:11:00.000+00:00

EE: THE WRATH OF BEALE

Poor old Bradders. First he dumps JoJo for Posh Totty. Then JoJo dumps him even after he dumps Posh Totty and tries to get back with her because JoJo's secretly schtupping his dad. And the only other single non-pregnant woman under 50 is Duckface. Fortunately they share a passing acquaintance with the work of Gene Roddenberry. Well, when I say 'passing', I mean Preeti can quote entire episodes of Deep Space Nine (the one that nobody likes) at the drop of a hat. Bradders starts to wonder if a lifetime of Vulcan salutes and nanobot jokes is really a good price to pay for getting his end away. Duckface goes into major stalker girlfriend mode. Bradley: sad.

Meanwhile JoJo is 'raising the stakes' with Dadley. This means not turning up in the Queen Vic toilets when summoned for a quickie, and going out with people her own age (I think)

Deano sulks about his mother being a skanky ho again. @@ moons over Gus. Make it quick @@, he'll be off on his suspension soon. The Bennetton family conspire to send Parklife and Mrs Goggins on an Easyjet flight to nowhere (or was it Tallinn?) because as usual, nobody bothered to book a honeymoon. Atkins is told to get out of Walford (again) or something. Her revenge is to tell Chelski that she shagged Parklife and Goggins knows! Chelski says she's not picking up the pieces of Mrs Goggins' broken heart yet again, and packs her bags. Then somebody suggests they all go down the pub and Chelski decides to stay.

Over at the Vic, Cruestella reminds Ben that his happiness and well-being are entirely up to her. Fill and Ian start on the Stupid Feud of DOOM that will apparently end up in the death of a Devil Child but we don't know which one (stupid soap mags). Place your bets here, folks.

Dot doesn't want the cute baby to be registered with a doctor and acts so badly that even Phoney gets suspicious. But Phoney's got her own problems. Billy doesn't want her to test the New Phoneybaby for congenital defects because the whole thing smacks of a eugenic conspiracy to prove that his seed is faulty. Cute baby gets a mild rash that Phoney says is MENINGITIS - once again the BBC miss a chance to show viewers the right thing to do, and they end up in the a&e ward, talking to a bored nurse about missing red books and NHS numbers. Phoney offers to help Dot hide the cute baby from the authorities and gets a job in the launderette to boot. Another baby for the EE supercreche.

JoJo tells NurseTanyah to expand the hairpatting shop to do...I dunno...car bodywork? So NurseTanyah decides that taking business advice from a nymphet with a market stall is a good idea and does exactly that.

Slimy loses his job for giving GADawn a credit card. He tries to hide it from GAD, but Dr SheWolf says: "No he's lost his job, you little strumpet. Who's going to pay for your hair extensions now, eh? eh? And I'm not paying your rent any more either." Hang on, she was paying their RENT? What kind of sick weirdness is this? Speaking of sick weirdness, have GAD and Slimy wondered about the medical ethics of buying your patient's baby and pimping your husband to her in order to 'keep her sweet'. No? I'll shut up then. There is cameo appearance from the lesbian off that geek comedy drama Attachments (ahhh...how well I remember their urgent discussions of banner ads and saucy intraoffice instant messaging). This time she's Dr SheWolf's happily married sister, with two moppets in tow. Dr SheWolf tells her that she's pregnant, and Slimy's at work. But there's some kind of altercation in the pub involving Slimy and a bottle and Dr SheWolf's tissue of lies is torn asunder. Not sure if this will provoke a crazed rampage involving a speculum, but we can but hope.

DVDLi, deprived of her dope allotment, decides to advertise Mickney as an escort service. The ramifications of this are not to be gone into, not even after several stiff drinks and many hallucinogenic drugs. Mickney and Gus find out, and DVDLi is foiled! Again! A nation sighs with relief (but not that kind of relief)...

2007-04-30T13:18:00.000+00:00

MOTHRATKINS VS GOGGINZILLA

I'm off on holiday tomorrow and an't think of anything to top Sarah's ace post - so here's a quick rundown of last week's so-called action...

News starts to spread about Dot and Jim’s stupid plot baby, who spends all Monday’s episode crying non stop, the poor little thing. They have the family round for dinner and Jim quickly explains that it is Nick’s son that he sired by knocking up a nurse whilst in cancer prison hospital. That makes about as much sense as the real plot. Abi notices that baby “George” looks a lot like baby Tomasz so Dot tells her to shut up. Everyone is a bit non plussed/sceptical. Dadley mocks Jim fro being paternal finally. Jim says “Shut up, haven’t you got a barely legal trollop to be messing round with?” not really.
But it’s still true! Jojo comes back from her holiday and starts canoodling with Dadley. He tells her that his marriage is in trouble but JoJo later discovers that this is a lie.
DVDLi chucks all of Gus’ stuff out of his cupboard and put a padlock on the door. Gus is all “Hey! That’s my plot cupboard where I live for most of the year!” Mickney discovers that she has set up the world’s smallest weed farm in the cupboard and has a dramatic confrontation. DVDLi whines that she has to do anything – ANYTHING – for money now that she has to support herself, her old ma and Mickney. Mickney says he will get a job and is interviewed by Bradley’s firm. I’m not sure what job he is going for – do banks actually need Jesters/Motley fools?
Cruestella tells Ben that “address” only has one “d” so he fails a test. Bwa ha ha. Fill buys him a lap top and Cruestella is cross because she wants Fill to buy her shiny presents instead!! Ben tries to talk to Fil about Cruestela’s reign of terror but Fill has a hilarious EE type misunderstanding and thinks he is talking about puberty instead. Fill is all “It’s art of growing up and becoming a man!”
Fill says he will propose to Cruestella properly and gives her a wad of dirty bloodstained £20 notes to buy herself an engagement ring. Classy! Why didn’t he just drop an Elizabeth Duke catalogue in her lap and be done with it! He wants them all to go away together but Stella tells Ben to make sure he is left behind, so he smashes up the bogs at school so he has to be punished by Fill. Fill and Stella go away and Fill proposes by hiding the ring in a bacon bap from a white van in a lay by. Ha ha ha, oh Stella can’t you find a nice middle class man to terrorise! They end up going back for Ben anyway as Fill misses him.
Annoying Deano moves in with Atkins but says he will go to Parklife’s stag do and wedding anyway. Mrs G says she doesn’t want a hen do but all her family/friends (they don’t actually need to rope in a bunch of extras as Mrs G actually has friends OMG!!) chuck a few triple vodkas down her neck and she is all systems go (her drunk acting is not bad actually!). Goddess Pat sees that Atkins is at the bar making hacky faces and goes and tells her to git out of Walford and no one wants her and Parklife has moved on and wants to be happy with Mrs G etc and so on. Atkins says that Pat is a dried up old slapper and will have no family once Parklife and Mrs G get married and move out. They carry on arguing and eventually go outside and have an awesome catfight with slapping, throwing onto car bonnets and kung fu kicks (from Atkins, though I would love to see Pat lay down a hefty axe kick). A handily passing police van breaks them up and while they are on the way to the cells Atkins mentions that she shagged Parklife recently, so there.
I miss the actual unfeasibly quick wedding but there is the usual will they/won’t they bollocks without which no soap wedding is complete. Pat warns Parklife that Atkins is in marriage wrecking mode so in the end he tells Goggins himself, adding that he was “depressed” when the act of joyless carnal hoo-ha took place – excellent excuse there, Parklife. Mrs Goggins says (a) Ew! And (b) She’ll have to think about it. While she’s wandering round in her non traditional maroon outfit, Atkins comes over to spill the beans and is such a cow that this somehow makes Mrs G decide to go through with the wedding. Don’t ask me… Atkins is all ”Bah, you might have foiled me this time.. but I’ll be back!”.

