POLINEMONY SNICKET: A SERIES OF IMPLAUSIBLE EVENTS
This is a bit rubbish as I am off on holiday soon and DON’T HAVE TIME FOR THIS SHIT!!!!! Anyway….

Everyone is running round going “Where is Ben?! Oh where could he be!??” The police are involved and search parties etc. It is all dramarama. Fill and Ian are taking it in turn to blame each other while Jane and Gu-want roll their eyes and check out each other’s booties. It turns out however that everyone in Walford is either blind or incompetent, as The Fit Doctor just stumbles across Ben hiding behind a step. He coaxes him out with a mars bar or something and returns him to Ian. Jane thinks they should tell the Mitchells straight away but Ian wants to let Ben settle down. Of course, Fill finds out from someone else and has a shouty fit. Ian and fill shout and blame each other some more (see last weeks entry – as the exact same thing happens another five times). They also bicker about whether Kaffee loved Fill or Ian more. If I was their dad in a car I would be threatening to turn the car round and go home at this point. Ian and Jane also bicker because Ian thinks that Jane should agree to anything he says, or else she is not being supportive. Jane goes to moan to Gu-want about the lot of them and they end up snogging – gasp! As someone on the GU board said, I suppose it is nice for Jane to get it on with someone bigger and stronger than her, for once.

Anyway, Ben goes over to the Vic for the night and has to share a room with Fill – great. He rows with amusingly brattish Courtney and then Fill decides it would be a good idea to draw their family tree on the wall. I think you’re going to need a bigger wall. Babs thinks that Ben is doing it on his own and shouts at him. Ben is sad and goes home to Ian. I see this is going to drag on for weeks.

Yet more of Freddy crying and Drippy getting to the end of her tether. JoJo is cross because Davetta is saddled looking after the brat instead of seeing about enrolling at school. Davetta says she wants to get a job and pay her way – of course, it is too much to hope that a bright girl in EE will pursue any sort of education. Drippy goes to see the fit doctor again and he acts a bit cold and distant towards her and then says that he thinks she should transfer to another doctor at the practice (what is this “practice” of which they speak – EE only ever has one doctor at a time. It is the LAW!). Drippy thinks it is because she is the most annoying woman in Christendom but no, it is because he fancies her and wants to ask her on a date. Noooo! He’s too good for her!!! They have a meal and kiss and everything afterwards. Sluts.

Speaking of sluts, GADawn goes to an interview at a model agency, but the bitchy agency lady tells her that she is too short and too old to be a model and that her fake boobs are rubbish. Dawn is all “What’s wrong with my humps, my humps, my lovely lady lumps? Check them out!” but to no avail. Afterwards she lies and tells everyone she is on the books, but Carly makes sour faces and thinks she is lying. They keep arguing and eventually have a little catfight in the market. Dawn pulls Carly’s hair and Carly smacks her in the face. Later on Dawn takes to going round with a huge pair of dark glasses and saying that the black eye is ruining her career. It turns out that she drew the black eye on with felt tip and yet again Carly uncovers her perfidy.

Davetta finds out that the money is coming from Lee. She has a bratty fit and says she doesn’t want it. Charlie tells her to get a grip or else start supporting herself 100%. Davetta is thoughtful. Later on Lee says that he has heard form Tony Bennett’s lawyer and is allowed to reopen Scarlett’s and use the profits to support Davetta. Davetta agrees and the club is all set to re-open (I suppose they have forgotten that whole plot where Scarletts loses its license after Beano slips JoJo some drucks that he bought off the doorstaff. Well I haven’t!!).

StraightPike tries to get Poline to go and stay with Gay Pike so he has a week to talk Dot out of grassing him up. Poline won’t go until Str8 Pike buys half of Dewsons timber yard and strews it round the kitchen. Poline starts having obsessive/compulsive panic attacks, dumps Betty on Dot and runs off to Gay Pike sharpish. Str8 Pike pleads with Dot but to no avail and even tries to suck up to her by setting up a new DVD player for Bradley (who is getting the hang of this acting lark finally – not so much for Carly yet though…) Dot throws him out and Betty runs out too and is instantly mown down by Bradley, driving his bosses car. There is a fab slo mo shot of Jojo shouting “NOOOOOOO!!!!” like in Platoon (in my imagination anyway…) Betty twitches sadly on the floor while everyone stands around and looks horrified. Str8 Pike takes her to dog hospital and it turns out that she isn’t badly hurt after all and doesn’t even need to have one of those lamp shades stuck to her neck. Str8 Pike says that he will tell Poline that Dot is a rubbish dogsitter if she doesn’t agree to keep mum re his crim past. Dot has a moral dilemma.

