FROM THE SUBLIME TO THE RIDICULOUS
Friday night I began my evening by watching Eastenders. I was thoroughly mesmerised by the pace and the plot of this programme. Unfortunately, I was brought resoundingly down to earth with the dross that followed on Channel 4 - Brookside.
At the moment Brookside is everything that Eastenders isn’t. For example: Eastenders is good. Brookside is not. Eastenders is riveting. Brookside is not. Eastenders is presenting an issue storyline that is spawning another issue storyline. Both are presented in a way that is both informative and compelling. Brookside is presenting an issue storyline that is spawning another issue storyline. Both are presented in an annoying way that is boring and overlong at best and bigoted and narrow-minded at worst. Eastenders has a volatile and vivaciious ingenue who’s immensely watchable. Brookside has a teenage slut who’s immensely unlikeable and who has the looks and mannerisms of a cheap tart. Eastenders has a villain who is actually chilling and chillingly handsome. Brookside has a thug who’s laughable and fat.
I could go on, but that would be too boring. If you aren’t bored already, cop this about Brookside:-
Someone is lurking about the Close. We know that, because the hand-held camcorder is filming behind the vague outline of someone’s overblown bulk hulking around the area, as subtle as a brick. It’s strange. Because the stranger doesn’t seem to hide behing trees or walls, yet people seem not to notice him. Either he’s invisible and a ghost (in which case it could be Clint or Susannah) or people are just generally thick on the Close. I am inclined to believe the latter.
The incredible hulk lumbers this way and that about the Close, until we see his vision hone in on Rachel the Dim, returning to the Dixon abode and arriving at the door. The incredible hulk watches her enter the house.
As she enters the Dixon lounge, Mike stirs from a prone position on the couch. He’s just finished a night shift and is trying to get some kip during the day. But Mike, with all his academic qualifications, hasn’t yet fathomed that when you work nights, nights become days and vice versa, so when you return home to sleep, you go upstairs to bed.
Immediately Mike sees Rachel, he begins his litany of moans about not being able to sleep in the daytime. (This is ridiculous. Your body naturally adjusts when you work nights). Rachel asks if Beth has been causing him any bother, keeping him awake, but Mike replies that Beth is upstairs sleeping, herself. Anyway, the important question falls from Mike’s lips: Has Rachel been paid?
Yes, she replies. And has she made sure she’s collected her Family Credit? Right again, replies Rachel, for what it’s worth. The Family Credit is next to nothing. Rachel is well fed up with the situation. She wants to get out of this financial mire.
Mike does as well, but he can’t see how they are going to do it unless they find someone or something willing to stoke a loan of £5000. Rachel naturally suggests asking Anthea, but Mike overrules her. Anthea bailed them out the last time. They couldn’t keep cadging loans off her. Rachel then suggests Ron.
Mike agrees, but says that Rachel should ask Ron for the money. He’d be more apt to stump up for her than he would for Mike. Rachel refuses and argues that on this occasion, Mike should ask.
Finally Mike agrees.
Next door and Chateau Farnham, the new Mrs Farnham is having a clear-out. She’s sorting through stacks of linen and discarding practically everything. As she folds and packs, she informs Max that all that she’s rejecting is for the charity shop. Max steps in and objects briefly. Why was Jacqui throwing away those sheets? They were perfectly good sheets and only about a year old.
Jacqui reminds Max that SOMEONE ELSE has slept on those sheets, and Max twigs her intentions; but he moans that the way he feels right now, he’d love to crawl between some sheets and catch up on his sleep. He’s still suffering from jet lag.
They why doesn’t he? Asks Jacqui. Because, Max explains, he has to work. It’s his shift. Jacqui implores him to reconsider. What happened to the pledge that they made on honeymoon - whatever they want to change, they will change? Max should get some sleep; but Max kisses her good-bye and scurries off to work.