2007-04-29T06:06:00.000+00:00

OEDIPUS VEX

Imagine yourself at a EE script conference. I imagine these take place in the cellar of some private drinking club. As dwarves in tutus rollerskate between the participants, bearing the drug of choice, plus a stiff chaser, the producers lounge on giant chaise lounges, occasionally yelling with glee as the next shivering scriptwriter is dragged from a softly moaning heap of rags in the corner. The head producer wipes her hands on a runner's Prada scarf and eyes the pitiful figure before her.

HEAD PRODUCER: Which one are you again? Ah yes. We've had to ditch the exchange arrangement with Bad Girls. Jim Fenner made outrageous demands for a believable character that wouldn't immediately sink his career after three shows, so the deal's off. We're keeping Atkins for a bit, but they want the Tall Julie one back. What's she doing right now? Oh well, get her to kiss Minty, throw in a bit of mother/son bonding, and send her back to Brighton. Are we putting the plot cupboard in Brighton these days? How charming. NEXT!

Grateful that she has escaped another ritual humiliation at the hands of Sid Owen, the writer scuttles back into her corner.

HEAD PRODUCER: Who's next then? Chop chop! Time is licence payers' money! Hmmm...this Ben/Cruestella plot. Not quite sure what's going on here, but those On High say that we've got to do some bullying thing. So keep up the good work. What's that? You want to raise the stakes? Fill is going to notice that something's wrong, but he'll get the wrong idea? Speak up!

SCRIPTWRITER: Errr...well, I thought Fill could notice that something is wrong, but being such a dreadful father, would think that Cruestella has it covered.

HEAD PRODUCER: SILENCE! I HAVE AN IDEA. Even better than that, we have a chance for one of those two handers that we usually reserve for Dot and a lucky stooge. Who can we have...think think...

SCRIPTWRITER: How about Dadley? The symmetry between the -

HEAD PRODUCERS: Bald Heads! Yes I know! It'll be like living Gilbert & George, only without the poo. Well, they'll have to talk shit, but you know what I mean. I like the cut of your jib, young...I'm sorry are you male or female? It's hard to tell with those EE-issue uniforms and haircuts. Anyway, not that it matters. Write some stuff about fatherly bonding and up the ante with Stella's torment. How is she abusing him, by the way? Chinese burns on arms? Oh, and throw in an awkward conversation about birds and bees. That'll sort the kid out for another week.

Hang on...I haven't finished with you yet. Since you're such an ideas...whatever...you can also handle the Goggins/Parklife wedding. I want them married by May.

SCRIPTWRITER: I thought doctors couldn't perform weddings...

HEAD PRODUCER: No, not Dr Foxxy, fool! May the month. We haven't had an unfeasibly quick wedding for a while. Make Mrs Goggins decide on 27 April, which is also the anniversary of The Death of St Jimbo. See? I know my Easties lore... That'll give Deano a chance to earn some acting spurs.

SCRIPTWRITER: But...Deano?

HEAD PRODUCER: Nothing too hard, just let him pout a bit over at Atkins's place and do his hilarious drunk acting thing. Carly can do that screwy up face and scream a bit, and the teens'll love it. Make sure he takes his shirt off too. Oh, and give her a cough. I like coughs...

Alright then, who have we got left? Hmmm.... Dadley and JoJo...running out of ideas with those two. Just get her to send him saucy text messages and maybe one of the kids will find it or something. Do 40-year-olds know how to do photo messaging? Must ask my mum.

What else? Oh, Dot and Jim and that baby. Oh I don't know. Can't she come up with some story about it being Nick's? Oh he's had cancer and been in prison forever, hasn't he? How about a ghost baby? We'll rope in the blonde Tanyette and freak out the Beale Devil Children some more.

Oh, there's a point. Prison Bitch Bert. Has he gone blind yet? No? well, get that zombie-faced kid to save him, and get him to the hospital. There's potential in that relationship. We could have another set of Cottons if Dot decides to take her walking frame and go.

sycophantic laughter from the writers' corner...

DID I SAY YOU COULD SPEAK? That's better. Now...time for pudding...

2007-04-17T16:30:00.000+00:00

THE TRUE MEANING OF EASTER = STEALING BABIES FROM ROMANIAN CRACK WHORES, APPARENTLY
Every so often, EE comes up with a plot that is so utterly crazy/mad/nutcase that all you can do is stare at the screen open mouthed and wonder what on earth they were thinking of. I am recalling such classics as “Babs goes to Spain for Fur-wank’s funeral only to discover that he has faked his own death and is in cahoots with Rula Lenska”, or “The Teen Muppets crash their minibus in the icy wastes of Scotland and Teen and that other girl lez up for 5 minutes.” You can normally tell when something mental is going to happen because location shooting is involved and this week is no exception.

Whenever they don’t know what to do with Dot, they reel out their copy of “Ingmar Bergman for Dummies” and have her having a crisis of faith or whinging on about the Silence of God or something (they haven’t yet had Dot being raped by God in the form of a giant spider, but I’m sure it won’t be long). This week, Jim notes that Dot is sad and takes her on a day trip to where they used to go hop picking in Kent in their youth. Nothing says “holiday” like back-breaking agricultural labour, that’s for sure. Dot goes to pester her old vicar, only he isn’t there any more and there is a nice lady vicar instead. Nice Lady Vicar gives her directions to see Old Dead Vicar’s son, who turns out to be television’s Dennis Pennis.

Dennis and Dot have a fascinating theological conversation where Dennis tries to lay all this newfangled relativistic hoo ha on Dot and she is all “la la la, I’m not listening”. Something happens to make her think her about Nick, so she goes back to church and ~~whines~~ prays about being a bad mother and asks for a sign to prove that she isn’t. As it happens a hard faced girl is dumping her little baby on the doorstep of the church at that very second, so Dot decides to take it home with her. Right.

In other news, Agarry discovers that Sullen has got engaged and acts a bit mardy. He is supposed to sign the mortgage papers with Minty and Naomi but instead makes some mysterious phonecalls and then buggers off to a Registry Office, leaving a handy clue for the others (like a big poster stuck to the wall saying “Don’t forget to go the Registry Office” or something). Minty is cross that his non gay non lover is getting married to someone else. When Agarry gets to the office, he meets a middle aged blonde lady wearing a cowboy hat who gives him a big kiss and tells him she thought he wasn’t going to come. WTF???

Jim (and every sane person in the audience) wants to know what the hell is going on, but Dot insists that they’re keeping the baby (while overacting like crazy to register her much publicised disapproval of such a crappy storyline). They have to babysit Abi, so they rope her into their web of lies and deceit and she helps them hide the truth from Mo, who hears the baby crying and acts all nosy. Abi says that it is a ghost baby and Mo believes her – “It beats signing on, I suppose.” thinks Laila Morse.

Back at the Registry Office, the annoying lady turns out to be Annoying Garry’s annoying mother, whom we shall call Annoying Hazel. She is actually marrying some other bloke, a smarmy colonel type in a blazer with brass buttons, and wanted Agarry to come along. There is a non comedy misunderstanding and Colonel Blazer thinks that Agarry is Ahazel’s bit on the side. He punches Agarry and dumps Ahazel. Ahazel now has nowhere to go, so Agarry tells her to book into a hotel and is all set to drive off back to Walford on his scooter.

