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Dean and Mick spoilers
Topic Started: 19 Aug 2015, 11:31 (4,167 Views)
Mrs Peel
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The Other Slater Cousin
19 Aug 2015, 18:11
We all know it is realistic that Dean wouldn't go to prison. It would have been ridiculous and sending out a completely wrong message to viewers. Linda reported the rape 4 months after it happened and that would lower the already tiny chances of a conviction. I'm fine with that.

The whole object of this storyline was twofold: its first objective was to show that not only do most women know the person who rapes then, the perpetrator is often either a family member or someone whom they trust. Also, Dean was someone whom we'd watched grow up on the Square. We've known him since he was an older teenager; we've known that he had issues with women, but initially they appeared to be him trying to punch above his weight with various young women. Now, it appears he has serious rejection issues, issues that can be traced back to his mother abandoning him and his siblings. He loves Shirley, yet from time to time, under stressful circumstances, he tells her painful home truths about what her abandonment did to him. In this respect, we get to see and understand why Dean did what he did, but that doesn't mean we should sympathise with him.

The other objective was not only a warning to women not to leave a time gap in reporting a rape to the police - this object was to show how difficult it could be in reporting a rape for a woman. When Dean attacked Linda, she froze. She didn't fight, kick, bite and scream that he was attacking her. Had she reported the rape then and there, the proof would have been her word against his. There were no defensive wounds on Linda, no marks on Dean and no bruising or signs of forced entry on her. All her frock and knickers would prove is that sex had taken place. Minutes before the attack, Nancy discovered Dean and Linda in what could have been interpreted as a compromising position. Dean's stalking and his inappropriate advances on Linda weren't told to Mick (for obvious reasons), and once again, Dean could have put his slant on them. From the very beginning, this rape was going to be near-impossible to prove.

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What I'm not fine with is how this is no longer a story exploring how a woman copes with being raped. I don't expect Linda to be defined by her ordeal, but from Christmas onwards, this story was about Shirley and the Mick and Dean rivalry. As the months went on, the rape, whilst initially portrayed in a very honest way, was clearly a device for the above to happen.


This, absolutely. In fact, to me, it seemed that the Linda-centric part of the storyline - the most important part, because this storyline was about the victim and how she coped in the aftermath - finished, or began to finish, in the episode where both Linda and Mick went to the police station for Linda to give her statement, where Mick broke down and told Linda how weak he was and how strong she was, and how he'd never sideline her again, in favour of other people. It finished in earnest when the CPS informed them that there wasn't enough evidence to secure a conviction. In all other regards, the rape has been a device for the estrangement between Mick and Shirley, and in this respect, the story is going round and round in circles.

There can be no rapprochement between Mick and his mother, not as long as she rigorously defends Dean's innocence, whilst at the same time, trash-mouthing Linda as a liar. Shirley won't choose between her sons; she shouldn't be expected to do so - after all, as Sharon states, a parent will love a child and a child a parent unconditionally, but acknowledging what Dean did, at this point, Shirley should be encouraging him, perhaps, to leave the area, for Linda to be able to move on with her life. Instead, all we have is the loop of Mick hating Dean and cold-shouldering Shirley, Shirley trying to make it up to Mick and silly Tina trying to get everyone to play Happy Families. Once again, Linda has been sidelined in favour of Mick and Shirley. In fact, we have seen virtually nothing of her since the baby was born, and now that Kellie Bright is going on SCD, we'll see even less of her.

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So my issue is that in all these months where Dean has struggled to bond with his daughter or has been hosting hairdressing competitions or has been sad because he can't go public with Roxy, where has been the counter argument? Where has been Linda's fear of having him living across the road? We have had zero insight into her character for many months now, and that is essential if they are insisting on continuing this story. So where are the audience being positioned here? To me, it feels very clear that we are meant to be seeing Dean as a victim of sorts and that is damaging.


We had a brief scene of Dean entering the pub, after having discovered that he was Jade's father, and Mick shielding Linda whilst Dean made the weird attempt to make amends with Mick, thinking the fact that Dean now had a child made everything OK between them.

You are totally right. Where is Linda's reaction to having a rapist right across the road from her? What about the dread she fears even walking out the front door to take the baby for a walk in the event that she might run into Dean? We've had the odd instance of Linda urging Mick to make up with Shirley, but last week, we even had Nancy giving a message to Buster with Dean standing right there, and there was utterly no reaction.

It does seem that TPTB have gone out of their way to elicit sympathy for Dean - the emphasis on the discovery of Dean's daughter, his relationship with Roxy and his appearing to be her rescuer from psychopathic murderer Ronnie - the thought that Roxy is rescued from a psychopathic murderer by a rapist with rejection issues is really quite horrific. We understand that Dean's life experiences have resulted in him having rejection issues and extreme difficulty in relating to women, and these have resulted in him raping a woman. We shouldn't be asked to sympathise with him. Now we're inching towards what seems to be a storyline where the increasingly infantile and puerile childwoman Roxy runs away from her obsessed and controlling sister to Dean, only to find him obsessed and controlling in a different way. Better the devil you know than the devil you don't, so there's likely to be a confrontation between Ronnie and Dean, whose death has already been foreshadowed. Ronnie's continued presence on the Square offends me as much as Dean's does, and I don't want her killing of Dean (and the subsequent cover-up) to lend any sort of credence to her as a heroine in any way. She and Dean are both people who need to go.

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If I was a victim of sexual assault and I was seeing a victim being shown as basically being "over it" less than a year later and the rapist having a nice little life, I would be offended. I want EastEnders to be realistic to an extent, but surely just as important as this is a sense of morality?


Yes, people get away with rape, and people get away with murder, but a gaggle of secret murderers aren't found within the radius of a small city square. The morality of the show has been skewed for sometime, really. Ever since Stacey was allowed to walk away from Archie's murder, although that was rectified to a certain extent when she confessed the murder and accepted responsibility and went to prison. I remember when someone killed another person on the programme, they eventually left, even though the discovery of the of the killing may have taken years, either by going to prison or by getting killed. Dean is viewed sympathetically, Ronnie should be a role model and viewed as a hero. No, just no. I know real life is different, but the show hasn't striven for actual "realism" for sometime now; however, it shouldn't lose sight of the morality it's supposed to impart.

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This just feels like they are whitewashing the rape away until Matt eventually leaves, and then he will get his comeuppance. That is a damaging representation. I'm all for pushing boundaries and doing something controversial, but this is neither of those things. Bar Linda's initial struggle to come to terms with what has happened, this plot has been insensitive and ill-thought out.


Dean's death has been foreshadowed in dialogue between him and Buster. My guess is that Ronnie will kill him, and in this man-hating version of EastEnders, she'll be lauded as a hero and that death will cancel out the horrific death she inflicted on Carl White. She doesn't deserve to be on the Square anymore than Dean, even if she is a Mitchell.
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