Across the Close, at Hotel Corkhill, plans are under way for a party this evening. On observing the scene, one could be forgiven for thinking that Timily were the owners of the house and Jimmy and Lindsey were the hired help. Tim and Plank are busy shifting furniture, whilse foul-faced, foul-voiced, foul-mouthed Emily barks orders at an increasingly hassled Lindsey. Lindsey moans that she’s tired, and she looks it. But she really means that she’s more than fatigued. She’s royally fed up with the Corkhill tenants.
Jimmy enters, having been on a foray for booze for the fete, laden with vodka and Bacardi. He surveys the chaos, with Lindsey pointing out that she had removed all his Trevor Jordache newspaper clippings and put them away. Ah, but Jimmy reminds her that he’ll put them back up after the party. Lindsey then reminds him that he still hasn’t succeeded in scrubbing ‘Trevor’ off the back patio.
Ron Dixon is seated at the Dixon dining table, plowing through reams of papers. Mike hovers in the kitchen, dressed in his pyjamas and dressing gown. As Ron shuffles papers about, he explains to Mike that all of the stuff covering the table is Great Grannies’ paperwork. It’s stuff about which Mike and Anthea should know - such as standing orders and direct debits - along with instructions about how to deal with the business whilst Ron is otherwise occupied.
Mike tries to downplay this, by assuring his father that all this worry would be behind him by Christmas, and anyway, it was Ron’s business to deal with the financial side of Great Grannies, as the head of the business. Ron ruefully remarks that he doesn’t think Online banking is allowed inside a prison.
After a moment’s hesitation, Mike asks his father if he’d like a drink. Ron immediately susses that his son wants something, and that that something is a hand-out. Without any pretence, Ron asks Mike how much he needs. Mike stutters a protest, but Ron knows his son all too well. Cut the preamble - is it a tenner? Twenty? Take twenty, urges Ron.
Mike is gob-smacked, but before he can find his voice, Ron begins his explanation. Great Grannies, he begins, isn’t so great anymore. The profits are down, he explains. Oh, they weren’t short of cash, but adverse publicity due to Ron’s trial had cost them a fair penny. And then, there was the cost of Jacqui’s wedding and reception. And probably with the trial looming, they would stand to lose more business. They weren’t skint by a long shot, he finishes. But they did have limited resources.
Mike’s face is despondent.
The party has begun across the way. It’s so noisy that Jimmy and Lindsey have to shout at each other to be heard. Jimmy is in fine form, cracking manic jokes to Lindsey, but she’s distracted by the possibility of her getting the manager’s job at Jacqui’s health club. She tells Jimmy that when she gets this job, she’ll be happy. (Yeah, sure).
The doorbell rings and more guests arrive, amongst them a young girl with knockers so big that they make Emily look anorexic. She’s wearing a low-cut flimsy top, as you do if you’re female trailer trash in Liverpool, and she’s greeted enthusiastically by Emily. They bounce together and they bounce apart. She is the mysterious friend Becky Lewis (and if her looks are anything to go by, she’ll probably be a regular on Brookside and in the lads’ mags).
After squealing greetings, Emily introduces Becky to the sum total of her life’s acheivement - Tim. Becky remarks that when she and Emily were in school, they had always planned to get a penthouse flat together and never get married. (So they do have imaginations in Scouseland?) But she gives her trashy approval to Tim.
Nikki arrives and marvels at the changes that have occurred since she last saw Becky Lewis - all TWO of them. Across the room, she spies Jerome, with his new spiderman haircut. Emily notices her sister and Jerome looking at each other and she pleads with Nikki to blank Jerome.
Meanwhile, at Chateau Farnham, Max is preparing to work an evening shift at the restaurant. Jacqui is trying to talk him out of his commitment, but Max is adamant. He’s already promised the duty manager that he would work Friday and Saturday evenings and Jacqui had agreed to that. But, Jacqui pleads, she’s opened a bottle of wine especially for the couple, and she can’t sit like a sadsack and drink it on her own.