Dot finds a Clue in baby Tomas’ nappy and sends Jim to a strip club in Dartmouth to investigate. There are non comedy shenanigans with Jim trying to interrogate a bunch of Albanian strippers and then being marched off to the cash machine by the bouncer to pay £120 for two glasses of baby cham. Meanwhile, the mother, who has a severe fringe and whose name is Anna Kalashnikova or something, tracks Dot down to Walford and says “you crazy lady, in my country when we leave baby in church it is so that baby is raised by wolves and becomes mighty warrior”. Dot asks Anna to move in with them so Anna says “Oh, OK”.

Agarry drives around a bit and then says “Oh bloody hell” and goes back to collect Ahazel. My boyfriend says “Oh f***ing hell, does that mean she’s in it all the time now?” Agarry takes AHazel back to stay temporarily with him, Minty and Naomi, and she immediately sets about embarrassing him with cute baby garry photos. Minty takes one look at Ahazel and is all, “hello, foxy lady” and Ahazel takes one look at Minty and is all, “You’re a groovy boy, I’d like to strap you on sometime!” Agarry is sick in his mouth a little bit and Naomi points out that the childhood photos might be slightly less embarrassing than watching Minty and Hazel rutting on the floor.

Jim remembers that he used to be a racist and has a quick rant about them asylum seekers coming over here and stealing all our jobs. Oh Jim, I don’t think you could get a job as a stripper even if all the legal immigrants were sent back home. He tries to talk sense into Dot and says that Anna is a dirty ho. Dot explains that Mary Magdelene was also a dirty ho so he can shut his cake hole. Jim goes down the street and phones up the Immigration Service, who apparently have a rapid response unit in the area (I don’t know if this is very realistic but it seems to me to be be NOT). Dot et al run and hide in a church and claim asylum but the kindly immigration bloke points out that they aren’t actually living in the 14th century and drags Anna away to be put on the first plane to Boratstan, leaving Jim and Dot holding the baby, both figuratively and literally. It’s an Easter Miracle!

2007-04-09T19:50:00.000+00:00

GHOST ON THE (WASHING) MACHINE

Just what is Cruestella up to? What drives a career woman to act all pathetic in order to snag the affections of a spud-faced pub landlord, then proceed to terrorise his young son? Whatever evil non-event the producers have planned for us, it's pretty damn good. Cruestella pours water on Ben's bed and tells him that dreaming about being bullied by the Children of Razorlight makes him wee in his sleep. But if she hides him from the Children of Razorlight, he has to tell Fill that he wants Cruestella to be his new mummy.

Cruestella does weird stuff to Fill's accounts book while everybody sleeps. Fill finds out and tells Ben to go to the playscheme and stand up to the Children of Razorlight like a true Mitchell. Cruestella says that she will protect Ben's snivelling little carcass. For a price! Fill beats up the main bully's dad and Cruestella messes with Ben's head some more. Wow! I love this... even though bullying small boys and messing around with their little brains is bad, m'kay?

There's stuff about Dasbo, @@@ and Lin. @@@ starts wearing make up and puts her profile on ~~the Russians for pervs~~ a dating site when she ~~looks as Russian as my cat~~ looks barely old enough to have started her periods. Good move @@@. Thought you were supposed to be clever? Dasbo also messes with Mickney's head re: DVDLi. No, I don't know either.

Big Mo tries to put NurseTanyah out of business (eh? Oh, this will be the big revenge!!! thing that Mo talked about the other week). The bright idea is to tell a bunch of pensioners that NurseTanyah is doing an OAP free perm special, and bring them to the doorstep, waving their vouchers. NurseTanyah gives them all perms - or at least pats their hair and waves some hairspray about - and thanks Big Mo for the marketing boost. Mo goes: "Bah! I'll get you NurseTanyah! And those Tanyettes too!"

Yolande starts work at the launderette. What happened to the Kwik E Mart? She winds Dot up with her fancy new ideas about not smoking and alteration services. Dot tries to nobble Yolande's laundry load and thinks that Yolande is after her job. Mr Opodopolus offers Poline's old job to Yolande. Dot has a meltdown and screams "I quit". Dot spends the rest of the week in either the caff or the pub, muttering about ageism. Yolande refuses the offer, but reminds Dot that Poline is properly dead and should really be buried, so get a grip. Dot grippeth not.

Beale tells the family that they're moving into Poline's old house. He promises a new double bed for Panto Jane, but Devil Child Lucy says the place smells of wee, and she can sense the presence of Poline. Obviously DC Lucy's satanic powers are not yet at a level that she can do battle with Poline's enfeebled ghost, so they all move back to the old house. Especially after Fill and Bill tell a posh couple that Ian rented the old place to that Walford is a den of vice, violence and iniquity. Posh couple demand a rent reduction. PJ finds Poline's ashes in a cupboard, and DC Lucy says she's still not moving. PJ enlists the local vicar's help. The vicar tells them that Auntie Poline is not a demon, but DC Peter sees the crossed fingers behind his back and starts getting all Buffy on his arse. Ian gives the ashes to Dot to keep in her ashtray and bribes DC Lucy and DC Peter to come back to the house. Dot keeps Poline in the launderette and talks to her after hours. Oh boy. I'd love to see what happens when they run out of powder.

Fill intercepts PJane's new bed and gives it to Billy. Because making Ian Beale's life a misery is not the same as proper bullying because Ian has foolish aspirations towards middle-classness and keeps yattering about gentrification, so therefore needs to be put in his place.

Pregnancy triangle update! Slimy snogs GADawn in front of Dr SheWolf and moves in with GADawn. Another meltdown and then Dr SheWolf tells Slimy's employers that he fixed up a dodgy credit card for GADawn in PantoJane's name. Never mind Slimy, there's always the caff. Or the bookie's. Or perhaps you could work on MMartin's stall? Well, that's GADawn's attitude anyway. Dr SheWolf tells Slimy that she'll see him crawling back to her after GADawn leaves him when the money runs out etc etc. Slimy and GAD scuttle off to his mum's for a bit. SheWolf: thwarted!

2007-04-04T15:15:00.000+00:00

SEVEN DADLEY SINS
The theme of this week’s episodes is “All middle class ladies be crazy!!” First of all we have Dr Fox, who is cackling with glee at the news that GADawn is past the legal limit for abortions and also referring to herself in the third person alot. (“What Dr Fox wants! Dr Fox gets! Bwa ha ha!!” etc). Calm down love, you’re not a character from Flash Gordon. GADawn meanwhile moves into the flat above Minty/Garry (who are disappointed, as they were hoping for a new cast member) and gets Stella to check over her Surrogacy Agreement. Stella says it is a load of tosh, legal-wise so GADawn tells Smarmy that they can live together and keep the baby and skip through tulip fields forevah! Smarmy dumps her. Ha!

GADawn is snivelling around so Dr Fox tells her that Smarmy never fancied her in the first place but just pretended to, so that GADawn would keep the baby, which is now more fought over than the Alcase-Lorraine region of France/Germany. GADawn drinks a bottle of vodka, has a hot bath and sticks “Vera Drake” in the DVD player. Everyone thinks she is trying to commit suicide and calls an ambulance. Dawn and the baybay both turn out to be alright. Smarmy sits on Losers Bench for a spot of manly crying and then tells Dawn that he does love her really after all, but Dawn tells him to “Git Ahhht!!!”

JoJo/Dadley drags on and on. This week JoJo wears a horrendous “sexy outfit” that makes her like a Victorian killer doll and Dadley sexes her up in his own living room while he is supposed to be researching guinea pigs on the internet. Don’t ask. Can something please happen with this plot now? Is that too much to ask? In other Slater news, BroJo weirdly flirts with Babs for a bit (mate, it’s called “masturbation”, look into it) and JoJo Ma reappears, saying that she wants to go on a holiday with her kids. The hateful brats all run a mile but then something happens so that Dadley ends up paying for a holiday for JoJo and Ma anyway.

