According to an article on Digital Spy's website, Tanya and Sharon are supposed to become good friends.
Poppycock.
Best of enemies, maybe, but never best mates. Not even passing acquaintances.
According to Jo Joyner, "Sharon's such a beautiful, iconic character that she puts everyone's hackles up. Kat's not impressed, and Tanya's not quite sure."
OK, I can buy Katshit's reaction. Kat's a slut and a trollop, and she would naturally be jealous of the calm classiness Sharon oozes, as well as being scared of being turfed out of the Vic she's brought down to her amoral level. Then, of course, there's the part Zoe Slater played in Den's death.
But Tanya would never be friends with Sharon. Look, we're talking about pairing up the one of the shallowest, most superficial women ever to tread the streets of Walford with one of the most iconic, nicest and most nuanced characters in the show. Highly unlikely.
Tanya's had one friend since she came to Walford - Jane Beale. And that was an unequal friendship. She only approached Jane for friendship because Jane was the wife of the local entrepreneur, with middle-class pretensions that rivalled Tanya's. Also, as much as Tanya was insecure in her marriage to a serial philanderer - a marriage and relationship based almost entirely on sex - Jane's marital status was on rung below Tanya's on the relationship ladder. Tanya had a man who was regularly unfaithful, but kept her satisfied materially and sexually. Jane was involved with a man, who clearly suffered from a terminal Oedipal complex and who interacted with her more like a recalcitrant adolescent son than a marital equal. Both were unfaithful to each other; and although they were fond of each other, they didn't love each other. Jane was with Ian as guilt penance and for financial security.
Tanya felt sorry for poor, pitiful, plain Jane. She saw Jane's dilemma when she and Jane swapped households for a week. Jane made Tanya feel good about herself. Jane was also a mask to hide Tanya's incipient alcoholism from the rest of Walford and her family. And Tanya lorded it over Jane when she returned to Walford, bragging about the size of Greg's penis when Jane was in the throes of the beginning of the end of her marriage to Ian.
Sharon is a fortysomething widow with a child - a very attractive, blonde fortysomething widow. Far more attractive than the Tanya the ubiquitous phoney. Tanya is a hypocrite, a scrubbed-up kappa slapper pretending to be middle-class and a drunk. She is an abysmal parent who always puts her needs before her children's. She is as amoral as the man she repeatedly divorces and remarries. She is a homewrecker and has attempted murder.
Sharon is serious and steadfast in friendships and relationships. Once past a certain age, people cling more to the friendships of their youth, the deepest and most lasting ones, rather than initiating new ones. Sharon's connections with Walford are, explicitly, Ian (her childhood friend) and Phil (her long-term on-and-off lover). Dot is her third point of reference, but Dot is away from Walford at the moment. The rest of the people who were present during Sharon's last sojourn - Alfie, Kat, Patrick, and Mo - were little more than acquaintances or adversaries. She hasn't seen Janine since Janine was a child.
In fact, I would have thought Janine and Sharon would have been a far more realistic female relationship than Sharon and Tanya. After all, both grew up in the Vic, both were daughters of iconic Vic landlords and both have daddy issues. (Who doesn't in Walford?) Sharon babysat Janine as a child, and it would be interesting to see their interaction as grown women and mothers of children, themselves.
Instead, we'll get long cozy booze-filled afternoons with Tanya, doing each other's nails and hair and comparing sexual notes on Jack Branning's prowess (as rumour has it that Sharon will be involved with Jack); and that's totally unbelieveable that Sharon would lolligag about, gossiping the day away with Bouncy Tan. The only think they have in common is the fact that they both have kids. Tanya has the morals of a cat and the hypocrisy of a puritan. She wantonly broke up one marriage with no regard for the innocent wife and child of the man she bagged and has carried out numerous infidelities since then. She has even attempted to kill her husband.
Sharon has two marriages and one infidelity in her history. Her first marriage was abusive and her second ended in her husband's death. She is still involved emotionally with Phil.
A friendship with silly, bitchy Tanya just wouldn't happen. A friendship with Carol, yes - totally believeable; even with Denise, but Tanya ... no.
And the fact that Cora's going to be involved in this storyline will not only raise the unrealistic expectations of the youth brigade on the fora lobbying for forty-two year-old Sharon to be revealed to be forty-seven year-old Ava Anderton (shades of American soaps!), it will more realistically serve as a vehicle for implanting Cora more firmly as the resident matriarch in Walford, when she is no such thing. She is simply an alcoholic, hypocritical, bullying, brusque busybody who holds no warmth or confidence in the majority of residents on the Square. But still, Kirkwood pegged her as the heiress to the matriarchal crown and we have an instant Big Mamma - ne'mind that this is a role which falls naturally upon a woman at a certain age and is developed over the years. As a matter of fact, Pat, herself, was barely older than Sharon is now when she "returned" to Walford originally.
Think about that.
This whole friendship with Tanya, this involvement of Cora and the rumoured relationship with Jack are means by which Sharon's return to Walford is cheapened because after Phil resolves the problem with which she's initially faced, she then becomes just another iconic character whose presence is used to try to validate the Brannings and their respective satellites as the premier family in Walford.
And that is an insult to Sharon as a character.
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