ok this week was some thriller. as carl and phil were on there way to a dodgy deal carl swerved and hit a lorry before losing control of the car going off the road and crashing into parked cars. phil went right through the windsheld and had to be taken by air ambulance to hospital. carl on the other hand was putting his plan in action by telling the police that his brakes went all of a sudden! with a handfull of witnesses seeing max threaten carl . things dont look to good for max. once max was released on bail he tried to carry on as normal but once again carl got got a reaction from him. max lost his temper and punched carl in the face and was re arrested. to be honest i cant see max getting out of this one! and why was lola so sorry about the state phil was in! its not so long ago that she overheard phil saying that lola was never going to get lexi back if it was down to him?
i do wander whether lauren or abi are the one's going to prove to the police that max is innocent?

another thing we saw was roxy finally telling alfie that ronnie was getting out of prison! he didnt take it too well and i think now he realises the mistake he made by dumping kat!

we also saw the issue of jeans bipolar disorder rare its head

and remember guys eastenders is on 5 nights a week next week!

a thrilling week this week. any views?

over the top as usual and flat in places- the stunt was okay but the real drama was tonight. Next week should be better.

Glad this week is over. Too much Max bloody Branning.

Underwhelming. Next week has to be something special.

this !

Rather unimpressed this week .
If they balls up Ronnie's return and the Peggy ep then its a truly disastrous year for the show .

You'll find there is a whole forum of views......

Mainly on how crap EE is too!

Apart from the 'unknown' peggy ep, any idea who's penning these crucial episodes?

EE has been in trouble before, and has come up with the same solution before - a hardman character who challenges Phil. It worked with Dennis, but the other times - Johnny Allen and Derek - just took EE into sub-Guy Ritchie territory, in my view.

I enjoyed the episodes more than usual, but as so many have said there is just too much of Max in the show at the moment, The real revival of EE came not with biggest-ever gangster types but with new characters - Ronnie & Roxy, the Foxes, the new Wicks family, the Massoods.

I hope Ronnie's return goes well - SJ says in this week's Radio Times that she's seeing how it goes in case she wants to stay - but I am finding it tough to suspend my disbelief. Ronnie was brilliant but she was also a spent character when she left, overloaded with grief and shown to be severely mentally disturbed. She was also involved in the baby swap, which I know some people enjoyed but which I found totally ridiculous (babies look so different from each other; it's as mad an idea as suggesting that one old woman can be swapped for another - and if you've held your baby even once, you will always know them). I am concerned that her implausible return will be the new Return of Dirty Den - great at first, but ultimately so mad that it undermines their character.

Out of curiosity I watched a couple of episodes this week. The crash episode was awful but last nights plumbed new depths. The writing, acting, direction were all embarassingly terrible. I have seen better school plays!

^ This ^

The character drives me nuts. Theres no light and shade with him. He's just a selfish, grumpy old man and his stories just go round in circles.
Like many on here, I think its time for most of the Brannings to leave and yes I do include Max.

This week no way lived up to the hype.

Confused plot and badly directed crash but last night topped it off.

The scene in the hospital with phil gasping for breath was beyond amateur. I've seen better acting at junior school plays.

I've watched East since day one and this really is the worst it has ever been.

The mistake he made in dumping Kat??????

Dumping Kat for Roxy was an absurd no brainer.

I didn't see it as an improvement, just they actually had a bigger story than they've had for the last 9 months and as usual it centred around the Brannings with a new villain thrown in and Phil involved.

It was contrived as usual, poorly acted and directed and to be honest if this is seen as a good week then heaven help the quality for an average or bad week. This is still Newman's work and despite what anyone else says she has made quite long lasting damage to the show with the direction she was taking it in.

Now to get the show back to being gritty and not just about old age men pretending to be gangsters, we will need to see another lot of characters changing personality to fit the storylines.
Lets see what DTC can do but I doubt we will see any of his imprint or improvement until at least the early part of next year.

I think they really need to bring in at least 2 or 3 new families, and I mean new, not just someone linked to an existing character. Get the show being back about families and not just a load of individuals being thrown together. Stop the reliance on the Brannings for every big story and have some storylines with slow burners with good long term planning rather than the short term stuff which we seem to have all the time. Then we may just see the show returning to what it once was. Its lost its way this past 7-8 years.

I was all set to be pretty scathing in my assessment of EE this week, until that helicopter turned up.

That changed my view completely, the crafty Beeb certainly pulled a rabbit out of the hat there.

I've hardly watched any of it this week (just last nights). The whole Max, Carl storyline is pathectic, and I say this as a huge Max fan. I find it totally unbelievable that this storyline is all because two people are desperate for Kirsty Its too far fetched and I hope that Phil soon realises that Carl is behind the crash, kills him and the whole matter never gets mentioned again (as is the tradition with Eastenders, e.g. Tanya burying Max, Billy and the missing post).

Its was a Sh*t week, like every other week.

An average week that was massively overhyped. When will the producers learn this show will never recover while the Brannings are still front and centre? They are the cause of the problem, not the solution.

i agree with everything you have said the brannings need to go now

Well it's less far fetched than Kirsty being desperate for Max.

I agree its so far fetched its laughable I find Max and Kirsty very difficult to watch as well there's no chemistry there at all. Max has known her for all of 5 minutes as well yet we're meant to believe they're this great love story.

The Roxy and Alfie scenes were a mess as well. On Tuesdays episode we had Roxy going around telling anyone who'd listen that "Ronnie's getting out on Monday" she even yelled it across the crowded pub to Kat yet she hadn't told Alfie and we were meant to believe he was completely in the dark. Surely word would have got back to him about it from the pub regulars chatting about it considering they all knew. I found his reaction completely over the top as well Ronnie has served her time (a rather harsh sentence at that) and he knew full well that Roxy was her sister when he started seeing her, what did he expect? Ronnie to just stay in prison forever and never speak to her sister again?

Absolute bag of shite 1 / 10

She cheated on him repeatedly: she had at least two one night stands, a baby with his cousin and kept bonking Derek Branning in a seedy bedsit. If you honestly believe that anyone deserves that and should stick with someone who acts like that, it's more a reflection of you and your own crippling insecurities....

Ugh. Why do I bother opening these threads? They read like market research from someone at the EE production office.

Hopefully Simon Ashdown. He's probably one of the best writers eastenders has.

I think your being unfair there. It was worth at least a 2/10 rating.

I thought the crash episode was so boring until the very end and I've had enough of Max Branning:sleep: