Monday 29th April 2013

Count Moonula looks at his child, which has apparently inherited his habit of strange looks.

Bora the Explorer has a headache and is going through the painkillers and DUN DUN DUN! The disappearance of Tanya's cancer painkillers raises suspicion, just as the dutiful mother takes time out of fretting over what her ex-husband is doing to worry about her wastrel daughter's oft forgotten alcoholism.

Billy Idiot has upgraded his polyester suit for... a slightly more expensive polyester suit to impress Ava. Meanwhile, Sharon is going through her purse because - much like Lauren - she has remembered her drug addiction!

It has taken all this time for Tanya to consider that a potential suspect for the theft of the painkillers is Lauren.

Count Moonula and Janine have - despite being potentially on the cusp of a custody battle - fallen into the Walford way of raising a baby. Which is to say playing pass the parcel with their infant. When Janine asks the reasonable question of where Half-Day Alice is... she's on a half-day! BOOM! BOOM! No, really - she actually is.

As if the sickeningly trite message of "we won" wasn't face palming enough, Kat has to repeat it too... Someone Citizen Kane being in custody has neutered the gang... you'd think, if anything, it would rile them up more but if there are two things that don't trouble Walford for any length of time, it's reality and consistency. So, this problem will just blow over. Hell, the scene might as well say "and thus concludes the gang plot and none of them were ever heard from again!"

Janine is demonstrating her inability to mother again. Meanwhile, we discover that Count Moonula wasn't really at a meeting - instead he left the baby monitor with her and he can hear how unsuited to parenting Janine is! DUN DUN DUN!  He's listening to this in a grotty cafe (not THE cafffffffffffffff) but no one seems to think that's strange.

Sharon - apparently unaware that particularly in a more deprived part of London such as Walford, that the distance to a drug dealer is comparable to the distance to a rat - has concocted an ELABORATE ruse of cake baking, predicated on the contempt of the other mums at Walford primary.

Lauren goes to Lucy - someone she could best describe as a frenemy and with whom she has repeatedly clashed over Joey's affections - to find out what happened at the pub on Friday... because an alcoholic can not just get absolutely hammered on a double vodka, they can get black out drunk.

Bianca is worried about her selling mojo... heart pounding excitement!

Sharon's ham fisted machination continues apace - despite the fact Tanya isn't the least bit interested... and really, it's pretty rude to just walk into someone's kitchen, drop down a bunch of stuff and say "WE'RE BAKING CAKES!" Not many people would tolerate that. Then just to show how stupid she is, she tries to get the drugs when Tanya is less than a metre away!

To heighten the idiocy, Sharon breaks all the eggs and then tells Tanya to go and get some more from the shop... and it's only at this point that she tells her that she's done but Sharon's opportunity to pill pop comes (or so she thinks), when Tanya goes off to confront Lauren about the disappearance of her painkillers because alcohol and painkillers GO TOGETHER GREAT! Lauren isn't too happy.

Sharon makes a hilariously poorly pantomimed search of the kitchen, before a truly risible attempt to clean the eggs on the floor leads her to find the pills in the bin and then she scurries off, leaving the kitchen for Tanya to clean up. Again - are we supposed to have anything but a seething hatred for this woman?

Cora finds Lucy telling porkies to Joey in the cafffffffffff.

Arbitration time! It's all being very reasonable but then... Janine reveals the baby monitor! DUN DUN DUN! So, she's still pursuing sole custody. Her lawyer's eyebrow deserves a shout out for an outstanding performance. Well done, eyebrow.

Bianca is being ornery on the stall... perhaps this is supposed to show how stressed she even on her best day, she's likely to shout the odds.

The happy arbitration meeting descends quickly into mud slinging, angry accusations, blame allocations and so on. Stuff we've heard before but get used to it, if this custody battle is going to be a storyline - we'll be hearing it all a hundred more times!

Heart break because the epic romance of the century is over... Joey and Lauren! Who cares. Saying Joey is a catch is like getting excited when you reel in a plastic bag. The Crayon Crew clearly think this is up there with Romeo and Juliet though... which is hilarious because Joey's showing less emotion than a person selecting a coat of emulsion, while Lauren sobs her heart out.

Tanya finds out the pills have disappeared from the bin but given it took her about ten minutes to compile a list of likely suspects the first time around, will she suspect Sharon?

Just in case you might have thought that time had softened Janine, she offers Count Moonula two options. He can see Scarlet and she won't pursue maintenance but he has to leave the house OR she pursues a lengthy legal battle to deny him ANY access (it doesn't matter how much money you throw at it, that tends to be something extremely rare) AND make him pay maintenance. Was that... a subtle critique of how Western legal systems are inherently broken and the rich can pay for justice? Nah, probably not - just Janine showing that her time away has done nothing to lessen her similarity to a female canine.