DRW50

Before I forget it all I should give my comments on the main episode. I was a little disappointed, but my expectations were low enough that I'd say it worked. It was a very ambitious episode, far more than the 25th, and those ambitions succeeded. The good: - The gorgeous night shots of London. Absolutely stunning. They took my breath away. - Even if it felt padded out, I liked everything with one person after another finding out about Dot letting Nick die. Clumsy or not, linking this to Ian realizing who killed Lucy made a great deal of sense. I liked that a few people in the room didn't want to go along with the coverup. I knew no matter how much they tried to protect her, Dot would make sure she paid the price - it's nice to see consistent characterization. I saw someone saying how bad June Brown was in the live scene in the squad car - it was pure ham, but also pure pathos - exactly what the scene called for. My favorite moment of the entire episode. - Kat shoving that smug, passive-aggressive cow's face in the cake. - Even if I am mostly going to complain about Phil in this episode, I'm still very happy they brought Kathy back. And she felt like Kathy to me, not Gillian Taylforth, which was a relief. God I got tired of Kathy after a while, but she never should have been killed off. It was, up to that point, the dumbest decision in the history of EE. EE is lucky as hell that unlike Pat and Pauline, this could be rectified. If they write this properly, instead of focusing on camp and posturing, then it could be wonderful. Harry Reid is a more than decent young actor, and Adam Woodyatt has recently given some of the best performances that I've seen from him in a very long time, so if the writing makes an effort, it can deliver. Don't screw this up, DTC!!! - I thought the Who Killed Lucy stuff in this episode worked well enough, even if the ultimate resolution was silly and clear shock value. I didn't care who killed her, I still don't, but I do care about Ian, so the focus on him and his latest existential crisis lured me. Seeing them give Adam a chance to actually act was a nice surprise. I even liked that endless scene with Ian and constipated Mick. And Laurie Brett and Ben Hardy were also very good. What was OK - Stacey and Martin. I just don't see the chemistry, and it reminds me too much of Stacey/Bradley. I'm willing to give it a try, especially since they are taking the relationship slow and allowing Stacey to be uneasy about him. - Kim giving birth. I like Kim, and Tameka and Diane were all too believable in playing the nasty things Denise said and Kim's refusal to forget or forgive, but I just didn't care about scenes of endless screaming. I realize the woman who plays Mo is rarely around, but I wish she'd been in the delivery scene with Sonia. I love Denise, but I will say that it's impossible for me to watch her in scenes with Patrick and watch Patrick trying to deal with her and not forget that she abused him. He does not have a believable reaction to someone he has every reason to fear hurting him again. More shock value writing, more lack of fallout. - Sharon and Phil. It's obviously leading up to yet another vomiting up of the silly, silly idea that Sharon sees a fantasy Phil and Shirley sees the "real" Phil, but the scene still worked for Sharon's character and story. I just wish this relationship would end. Anyway, Letitia Dean has worked very hard to improve her acting after a poor return, and to me she's done a nice job of it in recent months. The bad: - Tanya and Max redux. Sniping in the cafe and grinding the episode to a halt. I guess their fans probably enjoyed this. Personally I thought it was totally pointless and felt like DTC patting himself on the back, even though he's the one who destroyed the relationship beyond repair for me in the first place (buried alive). I expect Max to be a bad father, but I often feel we're supposed to feel Tanya is a decent mother (why, I don't know). She's as self-absorbed and deluded as ever, gliding over the obvious mental illness of her daughter in favor of moping about how she thought she might have had a chance with Max or that he had changed (why would she think that...? The man would probably climb on top of Dot if she agreed). I'm glad she's gone again and I hope she doesn't come back. - The Carters continuing to be the most isolated, sour, irrelevant family in Eastenders history. Say what you will about the likes of the Ferrias, but even they had more links to the Square. Let's break it down: - Dean returns to set fire to the pub with dozens of people inside - Mick and Mick alone sees him (even though dozens of people could have) and wanders around looking for him while not groping a stranger or having a lengthy, constipated-looking chat with Ian about killing in the name of love. - Dean takes Nancy hostage - only Mick reacts, as dozens of people continue to obliviously booze it up and listen to Kim wailing in the toilet What is this? What If You Took A Hostage And Nobody Came? Why is DTC so terrified of blending his pet family into the canvas as a whole? And how lame was that scene anyway? Did they have three minutes to go before filming shut down? Did they really have him return after 6 years away for that? This story has been a consistent failure in writing, acting, and most of all, message - yet another soap story that tells women if they are raped, coming forward will bring nothing but misery, and the law will never be on their side. Remember Kathy's rape story, when Eastenders actually cared about showing a woman bring her attacker to justice? While I'm at it, why were Nancy and Linda meanmugging and sneering throughout everything with Sonia/Kat and Denise/Kim? None of those arguments were serious enough to warrant the involvement of the pub owners. I have no idea why this family consistently thinks they are so vastly superior to everyone around them. And finally...last and least... Phil and Shirley. There's a thing called "NOTP" which describes a pairing you absolutely hate. This one is high on my list. Once upon a time, I think Steve McFadden and Linda Henry had chemistry. I don't anymore. I haven't seen it in ages. The fallacy of Shirley knowing the "real" Phil and a few words in his ear from her forked tongue causing him to be a bad boy is just arrogant writing that is not backed up onscreen. Linda is a talented actress, but Shirley is a loser, and not the type like Pat was in her first few years on the Square, who knew what she was. Shirley thinks she's a victim, and worst of all, so does the writing. There's nothing worse than an unpleasant, unsympathetic character who is treated as a hero. They already have Phil for that. They don't need Phil in a frightwig.

