Changing personalities

This has been discussed elsewhere but I'm just so fed up with the writers messing about that I had to start a new thread. They treat the viewers like idiots, as if we have the memory of a goldfish and can't actually recall what the characters are really like, so we'll accept whatever dross they hand out.

The most obvious one recently has been Tanya and the burial storyline. Absolute bollocks. Tanya Branning would never bury anyone alive cos you know why? She's normal, that's why. She's an ordinary woman in a situation thousands of women (and men) face every day but instead of letting her react in a normal, or even a slightly hysterical OTT fashion (it is a soap, after all), they draft in Stephen King to write and direct a few eppies and Tanya has turned into the kind of psychopath who could actually bury a human being alive.

Billy Mitchell is another one. We've been shown so many times over the past few years that Billy is in his own kind of heaven, he's finally got exactly what he wanted. He's got a wife who absolutely adores him and he has two little children, his own dynasty. We saw Billy in his element as the strong one when Janet was born and Honey fell apart and I think we were all happy to see Billy finally move on and mature into a devoted family man. Now we're seeing signs that Billy's just not happy cos he's still not "a proper Mitchell" in the rules according to the only people who seem to matter, Peggy and Phil. Why are the writers doing this? We're all bored to tears with Billy as a one-trick pony, that trick being to follow Phil around like a lapdog. Why won't they just continue with the storyline of Billy growing up and growing away from the Mitchells?

Phil too. It looked like he was finally growing up especially in the aftermath of the Stella episodes. He knew he had let Ben down and was going to spend his life making it up to him. Now here he is again making Ben miserable cos the boy isn't a Phil clone and nothing less is acceptable when you're Bad Phil Mitchell.

Even the recent Clair storyline with Nigel's non-appearance, do they think none of us remember the kind of man Nigel was? If he wasn't able to make it, he'd have contacted Clair. He would never have just disappeared and let her down like that.

Its an EE trait as far as I can see, Corrie characters dont stray from their original personalities, even the ones that are bad and have a good spell eventually return to form.

When Minty first appeared he was a slum landlord and now he's half of the Square's Laurel and Hardy impersonators.
Billy was a vile child beater.
Tanya as you say is a normal mother, I must admit I completely disregard the burial storyline because it was so pathetically crass its not worth taking into account. And I think the way in which its been disgrarded by the main players, except for one tiny mention, then TPTB have realised how stupid people thought it was, and even sensationalism has to be realistic.

It does seem to me to be the biggest problem with EastEnders and is what sets it apart from Coronation Street. I don't actually watch Corrie any more but when I did watch it I always found it more true to life than EE with regards to the characters. It all boils down, I suppose, to the "plot driven" versus "character driven" argument - Corrie is basically character driven with emphasis on development of the character and storylines being derived from that whereas EE nowadays goes in more for the short term, sensational, storylines. Presumably the aim is to win viewers but the proof of the pudding is in the eating and apart from the first few years when the two soaps competed pretty evenly for top spot Corrie has consistently come out on top. Even when Corrie do go in for the "sensational" - I am thinking mainly of the Richard Hillman storyline of 2 or 3 years ago - the characters are allowed to develop naturally over a long period of time before they unleash the surprise on us. Compare the Richard Hillman storyline to the Mad May one where May was in the show for just a few weeks before she was revealed to be a bit pyscho. Then she was gone in no time and brought back at a later date to boost the audience's flagging attention.