THE RETURN

It’s been a while, but the other week I actually watched an episode of EE that made me want to blog about it! Yay! I don’t know how regular this will be so don’t get too carried away, dear readers, but we’ll see how it goes. The event that encouraged this Return was none other than the Return Of Sam Mitchell! Dun dun dunhhh!!! As we all know, Sam used to be a teenager played by Daniella Westbrook, but after Daniella had some well-publicised drug shame hell type goings on, Sam Mitchell was sent away ‘to Spain’ and later returned with a completely new head to be played by Kim Medcalf, who, not to put too fine a point of it, seemed less thick than Daniella and so her Sam (aka Sham) occasionally put on a Business Barbie style New Look power suit and gibbered on about “business plans” and so on. She left too after getting embroiled in the Dirty Den Comes Back From The Dead But Not For Long storyline and now Sam is back again, having transmuted back into Daniella Westbrook. WTF? Now I am just waiting for a kafka-esque storyline where Sam is pursued by a stalker played by Kim Medcalf. Come on, EE, that would be awesome!!

I haven’t watched it properly for a while but was amazed at how many old timers are back on the square – Rickay! Bianca!! Juh-neen!!! I’m not sure who some of the new ones are yet though.

Anyway, it turns out that Rickay was sent to Brazil to launder some money for the Mitchells or something, and while he was there he met Sam who persuaded him to bring her home. Apparently Sam met some bloke in a bar who persuaded her that her crimes (preverting the course of justice re Dead Den) would have been like totally forgotten about by now. As I said, this Sam is thicker than we are used to. You can tell she lived in Brazil because she is covered in fake tan and wears scanty outfits in retina-searing combinations of orange and fuschia. Also her hair is gigantic and back combed to hell - she looks like Angie Dickinson! - and her teeth are so white that in some shots they actually look as though they are made of metal! Yikes! Her faintly goblinish aspect and wide range of sour expressions are still the same as ever though, thank God.

Babs is pleased to see her of course, but they are worried she will be collared by the filth, so she is supposed to be in hiding. Sam’s idea of hiding is to go down to the bar of the Vic and dance on the table in a vaguely robotic fashion. They make her hide properly while Fill talks to his brief. It turns out that she is still wanted and so will have to go back to Brazil (though clearly this is not going to happen). She decides to make the most of it and annoy as many people as possible before going back though – she annoys Roxie by impugning her motherhood skills and calls her baby retarded (possibly). She annoys Ronnie by aiming her breasts at Ronnie’s simple minded oaf of a boyfriend/husband or whatever. Ronnie and Roxie pretend they have known her for ages, even though they hadn’t been invented yet when Sam was last in it.

She annoys Jay by being a bit flirty with him (and giving him her undies – which (a) EWWW!! and b) is probably illegal in paedopocalypse UK) and then telling him to “leave me alone, you stupid childy child”, the next minute. She annoys Silent Tracy because obviously she is going to end up working at the Vic and thus giving her even less shifts/screen time/chances to say “I’ll go and change the barrel” once every two years. She annoys Archie, by just existing apparently. She annoys Bianca in classic fashion by immediately mesmerising Rickay with her barely concealed funbags and luminous teeth. By the end of two episodes they are engaged. Pat and Wuh Wuh Whitney* tell Bianca that she has to fight for her lurve, so Bianca goes to the engagement party to suck her teeth and look disapproving and ends up calling Sam “a peroxide chav”. Sam calls Bianca a “ginger mug” (V poor repartee. Must try harder) and bam – they are pulling hair and whaling at each other in classic fashion. Mreowww! Wuh Wuh Whitney is also annoyed as she is going to steal Rickay from Bianca and also deprive Wuh Wuh Whitney of the only father figure she knows who doesn’t indulge in Wrong Touching and call her a Dirty Whore all the time.

There is a classic montage of the people what Sam has annoyed, all staring thoughtfully at the their mobile phones, considering grassing her up. We never find out who makes the call, but before long a very tall detective and some shorter uniforms show up. Sam (wearing a heinous bacofoil batwing jacket she must have stolen off La Roux) runs away. She steals a car from the Arches, not realising that cars are taken to the Arches because THEY DON’T WORK. FAIL!!!! She makes it to the tube station on foot when some cops grab her and Sam screams “Nooo! nooo!! nooooo!!!!” while crying really badly and pulling unfortunate faces. “Someone grassed up my dortah!” hisses Babs, wig spinning with wrath. It is, as they say, ON.

In other news:

Juhneen has hooked up with a handsome young man who looks a bit like Paddy Considine. They are victimising Chelsea by having Paddy Approxidine rob her and then pretending to be nice to her. Juhneen expresses her gratitude by surprising Paddy whilst reclining naked, clad only in a pile of grubby £20 notes. I’m sure it isn’t the first time.

Minty has a love interest played by Josie Lawrence; a Guardian-reader type hippie with a kaftan woven of muesli and a son in a wheelchair, who is played by a real life bloke in a wheelchair. EE = bringing the issues!

Duhnise has acquired a love interest played by that handsome black bloke who has been in lots of other things. He has an annoying badly acted stage school kid, whose mother is decomposing in a shed in the allotment if the well-directed flies/vomitting scene means what I think it does. Ruh roh.

* this, of course is a reference to Bring It On, one of the Greatest Films Ever!!