Billy wants to turn the defunct DVD shop into an internet caff – how very 1998. He bickers with Fill and Beale about them investing or not. Meanwhile news spreads about Phoney’s pregnancy. Billy and Phoney think their little flat won’t be big enough and talk about renting Poline’s Palace of Burnt Memories instead. Beale says no, of course, because he is horrid and then suggests to Panto Jane that he moves them and the devil brood into Poline’s Palace of etc and so on instead. Jane: “Erm, I don’t think so!!”

The other middle class crazy lady storyline is that of Cruestella D’Evil, who is on fine form this week. Ben hides his hearing aid so he doesn’t have to go to school but then Cruestella makes him go anyway. All the kids tease him for being deaf and Ben wets himself. Cruestella mutters that he is a “wee stained little freak”(double ha!) and offers to help him hide his shame from Fill. Then she mocks him for being a wuss and says that he has to be HARD if he wants to be a proper Mitchell and worthy of his daddy’s love. Next day, Ben tries to smack one of the boys (when instead he should have teased him for being a rubbish actor and having hair like a girl) who made him wet himself and ends up being thrown roughly to the ground and given a good shoeing. Cruestella watches with a faint smile on her face for a few minutes before breaking it up.

Ben goes crying to Ian, shows him his bruises and tells him that Stella is beating him (Ian comes up with the “Cruella” nickname). Ian goes round to see Fill and be all Bealemeisterfull and outraged and then they quickly discover that he was actually beaten up by the kids from school. They tell Ben off and Cruestella slips into his room, tells him that he will be taken into care if he carries on lying and then gives him a hug and says that she’ll protect him. Brrr, creepy. This storyline with all the headfuckery and emotional blackmail etc is so much better than a clichéd child beating plot. Well done the BBC!

2007-03-31T22:20:00.000+00:00

WHEN I'M SIXTY-ERR?

It's a milestone birthday for Peggy. Not sure which one. The EE producers don't divulge that, but if she's supposed to be 60, then I'm Liz Hurley. Fill, Cruestella (thank you GU) and Victim Ben decorate the pub with old Carry On Stills, pictures of Babs taking tea with the Krays, you know the kind of thing. Babs has a few non-comedy senior moments over the catering delivery, and Ian sneers. Babs also engages some bloke with an outrageous accent to makeover the living room so that it looks like something out of a Furniture Village ad. The ladies not classed as a) totty, b) mad, or c) pregnant (Yolande, Babs and PantoJane) go to a yoga class and the bouffanted teacher in a leotard tries to realign Babs's chakras without her permission. Babs is later sad about this because it's the best offer she gets all week after NotDavid Essex says he's not coming to her birthday party.

Phoney is pregant again, and worries about telling Billy. Billy runs foul of a debt collector who follows him around until he hands over the money, and worries about telling Phoney. Phoney gets a job as the receptionist in the Hair Patting salon to make more money. Her first task is to screw up GADawn's hair patting and colouring appointment. GADawn makes an unreasonable amount of fuss, and Duckface Preeti has to fit her in over lunch or something.

Slimy is installing GAD in a flat above the plot cupboard, and AGarry is allowed out to sniff around. He's got a thing for pregnant ladies, after all. GAD's little head is too full of colour charts and sofa catalogues to notice, and she skips off to get her hair done. Only Chelski switches the hair dye for a red felt-tip pen, and GAD ends up with rather cute Gothy streaks instead of honey highlights. GAD marches into the pub and starts having a go a the nice ladies, who finally admit that Dr SheWolf has persuaded them all to pretend to like her, but they all really think she's a wee hoor. GAD can't believe that her only friend in the world is Carly (incidentally, whatever happened to Genghis, the Dolescum Dog?), and stomps off home to cry. I can't help thinking that with all this womb rental, accommodation costs etc, they'd have been better off visiting an orphanage in a developing country, but what the hey...

Plenty of action in the Hair Patting salon, today. JoJo decides to upgrade her appearance (again), and gets Preeti to set her hair in some carmen rollers to make her look like a Charlie's Angel, but not in a good way. Really, you'd think that GADawn could take one look at JoJo's hair and get some money off Slimy to get a proper cut in town.

Dr SheWolf tells NurseTanyah of her surrogacy hell, but with all the controlling and pimping her husband bits removed. Nurse Tanyah looks slightly concerned that Dr SheWolf and her flexible interpretation of the Hippocratic Oath is in charge of her family's health. Meanwhile Dadley is shagging JoJo amid the ashes of Poline's fruitbowl or something. No wonder the Bealemeister can't sell it if he hasn't even bothered to paint over the smoke stains. Two letters, Ian: B and Q.

There's some stuff about moving to Spain. It's always Spain isn't it? Never Cheadle. Or Stockholm. Stockholm's nice. Very clean.

JoJo thinks that Dadley is selling her a line. NurseTanyah has been watching far too many property programmes, and is impatient to make a fresh start. Blimey, she's only been in Walford for five minutes. But the Tanyettes don't want to move because they've got friends. Really? Well, Lauren is kind of mates with Zombie Jay and DC Lucy - no wonder she's going all Goth. Abi is friends with umm... Ben.

Not if CruStella has anything to do with it. CruStella says that Abi is a Bad Person, and that if Ben so much as talks to her, it'll be Spoontime for Benjy at Bedtime again. CruStella does mad faces and learns how to beat Ben at Grand Theft Auto and tells Abi that she's not welcome at Ben's birthday party.

Phoney tells Billy that she's pregnant. Billy tells Phoney that they're broke. But they decide to have the baby anyway. But only after Billy has made lots of bad smell-type faces and overacted like a good 'un. He's too good for this crap.

GADawn turns up in a red dress to match her hair, and "looks amazing", according to the official spoilers. Dr SheWolf sends Slimy out to "keep GAD happy", and looks mad and smug at the same time. Slimy looks worried.

Everything's going well at the party. Babs is wearing something ghastly in white and Bacofoil that screams Peter Stringfellow In Drag; Pat is wearing Stealth Bomber earrings. BroJo uses his combat skillz to create one of those champagne towers that you used to see in 1970s semi-porn movies starring Joan Collins; and JoJo makes sour comments about Nurse Tanyah's Spanish plans, and tells her that Dadley will probably leave her anyway, so what's the point. Not really. But there is a fight between JoJo and NurseTanyah over who spilled whose Babycham, and Ian knocks over the champagne tower while nobody's looking. Dadley runs after JoJo, saying that says he's going to ~~give the little minx a good seeing-to~~ demand an apology. Then he tells JoJo that he's in love with her. Eh? I've seen more passionate declarations from a wet cushion. NurseTanyah encounters BroJo in the ladies again, and he tries it on. NT says no, and discovers Dadley coming out of the Slater Tardis with JoJo. JoJo apologises, but what for???

2007-03-19T14:23:00.000+00:00

BEN FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST
Thanks to Red Nose Day, I only have three eps to do this week. Hurrah!

Parklife does the walk of shame from Atkins boudoir of cheap nylon garmentry after begging her not to tell anyone. He runs into Pat who tells him off for being a numpty and then says she will support him etc. Parklife then meets Beano and Carly and they all hug and forgive him too. Beano finds out about Carly’s big strop that sent Parklife packing in the first place and there is a bit of shouting. Great.

