Eastenders: The Boat Party, Episode One

(Monday 17^th February 2020)

Well, it’s a special occasion so I thought I’d write day by day for this one. You don’t turn thirty five every day, do you? So, the plan for these episodes is to tell the story of one day, each episode focussing on one set of characters. A bit like Emmerdale did the other week. This episode is all about The Carters and Whitney.

For starters, the show has changed its credits to much, much darker ones… Ooh! A bit like Coronation Street did last week. Then at the beginning of the episode, there is chaos in the water as the boat is sinking. Jack yells Whitney’s name. Sonia and Big Mo are screaming and shouting. Ben looks stunned. There’s a body bag. So someone is dead. It had better not be Tracey, that’s all I can say! The emergency services are there, which is unusual. Usually in these sorts of situations in a soap, the untrained cast members have to resolve things themselves!

Seven Hours Earlier…

So, the locals are gearing up to celebrate the Queen Vic being the Best Pub in London at boat party on the Thames. Linda is busy getting the party started early by getting extremely drunk, leading the one of the most epic fights soap has ever seen! There are punches and glasses thrown and everything! It’s so brilliantly staged! Jack the policeman just stands by and watches. It’s down to Tina and Kat to break it up.

Upstairs, Shirley is kind to Linda and admits that she has always been jealous of how much Mick loves Linda; she’s never had a relationship like that and never will. She begs her not to throw her marriage away.

Meanwhile, panicked Whitney calls the only man she can trust: Mick. Quite frankly, he just doesn’t need the stress of a dead body right now. Now, he does the kind thing and looks after Whitney but he does the stupid thing and attempts to cover it up. Leo died by accident. He was attacking Whitney. He died because he was stalking her and trying to kill her. But now they’ve left his body there, dressed Whitney up and taken her to a party with the murder weapon with the intention of dropping it in the Thames. So it’s going to look like she did it on purpose. The only thing she has on her side is his weird Loft House and Spy Hole.

Mick supports Whitney in the wake of Leo’s death…

Linda leaves Mick a heartfelt message, telling him that she still loves him and doesn’t want to lose him. However, she then sees Mick offering support to Whitney and gets the wrong idea. She packs everyone onto the bus (including the Queen Vic Bust) and demands the driver take off, leaving Mick, Whitney, Kat and Kush behind so they have to make their own way there. Charming!

On the boat, Linda is three sheets to the wind and behaving obnoxiously. She declares to the whole party that Mick and Whitney have been having an affair. Mick tells Whitney that he can’t go through with their plan. They have to tell the police the truth about what happened but he will take the blame for trying to lie. He can’t cover Leo’s death up; he has to be there for Linda and support her through her addiction.

Linda has made her way down to the kitchen where she gets the bright idea to balance on a little step to try and reach a bottle of wine of a shelf. Then the boat hits something (Big Mo suggests it’s an iceberg!), Linda falls and her ankle gets trapped between a unit and the counter (ouch, ouch, ouch!) I mean, the wine bottle falls down and everything but it probably wasn’t worth it.

The partygoers panic as the crew send everyone to the lifeboats, they are taking on water on the lower deck. Mick rushes down below to try and find Lina. It genuinely is like that scene in Titanic where Leo DiCaprio is handcuffed to the post and Kate Winslet has to axe him out of there, Kellie Bright being Jack and Danny Dyer being Rose! Only Jack was falsely imprisoned, Linda was drunk and incapable and trying to steal wine! As the room begins to flood rather quickly, Mick tries and fails to release Linda’s foot and keep her calm as she begs forgiveness for her behaviour. The boat shakes again and more alarms sound. Linda begs Mick to leave her but Mick refuses, telling her he loves her.

“If this boat goes down, I’m going down wiv ya!” #truelove

Sonia arrives home, having ditched her weekend away alone and gets rather a shock to find Leo dead on the kitchen floor. The police arrive and she looks awkward. So… did she call them about Leo or are they there for another reason?

Other things that happen in the episode that will presumably come to light later in the week:

Phil is hiding out on the boat with a gun,

Ben attempts to catch up with the boat,

Jack’s card is rejected,

Denise warns Jack that he needs to tell Ian that Lauren and Peter have split up,

Max ends up with a bloody nose but from who?

Tensions flare between Patrick and Isaac prompting Patrick to want to tell Isaac that he is his father,

Ian spends the whole party looking for Dennis,

There a bang that sounds like a gunshot!

