Cast Clear Out

If there's one Eastenders is notable for currently - beyond the dull and repetitive storylines that are so padded they'd be better used as insulation than fodder for even a bad soap - its a bloated cast, full of so much deadwood, that there is never a need to to worry about a shortage of firewood and as it's the season of darkness, despair and death (all the Ds!) in Walford, what better time to discuss those most sorely in need of joining the great big list of credits in the sky?

10. Jean Slater - in what will be a running theme for this list... here we have a character that the Crayon Crew just don't know what to do with. She worked best as a supporting character to Stacy but with her gone, there's just no real substance to her - especially given the terrible way her bipolar disorder is now written. She seems to fluctuate between Dickensian mad woman and village idiot. It's hard to believe that when first introduced this character won recognition from mental health charities - it seems unlikely they'd be so generous now...

9. Tyler Moon - we're shot of his father and brother, why not make it a hat trick? His brother fled the Square, Tyler followed suit... why didn't he just stay gone for inadequately explained reasons too? At this point, do the Crayon Crew even remember that he and Michael "Count Moonula" Moon are brothers too? But ever since his return from finding his brother, he's been little more than a peripheral character and so the question has to be - why even BOTHER having him return? Losing the emporium and his brother fleeing were a perfect excuse for him to depart forever and it would certainly have trumped him hanging around for the occasional scraps of dialogue he gets.

8. Twitney - as with Jean, Whitney started out with a fairly good storyline but unfortunately when the Crayon Crew start a character out with a good storyline, that typically means they're going to Shyamalan - start strongly but promptly succumb to a disastrous decline - and there was no way the grooming plot was ever going to be surpassed. They've tried several things with her since then and none of them have worked, which just makes her feel embarrassingly like a one trick pony.

Her portrayal in relationships has been especially poor with Twitney repeatedly reinforcing the stereotype that all women want a bad boy and often times going about things in the worst way possible - granted, she's going to have issues because of her relationship with the insidious Tony but... there's never the impression there was more to it than her being fickle... to say nothing of the contrived prostitution plot, which felt so ridiculously forced in every aspect from beginning to end and has (surprise) had no lasting impact beyond the fact it had her brother disappear.

7. Pointless Poppy - a character introduced purely to substantiate the mentally subnormal Jody, who is long since gone, who inexplicably lingers on. This might be somewhat forgiveable if not for the fact that she had actually up and left in the wake of Jody's departure before returning MONTHS LATER for... some reason and now we are subject to her and Arfuuuuuuuuuuuuur having a relationship... which is apparently based on Arfuuuuur being completely unfamiliar with ANY human customs and Pointless Poppy having an intellect equivalent to a bowl of rice pudding.

6. Half-Day Alice - it can be just about acceptable for a dull character to be in the show if they're in the background but Half-Day Alice has (despite the total absence of any discernible personality) been thrust into the limelight with her IMMENSELY repetitious relationship with her father and that consists almost entirely of her finding out he's a generally loathsome man, somehow forgiving him, only for him to go and do something loathsome again - rinse and repeat.

Half-Day Alice is less of a character and more of a stuck record or perhaps some kind of anthropomorphic plot point. Or perhaps, we should consider Derek Sisyphus and Half-Day Alice the boulder that Sisyphus was condemned to forever push up a hill, only to watch it roll down again... although, that boulder probably had more of a personality.

5. Joey the Hogson - if anything, Joey is even MORE bland than his sister. Clearly, he and his sister are making up for their father and 'is 'eart as black as pitch. Joey is the closest thing to blank space it's possible for a person to be. There's just nothing to say about him - he's so bland, he defies description. So, he's actually LESS interesting than his sister - which is a feat in and of itself.

4. Mo - like Jean and Pointless Poppy, she's a supporting character who has long since overstayed her welcome. Now she seems relegated to appearing to drop a line or two to forward the plot and her biggest storyline in the past couple of years is her (illegally) letting her house to Derek, after kicking out Arfuuuuuurrrr.

In fact, her scams - that everyone is wise to but still falls for - are the only memorable thing about her. She's such a place holder character - why would anyone willingly endure her? There are always characters you dislike in a show but Mo is unlikeable AND uninteresting and that's never a good combination.

The perfect opportunity to get rid of her - although, not nearly horrifying enough - was when she browbeat (with Kat's help) the vulnerable Jean into pleading guilty to welfare fraud. Something that has NEVER BEEN MENTIONED SINCE! Oh, right - about ninety nine percent of everything is forgotten forever after a week or two.

3. Kim - where to start... there's not really anything to say about Kim beyond the fact she acts like someone who has suffered debilitating brain damage. It's a miracle she has complete control over her bodily functions - the fact she can run (however incompetently) a B&B is merely proof that Eastenders does not take place in our universe.

1&2. Kalfie - Kalfie, Kalfie, Kalfie... ever since their return to the Square they've been like an anthropomorphic personification of entropy just sucking the life out of everything around them. The Vic - once the heart of the Square - has become little more than an empty shell and their storylines just go on and ON and ON.

Despite the relief of the baby swap debacle being cut short - and the fact Burger King clearly considered that to be his magnum opus explains why things went so horribly wrong under his reign - we're now lumbered with another storyline that has been prolonged not by character development or plot twists or ANYTHING that might even approach being interesting. No - we just had months of Kat staring at Phantom Shagger suspects in the Vic and now we've got another week of Alfie not just confronting Kat about her infidelity...

But even when they're not the epicentre of an awful storyline, they're just there - slowly sucking the marrow from the bones of the show. Leaching anything of interest out of the programme by their mere presence be it's Kat's forced laughs or Saint Alfie pretending to drink from a mug there's just something about the characters as they are now that is anathema to anything interesting happening.

The real problem here is, these characters HAD their time. They had their "will they, won't they?" romance, they went overcame the slings and arrow of outrageous fortune and they even achieved a happy ending - something almost as rare as good Eastenders episodes! - and then, they came back and it was as if they never left... it's just awful.