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‘In your face’ wallpaper; whose face is the odd one out; who’s not cut out to run a Hotel; whose imagination ran away with them & who’s run away?
So much has happened in Emmerdale since my last full post in January that it would be impossible for me to cover every great moment, but I can’t not mention ‘Killer Cameron’, can I?
You’d have thought that having this storyline running for over a year would have ended up with it becoming both tedious and unconvincing, wouldn’t you, but that was simply not the case.
Right up until the very end we were totally gripped – for which we have to thank the writers, actors, producers, and the great team behind them who have all worked so hard to turn Emmerdale into the Award-winning Soap it is today; regularly beating EastEnders in the ratings and now snapping away at Coronation Street’s heels!
Spot the Odd Man Out
We all remember Corrie’s Charlie Stubbs, don’t we? Bashed over the head by Tracy Barlow? Yeah, that’s him. Well, he’s alive and kicking and has just moseyed into town as John Barton’s brother James.
I’m generally always so impressed at how new family members in Soaps resemble their ‘relatives’, but I’m just a little concerned about this casting. I can understand how they’d have been excited to sign Bill Ward up (as he’s a great actor and I LOVED him as Charlie Stubbs), but there’s one teensy problem with him: he just doesn’t look anything like ‘The Black-Haired Bartons’!
His son Ross (who looks too old to be Charlie’s – sorry, James’s son), looks EXACTLY like a BHB (and could pass for Adam’s older brother), but in my opinion you’d be hard-pressed to find a man who looks LESS like the rest of his ‘supposed’ family than James.
Look at ‘father and son’ here, then close your eyes and picture John Barton. Now look again at James Barton. See what I mean?
Where’s that bottle of ‘Barton Black’ hair dye?
With this new trend of shaving actors’ heads, you’d think he would – at the very least – have had to dye his hair and cut it short so that at least one bit of him looked a bit Barton-ish, wouldn’t you? It’s a shame he couldn’t just have come in as a new, neighbouring farmer rather than as John’s brother.
Still, I’m sure my concerns will be temporary (and that once he’s been there a couple of weeks I’ll have forgotten all about it), but there’s something far more worrying about this Brown-Haired Barton’s arrival (apart from wondering how on earth he’s going to get those enormous shoulders through the doorway), and that’s that we can already picture the moment when he pulls Moira roughly towards him and snogs the face off her, can’t we?
I don’t want that! I think that she and Cain have got fantastic chemistry and – call me an old romantic – I’d like to see them married. This is a Soap though, so I’m guessing that the ring Cain ‘acquired’ for Moira probably won’t end up on her finger after all?
Having a ring don’t mean a thing!
Time will tell, and a ring on your finger doesn’t always guarantee a happy ending: ask Priya. Aah, so close to the finish line, but pipped to the post when it took Alicia being shot to finally bring (back on the road to being ‘Hairy‘) David to his senses.
We all sighed in happy relief as they shared that first kiss, didn’t we, but this week’s ended with Jake running away after Alicia was pushed into telling him that she wasn’t his birth mother.
Has Jake packed enough sandwiches?
‘Child runs away’ has to be up there as one of any Soap’s most tedious story lines, and – as if Alicia hasn’t been through enough already, she’s now got something else to worry about: a runaway son.
Jacob’s crying on Friday genuinely had me in tears. He played that scene brilliantly (especially the line where he asked whether it meant that his dad wasn’t his dad either), but he does unfortunately deliver some of his lines with the emphasis on the wrong part of the sentence.
Comparing him to Belle, Samson, Arthur and Amelia (all amazing young actors), Jake sometimes falls a little short (in my book) I’m afraid. He’s SO much better than he was when he started though so I’m sure he’ll continue to improve, but with the Emmerdale Police out looking for him he’ll probably be gone for at least six months, so I just hope he filled his rucksack to the brim on his way out through the shop!
Basil? Basil?
It looked as if Deccers was about to be packing his bags too – until Megan came up with the bright idea of turning Home Farm into a Hotel. Genius … apart from just one thing: Declan.
This is a man whose people skills make Basil Fawlty look good. Imagine turning up for a lovely, relaxing weekend and being confronted by his miserable gob? You’d be out of there before anyone even had time to steal your car, wouldn’t you?
