Yesterday's EastEnders

XP: I also liked the Carol/Connor relationship in the way you describe. Interesting to see Carol becoming so protective of one of Billy's friends, and of course it's always good to have the older woman/younger man relationship, just to remind people that it does happen.

Does Glenda actually like Phil or is she just trying to find out what's happening to Roxy's money?

Tamwar calling Stacey "babe" recently in an incredibly random, awkward tone was great acting/writing. I love little things like that. And Lauren's wtf giggles when she heard Billie had died.

I love Tamwar. I'm excited (within the context of Stenders, obviously) for a new Masood family storyline. Mas is my very favourite character, Tamwar a close second.

Great Glenda episode tonight...Party at Phil's new gaff with Glenda making both Phil and Ian uncomfortable as she's sleeping with both of them, getting drunk and speaking a few home truths.

Good clip of Glenda relaxing at home listening to Fleetwood Mac. Could just picture her rolling a few doobies and getting stoned to the Mac.

...and more...

This cot death/baby swap nonsense is fucking bleak, even by EastEnders standards.

Yeah - it's been pretty hard going. Really disappointed with Eastenders, as last year they had Archie's murder and the Indian wedding between Sayeed and Amira (really colourful episode).

This Xmas/New Year Corrie has been a lot better than EastEnders. Just caught up with yesterday's two episodes. Good stuff: with Tracey super-villain, the sexual tension between Sally and Tyrone etc.

Tracy is the worst thing in Corrie by miles (possibly only because Stape's been sidelined to accommodate her).

I did think for one long moment that Ronnie hadn't gone through with the swap when she wouldn't let Roxy into the room, but no, it's misery and bleakness all round with NO light relief at all (unless you count Masood and Zainab's bizarre mating "yes master" rituals).

worst thing in Corrie - coming up:

http://i1.cdnds.net/10/52/550w_soaps_corrie_tyrone_sally_kiss.jpg

Honestly I know tabloid hysteria is ridiculous and annoying but the cot death/baby stealing storyline is so depressing as to be borderline unwatchable.

The acting (esp. Jessie Wallace) has been terrific, but the storyline is harrowing as fuck. I don't even think I can bear to watch the "reveal" whenever they get round to it.

apparently they are rushing the reveal - the story was planned to go on for the whole of this year. i don't watch it though, it's a genuinely depressing show. every time i flick past it seems to be people screeching at each other and when they try to do comedy... o_O

Aware of the likely sensitivity around the issue, programme-makers had already made last-minute cuts to the New Year's Eve episode, including shots of a distraught Ronnie touching the cold hand of her dead baby, and Kat in blood-soaked pyjamas after her husband finds her haemorrhaging in her bed.

ffs.

oh, the quote was from http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jan/06/eastenders-complaints-cot-death

Is there a new person in charge or something? It does seem to have shifted from the awesome kind of miserable (whodunnits, serial killer priests) to just out and out miserable (baby stealing, mothers finding their children dead on the sofa).

I'm more amazed that they shunt things like Wall-E off onto BBC3 and/or starting at 10:00pm just so the 'larger' audience are available to watch this.

Aye, new bloke just taken over in the last year. ex-Hollyoaks big chief, apparently. Not that I watch Hollyoaks, but I believe they were quite big on sensational storylines in his reign as well.

xpost to Matt

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-12134763

But BBC controller of drama production John Yorke told Radio 4's World At One programme that the job of the show's creators was to "create a drama that people talk about".

"What's cheering about this - and I do hear the concerns - is that everybody's talking about cot death and we're putting it back on the agenda, he added.

I know a couple of people who've lost babies who have found it impossible to watch this storyline, especially at New Year when people tend to get a bit weepy over lost family. It's such an unsympathetic angle to take as well, making the grieving mother a mad baby stealer.

Right, let's get it over with: yadda yadda what's on your i-pod: Adam Faith, "Someone elses baby"

...

^^^

For years, the soaps cover themselves by claiming their tales are reflective of issues concerning real-life (I take it they had the usual "If you have been affected by issues raised.." phoneline/disclaimer)

But this is no better than Daily Star muckraking, purely for the benefit of people that things like this would never affect, just so they can go "ooh, look at him/her, always thought they was a wrong-un"

I don't really get why this is so awful (wrt tabloid hysteria), soaps cover murder, rape, domestic violence etc etc etc all the time and these are also things that families are affected by and no-one bats an eyelid.

Mind you I haven't watched Eastenders in years so maybe I'm missing something.

Eastenders is generally better at covering things like domestic violence/rape/child abuse sensitively though. This just seems like piling misery on misery for the sake of it. Specifically immediately turning victim into villain. Murders are so engrained in fiction that no one would think of not including a murder storyline because it would be insensitive - murder with real-life parallels a different thing obviously.

Also it's just fucking bleak and not even good soap drama. The funeral episode should be fun, I might give it a miss and do something cheerier like re-reading Jude The Obscure.

