Coronation Street Friday 21st July episode review

Hiya! It’s just Jordan and I’m back on the blog this week to give you my ever-flippant thoughts on Friday’s trip to Weatherfield.

 

It’s the day of all change over at the Rovers. Liz is packing up the last of her belongings acquired through several years as landlady as Toyah skips down the cobbles, ready to take over the running of the backstreet boozer. A fresh start which she’d rather not have, Liz later tries her best to slap on a happy face and while on shift at her new job at the medical centre, she nips out for a vape. Let’s just ignore the fact that a mutton-dressed-as-mutton-dressed-as-lamb barmaid would not get a job as a medical receptionist for now.  Every time poor Liz turns around, she finds her boss Mardy Moira breathing down her neck. The teetotal, probably feminist vegan, medical centre manageress berates Liz for vaping in front of the centre, demanding she stand by the bins. Later, during Liz and Steve’s leaving do in the Rovers, she turns up again, carrying a make-up bag Liz left behind at arm’s length and snipes vicious remarks about the most iconic pub in Britain. I’m not really sure what she’s doing in Corrie really. She seems to do little more than support my argument that Corrie is trying far too hard to be funny at the moment, and as a result, isn’t funny at all.  Anyway, once she gets on her broomstick and leaves the pub, Toyah makes a heartfelt speech in which she mentions Rovers stalwarts of decades gone by such as Annie and Vera, then cites Liz as the woman she aspires to be. It was this speech that altered my opinion on Toyah Battersby running the Rovers. I’m sure it’ll be in safe hands, but ‘m still not entirely happy. Toyah has barely been around for the past decade; she hasn’t earned the title of Rovers landlady.  

 

 

Bethany seems to have finally turned a corner. She’s found a forum dedicated to helping victims such as herself and it is helping immensely, but the raw truth that Nathan is still out there is difficult to swallow. Her new best friend Craig cannot stand to see her like this so the trainee police officer decides to take matters into his own hands – again. As we saw earlier in the week, Bethany confided in Craig that his superior at the police force was also one of her abusers and when Craig confronted Neil about this, her claims were unsurprisingly blown right out of the water. Deciding to have one last stab at getting justice for his friend, Craig approaches Neil again and the dodgy copper insists they go for a drive. It will come as no shock to learn that the whole Bethany storyline with the daft twist about the naughty copper has come to a head with one hell of a  deus ex machina. Neil “freatens” Craig in the car, he records it on his phone and is later labelled a hero that same day after presenting the evidence to the law-abiding police. The CPS seize Neil’s laptop and now have enough evidence to prosecute Nathan. All in a day’s drama.  Unfortunately for Craig, his actions crash-landed his rising career in the police force due to some daft rule about how he obtained the evidence.  Instead of taking the risk of being sacked, Craig quits before admitting to his mother that he is in love with Bethany. Why does Corrie always do this? If anyone is just edging towards a decent career on the Street, it is written out from under them for the sake of a relationship which does not need to happen. I really do not see any need for Bethany and Craig to be together as a couple. It’s typical soap behaviour of pairing any boy up with any girl as soon as there is a slight spark of friendship.  

 

 

Elsewhere, Eva digs herself into an even deeper hole with her whole crazy fake pregnancy plot. Now that she and Adam are planning to con Aidan out of his business, Eva has gone and bagged herself a job in the office after telling Aidan that the doctors have recommended she doesn’t work on the machines for the health of the (non-existent) baby. Unfortunately, however, the factory lot have picked up on the boss giving his fiancée a job in the office and confront the pair in front of everyone at Liz’s leaving do. That’s when Aidan blurts out she’s pregnant and Eva finds herself even further into this ill thought out charade. Still, she seems rather calm about it all. I’ve no idea what Eva’s next move is and I don’t think she does either. Hopefully she is beginning to realise she has taken this too far. An affair can be forgiven, probably easier than faking a pregnancy! As well as all that, Nicola starts to make amends with Pat Phelan (it really bothers me that his name sounds far too much like Pat Phoenix) with a little help from Seb, in which he tells Nicola that Phelan is dying. It obviously transpires that he is not, and Nicola makes her 500^th dramatic exist from the builder’s yard before returning later that day with a DNA test.

 

"Does anyone round here get a job on merit?!"

 

I don’t know how to summarise those two episodes. A little bland, I guess. I enjoyed the speech in the Rovers but everything else was a little monotonous to watch. Oh – and I’m getting a little bored of Michelle’s childish behaviour towards Leanne. It’s not like Leanne really did anything wrong, and watching Michelle snap at her like a schoolkid is just cringeworthy. Am I ever happy?! Ha! Maybe next week!

 

 

As always,

 

 

Thanks for reading!

 

Jordan

 

Twitter -  @JordanLloyd39

 

 

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