I wouldn't be surprised if they just drop the story long-term, as he obviously didn't know what he did. The whole thing feels silly to me. Lomas is OK; he has charisma to burn, and a way with comedy, it's just he isn't suited to major dramatic material of any kind, IMO. I'm not sure who decided he should play drunk. I will say I thought most of the flashback episode was decent. It was clumsily thrown together, but the use of music and atmosphere was effective. Lucy's long final conversation with Jane got to me. Hetti Bywater believably played a broken little girl - the first time I ever cared about Lucy...and sadly, the last.

Apparently they originally planned to make Cindy the killer, but then went with Bobby instead. I keep hearing people talk about how shocking and wild this is, but hadn't everyone predicted parts of this ages ago? I'm going through the flashback episode and my goodness Jamie Lomas is even more hilariously bad than he was on Hollyoaks. No wonder DTC canned him - even by EE standards he was just abysmal. I am laughing my head off in every scene he has.

I think inventing too many connections between characters starts to feel tacked on and self-aware. I do think they could have included Grandpa Hughes' memory in the story - perhaps have his oldest son (I can't remember his name) move to Oakdale and work on the farm, perhaps be a father figure to Emma and a grandfather/father figure to her kids. I liked the Snyders. It's easy for me and others to talk about what didn't work, but many things worked too. I think if people didn't like them then they would see them as overkill. For me the only serious mistake they made with the Snyders was too much partner-swapping. I also wish they hadn't abandoned most of the family and brought in a new Snyder branch with Jack, but I will admit, aside from Ellie and maybe Meg, most of Emma's kids were played out.

I'm really looking forward to seeing Karn again - I thought Higgins did a tremendous job the last time around. I hope they won't overuse Missy but I'm looking forward to seeing her again too. Gomez is a terrific addition to the show.

Geez. I guess they had her with her hair being fixed mid-slaughter to show us she was a girly gal but a tough one too. I laughed when she pulled that guy out of the van... The odd thing is if this had come out about 10 years earlier I could see it doing well.

