25 April-6 May

Due to a holiday, a busy schedule since coming back, and sheer laziness on my part, there will be no proper ‘Week in Walford’ entries for the last two weeks.

I will, however, sum up my memories of the last fortnight as best as I can remember them through a haze of not really paying attention to several episodes in a hotel room when they aired and missing the omnibus both weeks.

Theme of the fortnight? People reverting to type.

The Masoods seem to be on some sort of mission to win the coveted Family that Lies the Most in Soapland award; and my god, that’s a category with some fierce competition. Zainab is lying to Masood about meeting with Syed and lying to Syed about the problems in her family. Masood is lying to Zainab about his gambling and relationship with Jane. Tamwar and Afia are lying to everyone about their marriage. Syed is doing his best to return to this family of liars by – that’s right – lying to Christian about meeting Zainab. Kamil is the only (current) member of the family not lying to everyone he knows, but that’s probably only because he hasn’t learnt to talk yet. And somewhere in Pakistan, no doubt Shabnam is failing to tell the truth every time she picks up the phone as well.

4-8 April

Why do people still organise family celebrations in Albert Square?  Zainab Masood’s been living there long enough to be familiar with the success rate of such gatherings, right?  (I doubt the memory of Syed and Amira’s flat-warming party will be leaving her any time soon.)  Alas, she chose to ignore the warning signs and pulled out all the stops for Tamwar’s engagement, even ignoring the ominous rumble of thunder and rain lashing down at the beginning of Tuesday’s episode.  You know something’s about to go disastrously wrong in Walford when someone digs out the rain machine and looks for BBC Sound Effects Vol. 3.

Mind you, as Albert Square parties go, it doesn’t get much worse than organising an engagement party for your son who’s already secretly married to the daughter of your villainous ex-husband, which is then gatecrashed by your estranged other son and his boyfriend (thanks to the subtle machinations of said ex), who’s then flattened by a roof beam.  Oh, and you then find out you’re not insured, you owe money to all of Walford, and your souls are owned by Phil Mitchell of all people. And it’s never a good day at the office when Ian Beale can claim the moral high ground.  It’s almost enough to make you feel sorry for Zainab.

Almost.

28 March-1 April

Remember when EastEnders used to take its time over setting up plots?  When characters were introduced slowly into the community, natural friendships and relationships developing slowly through people interacting with each other?  Maybe it never happened.  Maybe my memory’s at fault.  But my god, EastEnders seems to be on fastforward at the moment.

Ronnie Mitchell went missing this week. For an episode. There was barely time for the usual Mitchell argument about whether to involve the police and for Phil and Jack to do a bit of pseudo-macho posturing about whose responsibility she was before she was conveniently located at Aunt Sal’s. As wonderful as it was to see the lovely Sal again – oh the joyous sight of Roxy’s face at “I said to Peggy, I hope that baby’s worth it, she’s aged at least ten years” – Ronnie was back home by the following Monday, with no movement or development in that plot whatsoever. She still hasn’t told anyone what she’s done; her loved ones can see she’s not right but they’ve known that for months anyway; and the audience are still no nearer understanding what the hell’s going on in her head. The endless circles of the baby swap storyline are bad enough in themselves, but do they have to whizz round so flipping fast? If you’re going to send Ronnie missing, at least stretch it out to a week or two!

Speaking of, remember Kat and Alfie breaking up (again) at the end of Friday’s episode? That’s right, they were back together again by the end of the following Monday. Hands up anyone who’s surprised! (No one?) There is a limit to how many times we can watch the same couple break up ‘for good’ and then get back together ‘for good’ within 24 hours; and Kalfie zoomed past that limit a very, very long time ago. They did, however – to everyone’s astonishment – manage to stay together until the end of the week and even into the next week. I only wish I could bring myself to care. Instead, I’m just counting down the days until they get their baby back and they can hopefully get off our screens for a bit to let other characters have a chance to do a bit of breaking up and making up. And I love Kat and Alfie, individually and together. God only knows how the viewers who don’t remember them from the first time round feel.

In other news, Michael Moon has moved in with Roxy Mitchell.  Yes, that’s correct.  For those of you who may have missed some of the finer points of this relationship, it basically went like this:

28 February-4 March

So the cat’s out of the bag.  Except that it isn’t.  The only people who heard Glenda’s revelation that Phil had been cheating on Shirley – other than the couple in question – were Ian, who already knew; Jane, who didn’t care; Roxy, who didn’t believe it; and Heather, who didn’t quite understand what was going on.

Poor Glenda.  She had forgotten one of the Unwritten Rules of Albert Square: all affairs must be revealed in front of as many cast members as possible for maximum impact, preferably at some sort of party or celebration.  Props help in this department.  If only she’d had a cassette tape as Grant did, a nice DVD like the one Lauren used to ruin her family’s Christmas, or had gone the Lucy Beale method and inexplicably – though neatly – spray painted a wall rather than sending an anonymous letter or text or even simply walking up to the wronged party in the street and saying, ‘Psst, love, did you know your husband’s shagging my uncle?’

If Glenda had spilled the beans in front of the massed gossips of Walford at Phil and Shirley’s wedding reception, she would no doubt be instantly believed by everyone and vindicated in her revenge.  Alas, she chose instead to reveal their affair over a cheese omelette in a half-empty Queen Vic and was promptly punished by the Gods of Albert Square.  No one believed her.  No one cared.

21-25 February 2011

EastEnders doesn’t tend to do enigmatic new characters. New arrivals in Albert Square tend to enter with a bang, indulging in some petty crime, starting feuds with various Mitchells and hopping from bed to bed, the agenda obvious upfront; or they sidle in with a whimper, appearing completely ordinary until the day we discover their dark secret a few months down the line. They will have some sort of dark secret, of course. These are the rules. If they arrived a while ago and still appear ordinary, the dark secret has simply yet to come out. The only people you can trust in Walford are the thugs and the criminals; it is, quite literally, the quiet ones you need to watch out for.

But then Dr Yusef ‘Kobra’ Khan slithered his way onto our screens; smooth, charming, handsome and overflowing with the charisma and screen presence that certain other new arrivals are sadly lacking in – there was no Michael this week in EastEnders, which may have contributed hundred-fold to my enjoyment of these episodes – but clearly with an agenda. We just don’t know what it is yet. He’s seriously enigmatic. Textbook enigmatic.

Who is he? Is he as lovely and charming as he appears? Is he completely evil and out to destroy the Masoods? Does he want Zainab back? What happened to his first wife? Is it just me being paranoid, or is there something very odd about his relationship with his daughter? Could he be Syed’s real father? (I don’t know whether it’s just coincidence or a result of the grudge the writers seem to have taken against ever allowing Marc Elliott to appear in an episode, but the longer Yusef and Syed go without meeting or mentioning each other, the more convinced of potential parentage I become. We’re back in Unwritten Rules of Albert Square territory again. Okay, the dates as we know them don’t really work, but in a universe where a woman can conceive in July and give birth to a full-term baby in December, clearly the passage of time doesn’t work as it does in reality.)