EastEnders. Only rancid relationships allowed

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EastEnders. Only rancid relationships allowed

May 03, 2016 - 16:41
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Average: 3.6 (17 votes)
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EastEnders… the everyday story of a typical working class community in London. Ordinary people struggling to cope with problems we can all relate to.

EastEnders' Sophie, Stacey and Kyle

EastEnders… the everyday story of a typical working class community in London. Ordinary people struggling to cope with problems we can all relate to.

Like Kyle, the transgender bloke whose lesbian best friend preferred him when he was Sarah. Or single parent Sonia who divorced Martin and now shacks up with two-timing Tina. Or killer Ben who has given up pretending he’s straight and is now besotted with funeral director’s grandson Paul.

On Albert Square’s hectic gay scene it’s all happening. But on the heterosexual front, it’s a dead-zone wilderness. Romance is very definitely not in the air. Only rancid relationships are allowed.

Hapless Jay’s promising affair with pretend adult Linzi earned him a conviction for paedophile sex crimes. Millions of horrified viewers are still traumatised after Denise’s drunken one-night stand with her sworn enemy Phil Mitchell. And when Masood went on an internet date, she turned round and mugged him. Happy days.

Would it kill the BBC to treat us to a love story with a nice ending? Here’s an unusual idea. How about a man and woman going out with each other, getting married and having kids? And by that, I don’t mean Ian Beale, who walks the aisle every ten minutes and churns out children at an alarming rate.

Isn’t it a bit weird that there’s not a single traditional family in Walford? I’m all for diversity. But it is actually possible for guys and girls to get on well. Surely a decent soap should bear a vague resemblance to real life. This depressing dystopia is about as much like real life as the Teletubbies.

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There are 3 Comments

Henrietta Knight's picture

It's the show where your mum's your sister and your grandma's really your uncle.
EastEnders has always been my favourite soap. Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner. But recently it has had zero plot lines that I can relate to.
All the characters are absolutely loathsome. There isn't a single person who you would allow through your front door. Even Stacey has become a nasty, scheming self-obsessed bore who won't stop ranting and raving about her misspent youth.
When people leave the Square, they often only move a few miles up the road. Take Shabnam who is only two bus rides away. She ditched her doting husband Kush after he slept with Stacey - and they weren't even together at the time. Nice girl!
Let's face it, most of the characters would never be able to afford to live there anyway. The real East End has been gentrified. If Walford were real it would be full of bankers and personal trainers, who probably wouldn't all be trying to kill each other.
Albert Square was based on Fassett Square in Hackney where former Victorian merchant houses sit behind a busy market. A three-bedroomed house there is now worth £1.3 million. Hardly the sort of dwelling to shoe horn in the entire Mitchell family.
The real life EastEnders wouldn't be seen dead shopping in the Minute Mart or drinking in the Queen Vic. They are far more likely to have their food delivered by Ocado and go for cocktails in hip bars in Shoreditch and Hoxton.
They barely know who their neighbours are. Let alone be close personal friends with them. And a pop up restaurant is far more likely to be held in an artisan coffee shop than a launderette.

Anna May's picture

I’ve recently come back to Eastenders after a much needed break. What with the murders, the sex, the love triangles and the non-stop wife-swapping, I just didn’t have the time. But enough about my personal life.

Having expected to dive back into a Walford full of people I’d never seen before (and Ian), I was completely stunned to find nearly every single character who’d ever lived there right back in the mix. No wonder they brought in an hour long episode. How else would they fit everybody’s weekly turn at moaning and whinging in? How indeed? I know! By inviting them all to a lingerie party, to drink alcohol and stand about looking at whips and silly underwear that even I wouldn’t wear…and I wear some ridiculous stuff!

So, having been truly slaked in Slaters, Mitchells and Fowlers, we leave the ‘party’ and immediately discover more Slaters, Mitchells, Fowlers and now some Brannings, along with some new faces too! Bonnie Langford! Yay! Well, she’s new to me! Boo, though, because she’d just been stood up. Oh dear. Moving on, houses crammed full of families made up almost entirely from…yes, you guessed it…Slaters, Mitchells, Fowlers, Brannings and Shirley’s infinite Carter clan.

Oh…hang on a minute…I found some Beales! Good old Ian, with his lifelong struggle with stove-bothering and a genetic inability to do anything else with his life that doesn’t involve bacon. To be fair, I’m with him on that one. In true Ian style, he thanks Tina for her commitment to keeping the café ticking along, then sacks her because he’s knackered up his other oven-based business and has to, yet again, sell that and return to frying up breakfast, lunch, and dinner to the entire population of Walford, because his is the only working kitchen in the Square…which is obvious, seeing as the others are all pretend anyway. At first, Tina thought they’d found out about the stale cakes she’d stolen. She’s a thief, basically. No, it wasn’t that, she was just being ‘let go’. Bless her heart, she responded by admitting the cakes she’d stolen were actually fresh! He and Jane still sat there feeling guilty! She’s a thief, Ian. She’s been nicking from you. Maybe have a little think about that when your next business starts losing money and fails (and it will).

What could possibly happen next! Oh, Roxy turns up out of the blue. Of course she does, because you can never have enough past, present and future characters rammed into one show. You really can’t! So in walks her mum, Glenda, as well. Why not!

One thing I’d like to ask of the writers. Can everyone PLEASE stop shagging Phil! This is wrong! Yes, I know he has to keep falling off the wagon and being a git, because that’s what Phil does, but if I have to watch his face parts touch another person’s face parts, or any other parts for that matter, one more time…I swear! Can't anyone at all in Albert Square reach for a bottle of plonk with one hand without reaching for Phil with the other? Seriously, after watching Denise fall drunkenly on top of him the other night, I was reaching myself (yeah, I know it’s retch, so bite me).

Kevin O'Sullivan's picture

Very funny review. And spot on. That campaign by the idiot market stall holders to stop Ian Beale flogging his crap jumble-sale style restaurant to Costmart?  They want to carry on charging high prices and prevent the new store from offering bargains to customers. What about the consumers? Come to think of it, why not bulldoze the entire market and replace it with an Asda? That might drag outmoded EastEnders kicking and screaming into the 21st century. Just do it!