EastEnders: JIM SHELLEY wonders if the scriptwriters have run out of ideas

By Jim Shelley

PUBLISHED: 15:25 EST, 26 July 2013 | UPDATED: 19:22 EST, 26 July 2013

I'm not saying the scriptwriters of EastEnders have run out of ideas but the climax of this week's episodes on Friday evening was the announcement of a death.

So far so dramatic, you might think.

Except that, not only were we not shown the incident in question, the character that had died hadn't been in the series for more than three years.

It suggested that my recent (jokey) theory - about Carl putting Ian's hand in the gas ring - might actually be true.

Tough meeting: Whitney was seen going to try and see her stepfather in prison on Friday night's episode of EastEnders

One day perhaps all the most crucial, sensational, scenes in EastEnders will take place off camera – to save on time and, above all, money.

Extend the idea further and, maybe EastEnders could just be one person telling us about everything that had happened – like Jackanory. Or Shakespeare.

Either way, the week's 'action' got off to a slow start.

The caff was closed, Janine ordered off the menu at Scarlett's (pasta carbonara) and Bianca was late for work because 'Tiff got chewing gum stuck in her 'air.'

Passionate in the park: Jean is seen sharing a kiss with Ollie the policeman

Sam and his jukebox moved in with Ava and Dex.

Viewers discovered that the one thing more embarrassing than watching your parents dance is seeing Ava and Sam skanking.

Unfortunately there was more evidence that the writers remain convinced that what the public are crying out for is to see more screen time given to precocious child actors from elitist stage schools who are just too young to actually know how to do it very well.

However thinks that the sight of Bianca's lovesick 7 year-old Tiffany and her 'older man' Bobby Beale (aged 10) having soppy clandestine conversations on their walkie talkies is 'adorable' needs to have a word with themselves – as Phil Mitchell would say.

'It's like Romeo and Juliet for 10 year olds !' sighed Carol, Tiffany's grand-muvver which a) it wasn't and b) no-one wants to see that in EastEnders anyway.

As for 'Lady Tiffany' ordering Beale her butler about, there's a reason why even parents dread school plays.

Mind you, anything is better than any scene involving Denny, the kid that even his muvver Sharon is fed up of following her everywhere.

'Twelve Ways To Find Out If Your Boyfriend Really Loves You,' Tiffany read from a magazine. 'Number One, does he look longingly at you every time you meet ?'

Even Whitney found it slightly creepy.

Tony King - the paedophile who groomed and abused her - used to 'look longingly' at her all the time. It was King who Whitney had discovered had committed suicide.

This after she went to visit him in prison.

'Why did you go ?' asked her fiance Tyler, confused not least she had told him that she wouldn't.

'I dunno,' Whit said, leaving Tyler and the rest of us none the wiser.

She even knew you needed a Prison Visiting Order, saying morosely: 'once they find out who I am, they won't let me in anyway.'

It didn't bode well for Tyler (or Whitney) that she didn't even seem glad that he was dead.

Good deed: Phil was seen giving money to Denise so Shirley would have somewhere to stay

Another thing they've obviously decided we want to see more of is Jean – one of soap's more irritating eccentrics.

The scene in which Jean and her new romantic interest Sergeant Boyden were playing swingball in the allotment will live long in the memory – and no, that isn't a metaphor.

'Are you supposed to hit it ?' Jean asked – a question that, frankly, made you want to hit her.

Jean had obviously never watched The Bill because when she finally discovered that her new friend used to be a policeman, she immediately confessed her involvement in the restaurant fire to Ian.

Ian predictably went bananas, demanding to know what he had done to deserve it.

'I offered you a job when no-one would touch you, offered you friendship, I helped you get your food safety certificate !' he thundered. 'Which one was it that got your back up ?!'

OK, OK, Ian. It was the Food Safety Certificate...

When he found out Bianca was also involved, to Denise's horror, he threatened to tell the police that Bianca had broken the terms of her parole.

But of course he didn't.

'Not that this appeased Bianca.

'What does it mean ''he's thinking about it'' ?' she screeched. Er...

There was more evidence of Shirley and Phil patching up their differences.

Phil secretly stumped up £ 500 for Shirley's rent, asking Denise: 'How long will that get in the B&B ?'

Anyone who guessed a year is out of order.

(Answer: a couple of munffs.)

Shirley had been sleeping rough in the Arches.

'Do I stink ?' she demanded to know.

Even from the other side of the telly, my guess was: yes.

'I want you to know something,' she told Phil. 'I was the best thing that ever happened to you.'

Well maybe a close second to Smirnoff.

Awkward conversation: Kirsty goes to visit Carl's mother Nora, who asks her if she's going to give her a grandchild

Finally, the writers treated us to the delights of Carl and Kirsty going to visit his muvver in a nursing home.

Kirsty's motives for the trip were unconvincing to say the least.

Having spent the last few weeks ostentatiously insisting how much she hated and feared him, Kirsty suddenly appeared to feel sorry for Carl and his dear old mum, whose birthday it happened to be.

She then told Carl she was only going in order to break the news that they had broken up (Kirsty and Carl that is, not Kirsty and Carl's mum).

Then when the old girl told Kirsty it would break her 'art if they split up, she didn't go through with it after all.

So all in all, another of Kirsty's brilliantly well-thought-out plans, right up there with the fake pregnancy.

The real point of the exercise seemed to be the start of a campaign trying to garner some sympathy from the viewers for Carl – henceforth, a nasty, charmless bully who served time with Derek Branning.

Sleeping rough: Phil rescued Shirley who has been sleeping rough

'You hurt her and I'll kill you,' his mum told Carl, cheering herself up enormously by digging her nails in to his hand.

This is, of course, one of the great EastEnders' tradition: introduce a new villain and then give him a back-story' that (supposedly) makes us feel sorry for him.

Phil and Grant Mitchell's old man knocked them about when they were kids. Max, Jack and even the loathsome Derek suffered at the hands of the previously-lovable Jim Branning.

Jay's dad Jase went from semi-professional football hooligan to Dad Of The Year.

This is all very well, to a point, though perhaps not with every single hard man that arrives on the square – which is practically once a month.

Having received one note from a mate of 'King Tony', Whitney decided – on her own – to go and visit him inside, even though as she told Tyler: 'You've got to be on the approved list. When they realise who I am, they won't let me in anyway.'

A good plan then.

Dressing in the blues and whites to blend in undetected was a brilliant idea though. Sitting against the walls, she all but disappeared. It was like an issue of Where's Wally: Where's Whitney ?

Let's hope she manages to get out.

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Source : http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2379480/EastEnders-JIM-SHELLEY-wonders-scriptwriters-run-ideas.html?ITO=1490&ns_mchannel=rss&ns_campaign=1490

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Saturday, July 27, 2013