Max reminds her that neither of them should back down on their routine, so Jacqui suggests that, in Max’s absence, she’ll take the kids over to visit ‘Granddad’.
Max is perplexed at this reference to ‘Granddad’, and Jacqui explains to him that Ron is now Emma’s granddad too. Max laughs at the thought of Ron Dixon being a grandfather to his children.
At the swinging Eighteenth Birthday party, Ray and Jessie arrived. Jessie is deafened by the din of the music, but Ray, in a misguided effort to fit in with Jessie’s conception of youth, pretends to enjoy it and starts to jiggle a dance, voicing his desire for Jerome to turn the music up louder.
As Plank hovers around the pneumonic Becky, Emily makes her way to the door to greet her grandmother. Jess explains that they’ve just dropped by to deliver Emily’s present, and she waves an envelope about. Emily greedily grabs the envelope, as Jess tells her that its contents would change her life. It’s something very practical.
Emily opens the envelope and takes out a slick brochure, explaining a beauty therapy course. Emily, revealing the true depth of her intellectual ignorance, immediately thinks that her nan and mum have treated her to a week away luxuriating in some expensive spa; but Jess is quick to say that she’s enrolled her in a beautician’s course at the local technical college. Emily, needless to say, is hardly thrilled. This was supposed to change her life!
Jerome, all this time is standing gawping shyly at Nikki. Jessie acknowledges his presence by asking him to turn the music down. Ray, on the other hand, determined to show Jessie how ‘with it’ he is, wants a drink; but Jessie concedes that they’ll stay for one drink and then get off. As she and Ray move away, Nikki is left to return Jerome’s wordless gaze. Emily, standing by her side, still urges her not to speak with him.
Jacqui and the two children have arrived at Ron’s to spend the evening. She arrives in a bustle of children’s coats and clothing, to find Mike and Rachel booted and suited and ready to head off for the O’Leary party. As Ron greets young Harry, Jacqui is quick to remind him that Emma is now his grandchild too. Mike maintains, rather ignorantly, that Emma’s a Farnham, whilst Rachel points out that Jacqui’s a Farnham now too.
It is then that Jacqui announces that her surname, upon marriage, is now Dixon-Farnham. The couple ask if Jacqui wants to accompany them to the party, but she demurs in favour of staying the evening with Ron. They have a lot to catch up on, especially with the trial coming up.
As Rachel and Mike walk toward Hotel Corkhill together, they comment jealously on the expensive coat Harry was wearing. Max and Jacqui were coining it, whilst they were wallowing in debt. Why, Max could wipe £5k off the books entirely - it was small change to him. There they were, working two jobs for shite pay and knee-deep in debt. But they decide to put their cares aside for an evening and enjoy the free booze. As they walk off, it’s obvious from the shaky camera angle and the shadowy hulking body, that they are being watched. Gee, I wonder who is watching them?
Later at Ron’s, he brings Baby Beth, who can’t settle, downstairs to join Harry and Emma. Jacqui offers to make Ron a hot drink. As Jacqui makes tea, Ron sits and sadly watches his grandchildren. He voices the fact that he keeps trying to get his head around what he’s done. Now all of a sudden, with the addition of Max and his two kids, he’s got a bigger family to care about. Suddenly, he asks Jacqui if she’s happy.
Jacqui confirms that she is, and that she’s going to bring Ron’s grandkids around on a regular basis just to cheer him up. Ron remarks that he doesn’t think Maxie would approve of her bringing his two kids around to a prison to visit. Ron decides to savour this moment, as it might be a rare one, which he won’t be able to experience for years to come.
Lindsey is making her exit from the party, explaining to Jimmy that the whole scene was a mite too young for her. She’s off to see Jackie, who’s finishing a shift at the garage. Rachel wanders about the room with Mike, remarking that it still feels weird to be in the house where her mother killed her father. Mike offers to get her a drink and Rachel orders a double.
