Tarted and Re-Tarted - Review: 27.08.2012

Of course you've heard of the Game of Thrones? Well, Walford gave us the Game of Tarts tonight. Tarts, more tarts and re-tarted to excess.

Watchable episode, but there was much which could be avoided ...

Like Abi's hair. Yes, when you stay out in the sun, your naturally blonde hair goes blonder; but Abi's had a full-on bleach job, not to mention a tan that was equally as cheap and bad. Just like all the rest. Tango'ed.

The bulk of the episode was taken up with Abi trying to find Jay and wondering why everyone acted as though she'd cut a fart every time she mentioned his name. First Lola - ne'mind the baby, who'd been born since Abi left, when Jay's name was mentioned, Lola suddenly remembered something she had to do and scarpered.

It's obvious, as well, from tonight's episode, we're being set up with a dichotomy of generations - in the Good corner, we have Abi and Alice, doted upon little princesses by daddies and brothers who think they're daddies. These girls will grow into Sharon (Abi's already got the hair and Alice already has the daddy) someday. In the Tarts and Re-Tarts corner, we have Lola and Whitney, who'll clearly grow up to be Katshit and Shirley.

Lauren and Lollygag Lucy are just gurners who'll grow up to be entitled bitches. (More later).

Abi's journey takes her from Lola to Phil's house, just to get the door slammed in her face, back to her home, where there's a party in preparation, but no one to be seen. Abi's taken an earlier flight and didn't think to tell her parents. OK, she wants them to be surprised, but then she hopes they haven't gone to the airport. Hellooo? Is someone being stupid here?

Onto the other good girl of the bunch tonight: Alice, who's still mooning after AntKnee, and who's being trailed by Toad Jnr, in a tad (pun intended) creepish way. He follows her into the Minute Mart, worried because Alice hasn't "smiled" today. He then employs a childish joke, and she laughs and worries because she can't afford a brand name hair product.

"Doting" isn't the word. This is as creepy as his old man and Dereks "mah bay-bee sistah" Carol. How long before he slaps her one across the chops? This carries on into the cafe, where she's seated with Poppy and gurny Lauren.

Poppy is nice, but please please please please please someone tell the atrocious Jacqueline Jossa that this is not some fucking stage production!!!!!

Her acting style is too overdone. The mannerisms are too exaggerated, the facial expressions too extreme, the delivery too intense to either be realistic or expressive. In point of fact, Poppy apart (and she's supposed to be a comic character), Jasmyn Banks outshone the rest of the rank amateurs (Jossa and David Wittless) in her performance, which was understated and, therefore, realistic. Jossa gurned, Wittless held his mouth agape and lolled his tongue. Eastenders can do better and has.

Part of the total downside of tonight's episode was, again, the youth. I counted seven female characters between the ages of sixteen and twenty - Lola, Abi, Lucy, Poppy, Alice, Lauren and Whitney. Seven. More than any other age and sex demographic in the programme.

There's one woman in her late twenties - Janine (and she's taking a break). Roxy, Bianca and Tanya are in their thirties. Kim, Denise, Katshit and now Sharon are fortyish. Zainab and Shirley are supposedly nearing fifty.

Some demographic needs paring, and you can easily see the most logical (and least talented one). That group, in my opinion, could be pared right down to Abi, Alice and Poppy. The rest are too awful for words.

Take the scene where they're hanging around eyeing up Jay leaving flowers on the windowsill of Heather's old flat. Fatboy, Poppy and the insidious Whitney want to approach Jay and offer sympathy. Big Lauren expounds on how she doesn't want Abi anyplace near Jay, how he's bad and Abi had an easy escape from involving herself with scum like Jay. This from the snide, little bitch who tried to kill her old man, and who threatens to do so every time he doesn't do exactly what she wants. There but for the grace of Max telling the court he didn't want Lauren punished and she would be sitting out a stint behind bars now the same way Ben is. What a hypocritical, little bitch. Just like her mother.