Parklife goes round to see Mrs Goggins and says, “I’m sorry. I made a mistake but it was horrible. That bloke from Torchwood died for no reason and then I had to drive a moped off a cliff. Crazy!” Mrs Goggins is all, “So you’re back, from outer space, coming home to Walford with that look upon your face…” and slams the door. Later on she says that her and the girls are moving to Leytonstone. Didn’t we just have this storyline two weeks ago? They are forced to sit together by their kids at a red nose day pub quiz and Atkins does a drunken speech about how her life sucks, but Parklife and Goggins are clearly made for each other and should get married. Later on, Parklife shows up at the Post Office and proposes to her. Mrs G says “You won’t get round me that easily – oh wait a minute, you will!” and says yes. Cue another unfeasibly brisk wedding, no doubt.

Billy is having money problems as everyone is eschewing his video shop in favour of DVDLi’s DVDs. He doesn’t tell anyone. Phoney gets a job as hairpatting receptionist though. Cue “boo hoo my wife earns more than me, I’m not a real man!” snoryline? Phoney is full on with her malapropisms this week but I will not encourage the scriptwriter by repeating any of them.

Dr Shewolf is still whinging on about GADawn and Gadawn is still whinging on about Smarmy. Shewolf complains that Dawn is eating too many chips or something and says “We can’t put her in a box!” in a tone that suggests that she could instead make her live in the bottom of a well and lower supplies in a basket (“It will put on the lotion! It will put on the lotion or else it will get stretch marks!”). She says they can put GADawn up in a flat “so we can control what she eats or drinks”. I think Dr Fox is confusing “flat” for “prison”. Smarmy tries to sell the idea to GADAwn but she doesn’t want to live in a damp bedsit on her own.

Dadley/Jojo affair drags on for another week. High point = Jojo getting dolled up to look “sophisticated” like Tanyah and everyone laughing at her. Dadley also says he wants to move to Spain with her. Oh as if.

Abi Tanyette sits with Ben and makes fun of him for liking Sdulla now. Ben explained that she was nice to him in that weird Hall of Mirrors malarkey. Abi tries to get Sdulla into trouble by telling Fill and Babs that she lost him, but Ben and Sdulla both team up to downplay it. Later on Sdulla accuses Ben of betraying her in her dry whispery voice and stares at him coldly from the top of a flight of stairs. Brrr. When did Sdulla turn into Nurse Rachett? Later on she manages to make Ben and Abi fall out completely and also gets Abi into trouble when Nurse Tanyah goes round to ask why she shouted at her daughter.

Ben is a bit unwell and Sdulla offers to look after him. They watch a DVD (crappy BBC version of “Lion/Witch/Wardrobe” – if Billy’s shop doesn’t have the posh Hollywood version with Tilda Swinton then it deserves to fail!!), then Sdulla offers to make them a nice hot chocolate and deliberately burns Ben’s hand with the hot spoon. Oh my god, so hardcore!! This storyline is actually pretty good now – especially as it is Ben who is being tormented, though I’m sure step mums all over the country are grinding their teeth in irritation. She tells him it is a joke and then gets him to lie for her again when Babs asks why he is wearing a plaster. Sdulla says all creepy stuff about how Daddy isn’t going to love him any more now that he loves her – then says “ha ha, only joking!” and offers to make him another HOT DRINK!!! Ben makes a wibbly face and the BBC bod announces a phone line in case Emma Thompson’s sister is menacing you with caffeinated beverages too (I know I know child abuse is v serious).

2007-03-12T22:14:00.000+00:00

WAITING FOR PARKOT
A pale male arm emerges from under a modish duvet cover. It’s Smarmy and he’s about to wake the sleeping figure beside him. It’s Dr SheWolf! Oh no, what will GADawn say? GADawn is busy twitching curtains chez Dolescum and her finger is hovering over the abortion clinic number, which she must have on speed dial. Dr SheWolf twitches every time the phone rings, expecting it to be GADawn’s abortion. Smarmy tells her that everything’s fine and maybe they don’t need a baby to keep their marriage going anyway. SheWolf orders him to keep GADawn happy with fine wines, cheap lingerie from the market, and a good seeing-to if that’s what it takes.

Smarmy finally persuades GADawn to stay over. Dr SheWolf goes and sits in the café with her slightly mad smile on all night by the look of it. Next morning, Smarmy, who realises he is but a sperm donor in Dr SheWolf’s Baby Hunt, tells her that GAD has ordered him to leave her.

Dr SheWolf visits GAD at home to offer more advice on womb control. GAD finds out he hasn’t left her yet, so decides to tell the Dr herself. Oooh…cat fight. Dr tempts her back to the flat and calls her a “cheap little tanorexic” who doesn’t know the difference between true love and a cheap shag. Dr gets a few more good insults in before she gets bored with GAD and her ‘bovvered?’ face, and starts chewing the scenery in order to stay alive.

Mr P offers the following: “Oh for god’s sake, why don’t they just get together and kill the bastard?” But he doesn’t know that it’s all part of Dr SheWolf’s Cunning Plan. Not quite sure what the point of this Cunning Plan is, but apparently SheWolf is pretending to be a bit mad in order to keep GADawn onside. Smarmy finds this very arousing. Dr SheWolf does the over the shoulder face and looks bored.

DVDLi finds out about Dasbo’s Russian bride scam. As an internet professional, I’m not quite sure about the economics of this little venture, but somehow Dasbo guarantees her #500 per month if she writes a few ‘sexy emails’ to her ~~interweb saddoes~~ clients.

Chelski loses her job, and doesn’t mind because she can spend more time annoying BroJo. BroJo smarms to Nurse Tanyah and gets Chelski her job back. Chelski puts Rainman off his breakfast.

Battle of the battleaxes update. Atkins gets drunk. Pat looks disapproving and offers tea, sympathy and Goddess wisdom. Deano starts a fight with some bloke who has been chatting up Atkins and a newly-returned Babs chucks them both out of the pub. Atkins gets locked out and spends the night on Pat’s sofa. Deano: so, so confused.

Carly finds Atkins on the sofa and starts shouting again. Pat tells Atkins to leave town. Atkins refuses.

NurseTanyah works out that Mo has been corrupting her family’s morals with her filthy knockoff fags. Mo gets caught by Customs, who search the Slater Tardis and fail to find the entire gross tobacco output of the state of Virginia in the living room, but they do her for tax evasion anyway. Mo decides that NurseTanyah is responsible and vows terrible revenge. Oh well, that’s Dadley and JoJo DOOMED then. Thank Christ for that.

Smarmy tells GAD that he’s been taking money out of the joint account, and one day they will run away together. It’s like they were reading last week’s blog, isn’t it? Smarmy tells Dr SheWolf to tell her friends to stop bitching about GADawn. He’s just no fun any more…

Mrs Goggins finds out about BroJo, and tells him to leave Chelski alone. BroJo turns on the charm and tells Mrs G that just jealous because Chelski’s getting some, and Parklife ran off. Chelski finds out, but still doesn’t dump him.

Carly tidies up the car lot office. Pat tells Carly she has to let go and offers the example of Furwank’s nervy b as an example of what to do when a close relative runs off with all your joint earnings. Carly untidies the office and invites Atkins out for a bite to eat and a drink.

Mrs Goggins packs up Parklife’s collection of foreign films and stripey shirts. Carly puts them out for the dustmen.

Cut to umm…Dungeness. A lighthouse. Ooh, are we having one of those Easties Away segments? Parklife, clad in existentialist black and dark brown, tears up his world trip tickets (except for the one to France) and throws them off a lighthouse. He walks along the beach and finds Mr Guppy from Bleak House/doctor bloke off Dorkwood in a beach hut. They fight, and Guppy does his ankle in. It gets a bit Godot while they act their socks off on material that is thinner than a Brazilian model’s little finger. Guppy nicks a bit of Derek Jarman’s garden to kill Parklife with, but Parklife makes him put it back. Eventually they go to a pub and play pool with London Calling playing in the background. That's...like...significant, isn't it? Parklife offers fatherly advice. Guppy nicks his bag with his tickets to France in. Parklife nicks a local’s bike and chases the bus to Folkestone.