Emily, on the other hand, is desperate to get shot of the ‘worthless’ beauty course and she finds a willing buyer in Becky, who forks over fifty quid for the opportunity to go to college. With the profit in hand, Emily hands it quickly over to Tim, with instructions to buy more ale. As Jimmy stands by Tim, he ventures to ask the lad if he’s going job-hunting on Monday.
Tim laughs sceptically. As if. He has better things to do with his time. Like what? Jimmy wants to know. Like planning on getting even with Christy Murray, perhaps? Well, here’s a sure fire way to do just that, suggests Jimmy. Tim needs to get a job at the bar. Ingratiate himself with Christy, but watch him all the time. Keep his nose clean and worm his way into Christy’s regard. Get Christy to trust him; then when Christy’s guard’s down, Tim strikes while the iron’s hot. Tim-Not-So-Nice-And-Very-Dim finds he likes this piece of advice.
Nikki Shadwick now approaches Jimmy with a favour. She’s studying psychology at uni, she explains, and she wonders if Jimmy would allow her to use him as the subject of a major thesis she’s doing on mental health. Social identity in mental health, would that be? Asks the Sage, knowingly.
Nikki is impressed, and Jimmy tells her he’s read all about his condition and other related matters on the web. Jimmy just logs on and finds he’s able to talk to others who’ve had similar experiences. In fact, Jimmy invites Nikki to come around anytime and he’ll give her the full story. (And she’ll probably flunk her degree course and all too).
Jerome approaches Nikki and asks if she’d like a drink. Nikki orders orange juice. (YAWN... Sorry).
Lindsey, meanwhile, has arrived at the garage to pay Jackie a visit. Jackie is surprised that her daughter left the party and asks her jokingly why she isn’t tripping the light fantastic in the house of horrors? Lindsey just shakes her head in an exasperating way and informs Jackie that at least she managed to get Jimmy to take the Trevor clippings down.
Jackie is relieved, but can’t understand why Jimmy had gone to such extremes. Lindsey explains to her that he’s reacting to the fact that she’s decided to sell the house. Jackie sighs and gives Lindsey a long look before she begins to reveal her plans. She tells Lindsey that she might as well know the truth now. She’s asked Ian Lee for a transfer to another branch. She wants to leave the area and start fresh.
At first, Lindsey finds this hard to believe and accept, but there’s a bit of good news forthcoming too. Jackie tells Lindsey that, as there will be an opening at this branch for a manager, if Lindsey wants, Jackie will put her name forward for the post with Ian Lee.
Back at the party, Nikki and Jerome manage to find a quiet corner in which to talk. At first they have some small talk about college course work and seminars, then Nikki reveals something to him that she hasn’t told anyone else. She’s not paid her tuition fees for the term, and she’s worried.
Jerome tells her to chill out; half of the university haven’t paid their fees. Then Nikki confesses something further. She’s wasted all her loan on shopping - she’s really a shopaholic. (Ahem! Question here ... WHERE is Margi? Margi has a good-paying job in Brussels. WHY should her daughter have to take out a student loan and WHY isn’t MARGI paying her fees?) She continues to talk to Jerome, imploring him not to tell anyone else about her financial predicament.
Interlude: Outside on the close, we see the jerky camcorder reel too and fro, just catching the fat blobby arse of the stalker who’s keeping an eye on things. Crikey! No idea who this mystery person could be!
Inside the Dixon house, Jacqui’s taking her leave of Ron. She’s got to get the kids home and get them into bed, trying to get them back into their normal sleep routine. Hopefully, she and Max will get the chance of a lie-in tomorrow.
Ron asks if she’s O K going back on her own, and Jacqui jokes that it’s only 5 yards’ difference between the two houses.
Back at the party, Mike asks Rachel if she wants to partake of the latest consignment of free ale. Rachel declines, saying that she really needs some fresh air and heads for the Corkhill back door and the patio. Jimmy corners Mike almost immediately for a chat. He asks about Ron and how he’s coping and Mike comments on Jimmy’s varicoloured shutters outside.
