Dreadful Nonsense

Part three in an ongoing project of listing off every TV show I watch, and thereby exposing what a restricted social life I have...

Eastenders

As soap operas go, I am a very fickle follower. Of all the soap operas on terrestrial television at the moment, I would be able to name the main characters and plot points of up to five, and still hold a passing interest in two others. That said, I never know one day to the next which show is on when, and if there is something else on at the same time that seems even remotely interesting, I will abandon the soap without a second thought. Depending on what I’ve been doing / where I've been living, in the past ten years I have moved between being a very regular viewer, to one of those viewers who keeps up with the plots through the three sentence teletext summaries. But isn’t that the beauty of the genre? To be able to dip in and out on a whim, knowing that you can leave it for up to six months, and then catch up on everything within two episodes - with the added bonus of being tipped off by the covers of women's magazines if anything of note is about to happen.

Eastenders won the Best Soap award on last night's ludicrous British Television Awards. This award ceremony seems to think that there are only two television stations in the UK today - ITV and BBC1 - and only occasionally acknowledges the presence of the rest. The parade of backslapping idiots continually looking very pleased for one another began to grate on me, and after watching the presentation of only one award - the moment when Graham Norton was handed over the crown to become the new Michael Barrymore - I switched over.

But that's beside the point. Before that ridiculous orgy of self importance began, I sat and listened to Eastenders while catching up on email. Not many of the plotlines at the moment interest me, and so I'm basically watching it on hold, waiting for something good to come along. One of my favourite characters is Sonia, although at the moment her reunion with Jamie is doing absolutely nothing for me. Tom, the new Irish guy, is also great. Uniquely in the world of soap, he is neither an alcoholic, a serial gambler or a wife beater. He doesn't have ginger hair, he isn't a travellor and he doesn't frequently break in to song. Of course, as he exists only in the world of soap, he does have a deep, dark, hidden secret that he is desperately hiding from everyone else. Poor old Tom has a pesky brain tumour, one of those ones that only activates itself when Tom finds true happiness - a plot device the writers lifted directly from Angel.

A storyline which is currently showing no sign of going away and leaving us in peace is the Trevor / Little Mo / Billy debacle. The Powers That Be have seen fit to add Stupid Sam Mitchell in to the mix, which has added less than nothing to the situation, but given the writers more opportunities to allow Trevor to growl and look menacing at a new variety of characters. The idea behind soap operas - no, not the ones about regarding ourselves and our own society on screen, or learning the dominant hegemony etc that you’re taught in media studies classes - the surface idea of soap operas is that you are supposed to get caught up in the lives of the characters. You are to become involved in their lives, their loves, their troubles, their joys. In short, you are supposed to care. Something, it seems, as gone wrong within me.

I came to this realisation last night as I watched Sam and Trevor have dinner together. To summarise a storyline that has been running for well over a year, for those of you who are unfortunate enough not to follow this nonsense: Trevor is married to Little Mo. In the course of their marriage he has repeatedly beaten and raped her. Last Christmas, she hit him over the head with an iron. He didn't die, and she was tried for attempted murder. She was (obviously) convicted but later (obviously) released. She is now with Billy. (As an aside, Billy was first introduced to the show as a very violent man who repeatedly beat up his nephew Jamie. That seems to have been forgotten now). Trevor has come to get Mo back. In an attempt to disguise his true intentions, he is currently dating Sam.

So, Trevor is controlling and short tempered, with a history of extreme violence towards women. Sam knows his background, but like many women in soap operas, she is naïve enough to think she can change him. Last night, as they ate dinner, she repeatedly and unknowingly said the wrong things to Trevor, and he constantly struggled to hold his temper, until finally he couldn't. This was portrayed over about five different scenes, until the climax where Sam threw a glass of wine over his head. And all the while, I was rooting for Trevor to give her a good slapping.

I don't condone violence towards women, or indeed violence in general. We're currently training Kesh to come back when she's called, and myself and Edel had an argument last night when I refused to agree to hit the dog if she didn't do as she was told. But watching that show, I can now only find entertainment when the caricatures they are presenting on screen live up to their cliches. When beetroot faced Phil loses his temper. When Peggy starts screaming about family. When brave, independent Sharon bursts into tears because she's afraid of being without a man for five seconds. When the gay characters leave the soap far sooner than necessary, for fear of alienating the BBC1 audience.

The soap opera in general, and this soap opera in particular, has become a cartoon. There's cartoon violence. Cartoon consequences. Forgotten back stories. Storylines changed mid-sentence to suit another change of direction. Needless "comedy" thrown in every time someone accuses them of being too miserable. At least Brookside, which is sadly to leave our screens at the end of November, recognises itself for what it is, and has some kind of explosion and mass culling of characters once every couple of months. Now, that’s entertainment.

This entry was posted on 16 October 2002 at 12:54 pm. 0 comments

Dreadful Nonsense

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