By Anna May @AnnaMayMight

Over the course of just a few days, there’s been a gas main explosion, a shooting, a fire in a restaurant and a poor girl having a miscarriage…not to mention the ambulance taking one of the casualties to hospital being hit by a massive oil truck and turning on its side! Then (because, why not?) Kush has a heart attack in the middle of the Square! Not just any old heart attack, though. No...this heart attack is due to a hereditary health problem that we later find out Carmel has…and potentially Arthur, the baby son Kush had with Stacey.

I mean…come on…I know it’s probably convenient to use the Walford General set for more than one emergency at a time, but it was like every member of the cast was either being treated in a bed or sitting in the waiting room. Just silly.

To make matters worse (if that’s even possible), when Martin can’t find wife, Stacey, after the explosion, he gets aggro with a police officer and pushes him over. Of course, now he’s being banged up for a few weeks. Great! Now Stacey, who’s just about managing to hold herself together as it is, in spite of mental health issues, has to cope alone with the worry Arthur might die of a heart condition. How much anxiety has that girl already endured, eh? Not enough, obviously. Plus she’s pregnant. Brill!

After the explosion, Bex can't help kissing Gethin, whilst lovingly cleaning his wounds (rubbing fake blood around on his face). What a shame her mum, Sonia, also fancies him…and what a shame he’s also Bex’s teacher at school. Come on, Eastenders, this is getting very old. Michelle and Preston have just done all this. Also, didn’t Sonia’s sister, Bianca, have sexy time with their mum’s fella? Yes, she did. Yawn.

Meanwhile, poor Johnny is recovering from having been shot by Ted, a war veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, AND nearly dying in the ambulance after it was turned over. Ted’s wife, Joyce tries to take the blame to keep troubled hubby out of prison, but gets found out anyway, so both of them are up for charges now. It just couldn’t get any worse, could it.

Well, yes it could. Abi’s still rambling on about carrying Steven’s baby, even though that pregnancy test looks stupidly fake. But her life’s about to go belly up (a familiar position for her, to be fair), because he’s now gone and died as result of the fire he tried to burn Jane alive in! Yes, Steven is actually dead! Doctors and nurses were there at the time to confirm it…and Billy has him in a coffin. A funeral is happening. Is that understood? He CANNOT come back…even as another person. DEAD!

Hang on a minute! Does that mean Jane’s nearly dead again? YES, OF COURSE JANE’S NEARLY DEAD AGAIN! Why? Because Jane has a suicidal knack of being able to find out EVERYthing that EVERYone is doing wrong. Not only that, she has a bizarre ability of ALWAYS being strategically placed in exactly the right place at exactly the right time, allowing her every possible opportunity to overhear ALL the naughty things potential murderers are getting up to. Just Jane. Nobody else, just her. Why, Eastenders, WHY!?

More to the point, how on EARTH are constant tragedies like this supposed to reflect real life. Imagine if this really WAS real life. Newspapers and the media in general would be reporting on attempted murders and fatalities in Walford on a ridiculously regular basis…

“Today, there was yet another death in the East London town of Walford. This is the sixty-eighth death in the town in just over two weeks, this time coinciding with an arson attack. All those involved are the same bunch of idiots who were involved last time, the time before and the time before that. As a matter of course, Jane Beale has been returned to intensive care in a near-death state. Moving on…reports just in of a shooting in the East London town of Walford, followed by a stabbing, a poisoning, a strangling, a drowning and disturbing lack of authenticity!”

Um…and Linda nearly left Mick. So, yeah, that nearly happened…again. Although, as for Jack Branning telling her it is SHE who has caused the lack of trust in her marriage…he can piss off! Mick kissed Whitney twice and told Linda he’d started to have feelings for her, but it was Linda who ruined the trust in their marriage? Who wrote that dialogue?

Thankfully, Kathy has just come home from her holiday. She’ll sort Ian out….and, now Jane’s back in her rightful place, connected up to tubes and wires, in her very own personal hospital side room, Kathy won’t have to move into a granny flat all by herself…so it’s win/win for her!

Oh…and where was Dot when all this was going on? Well, obviously, she slept through it all…then got up to make a shit load of tea. Why not!