Nikki and Jerome, in the corner, are conscious of the fact that they are being given the evil eye by Emily. Nikki notes that her sister isn’t happy even being in the same room as Jerome. Jerome, looking more abashed, by the minute, admits that he messed up in his relationship with Nikki previously.
Nikki asks why he wants to talk to her, and Jerome admits that he seriously wants to get back together with her. All he wants is the chance to be near her once again, and the two end up kissing.
The conversation between Jimmy and Mike has progressed to the point where Mike has decided to seek the wisdom of the Sage. He is telling Jim about his loan predicament. The wise man of the Wirral advises Mike that this situation could be used to Mike’s advantage. Mike should let the loan company take him to court. The court will decide in the company’s favour, says Jim, but they will take into consideration Mike’s straightened circumstances and ask that Mike repay the loan at a rate of about two quid a week or something.
But, Mike protests, he’ll be financially black-listed. So? Says Jimmy. Why worry? Mike has no mortgage to worry about and no car expenses. In a couple of years’ time ...
Suddenly, Rachel screams from the patio area. Everyone hurries outside to find Rachel staring in horror at the outline of ‘Trevor’ painted on the patio.
Meanwhile, the viewers follow the erratic camcorder as it follows the darkened hulk of the stalker. His fat arse approaches the Dixon doorstep, and he lays a white shoebox on the step and departs.
Rachel and Mike are leaving the party in a foul mood. Mike is clearly annoyed and Rachel is upset. If this is Jimmy’s idea of a joke, says Mike, it’s not funny. Jimmy tries to explain that he was only trying to save his house.
Well, Mike thinks the whole think is sick, stupid and incredibly callous. In fact, Jimmy was just plain weird, with his multi-coloured shutters and all.
Lindsey is still suffering from the shock that her mother has given her, as she prepares to return to the party. She tells Jackie that she’d better return, in case a riot erupts under Jimmy’s tutelage. The party was getting a bit loud, she says, and it’s a good thing that Kylie was on a sleep-over.
Before she goes, Lindsey asks her mum if everything is O K for her staying at Val’s. Jackie replies that Val has been great. She didn’t ask hardly any rent from Jackie at all. Lindsey screws her face up in a frustrated frown. If that’s the case, she says, she thinks that Jackie should be getting more rent from those scroungers Tim and Emily. They rule the roost at Hotel Corkhill and Jimmy does nothing. Besides which, she says, they pay next to nothing in rent.
Jackie says she’ll think about raising their rent if Lindsey thinks about the manager’s job Jackie’s offered her. Now it’s Lindsey’s turn to confess. She tells Jackie that she thinks she already has something lined up.
Jacqui Farnham is looking for someone to manage the Health Club, and Lindsey thinks she’s in with a shout. Jackie is shocked. Why would Lindsey want to go back working for Jacqui after the last experience with the Millennium Club? Besides, Lindsey doesn’t know anything about managing a health club.
But Lindsey asserts that she has all the qualities necessary for such a job. Anyway, it would certainly be better than managing this garage - anything would.
As Rachel and Mike walk toward the Dixon house, Rachel remarks on ‘Trevor’ in the garden. What a terrible thing for Jimmy to do! Didn’t he realise? Mike admits that, had he been more steady on his feet, he would have decked Jimmy. But did they realise that, apart from that, they had managed to put their troubles behind them for an evening?
As they approach the house, Rachel notices the shoe box and, picking it up, she opens it to find Harry’s lost trainer. Immediately they realise what this is and the ramifications thereof. Jacqui had mentioned that Harry was missing a shoe when he returned from his kidnapping ordeal. Gobby must have kept it, Mike surmises.
Of course, the dim pair realise, that could only mean one thing: that GOBBY must have brought this round tonight. GOBBY HAD BEEN THERE!!!!!
Summary © 2001 Marion Watts
Brookside and all related materials are © Mersey Television 1982-2001