Mo and Rainman play darts and Carly gets very very drunk. There is mother/daughter shouting. And mother/daughter bonding. Then more mother/daughter shouting. A dart ends up in Mo’s arse. Fill removes the dart from Mo’s arse, and then has to lie down in a darkened room to expunge the image from his head (and ours). I quite like Fill the grumpy landlord: it’s better than Fill the spudhead gangsta.

Non-comedy sub-plot. Pat and Deano play Trivial Pursuit. A nation discovers that Pat is a Trivial Pursuit demon, and possibly even more competitive than my mum.

OK, this is where it goes from Godot to Lost Highway. Parklife finds the burning wreck of the bus on a cliff path somewhere between Folkestone and Dungeness. Blimey, all we need is Sherilyn Fenn screaming her head off... Not quite sure what has happened. Maybe it’s a lorry crash; maybe it was Al Quaeda. Anyway, everybody’s dead, except Guppy, who dies quite hilariously in Parklife’s arms; jerking and everything.

Minutes later, Parklife gets out of a cab in Walford. (Maybe this is the Robin Hood Prince of Thieves moment, when Kevin Costner tells Morgan Freeman that Nottingham is only 15 minutes’ walk from Dover.) Anyway, he ends up at Atkins’s flat. In Atkins’s bed! This can only end in tears. Of boredom!

2007-03-07T12:55:00.000+00:00

THE DISCREET SMARM OF THE BEALEGEOISIE
I was out a lot last week so it’s cribbage time again. Sigh.

JoJo and Dadley continue their weird, repetitive and repulsive on/off relationship (though it seems to be more on than off). I can only assume that Dadley is v well hung as I can’t see why else Nurse Tanyah and JoJo would spend so much time fawning over him. Anyway, Duckface has a faux ann summers party and Di Vi Di Li borrows money off Dasbo to buy some pleather undergarments to sell. It all turns out to be a cruel hoax though so Chelski and Duckface can watch her make a fool of herself. That seems a bit much considering they are only fighting over MICKNEY, who doesn’t seem worth the bother, to be honest. The three of them start squealing and pushing each other but then it cuts away before the proper catfight starts. Boring. Nurse Tanyah is also there and Jojo has much angst re Dadley.

DVDLi can’t return the money to Dasbo and @@ is cross, but then it turns out that loads of ~~sad inadequates~~ blokes have signed up to their mail order bride site so they are suddenly loaded. Hmm, are they going to rent out Chelski and GADawn or is this basically a big fraud? Some bloke manages to track them down to Walford and says he is going to come and check out the fictional Olgas for himself. Ruh roh. In other news they think that a webcam of DS Keef might make them money. Trampcam.com?? I suppose I’ve seen crappier websites on the internets

Prison Bitch Bert spends half the week being feckless and irresponsible, while Pat pops up from behind the occasional lamp post to shout “Oi, stop being feckless and irresponsible!” and then disappear again. Ok Bert, if you aren’t going to fuck off back to Emmerdale can you at least cut your hair? That stringy shit is giving me the creeps. The Social come round and Jay is all “yes, I’m v happy here etc and so on” as he would rather even be stuck with Bert than be taken into care. Anyway, one day Jay-Z (Z stands for zombie, of course) is caught stealing a bacon butty from the caff because PB Bert has neglected to feed him his daily helping of BRANES. Doh. Bert has an epiphany, decides to be responsible and gets a job as a street sweeper but he’s still v annoying. Also his mystery ailment reoccurs and he crashes his dustcart into a stall. Let’s hope it’s something terminal.

Dr Fox buys DS Keef a drink and whitters on about sudoku puzzles for a bit as a lame pretext to suddenly squawk, “How is GADawn and her costly womb?? Tell me?? Tell me??” Dr Fox finds out that GADawn has met “someone” in the Cotswolds and immediately starts panicking that her precious baby will be stolen away by a horny handed farm labourer (or stockbroker, seeing as it’s the Cotswolds…).

I am really sad I missed this next bit (honest!) as Ian decides to try and be middle class and has an excruciating dinner party with the other middle class people of the Square (Dr Fox, Smarmy, Dadley, NTanyah). It all goes tits up when they all start going on about GADawn and adoption and the Foxes run off in a huff and Ian gets drunk. Better luck next time, Bealemeister. Bourgeois respectability will be yours one day! Later on it is the anniversary of their miscarriage and Dr Fox whines about her uterus AGAIN

Sdulla helps Ben with his homework. Exciting!

Jay’Z gets one of the Tanyettes to start smoking. Equally exciting!

The rest of the week is taken up with BroJo’s attempts to get into Nurse Tanyah’s knickers. BTW, does it count as crypto-incest if a brother and sister are trying to knock off a pair of spouses? Anyway, BroJo spends the whole time sniffing round Nurse Tanyah and offering to sort out her fusebox (that is not a euphemism, you pervs) at the Hair Patting Shop. It turns out he learnt to be an electrician as well as a sexy brooding psychopath whilst in the army. Nurse Tanyah starts off all “sod off you twerp” but then she changes her mind and is all “boo hoo, Dadley keeps binning me off when it’s time for marriage counselling” and BroJo is all, “You poor thing, tell me all about it… IN BED!!!”

BroJo overhears Dadley whispering saucy come-ons to JoJo on his mobile in the pub (though he doesn’t know it is her yet) like, “wear more self tanning lotion, it really turns me on” and “I love the smell of urinal tablets in the morning,” etc etc. He tries to prove to Nurse Tanyah that the Dadster is having an affair but the seasoned love rat deletes his call history off his phone. Bah! Foiled! BroJo continues to flirt with NT in various ways in front of Dadley, driving Dadley into a jealous rage that causes him to throw BroJo against the wall and say “grr” a few times in a totally non gay stylee. Poor Nurse Tanyah, destined to be fought over by a pair of charmless gingers. Dadley thinks that BroJo is going to do it with NT in the hair shop one night and bursts in to surprise them, but it is all a cunning ploy on BroJo’s part and instead he is doing it with Chelski. Gasp!

2007-03-05T20:24:00.000+00:00

GOGGINS A GO-GO OR NO-GO?
Late and short. A bit like Slimy Metrosexual's excuses. But I promise you, as soon as the baybay's born, we'll run away to the Bahamas and get married. I swear.

Just when you think that your internal bullshit detector has reached 11 and won't go any further, the Eastenders scriptwriters send it up a notch. This week, Fill raises his spuddy little head and starts demanding rent off the remaining Parklifes (and Pat), except that Parklife has cleared the business account of all funds. Not even Pat's goddess powers, or Dasbo's Bransonesque entrepeneurial skillz can save them from Fill's hungry bank balance. Instead Carly goes over to Fill's and fixes a car or two so that he can spend some time with Psycho Ben. Well, that was the original idea, but somehow Ben gets farmed out to whoever will have him - even Atkins gets asked, while Fill searches in the plot cupboard for Minty and Agarry. No wonder Ben's evil. Carly shouts at Fill, and the mere threat of her doing more shouting 'acting' is enough for Fill to stomp over to Pat's and let them off half the rent or something. Pat gives a little speech about how Parklife would have been proud of them all standing together in the face of imminent bankruptcy that he was mainly responsible for. Mrs G decides she's had enough and starts packing the Goggins bags for pastures new. Chelski and @@ object, so they end up staying after lots of shouting and pouting.

