Five Things We Learned In Corrie This Week

Embrace the darkness.  Now I'll admit I'm biased: I have never met a Goth I didn't like.  I've known quite a few over the years, and they have without exception been soft-hearted, kind souls who are brave enough follow their own star.  OK, they have terrible taste in music (only Goths can listen to more than two minutes of Fields of the Nephilim without begging for mercy) but we should applaud anyone who looks at the conventions of society and says "nah, not for me."

Which is a long-winded way of saying that I absolutely love Nina.  She's quirky, she's funny, she's smart.  She's strong enough to stand up to drug dealers, compassionate enough to care for her dying father, and interesting enough to have long scenes with Roy and equal him.  I loved her bluntly telling him "enough with the chess metaphors" as he whittered on about lonely queens.  I love her sense of Victorian drama - that outfit up there is what she wore to her father's funeral.  Can you imagine being at Weatherfield Crem and Nina sweeps down the aisle dressed like Miss Havisham's more theatrical niece?  You'd be thrilled.  The only bad thing about her is that she's not in the show proper yet.  Come on, we've known since her very first episode she's going to end up in the cafe flat, get on with it.

I mean, she was in the cafe for literally one scene and her frock made Sean pull this face.  He's so basic.  Get her designing lacy pants at Underworld and stirring things up; she could be like Alya, only instead of strutting about with a clipboard for three years then running off to be a waitress, she could actually have a purpose. 

Also if every director could film her with this ultra-dramatic Morticia Addams sweep of light across her eyes I would very much appreciate it.

Shona's not daft.  "Listen, Doc, here's the truth.  I'm not really brain damaged.  What actually happened is before Christmas I got married and now I've realised that was a horrible, horrible mistake.  The husband's a sarcastic jailbird, his boring brother's always hanging about, the sister's really annoying, the mother's way too close to them all.  And he's got these two kids and they look cute and all but then they're yap-yap-yapping all the day long.  On top of that they live in this Street where there are the most awful tragedies happening three days a week, sometimes five days if Britain's Got Talent is on.  I need to get out of there.  So if I pretend I can't remember any of them, can you pretend I need to go to a rehab centre somewhere, and then I can run off and make a new life for myself in Canada?  Thanks."

Aggie can't cook toast.  Alright, we get it.  Mrs Tembe Aggie is a terrible cook.  It's been months, you've really hammered that gag into the ground now (yes I am aware of the irony of me complaining about a gag being overused when I've just written Mrs Tembe for the eight hundredth time).  We don't need blackened bread at the breakfast table to underline it.  Even the rawest of first year students knows how to operate a toaster. In fairness, it may have been that she was too distracted to spot it burn, since she spent the whole week with a How To Get Back Into Nursing pamphlet propped up on convenient appliances so she could say to everyone "oh this?  Yes, I'm a fully trained nurse, and since I failed to save Robert's life, I'm thinking of getting back into nursing."  I feel like Aggie is one of those people who posts "having a really bad day" with a sadface emoji on her Facebook profile so that people will say "u ok hun?".  Incidentally, is anyone organising Robert's funeral?  Michelle and Vicky have both run off to Ireland and Tracy is distracted by a bisexual crisis.  Is he lying in a morgue somewhere waiting to be claimed, or have the council chucked the body in an unmarked grave with the destitute and homeless people?

Play it cool, Ty.  So Hope and Ruby are off with foster parents, and the Dobbs-Stape family are desperate to get them back.  What you do is present a happy, unified, problem-free presence to the social worker.  What you don't do is shout "IS THIS ABOUT THE GUN?" in her face before she's even sat down.  Come on Tyrone.  Think about it.  Luckily the social worker already knew all about it, which is more than I do, because I long ago lost track of what was going on with this gun - it was an antique that couldn't fire, or something, and yet Derek seemed to be able to get it to work, and there was a second gun, maybe?  And somehow Fiz is getting all the blame even though Derek was literally hunting down Gary the whole time and he got the gun from Gary's lockup?  I don't know any more, though hopefully it's all going to end now she's got a suspended sentence.  Actually Tyrone may have been deliberately trying to drop Fiz in it.  I wouldn't blame him if he thought putting Fiz in jail and Hope up for adoption would make his life a lot easier.  He certainly seemed to have more fun when they were off in Birmingham and he just had Ruby and Evelyn in his life.

Canonise Roy Cropper.  Every now and then a character in the show recounts their history to someone new, and you're forced to confront how weird life is for the residents of Coronation Street.  So it was this week, when Roy told Nina "yes, I was married to a transsexual woman for many years, and also I sleepwalk when I'm stressed, and last time that happened I set fire to a boat."  It's a lot, isn't it?  Of course Roy is an absolute star so it doesn't matter what he says or does, you love him.  Whether it's refusing to put a cream slice in a separate bag for Sean because "I don't want any part of your deceit" or it's helping Nina out by dropping off Hayley's sewing machine then modelling a corset, Roy continues to be the wonderfully quirky heart of the show.  If you didn't go "awwwww" when he proudly told the cafe that Nina was his niece, then pulled this face:

then I'm sorry, you're dead inside, and you should go and watch Love Island or some other TV show where none of the participants have human souls.

If Cathy won't kerb-stomp Geoff and rescue Yasmeen from his vile clutches then I will.  Let me know on Twitter @merseytart if you want to join my torch-wielding hate mob.

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