The problem is when Eastenders went from 2 days a week, to 3 days, and then 4 days a week, and the pressure was to keep one-upping itself and then Coronation Street, by coming up with more outlandish plots. If they'd just kept it to 2 days a week, or even 3 days a week, and didn't feel the need to keep coming up with sensational tabloid-friendly stories several times a year (as opposed to say two or three big storylines per year), it might have remained a reasonably decent and relatively believable show.
It had begun its downhill slide by 1995, but while some things annoyed, it had enough life left to limp to 2000, but by this turn of the century, it was all over. Yes things change-and that is exactly WHY it isn't EastEnders anymore. It COULD and is anything. Why is shy all soaps, like anything, should have a shelf life and be put to death once they're so unrecognisable that they're not what the label says and does. After all, Brookside was killed off, why not this? Except it has been, as since 2000, it was not EastEnders any more. Perfect in the 80s (like the music) and most of the 90s, but gone by 2000.
