Reception
The character has been criticised for being boring. He has been described by Phil Hansen of the Walford Gazette as "bland as tofu...the epitome of a sexless gay character, whose only purpose is to prop up the more colorful straight characters", and he has been accused of not existing as "a character in his own right".
The character's exit was also criticised in the Gay Times. The critic comments, "Hardly had he got his stethoscope warmed when he's scared off by a few choice comments by Martin Fowler, a gangly, sullen fifteen year old who 'comes over all queer' when Fred scuttles by...Fred is such a coward he's leaving for Islington (implicated as a step up to better things, happier days and no homophobia - the chatterings class round here are so much more tolerant, darling). And everyone's okay with this?...Why do we have to put up with such - yes, I'm going to say it! - namby pamby, piss-weak gay characters who leg it at the first sign of trouble? Everytime EastEnders disgorges a gay character onto the Square I am asked silently, by the glimmer in the eye, whether I think that this time, just maybe, this is will the one...that will merely stay the course!... I admit it now, I have lost the will to even consider that one day, just maybe, there might be." Lorna Cooper of MSN TV listed Fred one of soap opera's "forgotten characters".
Read more about this topic: Fred Fonseca
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“He’s leaving Germany by special request of the Nazi government. First he sends a dispatch about Danzig and how 10,000 German tourists are pouring into the city every day with butterfly nets in their hands and submachine guns in their knapsacks. They warn him right then. What does he do next? Goes to a reception at von Ribbentropf’s and keeps yelling for gefilte fish!”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)
“Aesthetic emotion puts man in a state favorable to the reception of erotic emotion.... Art is the accomplice of love. Take love away and there is no longer art.”
—Rémy De Gourmont (1858–1915)
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)