If that wasn’t enough to put you off the place, that psychedelic 60’s wallpaper would definitely finish the job. Even the delicious Megan standing in front of it wouldn’t be enough to distract you from its gawdiness. I just hope they get a good designer in to put it back like it was before it had its most recent make ‘under’.
Yes; with Megan front of house they might just get away with it (as long as Declan and Robbie are kept well out of the way of the guests!), and it opens up the exciting possibility of (at last) bringing a Housekeeper and a few staff in. How that place has run all these years without any sort of hired help (apart from Sam outside in the woods and Nicola putting in the odd half day when she can spare the time) is beyond me.
Yes, bring it on. ‘Macey’s Manor House’ has a certain ring to it don’t you think? (Actually, Macey’s bad–mannered House is probably nearer the mark!)
Nice try, Kerry
Some wonderful, wonderful acting from Kerry (as always) this week, when the frightening ‘Scarlet Gingivitis Syndrome’ that Kyle could have inherited didn’t quite ring true with his Grandma. “You just made that up!” Joanie gasped as Kerry blurted out the first disease she could think of in her attempt to help Amy try and maintain some sort of access to her son.
“Nooo. Me gran ‘ad it an’ her back end went and everything,” Kerry exclaimed in desperation, but it wasn’t enough to convince Joanie and she sped off up the road, leaving Amy distraught and Cain stood there looking bemused – having realised he’d just been holding his little boy’s hand.
Will it be ‘Daddy Dan’, or won’t he be ‘The Man’?
Aah, I’d love to see Cain and Moira have a baby, but will Ruby be hearing the patter of tiny feet, I wonder? My idea scenario would be that either Dan’s little swimmers fail to cross the channel and that it affects Ruby and Ali’s relationship so much that they split up, OR that Ruby does get pregnant but Ali gets jealous of the baby … and they split up.
Why do I want that? Because I want Ruby to get together with Vanessa. During the stress of it all, Ruby needs someone to talk to, the two of them grow closer, one thing leads to another and before we know it we have … ‘#Rubessa’!
Just my writer’s imagination working overtime again perhaps, although I do happen to do rather well with my predictions. I’m going to watch and hope on this one. Look at what a wonderful coupling Dan and Kerry are, and you read that first, right here on this blog (when both characters had barely made their first appearances), so might we get to see this ‘come to pass’ at some point too?
Vanessa’s been on the shelf for far too long
I hope so. I think they’d make a good couple (no offence to Misery Ali, but it’s hardly champagne and fireworks round at theirs every night, is it?), and even if they don’t get together, I DO hope that Vanessa gets a proper love interest soon. Almost all of us know what it’s like to love someone who doesn’t love us back, so – unless Rhona suddenly realises that she DOES love Ness after all – they need to get the vet a girlfriend, and fast.
Not a huge selection for the return of my Grins of The Week (surprisingly), but I’m not worried about it. Emmerdale’s humour is second only in brilliance to Corrie’s, and we certainly haven’t gone short on laughs over the last few months while Emmerdale-y’s been away.
Nicola: “I have to be in Southport at seven am.”
Jimmy: “Driving job?”
Nicola: “No, Jimmy. They’re awarding me the freedom of the City.”
Eric: “Yes, I’m back!”
Val: “Yeah. Look at our faces lighting up (!)”
Victoria: “Come on Ashley. Man up and put your frock on.”
Declan: “Do I look stupid?”
Charity: “Do you really want to hear the answer to that?”
PS
* Why did Robbie have a big dirty mark under his chin this week?
* Talking of chins: I was SO relieved when Ashley finally ditched that awful beard!
* I’m sure that as Alan Turner (who was something of a connoisseur when it came to the fairer sex) looked down on the villagers attending his wake, he (like a lot of other people!) would have truly appreciated Moira’s magnificent ‘frontage’ making an appearance to mark the occasion.
* Cain said that nicking those cars was ‘A victimless crime’ as they were all insured. I don’t know about you, but I’ve got a lot of stuff in my car that I wouldn’t be very happy to lose.
You can replace a car, but what about all the personal effects that might be in there? You can’t replace those, can you Cain? Hmmm? No, so ‘Think on’ next time, please!
* Notice how James Barton walks like John Wayne (as if he’s wet his pants)?
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