It is all moot anyway. That annoying bastard Bert (I thought he was only to going to be in it for like 2 episodes! Why is she still there??) decides he wants a DVD player for himself and suddenly shows up with one identical to Dot/Bradley’s. Str8 Pike assumes he nicked it and has the brilliant idea that he will break into Dot’s house to replace it. When he gets there he discovers that Bert didn’t nick the DVD after all. Of course, Poline just happens to get home early and just happens to spot someone breaking into Dot’s and just happens to find a handy policeman who arrests Str8 Pike. Poline collects him from the station and finds out everything that happened – she wants to know why Pike automatically assumed Bert nicked the DVD player and the whole story of their crim past comes out. Poline says she will forgive Pike as long as he chucks Bert out but Pike refuses, as Bert has been his wife longer than Poline! Poline tells Pike to get out as well then. Ooooo!

ALL BABS IS SAYING IS GIVE FILL A CHANCE
Grunt and Fill have a new dodgy lawyer, who says that Fill has to maintain an amicable relationship with Ian if he wants to see Ben. Fill asks if that means that he can't beat Fill up any more. Well, he tries, but the Bealemeister works himself up into a screaming panic every time he sees a potato - which would explain why he's not spending much time at the chippy - so Mr Maris Piper doesn't make much headway. The meetings usually follow a pattern: Fill approaches with penitent look on his face. Ian looks suspicious. Ben looks scared. PJ makes mollifying noises and Fill awkwardly tries to bond with Ben. Ben thaws slightly. Fill makes gaffe - usually of the Fill: "I am your father"/Ben:"I have no father" variety. Ian waits until Fill looks at him funny, screams that Fill will never see Ben again. PJane intervenes. Ian says PJane is against him. Ben looks scared. We get about three goes at this, with the occasional variation of Babs screaming at Ian instead of Fill. Ben gets fed up with all the fighting and runs away. Ian blames Fill. Fill blames Ian. PJane and Babs round up the pub regulars for a good old search party. My fancy schmancy DVR recording didn't get the last ten minutes or so, but the BBC site shows Fill praying with Dot.

Lee, meanwhile, is well into his long dark teatime of the soul. There are plenty of scenery chewing moments that display Lee's full range for passing agents. There's Lee getting his act together and smiling dangerously. There's Lee being 'sensitive' with Ben in the betting shop (long story). There's Lee with a bottle of vodka, doing some strange target practice thing with a hammer and a packet of chocolate digestives. There's Lee beating up Juley in full view of the entire market and getting threatened by Davetta in full-on psycho bunny mode. Go Davetta! There's Lee contemplating Ethel 2.0's happy pills. There's Lee walking to the cop shop to turn himself in and...there's Grant and Fill, bundling him into the back of the motor, telling him he won't survive ten minutes in prison with those pretty eyes. The desk sergeant tells Lee to get to the back of the queue while he deals with the other serial killers and lost cat enquiries. Lee gets bored and decides that prison life might not be for him after all, in fact life might not be such a good idea. He covers the soft furnishings with newspaper and contemplates the happy pills once again. A burglar alarm salesman drops by. Lee asks him if his burglar alarm can find bullets lodged in shattered skulls. Salesman makes his excuses and leaves. Grant and Fill offer to help Lee commit suicide by running him over with Grant's jeep, but Lee chooses life. Again. They all end up eating biscuits in Lee's kitchen. Lee admits that Curly was a bit of a liability and is probably better off dead anyway.

Dot's vigil is finally rewarded after five non-comedy days of Jim's wisecracks, tumbling curtains and Dot whispering into a dictaphone by Mr Benn taking some rubbish out. And then taking it back in again. Mr Benn also says that he's not driving the old folks to St Paul's Cathedral because it's only a couple of stops on the tube, ffs. Dot throws a wobbler.

Drippy is still sad and going ever madder. Babs gives her some time off, and Dr NotGayYet tries to give her some homeopathic anti-stress medicine. Drippy twitches and says she just wants to take care of Cute Baby Freddy. Try letting the poor kid walk occasionally then, madwoman. Mr P is convinced that she's only there to make other parents feel good about themselves.

