Tag: eastenders

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Crying is for babies !!!

Image: Maggie Smith / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Crying Baby

I don’t know about anyone else, but yesterday, I watched the last three Eastenders episodes on BBC Iplayer in one go and felt like a right nutcase afterwards.

After avoiding Eastenders when the baby saga was on, I had decided not to watch it any more at all, but I couldn’t resist with the news of the death of Pat Butcher coming up.  I think it must be some kind of morbidly fascinating compulsion to see such a hugely liked character leaving a show after so long.

Right from the moment that the doctor told her she had cancer, I blubbed.  Chest heaving, racking sobs that threatened to spill over and out into real life.   Two boys were on the couch opposite me, so I swallowed my pathetically weak constitution as I watched the end emerge.

Moving from the ridiculous to the farcical with Pat being left alone with so many people in the house, and almost total strangers walking into her room unheeded made no difference.   Pam St Clements did a fantastic job of acting and I could really imagine that it was someone on that bed, who was indeed breathing their last few breaths.

Perhaps it was the hark back to the night and the day that my mother in law died.  She was a woman taken far too soon with bowel cancer which had spread enormously.

Perhaps it was the similarity in how she lay down, unable to make herself fully articulate to those who were looking on.

Ok, the end came quick for Pat Butcher, in the way that it didn’t for my MIL.  Her body laboured on for about 12 hours after her brain seemed to leave us.

The last scenes with Janine and with David.   Well overdramaticised exaggeration, but that made no difference – I could feel the heaving in my throat as I fought back the tears while I kept watching, transfixed by the way it all unravelled.

A couple of little tears slipped down out of the corner of my eye, and littlest spotted them as he moved over beside me.  “Stop being so silly”, he said, “crying is for babies” then gave me a hug.   Now that just made me heave once more at the little boy who was obviously on the first rung of the don’t show your feelings for any reason rung of the ladder.

In a way, I’m glad this Eastenders storyline is over.

It has to be the only soap storyline that I have ever sobbed my heart out over, and I absolutely loved every second of  it.

Now, the only thing left to do is to put on Marley and Me on tomorrow, to let littlest rekindle the fast leaving publically empathetic side of him !!!!

 

 

 

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Eastenders Plot – Ronnie, and Baby Swapping

On twitter last night, there was a lot of outrage at the storyline of Eastenders and what they have done to Ronnie.  She has already been through the lost one child, found it again, only to lose it, and then miscarriages.   

They show Ronnie whose baby has suffered a cot death, and then almost instantly going to the Vic and swapping the infant for Kat and Alfies’.

I can see what I think the writers are trying to do, and they seem to have been putting Ronnie through the mill so they can have the female breakdown, and inevitably the post natal depression type scenario that may possibly be the reason for her swapping her baby almost immediately with the baby from the Vic. 

The Vic  baby is the one who is conveniently sleeping alone, in an upstairs room, a day after it’s birth, with no supervision.   It also seems that anyone and everyone can gain access to the upstairs of the pub.

We all know that soaps exaggerate storylines for effect, and for ratings, but they have missed a fabulous opportunity to educate the public on the worries, effects and aftermath of cot death.  The storyline surrounding the babyswapping seems ridiculous to any mother who has spent time with her newborn, and who would notice it was not her baby.   The only people that babies all look alike to are those who have never had, or looked after any.

Perhaps the storyline is going to change and perhaps Kat will notice that the baby in the cot is not actually hers, but whichever way it is going, it seems to be so ridiculous a plot surrounding serious issues, as to be a pathetic attempt at gaining viewing stats for something that is bound to cause panic in the mind of many a new mother. 

Instead of  gaining and keeping viewers, this just may lose the BBC many of them.   

You should have asked the bloggers BBC.  They might have helped you with how to deal with it, and make it compelling viewing and put the minds of new mothers at rest at the same time.