And late, Whitney's totally tactless and ignorant remark about how Heather died - Bianca's influence there. Why not have someone like Jay question Whitney's sexual involvement with Tony - like what it was like to be seduced by an older man who should know better. Another plea for good taste ... whoever decides on what these assholes wear, please, for GOD'S sake, keep Hetti Bywater AWAY from sleeveless tops. If I want to look at a skeleton, I'll watch a horror film. She is too thin and thinness of that degree is not normal. As the fabled camera puts five pounds on anyone normally, she must be positively emaciated; because there's nothing but skin-and-bone there, and it's quite off-putting and sickening.

Sharon's telling porkies. Dennis the helicopter pilot who died rescuing people. I've known kids younger than DamienDen (who'll surely give Tiffany Butcher a run for her money in the obnoxious stakes) who've known that their fathers have been killed and how they've been so. Why the pie-in-the-sky story about the heroic helicopter pilot? She even pursued that lie with Michael, who knew all about Dennis's real death (no doubt through his wife). 

Break: OK, Digital Spy Luddites, I know Janine had gone by the time Dennis died; but she returned in 2008, and surely Pat would have clued her, Ricky and Bianca all in on how Sharon had returned, Den had risen from the dead, died again and how Dennis died. Critical thinking.

The one truth Sharon admitted was that she came back because she "needed Phil." Boy, that was the real truth coming out. Like as not, she was riding to  her wedding with John when she realised Phil was close enough by, and it was he whom she really wanted. Red herring that she rushed to Phil's house, wanting to talk to him about Dennis.

Phil, on the other hand, is introspective. He's alone now, he's lost his son. He's questioning his very reason for staying in Walford. Sharon maintains that it's home, but he reminds her that Walford isn't what she knew before. Phil confronts the fact that he's alone now in what was and is his "manor" and that frightens him; and his fright forces Sharon to confront the fact that she's "home" in a place where her father was killed and her husband also. It's brought home symbolically when she drops the contents of her bag bang on the spot where Dennis died, and she's helped by Alfie who refers to her as "princess." (Odd, that that's the first interaction between these characters who know each other from before, and Alfie refers to her by Den's favourite name for his daughter).

Now, she wants to leave, rather than confront her son with the truth about his father. Once again, the writing for Sharon is all over the place, but I have to tell myself that Sharon's in a place she's never been before, psychologically, and that might be worth bearing in mind.

Onto the dark side now, and Shirley, predictably, has done what Shirley always does when presented with the loss of someone or something she valued but treated (at times) cavalierly. She gets drunk. Shirley, the ageing slapper, is rescued from the rubbish heap by her heiress apparent, Katshit.

Here's the irony of the situation: Kat takes Shirley home, gives her a bath (surprised we didn't have one of those special "bath-bonding" scenes often done with Jean and Stacey), and Alfie takes it all in his stride. And what's Kat saying? That she misses Shenice? On the rare occasion when we saw the ghost otherwise known as Shenice, Kat paid her scant mind, chiefly because Kat's head was so firmly ensconced up her broad ass that she couldn't be bothered with Shenice, much less Tommy.

Kat, in taking in Shirley, took in, yes, a waif and stray, and that's as far as it went with Katshit, who isn't capable of thinking further than what is immediate. Alfie, on the other hand, is practical. And kind. He knows what Shirley needs - direction, routine and an income that creates some sort of independence from Phil. So he offers her a job, but no, Kat knows better. Her resolution to the problem is chav-simple: Phil has money. Phil owes Shirley.

Shirley should demand money off Phil.

Really? Phil owes Shirley? Well, yes, but you cannot measure what Phil owes Shirley in terms of money. And the object of Alfie's exercise is exactly what Shirley really wants - independence from Phil. As long as Shirley is demanding payment from Phil in return for not grassing him up, she will be forever and indelibly tied to him; and as long as Phil knows Shirley would rather maintain some sort of contact with him instead of grassing him, he can play on her weakness and entice her to return to him - he won't be alone, and he'll be sure that she won't grass.

I think Shirley saw that and took Alfie's, instead of Katshit's advice. Alfie is too good for the slut he married.

And speaking of sluts, Jack didn't return home to his flat. Again. And not only his babymamma but his daughter is staying under his roof.

The shagger is Derek. Watch this space.