We thought we'd watch EastEnders last night, just to see what on earth was going on. I had accidentally strayed into soap land the other evening when I was sitting and working on my laptop. The television was on and I wasn't watching as my concentration was elsewhere. Then EastEnders came on. (See earlier post where I discuss this.) So I was somewhat fascinated to see how things were developing, hence what follows. As I've mentioned in an earlier post, Christmas in soap-land is always fraught with drama and excitement. Possibly this will be the only episode we'll bother to see for the rest of 2018, but who knows? We have a television set in our bedroom, so if it's too awful we could always just fall asleep, due to the boredom. So, what on earth IS going on in Walford? Possibly not boring. Someone is in intensive care. I assume they are. I couldn't work out if the 'someone' was male or female. Carol insists it's female. This is a soap stand-by. Have someone or other involved in an accident of some sort, traffic, house-fire, shot or whatever, so they end up in hospital, in intensive care, miles of tubes, things stuffed in their mouth, bleeping monitor at bedside, and family members come in and stand or sit at their bedside, tears running down faces, gloomy, not sure if they'll pull through (the patient, that is, not the family.) Usually this is done when an actor wants to leave the show, or hasn't decided to sign contract to remain, so the producers do this to their character. They die if they don't sign the contract, or they live if they do. They can remain on life-support for endless episodes. Harrowing and dramatic, but probably incomprehensible if you're not a regular viewer of the show (as we are.) Who is this character? Why are they in intensive care?
Then we had another plot, involving a coffin, Billy Mitchell as a funeral director, and a whole gang of 'hard' men, including Mr 'Potato head' Phil Mitchell grunting and scowling (as he always does.) in a scene which was more a cross between Joe Orton's play 'Loot' and a piece by Harold Pinter than your average EastEnders storyline. Had they hidden some ill-gotten cash inside the coffin of someone's dead mother? Or whose corpse was it anyway? (Good name for another play, methinks, a farce perhaps, or even another television show of some sort.) It did smack of Orton, as I know the play well and worked on a production at Colchester Rep when I was an A.S.M. in the early 1970's. Anyway, I just hope the Orton estate doesn't sue the producers of EastEnders for plagiarism or something. It was all a real muddle, particularly as we weren't sure what was going on, or who was who (or whom.) Was someone pretending to be a priest, or at least a man of the cloth, or a vicar? This character began to speak a load of gibberish, sort of stage Latin. Was he supposed to be attempting to say the Last Rites? More laughable than anything. Then they decided to take the lid off the coffin and I assume put the loot inside and, for some unaccountable reason, the corpse fell out. I don't think it was necessary, but I think they got complaints from some viewers as a result, or I expect they would. Who on earth would want Billy Mitchell as a funeral director? He's fairly incompetent at the best of times, but the thought of him organising a funeral leaves much to be desired. Not exactly realistic. I felt sorry for the person who had to be the corpse. I assume it was a real person and not a dummy. They would have had to remain still and not breath for a long time, although there were no shots of the corpse, except very brief glimpses. Had they got the wrong coffin? I assume that what was going on. Billy Mitchell selecting the wrong one, no doubt.
Are we to assume that the stolen cash is put in a different coffin and Billy buries the wrong one? In the play 'Loot,' the hearse taking the coffin to the cemetery is involved in an accident and later the coffin and a casket, which contains the hidden money from a robbery, gets burnt and returns to the home of the deceased wife of the central character, so it'll be interesting to see if they pinch this plot idea from the Orton play. I don't think I can be bothered to watch to find out. The whole thing is too absurd and not worth the effort to watch, but never mind. They have had gangsters in earlier episodes of EastEnders and it got ridiculous and unrealistic. People with guns and things in a soap is going too far if you ask me. Not just in EastEnders, but I seem to remember something similar in Brookside and we know what happened to that particular soap opera. It got cancelled. Just a good way to lose viewers when things get unrealistic and crazy.
One assumes the cash has been stolen in some sort of robbery. I didn't discover where it had come from. If you're a regular viewer you would obviously have learnt all these details, so watching one episode it does take a while to fathom out what is going on. No context for any of the current goings-on. A bit like picking up a novel, probably quite a long one at that, and just opening at a random page and reading and expecting to understand the plot and characters from only reading a couple of pages. New characters have been introduced since I last watched EastEnders. Some have left, and old characters have reappeared.
Then we had another plot, involving a coffin, Billy Mitchell as a funeral director, and a whole gang of 'hard' men, including Mr 'Potato head' Phil Mitchell grunting and scowling (as he always does.) in a scene which was more a cross between Joe Orton's play 'Loot' and a piece by Harold Pinter than your average EastEnders storyline. Had they hidden some ill-gotten cash inside the coffin of someone's dead mother? Or whose corpse was it anyway? (Good name for another play, methinks, a farce perhaps, or even another television show of some sort.) It did smack of Orton, as I know the play well and worked on a production at Colchester Rep when I was an A.S.M. in the early 1970's. Anyway, I just hope the Orton estate doesn't sue the producers of EastEnders for plagiarism or something. It was all a real muddle, particularly as we weren't sure what was going on, or who was who (or whom.) Was someone pretending to be a priest, or at least a man of the cloth, or a vicar? This character began to speak a load of gibberish, sort of stage Latin. Was he supposed to be attempting to say the Last Rites? More laughable than anything. Then they decided to take the lid off the coffin and I assume put the loot inside and, for some unaccountable reason, the corpse fell out. I don't think it was necessary, but I think they got complaints from some viewers as a result, or I expect they would. Who on earth would want Billy Mitchell as a funeral director? He's fairly incompetent at the best of times, but the thought of him organising a funeral leaves much to be desired. Not exactly realistic. I felt sorry for the person who had to be the corpse. I assume it was a real person and not a dummy. They would have had to remain still and not breath for a long time, although there were no shots of the corpse, except very brief glimpses. Had they got the wrong coffin? I assume that what was going on. Billy Mitchell selecting the wrong one, no doubt.
Are we to assume that the stolen cash is put in a different coffin and Billy buries the wrong one? In the play 'Loot,' the hearse taking the coffin to the cemetery is involved in an accident and later the coffin and a casket, which contains the hidden money from a robbery, gets burnt and returns to the home of the deceased wife of the central character, so it'll be interesting to see if they pinch this plot idea from the Orton play. I don't think I can be bothered to watch to find out. The whole thing is too absurd and not worth the effort to watch, but never mind. They have had gangsters in earlier episodes of EastEnders and it got ridiculous and unrealistic. People with guns and things in a soap is going too far if you ask me. Not just in EastEnders, but I seem to remember something similar in Brookside and we know what happened to that particular soap opera. It got cancelled. Just a good way to lose viewers when things get unrealistic and crazy.
One assumes the cash has been stolen in some sort of robbery. I didn't discover where it had come from. If you're a regular viewer you would obviously have learnt all these details, so watching one episode it does take a while to fathom out what is going on. No context for any of the current goings-on. A bit like picking up a novel, probably quite a long one at that, and just opening at a random page and reading and expecting to understand the plot and characters from only reading a couple of pages. New characters have been introduced since I last watched EastEnders. Some have left, and old characters have reappeared.
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