Derek Branning - Walford's Hogfather of crime - is sitting in the Vic, radiating smug while everyone dutifully plays statues again. Alfie storms off behind the bar, followed by Kat and asks how she could be so sick and twisted as to cheat on him with Derek... yikes! Still, a pretty valid question or at least it would be if we hadn't already established that Kat is looked down on by rutting alleycats for her undiscerning promiscuity.
Alfie shouts because shouting equals ACTING! That's not quite enough ACTING though and so, he has to push her through the doors back out into the Vic (despite her pleading) and then through the pub out into the still ongoing German fair while Kat blubbers. Then he goes back into the Vic, everyone STILL frozen in place and utterly silent.
The Hogfather gets up and slowly puts on his overcoat while giving a meaningful glower toward Alfie, who makes his way through the still inanimate proles... perhaps someone just turned they're playing a game and they're actually just waiting for someone to turn the music back on or something? Alfie makes his way over to Derek who turns around casually, tells the assorted Brannings he'll see them at the wedding and then is on his merry way after giving Alfie another glower. Why exactly is he glowering at Alfie? Are we going to get some ridiculous situation where Derek proclaims to be the person Kat deserves? Bleugh.
Derek sees Kat and is all smiles and sunshine, telling her that he'll look after her but perhaps able to see him in adequate lighting conditions she doesn't seem overly keen on the prospect of that help and cries out for Alfie, prompting Derek to say "He can't hear you." First off - given the fact pretty much everyone in the Vic seems to have struck dumb, Kat has a voice comparable in volume to a fog horn and is standing just a few steps from the door, that's nonse. Secondly - could that sound ANY more rapey? Seriously, are we just building up to the revelation that Derek went to jail for a series of sex offences? It would fit RIGHT in with how stalkerish and downright creepy this storyline has been...
Back in the Vic, Alfie does the predictable "I don't need your help!" and throws the Brannings out, before going off on a tirade at the assorted pond scum of Walford, punctuated by smashing glasses and "GET OUT OF MY PUB!" Pfft, not a patch on Peggy - she could do it better in her sleep... You'd see people put more feeling into their orders a fast food restaurant.
For some reason this situation prompts Half-Day Alice to start blubbering. Uh... why? The Hogfather looked pretty pleased at how things turned out! Oh, right - this seems to be a way of making sure she doesn't go back to her father's place... pfft! As if Half-Day Alice could actually be involved in anything even vaguely interesting, she's like Middas, except everything she touches turns to dull!
Lauren - having once again remembered she has an alcohol problem - is drunk and has been threatening to reveal some of the skeletons in her mother's closet and when her father is his usual grating self, she has had enough and decides to come clean about the car crash - how Joey took the fall for her because she had been drinking and how Tanya knew about it but didn't tell Max because Lauren was sleeping with Joey! DUN DUN DUN!
Max isn't too happy about this revelation as Lauren stands in the background with a bottle of vodka that teleported into her hand. Tanya gives her a slap because it's Christmas time! Lauren then goes on to say she hates her mother because she knows that she told Joey to go away, which makes Tanya let slip that Joey loved her and that was why he left. Despite her pathetic attempt to play dumb (followed by the most obvious guilty face ever), Lauren is able to work out that she knows something... proving that a thoroughly intoxicated teenager is orders of magnitude more intelligent than Alfie.
As her mother fails to answer her, Lauren takes some drastic measures and takes the wedding dress hostage! This is apparently a good tactic because Tanya almost immediately spills her guts about how this was all down to the Hogfather's machinations. Which she then follows up by shouting, tearing the dress, knocking the conveniently place wedding cake to the ground and falling to the ground and vomiting... What does she do for an encore?!
For about the seventeenth time this year, Max is about ready to go round and beat some sense into his brother but Tanya points out that Derek could still call the police and this would somehow result in Lauren going to jail, despite the fact there's almost certainly no material evidence left and he'd STILL BE SAYING HE SUBMITTED A FALSE ACCIDENT REPORT! WHICH IS A CRIME! Or have they forgotten that he's supposed to be worried about getting sent back to jail? Oh, wait - that happened constantly even when they DID remember. Still, Tanya tells Max that he's just going to have to stomach it.
At Derek's flat - Derek has turned the creepy rapey factor up to around a seven, there's plenty of room for it to get more skin crawling, folks! The real question is whether Derek is supposed to be coming off as a sex offender? The one thing he definitely isn't coming off as, is someone a conscious and sane woman would want to be in the same room as - let alone have consensual sex with... but then Kat isn't exactly sane.
Apparently, even Kat isn't capable of falling for Derek's as yet unidentified charms as she says again that she isn't in love with him and still loves Alfie - even if he doesn't believe her. Kat realises that she sent a message to Derek saying it was over and goes searching for Derek's phone, he tells her he deletes his messages... only for Kat to find he has kept ALL OF THEM! Nothing creepy about that or the fact he then adds that he likes to hear the sound of Kat's voice... Oh and Kat is instantly able to find the message she was talking about. What are the chances?!
She says she's going to show Alfie the recording, followed by a menacing and very rapey "You can't." from the Hogfather... yeah, this storyline is about on course for the best Christmas Walford ever had... Apparently, this is just him trying to convince her this is a bad idea though. Kat doesn't buy into this though and says she still wants to make a go of it with Alfie, which prompts the Hogfather to say that HE'LL go over and talk to Alfie. On his own... because someone with a reputation for manipulation (albeit some of the most ham-fisted, self-defeating manipulation seen outside of the playground) is exactly who you want in a situation where they have a vested interest in things going their way.
Kat even asks why he'd do it for her... perhaps not realising the obvious idiocy of handing over the ONE recording that proves you at least TRIED to get Derek to back-off but she's so stupid that she buys into the transparent lies of a pathological liar and career criminal. Although, if she wasn't intensely stupid - she wouldn't be in this situation in the first place.
At the Vic, there came a rapping, as if someone came a tapping - it's Derek! Apparently the less than twenty minutes that has passed (possibly closer to ten?) has been enough for the Vic to look as good as new. As one might expect, Alfie isn't exactly back to cheeky chappy yet. We get the bit where it seems as if Derek is being all sincere and wants to mend the fence.
BUT WHAT'S THIS?! He's played a message where Kat is going on about her lust for Derek and he then goes on to tell Alfie that she's been calling him day and night. CURSE YOUR SUDDEN YET INEVITABLE BETRAYAL, HOGFATHER! If you didn't see that coming - you're blind. Then there's a friendly punch in the face for Derek. He also gets a complimentary barring for life from the Vic! With Derek gone, Alfie breaks down having expended all his shoutiness and starts weeping like a woman and then Poxy gives him a hug.
Derek goes back to tell Kat his pack of easily exposed lies... that's anti-climactic.
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