A Marathon I Hope and Pray Never Ever Ends


By Priscilla Mayfield

Probably not unlike a lot of East- Enders freaks, we’ve had homemade marathons before. When EE was being shown on our local PBS station we’d occasionally stockpile several Tivoed episodes (and, of course, pre-Tivo it was our old friend the VCR) when we didn’t have time to devote to watching, or, sometimes, would save ’em up on purpose… it was great to have four eps, two weeks’ worth, in the bank, especially when they were so parsimoniously distributed, a meagre two every Friday. I suppose there were times when we even had six eps waiting quietly in the queue. Riches! On a recent Saturday, however, we had something much more impressive. We watched 22 episodes, all in a row, in a single day. And may I say, it was stupendously great.

When our local PBS station, the single-mindedly mismanaged if not outright evil KOCE in Orange County, California, peremptorily dropped EE despite a motivated and supportive fan base, we’d taken the fatalistic view that that was that, no more EE for us. We’d been through this already once before with KOCE, when they capitulated to the outcry and returned EE to the roster. It was pretty clear there was no way that was going to happen again – they wanted to be rid of EE.

We held onto a small, secret thought that, possibly sometime in the future, with the help of New Media, or satellite, or SOMEthing, we’d have an avenue to EE. Or not. Fatalistic, like I said. But thanks to a wonderfully serendipitous concatenation starting with Walford Gazette Fearless Leader Larry Jaffee coming to dinner in early February 2009 and ending with us finding out that the local EastEnders organisation, as a benefit of membership, supplied DVDs of EE, we’ve been ecstatically watching again since spring 2009.

Except when we don’t have time to watch, which is what happened for a couple of months here recently. And resulted in a big old pile of DVDs accumulating. Untold riches.

Finally, the Saturday came when we thought we’d watch a few. There was a scheduled morning visit from a Sears tech who was to take a look at our recently nonfunctioning ice maker, and we thought a little EE the perfect distraction and accompaniment. And so it was. The Sears guy came, right on time, and informed me that the ice maker’s prob was only that the arm that pushes out the cubes was stuck, so after reaching in and causing a plasticky THWACK, his job was done. The ice maker almost immediately made the familiar sounds of its fill cycle.

And the day had not yet seen 9 a.m.! And so we began. Sometime later, OK, like 11 p.m., we stopped. Twenty-two episodes down. STILL not fully caught up! There were a couple of brief breaks, for cheese crispas, the south-western cocktail snack of a flour tortilla topped with cheese and heated to crisposity on a griddle, and pork-belly tacos, and a couple fresh-juice Orangeritas, for instance, but mostly it was a joyous plunge into the world of EE from which we did not have to surface for the foreseeable. (The actual eps were original air date 7 November 2002 through original air date 12 December 2002.)

The story arcs we traversed, some picked up in their middles, some newly begun, and some that got sorted, include but were not limited to: Peggy’s seriocomic search for a Queen Vic manager, culminating in the adorable and very EastEndery Alfie Moon’s introduction, AFTER Sam’s sorting, in a very very Mitchellish sorting, the vile Dave Roberts. The interminable-seeming attempt by Laura to prove that Janine is the source of the poison-pen letters, and the aftermath of Steven’s being discovered, and then Steven’s own discovery that Ian is not his biological father. The excruciating Charlie-Peggy dating storyline… sadly, still active where we left off. Why Peggy would give such a blubbering fool a second glance is not explained. BECAUSE THERE IS NO EXPLANATION FOR SOMETHING SO RIDICULOUS!!!

Ricky straining his brain cell over deciding which job to take, and, surprisingly, Sam getting in some funny comments as he chews on it in the Vic. “DI-lemma! Let’s see, Roy’s cars, or the Arches… the world’s your oyster, Ricky!” The hapless Barry unloading the oil-burning clunker with neon underbody lights on the hapless Martin, a deal later undone, for all the right reasons, and Derek and Roy (and the absent but invoked Pauline) get Martin a sensible first car. Because we can all afford cars in Walford Square, right? On a fruit-and-veg barrow income, OF COURSE we can.

Perhaps the biggest and most interesting is Phil’s return, WITH Baby Louise, and WITHOUT a good explanation of just how Lisa would have handed the baby off to him with all good wishes. We get several highly uncharacteristic glimpses of Detective Marsden talking to her latest boy toy assistant, a window into actual police work we have heretofore not had the benefit of.

A little jarring, and unEastEndersy, but in the end, adds a good something, something that was started way back when Marsden was interviewing Phil about just who might have shot him, anyway, and he made some remark about how if she wasn’t a copper he might have just had to date her. What Marsden thought of that, we are not privy to, but she does seem quite fixated on Phil Mitchell, but I guess no less than any of the other women in the long, long Chain of Fools he’s accumulated in his considerable wake over these many years.

Sonia continued to annoy and harp and whinge, so much so that, well, one found oneself agreeing with Phil when he took her down a few pegs in front of Jamie. We enjoyed her foray onto the Internet, exchanging what I believe is called “electronic mail” with Melanie, and the one-sided conversation with customer support for her dialup service.

I could go on. There’s so much that happened! But as I say, we’re not even up to speed, yet, with our fellow Orange County EEers! And in the end, it’s just another beautiful day in Albert Square.

A beautiful day I hope NEVER EVER ends.




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