Eastenders is on BBC1 on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays (7:30pm/8:00pm)

Doctors: Computer Control

(Monday 10^th – Friday 14^th February 2020)

Al formulates an app that will predict cancellations, completely ignoring the fact that as an incredible receptionist, Karen can already predict this better than any computer. On the first day of the trial, Karen does indeed predict the cancellations and Al’s app, which double books appointments based on who it thinks will cancel, turns the surgery into absolute chaos. Patients end up waiting an hour and a half for appointments and even walking out. Bear persuades Al to give it up. Karen proudly shows him that at the beginning of the day that she was far more accurate with her predictions that his app could ever have been.

Staff at The Mill have begun to notice the growing attraction between Bear and Ayesha and I am not happy about it! Bear quizzes Karen about Ayesha’s relationship status and arranges to go to a CCG meeting with her followed by lunch. I remain convinced that he is behind Jimmi’s incarceration. The meal doesn’t go well, as just like during a recent meeting. Ignorant Bear spends most of the time on his phone. And I’m pretty sure he mentions something about a ‘lock up’. My suspicion grows. He becomes almost aggressively jealous on ‘Galentine’s Day’ when he mistakenly believes there’s something going on between Ayesha and Valerie. But thankfully, he seem to have blown it without even realising and when he gives Ayesha a Valentine’s Day present; she neither understands why he is bothering or how he can even afford such an expensive gift.

There’s a really sweet episode where Al gives up an afternoon at a comic convention to treat a nun with a UTI and then help another nun with kleptomania. She started stealing dog food when she angry with a supermarket for calling the police on a homeless man needing food for his dog and wouldn’t let her buy it for him. Then she started stealing hundreds of tins, all from the big supermarkets. Al refuses to let her hands the tins back or to turn herself in. It won’t do anyone any good. Instead, they donate the tins to a dog shelter who really need them, helping to absolve herself of her guilt.

In a rather hilarious episode, Karen gets drunk with a rather annoying friend of hers who is bitter and angry and having some sort of midlife crisis. She wants a career change and has dumped her boyfriend and is clearly jealous of Karen’s success. She’s even jealous of her head injury and memory loss! But Karen falling off the swings and generally being very funny is worth it for having to put up with her irritating mate.

Meanwhile, Emma helps Daniel and Zara with Joe’s blaster gun party which is absolute chaos. While Daniel joins in the fun, Zara attempts to control the chaos and Emma gets hilariously drunk. But the next door neighbour thinks that actual guns are being fired and calls the police. The next thing they know, armed police descend on the house, frightening everyone, apart from drunk Emma who finds the whole thing rather exciting. However, Joe and his friends think the police turning up has made it the best party ever!

Rob discovers Joe’s online friend, Pixie…

Rob comes to sort the whole situation out but he makes an even more alarming discovery when he gets chatting to Joe and discovers that he has been talking to a girl called Pixie online. It soon transpires that Pixie is actually Al and he was trying to prove to Daniel and Zara just how unsafe Joe is online. At first, Daniel is absolutely livid but surprisingly, Zara is quite reasonable and asks Al to help them protect Joe online. However, when he connects their phones to his tablet, Joe is able to see the content of their phones as well. Left in Valerie’s care, he casts his tablet to the main screen in the waiting room and accidentally plays one of Daniel’s video diaries to Valerie in the empty waiting room. Zara rushes out and stops it before making Al change the settings to block Joe from seeing their phone content. Later, Zara watches Daniel’s video diaries. Another step towards them getting back together?

Daniel and Zara discover that Al has been talking to their son online…

Emma is surprised when her old flame, Lena asks to book her spare room for the weekend, especially when she books it for Valentine’s Day. Lena has left her husband and has decided that she is much more interested in women and is a lot happier with herself and her life now than she was when they were together. Emma is about to make her move when Lena announces that she is six months (and eight days) into a new relationship. Then she asks if her girlfriend can stay as well, landing Emma with sharing a house with a very happy couple for the weekend! Poor Emma.

Rob and Emma support a grieving mother seek justice for her son, victim of a postcode killing by a gang of thugs. Valerie, meanwhile brings together a couple who have only communicated over playing chess on the Internet.

Doctors is on BBC1, weekdays at 1:45pm

Eastenders: The Curse of Queen Victoria

(Monday 10^th – Friday 14^th February 2020)

Callum’s day go drastically wrong when Keanu shows up and abducts him! Poor Callum. See, this is why Ben warned you to stay away from him… Keanu then tracks Ben down and informs him that he wants £100,000 or Callum is dead. Honestly, I don’t know how these soap characters ever expect (or manage) to get hold of these kind of sums or money. It’s just unreasonable. Set your sights a bit lower, mate.

Anyway, Ben spends most of the episode fart arsing around really. He’s certainly not in much of a hurry. He mostly looks after poorly Lexi and looks a bit tense. Oh and he has a go at Martin for not actually committing murder when surely the fact that Keanu is indeed alive would solve most of his problems. Phil could return from exile and Louise would have a father for her child, to name a few. Martin then warns Karen to tell Keanu to back off his stupid idea when she gets hold of him. Phil returns to help Ben so I’m sure this will end marvellously.

Keanu meanwhile, is keen to run off with Sharon and start a whole new life with her and the baby. She manages to talk Denny round. However, she makes a big mistake by lying to him that Phil and Ben did indeed kill Keanu. I mean, they meant to kill him. They fully intended to kill him. But they didn’t do it. And she knows that. And if they do run off together, presumably with Denny, even he’s not dumb enough not to work that out so he’ll kick off yet again when he realises she lied to him while they were making up. For once, he might actually be justified for being an absolute brat. Honestly, he didn’t get any of his lovely Dad’s genes. RIP Dennis Rickman.

Mick and Linda put on a united front for the social worker but still Linda can’t get through it without a few swing of alcohol. She gets the wrong end of the stick when she spots Mick and the social worker talking at the bottom of the stairs and doesn’t believe Mick when he tries to explain. The truth is that he was reassuring her that Linda has never been unsafe with Ollie, which is of course a lie. Unsatisfied, Linda tracks the social worker down and attempts to explain herself, revealing the whole story of Ollie going up on the roof. Mick is absolutely furious. Not only has she revealed herself to be an unfit parent, she has also shown him up to be untrustworthy.

Linda announces the end of her marriage…

Linda takes things further by drunkenly berating Mick in front of the whole pub. Everyone is uncomfortable when she tells them that the Mick they all love didn’t protect her from being raped by Dean or protect Tina from Stuart. She then lays into him about having panic attacks. He manages to get in there first when she is about to announce that they are getting divorced. The moment gets even worse when she falls face first on the floor. Mick doesn’t help her up. He is disappointed the next day to realise that Linda has already sought legal advice from Gray, before she even handed him divorce papers. He goes home and sadly signs away his marriage, unable to change his wife’s mind.

Mo tells Daniel off for being so grumpy with Jean who is doing her best to look after him since he has been told that time is running out. He then buys Mo’s entire Valentine’s stock in a bid to make things up to Jean, wanting them to enjoy the time they have left together. Suki continues to try and gleam as much information as possible from Jean about living with cancer.

Still hurt over her parents’ lies, Bex decides to get a job and move in with Ash, Iqra, Habiba and Bobby. She doesn’t manage the job part but she does move out and she’s welcomed into the open arms of her friends. Bobby tries to enjoy a social life with his friends but they awkwardly alert him to some trolling online. That night, Dotty offers drugs to him and Bex. After his previous experience, he turns her down but Bex goes for it and even wants some more the next day. Not a good idea! Kathy alerts Ian to the online trolling of his son but Bobby doesn’t want his help.

Leo continues to spy on Whitney from the loft. He watches a heart to heart between Whitney and Kush as she reveals that she kept a letter that Tony sent her shortly before he died. Whitney lets Sonia down about the trip away, not feeling it would be right to go and enjoy herself when she has let Kat and Kush down so badly. She does however, go and make things right with Kat. While the house is empty, Leo ransacks the place looking for Tony’s letter. Whitney is shaken to find that someone has been in the house. The police follow protocol but Kat insists that it’s obvious who is behind the robbery. It’s confirmed when Whitney discovers that Tony’s letter is missing.

Things come to a head the next day when Leo confronts Whitney alone in the house with a knife. Trapped, with no exit, Whitney desperately tries to get away from him but things become physical and Leo hits his head. He slips on some spilled water, landing on top of Whitney, the knife between them, the blade stabbing him. Ding dong, Leo’s dead.

Eastenders is on BBC1 on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays (7:30pm/8:00pm)