BS detector reading: 11.7

Psycho Ben tries to get his dad to spend time with him, but Fill keeps wandering off to do something more interesting. Sdulla sits on some Airfix glue, and Ben gets into trouble again, and she flounces off stage right. Then she comes back again the following day and takes him on a trip to the London Dungeon (his choice - told you he was psycho). There is a weird creepy moment when Ben runs into a hall of mirrors shouting for Sdulla and crying about losing her while Sdulla hides behind a corpse and looks strangely evil. It's almost like The Lady from Shanghai - only without Orson Welles...or Rita Hayworth...or decent production values. Somehow this is supposed to mean that they have bonded.

BS detector reading: 12

Nurse Tanyah finds a receipt for some jewellery in Dadley's pocket and is sad because Dadley is obviously cheating on him again. She brings it up at the counsellor's, and Dadley tells her that it was supposed to be a surprise secret necklace but no she's spoiled everything. The next day is Nurse Tanyah's birthday, so Dadley goes to lunch with JoJo in a posh restaurant. The maître d is snooty and asks JoJo if she's old enough to eat posh food. JoJo pretends that Dadley is her dad, and this is her 18th birthday present, and this somehow makes her more attractive or something. Meanwhile NT and the girls make pancakes and bury a dead hamster (with Returned BroJo's help) in the front garden. You start to see Dadley's point.

Anyway, NurseTanyah and Dadley end up in the Vic. NT gets very very drunk, and Dadley takes advantage of her drunkeness to slip one to JoJo in the toilets again. Soon Nurse Tanyah will be wondering why he keeps buying her bottles of Eau du Parazone and asking her to flush when she's ready. NT staggers into the toilets and thinks JoJo is alone. Then in comes BroJo , who starts pestering Nurse Tanyah. Dadley hides in the cubicle with JoJo going, "grrrr...my wife..." very very quietly. JoJo: sad. Because she has fallen in love with Dadley. A nation is mystified. Abi gets a new guinea pig to replace the dead hamster. Let's hope they get hungry Peruvian neighbours, for the guinea pig's sake.

BS detector: 13.987

PB Bert is starting to develop a kind of relationship with Zombie-faced Jay, who is possibly the coolest kid on TV apart from Tracy Beaker. Pat activates her Goddess powers and forces Ian to rent the cute little flat behind the chippy to them. Bert goes to an optician and discovers that he's going blind.

BS detector: off the scale

2007-02-20T11:38:00.000+00:00

THEIR BLOODY VALENTINE
Dr Fox is all, “I was disgusted that you shagged that hussy in my house!” Smarmy is all, “I’m doing it for you! So you can have a baybay! It’s no fun for me either, ahem ahem.” Later on Dr Fox apologises and arranges for a night of hot loving with Smarmy (cue shirtlessness to keep Patrick happy). GADawn phones about 15 times while they are Doing It and then leaves a message to say she has gone to stay with her mum. Dr Fox is worried that Rosie Klebb will talk sense into GADawn. I assume she never actually met Rosie Klebb.

Bradley spends the evening in the pub with JoJo and decides that he lurves her again (I can’t really take Bradders seriously any more after Harry Hill pointed out that he is always making faces as though he just farted…) Next day it is Valentines Day and PR Fluffy Lydia sends round a huge stalkeriffic basket and balloon arrangement thing. Bradley gets her a shitty cheapo card and then buys her a manky rose off a bloke in the restaurant when they have a romantic lunch. (Why name a restaurant Fargos?? It just reminds me of Steve Buscemi being put in a wood chipper. Mmm, seconds please!!). Then he dumps her and says, “It’s not you, it’s me!” Yes Bradley – it is you, acting like a real tool. Couldn’t you have waited another few days to dump her? Lydia stomps off to delete all the files off Bradley’s computer at work. Bradley runs around to declare his lurve for JoJo but she is too busy shagging Dadley and tells him to get lost. Ha ha.

Dadley is v unromantic to nurse Tanyah so she arranges a nice meal for them herself and asks Dot to watch the kids (non comedy Vday subplot – Jim pretends to have forgotten and then cooks a nice meal behind Dot’s back, but then Dot shows up with the girls. Jim pulls his patented “dohhhhh!” face). Dadley texts to say he is stuck at work (ie shagging JoJo). What a tool – couldn’t he have waited til the day after? I’m sure JoJo and her lady parts would still be there on 15 Feb. Nurse Tanyah says they have to go to marriage counselling. Then there is some business where Dadley is nearly caught out buying gifts for both his birds and getting the receipts mixed up or something. I think this plot would be a lot better if Text Pest BroJo was still around to glower sexily at Nurse Tanyah.

The Fill/Sdulla/Ben subplot is now in a weird temporal loop like on Star Trek where the same thing keeps happening over and over again. Ben is mean to Sdulla, Sdulla runs away, Fill gets her back. Rinse repeat. This week Babs also goes on holiday.

I quite like dead eyed urchin Jay too. For some reason he reminds of one of the zombie kids from Day/Dawn of the Dead and I certainly hope he ends up killing Prison Bitch Bert and cannibalising his corpse. Anyway, PBBert is all neglectful etc and Jay runs around stealing stuff and bunking off school. Yolande sucks her cheeks in and tries to be a bit parently and tells PBBert when is being a fule (well, more than usual anyway) ie like when he ignores a truant letter, even though it could mean PBBert being back sent to prison and being a burly convict’s wife again. Yolande and Trinidad bribe the miscreants to get out of the house for Valentine’s Day so Trinidad can leer at Yolande’s rack and say “yeah, mon” a few times. Jay gets sick of roaming the streets and goes back anyway and ruins their romantic shenanigans. Later on he finds out he has to go to school and has a bratty fit and breaks something. Yolande says “that’s it!” and says they have to move out.

It turns out that Dasbo is running a Russian mail order bride website. Ok, that’s believable.

Deano is sick of being teased re missing Parklife and makes up a lie – perhaps that he is staying in a house, in a very big house in the country. Mrs Goggins is chatted up by a handsome man in the Vic but says “No thanks, I have a man actually and he certainly hasn’t left me, nosiree bob.” The police come round and say that they have found Parklife’s car at Beachy Head. Everyone is worried that he has killed himself dead (except for me, who is HOPING that he has killed himself dead). Carly meanwhile has pulled herself together and starts running the car lot. Maybe Carly is actually short for Carlotta??? What are the chances etc. Pat is pleased but then it turns out that they owe Fill rent for the car lot and also Carly has to pay for the car she smashed up pointlessly last week. Pat goes to sort out the money but discovers that Parklife has emptied out all the business bank accounts. Everyone is pleased at this sign that he is alive, except for Mrs Goggins who feels more and more like an inhabitant of Dumpedville.

2007-02-18T02:27:00.000+00:00

YES SIR, THAT'S MY BAYBAY
My notes for this week have gone astray (probably still sitting on my iPaq somewhere in the Baron's lair), so it's a mixture of shoddy crib and fading memory this week.

You know it's bad week on EE when I start feeling ever so slightly sympathetic for GADawn. Well, now that everybody knows about GADawn and Slimy, it's scarlet letter time. Only GADawn doesn't have that much in the way of embroidery skillz, so she has to endure the pointy fingers of women who should know better. Babs and Mo point to Pat and tell her that GADawn will end up like her if she's not careful. So, let's look at those options for EE women in more detail shall we?

