Karen Taylor made more appalling, unacceptable, racist comments - like accusing Masood of supporting Sharia law - but she was still inexplicably portrayed as a comic character in EastEnders, by Jim Shelley

We’re only twelve days and eight episodes in but it already looks as if 2018 could be a historic year for EastEnders. Historically awful that is…

It started on New Year’s Day with an hour-long special devoted to Aidan Maguire’s farcical armed robbery. Well he was armed. The rest of his ragbag gang had wooden guns.

The first week of January also saw Albert Square coming to terms with the aftermath of the ill-conceived ‘Project Dagmar’ storyline. 

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Awful: We’re only twelve days and eight episodes in but it already looks as if 2018 could be a historic year for EastEnders. Historically awful that is...

Awful: We’re only twelve days and eight episodes in but it already looks as if 2018 could be a historic year for EastEnders. Historically awful that is...

Months of James Willmott-Brown’s excruciating 1980 Yuppie boardroom clichés and villainous moustache twiddling, plus the tenuous sub-plots involving his children Luke, Fi, and Josh, came to… nothing basically.

The market and the Queen Vic were saved (again) and Max Branning returned all the deeds to the properties to their former owners.

The soap had more hospital scenes than Holby City with Abi and Lauren Branning in Walford General having miraculously survived falling off the pub’s roof.

Abi was in coma admittedly but Lauren is hobbling off to Glasgow with Josh, gloriously untroubled by any thought of helping look after Abi’s newborn baby (soon-to-be orphan).

Shocking scenes: During the show Masood was subject to racist abuse from Karen

Shocking scenes: During the show Masood was subject to racist abuse from Karen

Oops: ‘You know what?’ she screeched, losing her temper. ‘Roll on Brexit ! Coming over here taking our jobs ! Screw thy neighbour…Is that part of your sherry law?!’

Oops: ‘You know what?’ she screeched, losing her temper. ‘Roll on Brexit ! Coming over here taking our jobs ! Screw thy neighbour…Is that part of your sherry law?!’

Tanya Branning has proved similarly unsupportive.

Having rushed back to Walford to save her daughters from Max’s evil machinations she disappeared after Abi was hospitalised/brain-dead.

There was no sign of any Brannings in any of this week’s four episodes, which were arguably even more deranged.

Masood was revealed to be living in a derelict ice-cream van. (Don’t ask.)

His uncle and aunties’ foster child disappeared and was then found again.

Two's company: Despite half of the characters eternally needing work/money, only two people had bothered to apply for a job: Karen Taylor and Masood

Two's company: Despite half of the characters eternally needing work/money, only two people had bothered to apply for a job: Karen Taylor and Masood

Plus another young runaway, Tiffany Butcher, told Whit that she had run away from Milton Keynes because her muvver (the legendary Bianca) had tried to kill herself.

Meanwhile, Walford’s version of The Italian Job was still limping on waiting to be put out of its misery, albeit without any sign of the police investigating it.

This was despite having an eyewitness (Masood’s uncle) and forensics from Mick Carter’s blood (after he was shot but before Masood’s auntie had, inexplicably, patched him up).

The protagonists had mysteriously vanished too.

Aidan, Phil, Keanu, Mick, and Vincent had all left Walford at the same time – somewhat suspicious and unlikely given that they’d discovered someone had pilfered their money.

We now knew this was Ben Mitchell, as they probably would have - if they’d hung around. Kathy’s necklace would have been a clue.

Emotional: Meanwhile, another young runaway, Tiffany Butcher, told Whit that she had run away from Milton Keynes because her muvver (the legendary Bianca) had tried to kill herself

Emotional: Meanwhile, another young runaway, Tiffany Butcher, told Whit that she had run away from Milton Keynes because her muvver (the legendary Bianca) had tried to kill herself

Mel Owen (Tamzin Outhwaite) had worked it out – and she’d been out of the series for 15 years.

Sporting a floppy green hat as though disguised as Quentin Crisp, Mel followed Ben on to the Dover-Calais ferry, and looked as if she had conned the young criminal mastermind, switching his suitcase full of crisp fifty pound notes.

Ben had ingeniously been planning to just carry it through French customs so was probably relieved when he was stopped before discovering the money had been replaced by copies of the Walford Gazette.

All of which is left us with another distasteful, demoralising, contribution from Karen Taylor.

Since the arrival of Karen and the Taylor family, EastEnders had, typically, tried to have its cake and eat it, vacillating between portraying them as generally crude, rude, and lazy while trying to see them as life’s victims: its own version of a Ken Loach family struggling to get by.

Her son Keegan for example had initially been a realistically unpleasant teenage yob, spending months bullying Bex and stealing Arthur’s bench in his campaign menacing Michelle. Gradually he’d softened though only to help Aidan with the raid, as had his brother Keanu Taylor (supposedly the sweet, most honest one).

