(EastEnders) Jean Slater: is she a character worth watching/saving?

[Redway]

Or is her current unreasonable dog-house behaviour with Harvey a reminder that she’s been past her best since at least 2010 (if not 2007)?

[Saph]

I’ve been watching classic eastenders 04/05 recently on Sky and Jeans old acting was so good

They really made her a joke character ever since about 2010

[Redway]

I’ve been watching classic eastenders 04/05 recently on Sky and Jeans old acting was so good

They really made her a joke character ever since about 2010

I second that. The week in December 2005 where Stacey went to see her in her boarded-up old dumping ground during one of her episodes and her work in 2009 when Stacey broke down herself and needed Jean to be the mum she never was except during her earliest years will forever be the best of Gillian Wright’s work on EastEnders, IMO.

Her 2004 debut was also very good but to someone without enough in-depth knowledge of bipolar perhaps a little too cold to really flesh Jean’s character out properly and in detail, which is what the 2005 week was there to do. 2004 Jean on the undifferentiated face of it was just there to be a spiteful, neglectful mother with unspecified severe mental health problems, as pitch-perfect as the writing and acting actually was. It wasn’t until a year later that it all started to click and make more sense to the wider audience and it was a hugely instrumental week in solidifying Lacey Turner’s brimming potential. She (Jean) was theatrically softened in 2006 and the first 3/4 of 2007 as it became clear that she was recovering some and that that was to an extent her personality in itself but she became too much of a comedy character after she was made full-time (late 2007), especially from 2010 onwards. 2009 was like a brief interlude when she returned to form and in a unique way but fundamentally I don’t think Bryan Kirkwood got her character. She’d already become more of a one-note sausage-surprise caricature by that point (minus the storyline where she helped Stacey come to terms with her own emerging bipolar and the immediate aftermath of that) but Kirkwood ramped it up to the 11th gear and no-one’s fixed it since, not even Clenshaw (the current E.P.).

She’s been a bit better since her last manic episode than she was in the 11 years before it but she’s still a million miles away from the grittier character she was in the mid.-noughties and in 2009 particularly and it’s a shame. It’s a shame she never comes back good these days. Not from the psych.-ward, not from Greece, nowhere. Harvey’s an idiot but even he could do better than this version of Jean.

2007/08 Jean? Meh. Nowhere near as bad as 2010-onwards Jean but she was already sort of in the first phase of that cartoon caricature-ness, complete with comedy catchphrase “sausage surprise” and just pretty far-removed from Gillian Wright’s incredibly raw, vivid portrayal of bipolar disorder when we first met her, in 2004/05. The Jean we know and talk about now is nothing like the woman we met back then.

Not saying she’s just a pamphlet for bipolar disorder but turning her into a joke or just-plain irritant hasn’t helped matters at all as far as her characterisation goes.

[Redway]

I’ve been watching classic eastenders 04/05 recently on Sky and Jeans old acting was so good

They really made her a joke character ever since about 2010

Indeed. Early Jean/2009 Jean was perfection.

[Beso]

Jean and stacey, are eastenders for me.

[Redway]

Jean and stacey, are eastenders for me.

When was the last time you actually watched EastEnders?

[Beso]

When was the last time you actually watched EastEnders?

When I made over 450 quid at the bookies predicting stacey killing whatshisface in the pub.

[Redway]

When I made over 450 quid at the bookies predicting stacey killing whatshisface in the pub.

My point exactly. Jean was awful from 2010 up-until two years ago. And still isn’t very good.

But well done for predicting Stacey killed Archie.

[Beso]

My point exactly. Jean was awful from 2010 up-until two years ago. And still isn’t very good.

But well done for predicting Stacey killed Archie.

That was the easy part. The hard part was continuing to watch eastenders.

[Redway]

That was the easy part. The hard part was continuing to watch eastenders.

2011-2021 (minus 2014 and maybe 2019) was utter garbage indeed. 2010 was up and down but the three months following the live episode weren’t great, and I’m not someone who even enjoyed the Archie storyline like that in the first place. But I can appreciate its appeal.

Clenshaw’s (the new guy) not perfect but to his credit the past 2 years are easily the best the show’s been in at least 9 years. 2015-21 was about as watchable as watching Lily pick her nose and eat it for breakfast and lunch. Terrible, terrible years.