That's funny. I can see why it was criticized for heavy violence. Seeing her just firing and firing while perched out of her car window...what the hell is that? I wonder if the GTA designers ever watched this.

No, it didn't. If it lives on it's probably for Jamie Rose's brief stint on St. Elsewhere, when Bruce Greenwood's character, after screwing her over, hands her some flowers and says, "Red roses for a blue lady." And I think the theme song did well. God this is the worst CSO I have ever seen. It makes Dark Shadows look like Avatar.

I have been saving some of the last of the 79-80 clips to slowly watch, mostly with my mother, who was a fan back in the '70s but didn't watch much by the end of the decade. I always wonder how fans at the time must have felt about seeing this weird-ass hippie man come out of nowhere to suck up airtime and aimlessly wander around in the woods like one of those ponderous programs you used to half-watch on PBS while you were waiting for your real shows to come on. He has no charisma. If he'd been brought in as a love interest and foil for Lisa, that would be one thing, but knowing he was supposed to be the main love interest for Annie and Dee (ATWT's only young heroines at this time) and one of the main faces of the show - it's mindboggling. And the Joyce flashbacks are just surreal and...downright baffling as we get to the point where she's thinking back to being half-dead in a car and having some woman go on and on about family problems. They come across as planning to take her in a cabin and torture and kill her. I did laugh WAY too much when that woman told her, "You've got quite a gash." That's what Ralph Mitchell said! No wonder people were flocking to ABC. I liked seeing it too, as I did the Bauer kitchen on GL, but I just didn't like seeing it as the main room for all those years. I was happy when we got to see a parlor for a while there in the mid-80's.

I felt like we did see quite a bit of the Hughes home around Christmas, so it didn't bother me that much, but I do think some points of time were very Snyder-heavy (especially the years where they had multiple rooms in their house, although I liked that we got to see more than that damn kitchen).

Thanks for all the videos you share with us.

It's a little too angst-ridden and busking outside the coffee house. I always like this version of the theme:

They're never really THAT isolated from the canvas in Marland's last years. Iva had a lot of scenes at the hospital and with John and Andy and family, Ellie is still heavily involved in the Walsh business stories, and Holden's story ropes in Lucinda. Julie was also well-connected to Lisa and Andy. Seth was recurring by this time, Meg was rarely seen. The only one I'd say was isolated was Emma (whom Marland ALWAYS kept isolated for some reason) and Caleb, but Marland was working on that with having Caleb join the police force (which I did not agree with...). I'd say they were more isolated early on, where I felt dizzy when Emma would go over to the Hughes house for a funeral. People (mostly Lily but others too) would come to them, like they were dignitaries. This didn't happen as frequently later on, aside from bits like Holden and Lily's wedding reception, when 3/4 of the cast packed into the Snyder kitchen. Even the non-Snyders who suck up airtime on the farm, like Rosanna, are tied to Courtney and to Evan and to the Walshes. I think the problem more than isolation is that it was just difficult to care. I didn't care about Ned, or Debbie, or Rosanna, or Hutch (Hutch is a lot of fun with Tess sometimes but that's about it). The Linc, Hannah, and Woody stuff was also isolated, and not all that interesting, but to me it doesn't take up as much airtime as Rosanna later would. The main issue with ATWT in Marland's last few years is it's so densely packed. He managed to pull it off, and I do think if he'd lived he was having a clearout (as everything Carolyn-related was wrapped up at the end of 1992), but it's not something the show could have sustained. Still, ATWT was in a decent place, as much as I sometimes may carp about cliched writing and so many damn scenes of someone walking in at the wrong time and seeing someone hugging. ATWT had so much bad luck (multiple deaths, Joe Breen having to leave) and the genre was in freefall, which meant it never had time to recover the way it did in the aimless, ponderous, schizophrenic 79-84 period. It's a shame, because late 1994/early 1995 ATWT is decent, minus Mike and Rosanna.

