When you can't get silk, settle for rayon. It's always hard to follow a successful villain.
Star Trek replaced the magnificent Khan with Christopher Lloyd in some pointy shoes; Daniel Craig finished fighting suave supervillain Le Chiffre then in the next film battled a tiny Frenchman who ran an ecotourism business. Finding a nasty who could replace the fantastic Pat Phelan was always going to be difficult. Still, I would've thought there were about fourteen thousand other options before you ended up making Nicky Tilsley the new criminal genius. You remember Nicky - that bowl headed child who spent most of his childhood staring down the camera lens, before transforming into an Action Man with a centre parting? A man who's spent his whole life basically grimacing at the back of shot while the rest of his family do the proper heavy lifting? Apparently, now he's pushing 40, Nicky has given up on his life of being a slightly wet irritant and decided to swindle his grandmother and blackmail his brother. It's a curveball, I can tell you.
They're doing their best, but they're not quite pulling it off. His "fight" with David was a hilarious slap fest. And Jack P Shepherd can summon up determined evil without breaking into a sweat; stick a cutthroat razor in
his hands, and you worry someone's going to get hurt. Give the same tool to Nicky and you think he's cutting the skin off an apple because otherwise it's too hard for his toothy-pegs.
Still, he got a nifty facial scar out of it, so that should help his super-evil credentials. Next stop: the cat's home for a nice white Persian.
The best friendships come from unlikely places. I've gone on about the brilliance of Mary and Tracy before, but this week I realised something: they're the new Mavis and Rita. One is a flighty, reticent, romantic, the other a cynical, world-weary businesswoman. I could watch them talk about baby names and Mary's insane family (Chlamydia!) all day. I do wish they'd put a heater in that flower shop set, though, because clearly Kate and Patti are freezing. It must be difficult to do intricate arrangements with nasturtia and pussywillow when you're wearing thick woollen gloves.
Elsewhere the prison bitches got roaringly drunk in the Rovers and it was an absolute delight. Abi and Sally as mates is a partnership I didn't know I needed; add in a sniffy Yasmeen trying to pace herself with fizzy water and Gail confessing to her own time doing bird and it couldn't be beaten. There were so many delights - Abi pouring white wine into red, the singalong to Paul Young, Claudia calling them "something out of Dickens", but the best moment for me was Yasmeen's face when she discovered that both her neighbours had been wrongly imprisoned.
That's the look of a woman wondering exactly how much has been knocked off the value of number six thanks to the crims on either side.
There's always time for coffee. So you've faked your own death. The man you love has been hit by a car. You've flown across the Atlantic to be with him, and immediately been kidnapped by some random girl. Thinking quickly, you make your escape while she's distracted, and flee the scene. You absolutely have to get out of there in case the kidnapper or the police catch up with you... but hang on, is that a Costa? May might have got away with it if she hadn't had a sudden urge for a hazelnut latte. As it was, Gina was able to swoop in and persuade her to confess all, though sadly we were denied the no doubt hilarious scene where poor Olivia walked in to find her mum alive and well and struggled to form a look of shock from under eight inches of make up. Gina spent the rest of the week subtly hinting that she was a hero for what she did; Sally rightly told her where to get off. After all, if Tim had actually fallen for her tricks and invited her into his bed, Gina would've happily let Sally rot in prison until the end of time.
Dev wants to be Peter Barlow. You'd think he had it all - his own business, a house, two children who aren't entirely awful - but deep down, Devendra wants to be like Peter Barlow: a middle-aged recovering alcoholic who lives with his dad and whose ambitions extend no further than renovating a manky old boat on Gail's driveway. Such small dreams from our Mr Alahan. Aim higher.
Babies are having babies. It is with a deep sigh that I must inform you they're doing the teenage pregnancy storyline again, this time with Amy. (Why do they never do this story with a boy, by the way? Why isn't it Max who has to shamefacedly admit he's got uncontrollable genitals?) Up until now Amy has been the level-headed rock between her two flibbertigibbet parents, dragging them back to earth and disapproving of their wayward underwear. She really doesn't seem like the type to try a bit of backyard fumbling, and if she did, it's hard to believe she wouldn't insist on protection of some sort. She's always been a strong-willed girl and wouldn't be easily persuaded. Hopefully this storyline will resolve itself sensibly with Amy having a termination so her life isn't ruined by an unwanted child, but I realise that's not exactly dramatic, and she'll probably keep it a secret for months and then drop it on the floor of the shop flat. Oh no, wait, that's what happened the
last time we got this storyline. Whatever happens, it'll be interesting to see how Simon reacts to it all, what with Alex Bains having just become a teenage parent himself. It could all get very meta.
This week, the author was confused to hear Izzy talk about someone called "Jake" being obsessed with broccoli. If you know who this "Jake" person was - she talked about him like he was her child, but that can't be right, because he's never onscreen, and Gary only ever talks about his baby with Nicola - let me know on Twitter @merseytart.
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