Review

[Treacle]

That thing about DUC is just what Peggy would say!

[callummc]

well theyve definatly hit the nail on the haed,best bit for me was the nhs bit

[Treacle]

WALFORD LOVERS BARDLY DONE BY THAT VILE JIM SHELLEY
16 August 2005
THERE'S nothing like coming back from two weeks of fun and sun abroad, and settling down to catch up with Britain's most talked-about programme.

Unless, of course, that programme happens to be EastEnders.

This week's storyline featuring fun-loving 14-year-olds Demi and Leo was one of the most miserable, miserably inept that EastEnders has ever cobbled together. (No mean feat, that.)

To recap: Demi and Leo had run away from home with their bay-bay Aleesha (named after Ms Duvall).

They had moved into a squat of Dickensian squalor, full of rats crawling over the corpses of junkies and cackling prostitutes.

Within hours, Leo's mate Gav had inexplicably loaned him so much heroin he could pass for one of the Taliban.


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"What is it?" Demi, a wide-eyed, waif-like version of Bianca, asked, staring at a bag of pristinely folded wraps of heroin that Gav had cunningly disguised as cocaine.


Inevitably, within two episodes, Demi was chasing her first dragon and Leo was injecting/OD-ing. It was as if even the writers couldn't wait to get the whole thing over with.


The inanity and amateurism of it all was mind-blowing - although not as mind-blowing as Gav's heroin.


Rosie and Keith reacted to their daughter's disappearance with their customary class - arguing and generally being useless.


Keith took to staring at photos of Demi like some sort of wretched caveman, but still insisted they watch TV.


(Keith is so idle he doesn't even take Genghis, his only friend, for a walk.) When Demi phoned home, inevitably all she could hear was shouting.


The Millers' gormless histrionics ended (mercifully) when Appalling Pauline Fowler brought baby Aleesha home.


You could see the poor little mite thinking: "No! No! Not Pauline Fowler! Not the Millers! Get me back to the rat-infested squat full of junkies!"


Amazingly, Keith gave Appauline a hard time - just as Rosie did when Leo's mum agreed to take them to the squat where Leo and Demi were hiding out/OD-ing.


Meanwhile Demi was doing Shakespearean soliloquies.


"I wish I could just turn my 'ead off. I wish I could just stop finking" - not difficult, you'd imagine, in her case.


Not that Demi was without dreams, of course.


"When I'm 16, I'm gonna have an 'ouse. I'll have a wardrobe, a bed and a cot..."


A wardrobe!? Well, I didn't say they were big dreams.


Her big dream was to go to Southend, the East Enders' Mecca. "We're going to Southend!" Leo protested to the junkies even as they were mugging him.


Later he OD'd, croaking (just before he croaked): "It wasn't meant to be like this. It was meant to be luvverly."


A truly hilarious, vomit-inducing "vision" of Demi and baby Aleesha (understandably) finished him off.


ROMEO & Juliet it wasn't. It wasn't even kids' TV. (Did Zammo die in vain?)


What I found most objectionable was the way, as usual, EastEnders reverted to a position of total moral ambivalence, expecting us to sympathise with this pond life.


Keith Miller's comment "I thought we might as well LOOK like people the public would want to help" was particularly ironic, given that after all this time they still don't.


When they first arrived, the Millers' main contribution was to dump their rubbish on their neighbours. Demi and her brother Darren have spent most of their time since nicking from the local mini-mart.


As for Leo, the underlying message was: his dad was horrible. He couldn't cope with being a dad. He had no choice BUT to become a heroin dealer (twice).


"So what am I supposed to do?" the little toe-rag sniffed. "Go and nick us some food?"


Er, yeah - that's what any self-respecting teenager (like Demi and Darren) would have done.


"I bet you're loving this!" Ray's Horrible Dad growled.


"No, as it 'appens, I ain't," Keith mumbled back, speaking for us all.


For years now EastEnders has been degenerating into Brookside. This sorry saga just proves it, although to be fair to Brookside this is the sort of crap Brookside was doing years ago.

[Leo_in_ee_rules]

that was such a sad story line

[xcutiekatiex]

lol now that was funny( i ment the 1st one)

[Trinity]

EE can't 'degenerate' into Brookside. The word would be evolve. If EE dgenerates much more even WQ would stop watching it!

[Treacle]

EE can't 'degenerate' into Brookside. The word would be evolve. If EE dgenerates much more even WQ would stop watching it!

I would NEVER stop watching it especially when it has characters such as the wonderful Dot Cotton, one of the biggest soap icons ever if not THE biggest icon in any soap

I don't think it's that bad at the moment apart from Mofie which will be ending soon and the Demi and Leo storyline which has now ended!

Things seem to be flowing nicely and the plots seem to be moving along again. Plus we've got the return of the Mitchells to look forward to

You can see how much EastEnders has improved by looking at the way new characters such as Naomi are being introduced without any fanfare.

EastEnders is nothing like what Brookside became, the two are uncomprable!

Brookside lost most of it's decent characters and the ones that were left were wasted. They hung onto the fabulous Bev Dixon and Jacqui Dixon for example but I remember these being totally wasted in favour of that new Gordon family etc. Brookside degenerated into a Hollyoaks type programme before it was eventually axed, it was totally ruined and had to go really.

EastEnders is still watchable and is getting better apart from this Mofie rubbish

So I think you're being a too harsh Trinity! Afterall EastEnders is still proving to be a hit in terms of viewing figures

Admittingly gone are the days when it was a top notch drama but that sort of ended in 2000 and was more of a 80's/90's thing and after that I thought it was just a great soap which was good enough for me up until 2002. It's getting back to being a good soap though

[Treacle]

No doubt they'll be more critics nitpicking in tomorrows papers!

The funny thing is there's a million and one things to nitpick in all the other soaps especially Coronation Street yet these critics dedicate half a page to EastEnders and a paragraph to another soap

[Treacle]

To Walford-upon-Avon where Romeo And Juliet -The Grange Hill Years was reaching its climax.

Yes, Demi and Leo were still missing but if you didn't watch it you were missing nothing.

However, the show did for once manage to capture the real East End - it was totally hackneyed.

A storyline-by-numbers. Cut with every drug cliche going, any good acting (Demi) swamped by overacting (the rest).

And rounded off with possibly the funniest thing I've seen on EastEnders all year - Leo's crack-induced pre-death vision of his girlfriend and daughter basking in a sunny glow.

Honestly, it was as if Bouncer's Neighbours dream sequence never happened.