[Redway]

Originally Posted by Swan

Yeah he's turned up. He's already womanising, punched Phil, he's certainly made an entrance. Also Jack Dalton made his first appearance in today's episode. Phil goes to see him, and the ending is very interesting!

The summer is pretty much just beginning too, and with the new characters i think Redway is right, 2003 really becomes a good year.

Yeah, 2003 was a decent year. The summer of that year (after Dennis killed Jack Dalton and the Ferreiras became more prominent) and the Shirley/Gavin stuff weren't great but the rest of the year was very okay. I know everyone used to complain about Little Mo's second rape and to be fair Freddie could've easily been the result of natural conception with Billy but what's done is done now. I don't think there's anything from 2003 that hangs over the show negatively in the long-term. Robbie was a non-entity, Mark's story was told and Barry was a joke so those three characters getting the chop doesn't bother me whatsoever. The line about the slip-on shoes and the resolution to the whole thing (December 2005) alone made it a worthwhile storyline. And that's before even getting into Paul Trueman's involvement in it.

I genuinely don't get why a certain minority of people are so dismissive of 2003 and lump it in with 2004 (the more challenging part of the Berridge era, because of all sorts of off-screen problems) as a "bad" year. 2003 was a lot of things but bad isn't one of them. Puffs (and when I say that I don't mean with regard to sexuality per-se but just people who live up to a certain sensitive stereotype in that regard) don't like gangster stories but people like me do and so do many others (especially people from urban communities) so it is what it is.