EastEnders - Denise Escapes Dominion
Submitted by Liam Tucker on 07/29/2010 - 12:08
Lucas and Denise shortly before he chokes her 'to death'
In case you’ve not been keeping up, Lucas has been busying himself for the best part of Christ-knows-how-long, slaughtering innocents, drowning dogs, falsely imprisoning loose women and lying to anyone who suspected him of evil deeds. Then, having framed his own wife, Denise, for the murders, he considerately faked her suicide and acted as Minister at her funeral.
Finally this week the big reveal came. Even though we hadn’t ever seen Denise’s corpse, we were expected to believe she’d really died, and were expected to be shocked to find she was actually entombed in the basement of a derelict house. But this is where Christopher Reason came in, fiddled with the script and saved the day.
The dialogue, before scrambled and a little leaden, suddenly took a turn for the better as Denise wrestled with her husband’s conscience and then escaped, only to discover she was actually locked up in the house next door to where her family were celebrating youngest daughter Libby’s birthday.
Nearly there then. Like a tired, bored, carsick child on the backseat yelp-asking ‘are we nearly there yet?’ EastEnders’ viewers can finally see the sea on the horizon, and the chance of a vaguely happy ending. Despite all the corpses, the waterlogged dog, the rake-killing and the lies.
Besides all that, there’s very little going on beyond Max and Darren’s sitcom-style misunderstandings and farce-play. With Darren worrying about the appearance of his manhood in light of advances from heartbreaker, Josie, Max is having to play Dad, even going so far as advising Darren on future, intimate operations the boy’s considering having simply to please his (half Jewish) girlfriend.
It’s slightly incongruous, all this member-based silliness when you’ve got a John Fowles novel going on a few doors down, but at least there are chuckles to be found in Darren’s horrified cock-reception, with Josie screaming the place down at the sight of his dangling particulars. Without Reason on scripting duties, however, we might have been robbed of Max’s killer line ‘you don’t diss a dude’s doo-dah’ – and that would have been a massive loss for all fans of stupid, endless soap operas that continue to entertain for no good reason.
Liam Tucker is the founder of Watch With Mothers
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Lucas and Denise shortly before he chokes her 'to death'
It had to happen eventually. The Lucas plot-line – that perennial serial-killer story that seemed drip-fed into the public consciousness like some East End form of entertainment water torture – appears to be coming to a close. If you’ve not been watching, this week saw classy Enders’ scribe Christopher Reason return to writing duties, and suddenly a moribund narrative arc took on a new momentum. Suddenly it looked like the end was in sight.
In case you’ve not been keeping up, Lucas has been busying himself for the best part of Christ-knows-how-long, slaughtering innocents, drowning dogs, falsely imprisoning loose women and lying to anyone who suspected him of evil deeds. Then, having framed his own wife, Denise, for the murders, he considerately faked her suicide and acted as Minister at her funeral.
Finally this week the big reveal came. Even though we hadn’t ever seen Denise’s corpse, we were expected to believe she’d really died, and were expected to be shocked to find she was actually entombed in the basement of a derelict house. But this is where Christopher Reason came in, fiddled with the script and saved the day.
The dialogue, before scrambled and a little leaden, suddenly took a turn for the better as Denise wrestled with her husband’s conscience and then escaped, only to discover she was actually locked up in the house next door to where her family were celebrating youngest daughter Libby’s birthday.
Nearly there then. Like a tired, bored, carsick child on the backseat yelp-asking ‘are we nearly there yet?’ EastEnders’ viewers can finally see the sea on the horizon, and the chance of a vaguely happy ending. Despite all the corpses, the waterlogged dog, the rake-killing and the lies.
Besides all that, there’s very little going on beyond Max and Darren’s sitcom-style misunderstandings and farce-play. With Darren worrying about the appearance of his manhood in light of advances from heartbreaker, Josie, Max is having to play Dad, even going so far as advising Darren on future, intimate operations the boy’s considering having simply to please his (half Jewish) girlfriend.
It’s slightly incongruous, all this member-based silliness when you’ve got a John Fowles novel going on a few doors down, but at least there are chuckles to be found in Darren’s horrified cock-reception, with Josie screaming the place down at the sight of his dangling particulars. Without Reason on scripting duties, however, we might have been robbed of Max’s killer line ‘you don’t diss a dude’s doo-dah’ – and that would have been a massive loss for all fans of stupid, endless soap operas that continue to entertain for no good reason.
Liam Tucker is the founder of Watch With Mothers
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