Hiya! It’s just Jordan taking time out from the most hectic week I’ve had in a while to give you my thoughts on Friday’s trip to Weatherfield. I know my reviews have been a little sporadic lately, but I couldn’t not review the drama that unfolded and exploded the other night. I give you fair warning, though, that this is not going to be a happy review. It is going to be a bloody whingey review all the way through. Oh yes. The keyboard is being punched at mercilessly as I type this, trying to figure out a way to summarise just how Corrie concluded what could be called the most notoriously twisted storyline ever. You probably already know what I’m going to rant about though. Grandmothers were raging and Twitter was ablaze by 9pm Friday night.
Although it is impossible to tell, morning has broken at the
Hotel Phelan. A second guest has checked with reservations under the names of
Mr Vinny Ashford/Harvey McArdle and he is just waking up to his new surroundings. Andy is less than pleased with his new roommate,
however, as he is under the impression that he was the cause of Michael’s
death. As the whole country knows, it was of course Phelan who was responsible
for the demise of Gail’s fifth husband. Despite Harvey’s protests, Andy refuses
to believe that his psycho kidnapper could possibly kill someone. Pat and Andy explain to him that he will be a
stalemate; the plan – as far as Andy is aware – is that he will see to
HarveyVinny in the basement and Phelan will clear off. All sounds very logical.
That is until Phelan drops a bombshell. That is not the plan at all. In order
for Andy to regain his freedom, he must do one last thing. He must kill
HarveyVinny.
But before we get
into that, we’d better talk about Nicola – Phelan’s long lost daughter who did
more than her usual share of dramatic stomping round the cobbles. Anna had
finally told Nicola that her long lost dad had once blackmailed her into having
sex with him. She thankfully decides to believe Anna and soon rushes round to
see Lydia again, the friend of her late mother who got very cagey when she
heard the name Pat Phelan. After coaxing Lydia for a while, more revelations
surface. Nicola learns that she was not conceived during an extramarital
affair. She was conceived during a rape. She calls Phelan and demands to meet
him by the bench that is dedicated to her parents. The perfect place to accuse
your long-lost dad of being a rapist. Phelan is told that if he doesn’t take time
out from his busy schedule to go meet Nicola by this sodding bench, he will
never see her again - at which point she
tells him to stay away. Would she make up her bloody mind? Of course, Phelan
denies everything, putting on yet another Oscar-winning performance. Nicola
concludes that he is either telling the truth – or lying extremely well. She
does seem to get upset about the wrong thing though. Oddly, she seems to care
more that even if the sex that led to her conception was consensual, it was
just sex, not love. Need I even explain how Nicola ends this murky
confrontation? Oh, okay then. I’ll just copy and paste from one of my previous
reviews. She storms off. She then swings by number 11 to bray the door down,
determined to tell Eileen the truth. Unfortunately, Mrs Phelan is in the
shower; this allows for a few words of discouragement from Anna, leading Nicola
to climb into the back of a conveniently arriving black cab.
Back to the other half of the Phelan Phiasco, the guests of
the hotel are now, after several gloomy choked-up exchanges, preparing for a
production of Andy Get Your Gun. And
get it he does, albeit with some stagefright. Confused, shaking and really believing
he is about to buy his freedom, Andy shoots Phelan’s ex- dodgy-business
partner dead. He then points the gun at Phelan, but is talked out of shooting
him. In an overly-dramatic twist, Phelan manages to obtain the gun from Andy.
We see the exterior of the warehouse thing, and hear a gunshot. After months of
this bizarre storyline, it ended with just killing the victim off anyway. What was all that about, Corrie? So, anyway, Phelan closes his victims’
eyes, who are lying neatly beside each other, and bu**ers off to the pub, where
he gives a few threats to the foolishly courageous Anna and opens a bottle of
Prosecco.
Is it even worth having an “Elsewhere…” section of the
review? Almost every scene was dominated by the Phelan saga. A few other
scenes, were squeezed in, though. Alya is now trying hard to be a good
girlfriend after working overtime and missing an expensive date with Luke. She’s
cooking a delicacy: chicken goujons. Then she has a snog with Aidan, and as we
all know, kissing someone other isn’t your designated partner in Soapland is
the worst thing a person can ever possibly do.
A strange couple of episodes. Too much happened in what was
played as one day. Oh – and I would like to ask where Steph is in all of this
Andy/Phelan drama? Yes, we know she left for Portugal to live with Katy at the
start of this year. But the only reason she went out alone was because she had
received a text from Andy’s phone ending their two-year relationship. Why would
she accept that he’d end their long term relationship via text? And where was
she when Katy died in that car crash the other week? There’s no way she would
have – or could have – cut every single tie with Weatherfield. But, despite the
ridiculous drama – which at times has been rather nauseating – the acting of
Connor McIntyre as Phelan and Oliver Farmworth as Andy must be praised to the
highest degree.
As always,
Thanks for reading!
Jordan
Twitter @JordanLloyd39
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