GAD --> Pat: own, mortgage-free house, own business, biggest collection of lairy earrings and giant leopard-print tops this side of Peckham. Houseful of vaguely-related Bennetton brats and Prison Bitch Bert buying you gin.

GAD --> Babs: battered woman, psychotic, spud-faced, prison-dodging offspring with severe committment problems. Assortment of ghastly grandchildren, one of which is a Beale Devil Child. Owns more wigs than Danny La Rue.

GAD --> Mo: living on sufferance in son-in-law's house with assorted grandchildren, friends of grandchildren, great-grandchildren posing as grandchildren. Deals in knock-off turkeys from Suffolk. Has slept with Prison Bitch Bert.

GAD --> Poline: ahhh...the life of a respectable East End matron. Spouse no. 1 dies in prison. Daughter knocked up by two (count 'em) pub landlords and living in Florida. Son dead - and hardly anybody noticed that he was alive anyway. Younger son knocks up a Dirty Jackson, kills Dirty Jackson's fiance, marries Dirty Jackson, divorces Dirty Jackson, gets back together with Dirty Jackson. Ends up dead in MacArfur Park, killed by Spouse no.2 because she never put out.

You decide!

Anyway, in the meantime, Dr SheWolf goes on her own charm offensive and gathers the youngish women on her side, starting off with Phoney. Yep. Phoney's out of the plot cupboard because it's time for the CUTEST BABY IN THE WORLD's jabs, and Dr SheWolf needs someone to go down the pub with. In the pub, Dr SheWolf tells GADawn to pack in her job because she doesn't want beer fumes affecting the Dawnlet's IQ or something. Dawn glowers at the nice ladies drinking wine in the corner while Babs tells her (again) that she's no better than she should be, and she's getting fat. Slimy arrives just as Dr SheWolf simpers something about adopting a baybay, and everybody applauds as she tries hard not to polish her halo in public.

GADawn has enough and announces her resignation to Babs. On Elf grounds.

Babs: Elf Grounds? Elf grounds? Strumpets don't have Elf grounds...

GAD: Well I do. ' Cos I'm pregnant.

pub gasps. I mean, who gets pregnant in this day and age?

GAD: (points to Slimy). With HIS BAYBAY!

Dr SheWolf looks busted.

Anyway, it doesn't help GADawn's standing in the community one bit. Nurse Tanyah shuns GAD's custom at the beauty shop, and Yolande gives her that cheek-sucking stare. GADawn gets Slimy to take her off to a hotel for the night, only Dr SheWolf sees them and realises the price she is really paying for motherhood, etc etc. Anyway, Friday's ep ends with her listening to them dry humping in the room next door, and Slimy promising to leave his ghastly, controlling wife etc etc.

Incidentally, has anybody else noticed how unconcerned Prison Bitch Bert seems to be at the death of Straight Pike? He's got troubles (ie, a plotline) of his own, anyway. Because somebody vaguely connected with him dumps his feral-faced hoody grandson on TriniDad and Yolande's doorstep. PB Bert tries to get rid of the brat, who has a great line in hollow-eyed stares and likes nothing better than to stare hollowly at the TV all day. Anyway, I suppose the plot line is all about how PB Bert learns about responsibility and that a life of petty crime and shagging Mo is a Bad Thing. Well, if it lands you with a friend like Straight Pike, you have to wonder. PB Bert also appears to be sniffing around Pat, much to Mo's displeasure. What happened there again?

Parklife's disappearance
Looks like Phil's done a runner - well you always could tell when he was just going through the motions. Carly does a lot of shouty "acting" and loses her job at the Arches. Ends up working on the stall. Atkins gets GADawn's job and is brassy. Deano: sad.

Fill and Sophie Thompson get back together again after Babs encourages him to stalk her. After all, he hasn't had a drippy co-dependent in his life for a while, and he's been getting a bit lonely. Ben starts collecting locks of Sophie's hair and bits of candle wax for the making of effigies.

Dasbo is wandering around with a big fat wallet full of cash, and lots of jiffy bags. I thought he might have secret camera in GADawn's bedroom, and has been selling Dawnporn, but @@ - who I suppose we should now call Libby, but I like @@ even though the key is in the wrong place on my laptop keyboard - finds out that he's been selling stuff on eBay and probably has a purple shooting feedback star by now. He appears to have got around the whole 'over 18' thing by using his dad's bank account. Hang on, Keef has a bank account?

2007-02-12T14:21:00.000+00:00

AU REVOIR, LA MOOMIN
Who could it be??? Gasp – it is Straight Pike, coming to collect his belongings and confess all in the style of a Scooby doo villain. He explains to Dot that Poline was a miserable old bitch who didn’t even pretend to be nice to him and never put out or anything. He hit her with a frying pan on xmas day but she seemed fine afterwards (and let’s face it, he didn’t leave any visible marks) and it was all her fault anyway. Oh the dramatic irony that Poline would be laid low by her trusty husband battering pan. Dot starts screaming “Moiderer! Moiderer!” and dials the police, but Str8 Pike dashes the phone from her grasp (though it is still switched on so the 999 operator hears the whole confession). While they are grappling, Jim happens to be passing so he runs upstairs and um throws Str8 Pike out of the window! Ha ha, I’m not joking! Str8 Pike bounces off the porch, crashes through a market stall and lands in a heap on the pavement. Ouch, that’s going to leave a mark definitely. Buh bye Straight Pike, what a boring character you were. Does that mean your prison bitch Bert is leaving too? Oh.

By Monday, Moomin has been released, Str8 Pike has been pinned with Poline’s death and Jim has been cleared of any crime. Wow, that’s the quickest police investigation and inquest ever! Martin wants to get back together with Moomin but she thinks it is a bit quick, what with him accusing her of murder just last week etc and so on. Poline’s will is read out and Martin gets the house as long as that Dirty Jackson doesn’t live in it. Ian rubs his hands at the thought of Martin falling for Moomin’s ahem charms as that means he will get the house. Martin and Moomin bicker and make up and bicker again. They have sex at some point too and then Martin shouts that he just wanted a wife but Moomin couldn’t decide whether she wanted to be a lesbian! or read a book! or play the trumpet! Trumpet playing, literate married women all over the country give the TV a quizzical look.

In other news; Evil little scrote Ben manages to drive drippy Sophie Thompson out of the Vic and back to her damp bedsit.

GADawn, Smarmy Metrosexual and Smarmy Metrosexual’s luxuriant chest rug start canoodling again. Rob says he will leave Dr Fox after GADawn has the baby but they have to string Dr Fox along in the meantime. Dawn agrees because she is stupid.

We finally discover Parklife’s dark secret and it is v boring – basically he isn’t Deano or Carly’s real dad (that would be some bloke in the back alley behind the pub – a different one for each kid). Deano is shocked but then accepts it but that insufferable little madame Carly starts whining and carrying on until Parklife grabs his passport and drives off in the dead of night, never to be seen again hopefully. Meanwhile Atkins puts moves on Fill and Agarry (while wearing a black netting blouse like something Marylin Manson would wear in one of his shittay videos) and later gets slapped by Carly.

In the end Moomin decides to go to Manchester and live with Bianca so she can sort her life out. Also there might be a chance that her mum will actually visit her there! At the last minute, Martin throws himself in front of the Taxicab of Finality and says that him and Chloebacca are going too and Moomin just has to shut up and agree with it. Poor old Moomin does as she’s told and they kiss in the back seat while Chloebecca smiles like an evil little goblin between them. What a creepy shot. Then they drive off and I am heartily sick of them, so good. Buh bye Martin and Moomin, you have provided us with lots of laughs over the years, not many of them intentional but never mind. I expect to see Martin on the Bill and Moomin on Holby City any day now…