Conned: Mel followed Ben on to the Dover-Calais ferry, and looked as if she had conned the young criminal mastermind, switching his suitcase full of crisp fifty pound notes

Conned: Mel followed Ben on to the Dover-Calais ferry, and looked as if she had conned the young criminal mastermind, switching his suitcase full of crisp fifty pound notes

Like so many supposedly ‘strong’ ‘salt-of-the-earth’ matriarchs with ‘a heart of gold’ before her in the show,

Karen Taylor’s impassioned speech to her kids when she found they’d been stealing mobile phones (about not fulfilling other people’s worst stereotypes and behaving like ‘Chavs’) sounded hollow but was at least well-intentioned.

So not surprisingly, a lot of fans took to Twitter on Tuesday, shocked and appalled by the racist bile the writers had suddenly decided to attribute to her.

Applying for the job of manager at the launderette, the perennially unemployed (unemployable) sponger assumed that Mr Papadopolous junior was ‘a squatter’ rather than the owner, even though he was smartly dressed in a suit.

‘We don’t need no asylum seekers here !’ she then berated him. ‘Go back to wherever you came from !’

Even he didn’t understand her rambling ‘explanation’, asking ‘are you from some sort of home?’

Ongoing: Walford’s version of The Italian Job was still limping on waiting to be put out of its misery, albeit without any sign of the police investigating it

Ongoing: Walford’s version of The Italian Job was still limping on waiting to be put out of its misery, albeit without any sign of the police investigating it

Predictably she resorted to reiterating ‘I need this job and my family need me to get it’ (although she hadn’t applied for any others since she’d been there).

She defended being sacked in her previous job (for attacking her boss with a loo brush) with the sob-story that had been the week before Christmas and being fired meant she wouldn’t be able to buy Keanu the computer game she had promised him.

Papadopolous had directly challenged her for being ‘racist’ and made her backtrack frantically but the Waynetta wannabe still did it again on Friday.

Despite half of the characters eternally needing work/money, only two people had bothered to apply for the job: Karen Taylor and Masood.

‘You know what?’ she screeched, losing her temper. ‘Roll on Brexit ! Coming over here taking our jobs ! Screw thy neighbour…Is that part of your sherry law?!’

Unforgivable: Why the writers and the show’s new producer John Yorke think there’s anything funny or charming about Karen Taylor is inexplicable, and unforgivable

Unforgivable: Why the writers and the show’s new producer John Yorke think there’s anything funny or charming about Karen Taylor is inexplicable, and unforgivable

(She meant Sharia law. Karen Taylor was that lethal combination: prejudiced and thick.)

‘You do know I’m British?’ Masood mentioned calmly, presumably used to it.

‘Where are you from then?’ she demanded.

‘Karachi.’

‘Scotland…’ she concluded gormlessly.

‘Pakistan,’ he corrected.

‘Then swan off back there !’

Unusual: You might think that having witnessed this Mr Papadopolous junior would decide he would rather not employ Karen Taylor as his launderette manager, particularly as she had already racially insulted him too

Unusual: You might think that having witnessed this Mr Papadopolous junior would decide he would rather not employ Karen Taylor as his launderette manager, particularly as she had already racially insulted him too

Cleaning: Instead he devised a ludicrous clean off between them to decide who should get the job. After they’d spilt bleach everywhere, Masood nobly took the blame (inexplicably – given that she’d told him to go back to Pakistan)

Cleaning: Instead he devised a ludicrous clean off between them to decide who should get the job. After they’d spilt bleach everywhere, Masood nobly took the blame (inexplicably – given that she’d told him to go back to Pakistan)

You might think that having witnessed this Mr Papadopolous junior would decide he would rather not employ Karen Taylor as his launderette manager, particularly as she had already racially insulted him too.

Instead he devised a ludicrous clean off between them to decide who should get the job.

After they’d spilt bleach everywhere, Masood nobly took the blame (inexplicably – given that she’d told him to go back to Pakistan), ensuring Karen was given a week’s trial in charge.

Karen offered him a bacon sandwich to thank him.

‘I’m a Muslim,’ he reminded her.

‘I’ll cut the fat off !’ she chirped bewilderingly.

At best this was ignorance being portrayed as ‘lovable’ or ‘colourful.’

Unsure: Producers seemed to think we are on her side and would see it as a good thing that she’d got the job, judging by the way she celebrated with her kids

Unsure: Producers seemed to think we are on her side and would see it as a good thing that she’d got the job, judging by the way she celebrated with her kids

But why the writers and the show’s new producer John Yorke think there’s anything funny or charming about Karen Taylor is inexplicable, and unforgivable.

They seemed to think we were on her side and would see it as a good thing that she’d got the job, judging by the way she celebrated with her kids.

Either way she ended 2018’s latest episode in charge of Albert Square’s famous launderette.

From Dot Cotton to Karen Taylor…

It summed up where EastEnders is at these days and how far it has fallen.

Fallen: The episode summed up where EastEnders is at these days and how far it has fallen

Fallen: The episode summed up where EastEnders is at these days and how far it has fallen

 

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