Christmas 2025: Dumpster Fire!

Photo by fr0ggy5 on Unsplash

Is it just me or was the 2025 Eastenders episode the worst Christmas episode ever filmed in the history of Eastenders?! No wonder Zoe’s gone AWOL, and with it Michelle Ryan's most anticipated return in recent soap history fizzled out quicker than you could say, "Get outta mah PUB!". In fact, we hardly saw her on our screens this year. Now, less than a year, later she is quitting the show. And rightly so.

Let’s backtrack for a second. Anthony Trueman, the local GP, dated Zoe in the early 2000s but refused to have “intimate relations” with her. Cue forward and he left the show in 2003. Zoe moved quickly all over Dennis Rickman, sleeping with his dad, Dirty Den, and betraying Sharon as her stepbrother was also her love interest. Zoe had never slept with Anthony. She finally quit the show in 2005. That's 20 years ago. But hang on a minute. She gives birth off screen around the same time to two of Dr. Anthony Truman’s kids?! Zoe fled to Spain after helping cover up Dirty Den’s murder, and Anthony had plodded off to Scotland where he built his GP practice. Yet there was never any mention ensuing 20 years of the show  that these two had gotten back together off screen somehow, which would have been the most unlikely coupling seeing how things unraveled for her character from innocent teen to murder accomplice.

That storyline was dead in the water and should never have been resurrected. It was not only unbelievable, but written and executed poorly. Zoe/Michelle returns after vowing to never return to Eastenders 20 years later, with her unbeknownst daughter, Jasmine, killing her biological dad on Christmas day because he’s arguing with Zoe about the missing adopted twins? Why not dial 999? And the twin brother that shows up, Josh, is so anticlimactic.

Zoe has been distraught and tortured for 20 years searching for her kid(s). She is searching for her long lost son over the past 20 years. When he finally rocks up, she’s like, “See you later mate. I’m off to Lynne’s for some much needed R&R and me time. Laters!” Hard to believe, but so much of this nonsense is digestible. Long gone are the days of Bradley and Stacey or the grittiness of the 1980s.

There no bond or connection, and we don’t even see the twins and Zoe reunited — no heartfelt confessions. In fact, she hardly pays attention to them in the Vic and the two twins stick out like two sore thumbs in the Queen Victoria. Then they (the out of touch writers, greenlighted by a delusional producer) throw in a storyline that the twins are secretly in love with lanky Oscar, with the other not knowing! Do me a favor!

Who is writing this stuff? For the first time in 26 years of continuous watching, (and I have watched every episode broadcast in 40 years), I considered unsubscribing. 

In fact, I did unsubscribed as I couldn’t take this gaslighting anymore. I had a change of heart because I’ve watched so many years of episodes and have invested so much of myself and my time in this one thing, I went back.  

But the damage has been done to the brand. Utterly ridiculous characters and storylines. No wonder Michelle Ryan burnt all her scripts on and posted the footage on her Instagram. Dumpster fire vibes.

Well surely I can’t be on my own here. Would you have burnt the scripts? Was this the worst Christmas episode in Eastenders 40 years? Do you have a love/hate relationship wit the show now? For the first time ever, over the past 24 months I've thought that maybe it's now time to end the show before running it fully into the ground. It's now a love/hate relationship and I hope they can right the ship, But is it too late?