They were going to burn down the farm in 1994, but the story was leaked to the soap press, so Laurie Caso dropped it. It always made me sad seeing that kitchen in later years, with barely any Snyders and most of them long forgotten, so I wish they'd burnt it down. I've always wondered if that was a rewrite because they didn't plan for Lily and Holden to be together initially. Either way, it did seem like too much at one time. Iva's story was so devastating (as she had also been forced into making porn while underage), I guess they may have felt people just couldn't concentrate too much on it, even though it haunted her for the rest of her time in Oakdale.

This is so funny. @dollyjoyner You never answered me @LauriebrettX how is @AdamWoodyatt ?… #leastyouknowitslive #gutted @AdamWoodyatt @dollyjoyner Thanks for asking, I’m fine. @LauriebrettX @dollyjoyner @AdamWoodyatt should have said- you been drinking Tan?? Love you Jo,you’re the best . And The nation loved it

No. I hadn't. I haven't really kept track of those Gay Times/Attitude things in the last few years as I wasn't into most of the guys they chose. That's awesome. And he was even on the cover. Wow. I don't know why they dialed back the nudity to a nonexistent level on Hollyoaks. That's a killer ass; it should be shown off. I'd seen the Lyndon Ogbourne photos from that issue (and he really must have gotten in because of gay fans as I don't think he's done much of anything post-Emmerdale). Lyndon looked much better with a bit of weight on him. The British soaps continue to cast hot guys, which is more than I can say for US soaps. I hope the magazines there continue showing them off.

I'll have to keep an eye out. Literally most of what I've seen of the Roscoes in my limited HO viewing is Freedie's ugly tats and Robbie modeling earrings and looking pained.

Thanks. I've only seen him a few times on there. I thought he would have been too old for the role, but he looks a lot younger on HO than he did on ED.

Who is he on HO? Lockie? Cameron? I guess he might be the last alcoholic, although there may be one I'm forgetting. I mostly remember Miles for his the scarves he constantly wore, even in summer.

Was there a scene of her watching Ashley and Harriet and looking forlorn or am I making that up?

http://www.zap2it.com/blogs/norm_macdonald_reveals_snl_40_eddie_murphy-bill_cosby-celebrity_jeopardy_bit_that_wasnt-2015-02

I have a feeling it may be just through tomorrow's episode, but I hope it's more, especially as they have no stories of their own. We've seen more of the old Chas lately in how she is with Aaron (I just hope they will further explore this beyond her being an obstacle to Aaron/Robert and a reason for Aaron to hate himself), but I'd like to see more of the other side of her old personality too. I'd also like to see James vanish and see her get new hair, but we can't have everything. What do you think of the Laurel booze story?

When I saw that Kush was there the way Ali had once been I couldn't help thinking about DTC's pride in not "box-ticking." You can pretty much call that "box-ticking."

If you want to see Nick's end you may want to start from last week. I'm sure someone who watches more on a day to day basis can tell you what a good jumpoff point would be. I don't really think you will miss anything if you just start from last week, although you may want to look for the bit where Shabnam talked about her baby.

Yes, she said "How's Adam?" Some fans think Laurie Brett had a line and she dropped it to avoid confusion. I don't know. Part of me wonders if it was planned, as it's gotten a ton of press attention, but I doubt any actor would humiliate themselves that way. She's taken it in good humor. The irony is yesterday she'd jokingly tweeted that she was now on the scene to save Jake Wood from any live blunders (as some thought he fluffed a line on Monday). I won't give anything away about tonight's episode but I will say that your theories about Kathy will continue after the show. I'm more confused than ever myself after tonight. I almost wonder if they put this thread in for viewers like me that don't care who killed Lucy. Other than the Carters (again - this time with huge idiot plotting regarding Dean), this was a good episode, one I enjoyed almost everything in. There was far more "live" content than I'd expected, and the cast coped with it well. I also think Ben Hardy's really done some very good work in these last few episodes.