The Battle Of The Drug Abuse Storylines: EastEnders vs. Emmerdale

This week on EastEnders, Phil Mitchell’s brand new drug addiction *cough* PLOT DEVICE *cough* will have dire consequences as he causes the Queen Victoria to burn to the ground in a storyline that will result in Barbra Windsor’s exiting from her iconic role as Peggy Mitchell.

With both EastEnders and Emmerdale doing big drug storylines at the same time it is interesting to compare and contrast the major differences between the two and how they are both unfolding.

On Emmerdale Holly Burton’s drug storyline began as a slow building storyline that has only recently hit the fan as everyone found out Holly’s miss doings when she left a little bit of her ‘stuff’ behind at a baby-sitting job for the local Vic. Yea doing drugs in a house with kids is bad, doing drugs in a house with kids for the local preacher is probably the stupidest thing you could do.

Anyways the storyline continued to fall out with Holly running away from home, leaving her family to believe she was dead in a ditch somewhere. Now Holly has returned home one last time to pick up the rest of her personal items while the rest of the family is out, only her little sister Hannah appeared before she was able to leave. Holly was able to escape and the Burton’s now know that at least their daughter is alive… for now.

Over on EastEnders, Phil had lost everything. His son Ben was sent to prison, after following in his father’s footsteps. Then his little girl was ripped from his hands by his own MOTHER and given away to the person who stole her in the first place.

So first Phil did what any alcoholic would do, he turned to the booze! But hey that doesn’t numb the pain enough, thus he hooked up with some Branning trailer trash and all the sudden became a junkie! Now Phil has a case of the munchies and cannot wait for his next hit.

While the spiraling disaster that is Phil Mitchell’s life is an accurate presentation of what someone would do given his situation, it is hard not to notice that everything that went wrong in his life was all done as a plot device to get to the point that will deliver Peggy Mitchell’s final moments on the square.

Now with that said which drug storyline are you enjoying the most? Do you disagree that Phil’s is very plot driven, whereas Holly’s is character? Let me know what you think in the comments below.