Parklife's car lot is now called "Getaway Carz" or something equally classy. Dasbo and Beano's battle for marketing supremacy ends when Parklife lets them choose a car each, then tells them to start saving so they can buy it. Isn't Dasbo too young to drive, and shouldn't he be in school anyway? Where is this truant-officerless alternate universe? Anyway, Beano offends GADawn again and I still find myself strangely unable to care.

FILL AND BEN THE POWER PLOT MEN
This is a shoddy crib as I didn’t manage to watch very much last week

Anyway. Someone breaks into the car lot and messes it all up. Yolande starts squawking that it is cursed! Cursed I tell you! and says that Patrick has to get rid of it before they discover that it was built over an ancient Indian burial ground or something. They offer Parklife and Pat first refusal but Parklife doesn’t want to because he is still dreaming of going abroad. Sorry mate – you are trapped in the Walford Zone forever now and will only be leaving in the Mythical Taxi of Finality. In the end they decide to take it over, with Pat providing the money and Parkilfe as manager. There is non comedy rubbish re Beano and Dasbo vying to be his chief minion.

Fill sets Carly a series of tasks or quests or something before he can decide whether to send her on day release to mechanic school. She passes. What the hell ever.

Pat finds that Lee has locked himself in his flat and is spending his days rocking back and forth and sobbing – That’s right Lee! They still haven’t written you out of the show! Doomed to be a superfluous pointless character for ever more! He later pulls himself together and offers money to Charlie for Davetta’s upkeep, which he *says* is from Tony Bennet.

Drippy is still having nervous breakdowns re the kid and generally Not Coping. Zzzz.

Davetta is staying in the Slater Tardis but doesn’t want anyone else to know, especially when the local paper comes out and it turns out that Tony Bennett has confessed to about 15 murders including the Lord Lucan and Jack the Ripper ones. JoJo sneaks around and fetches stuff for her from the shops etc and Bradley thinks she is cheating on him but of course she isn’t.

Dot thinks that Mr Benn (what do we think kids, is that a better nickname than Straight Pike?) and Bert are up to something suspicious. Mr Benn tries to suck up to her by fitting her a shower as a surprise but then Bert spoils it by amusingly pretending to ambush her with a spanner. Dot runs away, falls over and hurts her leg – thus setting up Rear Window style pastiches with Jim as, um, Grace Kelly (they didn’t really think that through, did they…)

Phoney has a dream that she is going to give birth to a cat. I am so sorry that I missed that exciting plot development.

Fill has arranged to do something with Ian and Ben but Ian receives a Message From Beyond The Grave in the form of a packet of Kaffee’s photos and knick knacks etc and blows off the appointment to sit in a darkened room and cry and rock. Fill goes mental and threatens Jane so Jane says she will press charges if he does that again. Jane has taken to wearing some dark purple lippy that doesn’t really suit her. Ian randomly decides to take the kids on a camping trip (in the first week of April?? Are you actively trying to drive Ben into Fill’s fat blubbery arms?). More Fill/Jane aggro. Fill sees his tall icy lady lawyer (aka the Snow Queen from Narnia) and is told that it would be best to come to some sort of amicable arrangement. Amicable? Am ik ub al? Fill rushes off to find a dictionary and plot his next dastardly move.

Naomi plans a surprise party for Moomin and forces everyone to attend. Martin wants to go out for a drink but all his mates are going to Moomin’s instead. He sits on Losers Bench and sulks and then spoils the surprise party for Moomin – what a bastard. I knew that divorces were messy but spoiling a surprise party??? Are there no depths he will not plumb??? Moomin is sad and then ANGRY!! Fear the wrath of the Moomin! Martin goes round to apologise but Moomin squeals that he is dead to her! Dead!!! Martin says “Fine, then you’re not allowed to see Moominspawn when she comes for tea tomorrow!” Moomin somehow uses her powers so that Martin is no longer dead to her and goes to tea with the kid. They all pretend to like each other while the kid is there but when it is over Jim says that Moomin is a nasty piece of work for manipulating people and turning into a lesbian for the sake of lame plot shenanigans. Moomin = still sad. Next day Naomi and Moomin are canoodling in the Vic. Yeah right, as if any gay would actually do that in a dog rough east end pub like the Vic! I wouldn’t do that and I am built like a brick shit house (well, quite tall anyway). Oh if only there was such a thing as a gay bar they could go to instead! (they wouldn’t even have to build a new set! Just put the pool table in the restaurant set and hey presto!). The whole point of this nonsense is for Jim to save Moomin from some lewd youths so that they can have yet another argument about Moomin switching teams and then start crying and hug each other etc.