Colonel Poo, because it's painting the grieving mother as a completely deranged psycho, ignoring the fact that Kat would surely recognise her own son and that the dead baby wasn't him, bypassing any sensitive way of dealing with the issue to make what someone somewhere thinks is a better story. It's factually inaccurate and handled really badly, I don't think there would be the level of complaints if it was simply either Kat and Alfie or Ronnie and Jack grieving for the death of their own actual son.

Eastenders have done cot death and miscarriage before, and handled them effectively and sensitively in the past. But this time round, it's just whizzbang ratings-grabbing mentalism.

xpost

Newborn babies all look the same to me but then I'm not the parent of one. Also the fact that one baby had a club foot and the other one didn't and the doctor's examining the dead baby didn't wonder why it had suddenly developed one that no one had previously noticed is just a really stupid plot hole.

purely for the benefit of people that things like this would never affect

idgi - pretty sure people with kids also watch Eastenders

Well, from someone who's responsible for two babies, I'd have recognised both within five mins of them being born.

xpost yes, and is it for their "benefit" ?

OK, I'm only vaguely aware of this because of OUTRAGE headlines and just thought people were pissed off because a soap was covering cot death.

I'm assuming a bit (never watch it)..

The main outrage/reaction is due to the victim/villain is not the classic Nick Cotton "born bad" nasty in all he/she does, type.

Because 'we' have been given to be sympathetic to her past situation(s), and allowed to identify with her, when she does something 'mental'/'evil', it disgusts in larger measure.

I think the main outrage is that it paints grieving mothers of SIDS babies as crazy psycho baby snatchers.

Was reading an article at lunchtime where infant death campaigners are a bit miffed at the way in which a grieving mother is being portrayed as something akin to the childcatcher

xpost

I agree with the people who have watched it and know what they're talking about.

But, as Grace Dent points out, Ronnie Mitchell-Branning is hardly your standard grieving mother. She has form in the area of doing weird baby-related nutso things (didn't she essentially offer to buy Sam Mitchell's baby off her (standard soap stuff, I know), she has reason to be unreasonable around babies, what with her dead daughter (who died twice as far as she was concerned, and was the child of incest), her miscarriage, and so on. S

All that aside, though, I totally agree with Matt DC. There's just no satisfying conclusion to this story. Nobody in the audience is waiting with bated breath to see Ronnie get her comeuppance the way they were waiting for Trevor to get his, or Tracey Barlow to get hers, or whatever. There is nothing but more misery to be wrung out of this storyline. It's just bleak and miserable and it teaches nobody anything about anything.

Stray S there. Nice.

You know, I typed out Ronnie's backstory to illustrate a point earlier, then deleted it because it made me sad that I watch such a ludicrous soap.

You forgot that her niece is her step-daughter, for extra odd kid-related stuff.

I think there's another reason people are annoyed at this that the BBC haven't really acknowledged yet, most mothers don't develop problems after going through things like this but some do and those problems are nothing like this. The writers seem under the impression that people sometimes just go crazy and that general craziness can pretty much explain any action at all, there doesn't seem to have been any research into how grief or child abuse actually affects people mentally. The official responses from the BBC so far have been along the lines of "oh but you don't realise, she's really crazy, and she has been through a lot you know." It's missing the point that people who go through "a lot" and develop problems as a result still don't go around stealing babies.

Yes, pretty daft to talk about soaps at the moment with so much rubbish going on in the world right now, but... (I couldn't find an Emmerdale thread so forgive me for sticking this here) - Jackson and Aaron's story at the moment is brilliant. Fantastic acting from those two guys, I was almost in tears last night.

How much do we reckon Whitney Dean is worth?

too right chris. guy who plays aaron is the best actor on telly, hands down. a lot of emmerdale is o_O or boring but when it's good it's stupendous.

yeah amos & mr wilks were awesome. Miss it when it was actually good. Post plane crash (of course it had nothing to do with lockerbie yeah right) is bollocks bar when nelly dingle was in it.

I never forgave them for killing off Archie

heh
http://www.emmerdale.org/emmerdale/profiles/archie.htm

his body was never found. Bring him back!

let go

I'm quite sad that there will be more scenes of Ronnie walking around in a catatonic state struggling to say anything, it was getting quite funny.

Otherwise, this show hasn't been very good at all lately. Max might be able to wear a suit well but I really doubt Tanya would even consider swapping Greg for him.

I think my facial recognition software is playing up - I keep having trouble telling Tanya and Jane apart.

EE's been pretty bad for the last few weeks. Hopefully, the scriptwriters can draw a veil over this whole sorry baby swap/Ronnie plot. I'd like to see Roxy and Christian out-clubbing again (not in the R&R, or whatever it's called these days). I'd like to see a new older femme fatale to replace Glenda.

Aaron/Jackson/Hazel in Emmerdale last night were incredible. Jackson skydiving to Doves 'Words' the other night was gorgeous too. This storyline's been so good.

I can't believe the BBC haven't registered www.butchersjoints.com

Does anyone here watch Eastenders? I ask because my mum, who watches every soap imaginable, does not watch 'stenders and gets annoyed that it regularly wins every Soap of the Year award going, she says, "It must all Londoners that vote, because nobody here watches it." Are there regional breakdowns of viewing figures? Is everyone all Corried-up North of Watford?