Meanwhile Martin cops off with some blonde bit part actress and takes her back to his depressing house for some loving, only Poline runs in and says that that sort of thing is not allowed under her roof. Aargh, they are both mental! Poline – stop being such a freak and let Martin get laid! Martin! Why didn’t you smuggle the girl into your room like a sensible person? Are you really that thick? Martin points out that actually he owns a part of the roof and Poline says that “this isn’t the answer”. If cheap meaningless sex isn’t the answer then Martin is asking the wrong questions! The girl runs away thanking the gods for a lucky escape and Martin starts crying like a big baby.

FATMAN AND DOBBIN
It's Christmas...oooh...hang on, has the Easties universe gone completely alternate and started doing two Christmases a year like US sitcoms? The cameraperson seems to have been at the script editor's gin cupboard, because he's lying on the front seat of a cab, filming Fill taking hundreds of suitcases out of the back through a dirty lens. Oh no, the cab clock is counting down to midnight - that'll cost a bit. The other cameraperson is lying on the pavement, off his face on the producer's secret dope stash, focused on the pretty colours in the Vic windows...shots...Fill screams silently as shots ring out and Shazza starts screaming. He looks down and, oh no! His hands are full of blood...and...

...he wakes up. It was all a dream. What's that all about then? Now, I'm prepared to see this as an ironic hommage to the late, great Dallas shower scene, but on the other hand it could just be a producer's coke-fuelled attempt to raise the tone. Grunt overhears Fill's long dark midnight of the soul and decides to take him off for a day of golf and 'sorting out business' in Essex. We see enough of young Courtney to work out that she's got great potential. More than drippy little Ben, anyway. Mind you, Ben is with the Devil Children, so there's still time.

On the way to somewhere in Essex, Grunt tells Fill that he's done therapy and is now a Zen master like Jaymee, able to help Fill through his days of darkness. Fill grunts and drives Grunt to Tony Bennett's place.

Chez Bennett, Tony spends his time dressed in a pink jumper in his steel-doored panic room fitted out with full-on CCTV, cupboard for his collection sawn-off shotguns and a Ukranian vodka lake. Davetta bakes scones in the enormous Mafiosi kitchen. Curly seems to hang around being creepy and mad. Grunt and Fill force Tony back into the panic room, and Fill begins round one. Grunt meets up with Davetta and activates his new Ultimate Force Zen powers to help Davetta understand her dad. It can't be easy, having to be Carmela and Meadow at once. Poor Davetta! Anyway, she tells Grunt about the improbably relationship with Juley, and Grunt discovers the pimping scandal, which is somehow counter to the Ultimate Force Zen Master code and goes "Grrrr!" but doesn't smash. There's taunting. And some fighting. Then more taunting, and a car chase in which Fill drives Tony's motor into a pile of skips and the boys end up tied up in an outhouse with only Tony's CCTV for company.

Then Lee turns up, acting on a hunch and looking for Curly. Curly is creepy and mad. Really creepy. Like, Peter Lorre creepy. Curly slips Davetta some sleeping pills and indulges in a bit of groping. Lee finds out that Curly killed Denman and filmed it like a demented happy slapper teen, and decides that Curly Must Be Stopped.

Meanwhile, Tony hands Curly his second-best sawn-off shotgun, and tells him to bury Grunt and Fill in the woods. Having killed them first of course. First Dallas, now Miller's Crossing. There's more chat. The Mitchells try a bit of psychology on Curly, but they're assuming that Curly has more than three braincells to rub together so that doesn't work. Curly points the sawn-off shotgun at Grunt's head...there's a bang, and Curly falls down deaded. Shot by his brother, who found a tiny little handgun with amazing range just lying around the place. Bye bye Curly. Maybe you'll find a decent job one day. Maybe there's room for a slightly crazy young medic on Casualty or something.

Davetta finds the happy stabbing vid on Tony's phone and has a showdown with her dad. Lee returns to the house just as Tony is driven off in the police car, on his way to confess everything, just as Davetta told him to. It's so's she can be proud of her dad, or something. What's she going to do? Put it on her CV? When Tony says he's going to confess to everything, the coppers sigh, put the kettle on, and phone out for pizza. It's going to be a long night.

Davetta frets about Curly, but Lee says that Curly has gone to a happy place where nobody can hurt him or steal his salsa nights any more. He drops her off at the Slaters and goes home to his empty house.

The Mitchells return home and Grunt asks Babs for her best pie for lunch. Ben passes and Fill tries out a sensitive wave but his hands keep bunching up into a fist. Poor Fill