Five Things We Learned In Corrie This Week

Don't break your promises.  

Dear ITV:

I would like to complain in the strongest possible terms about the episode of Coronation Street broadcast at 7:30 pm on the 24th June 2020.  In this episode, the entire street - well, a booth worth of elderly characters - got together to commemorate the 75th anniversary of VE Day.  This was a community event, the kind of thing the show does well, and tradition demands that Rita gets up and belts out a suitable ditty.  Probably We'll Meet Again.  Norris even trailed it, suggesting that one more vodka and tonic and she'd be "doing the Greatest Hits of Vera Lynn".  And yet, she did nothing.

Oh, at the end of the show we got a long shot of the Rovers, with a singalong laid on the soundtrack.  But that wasn't what I came to see.  I was here to see the Weatherfield Nightingale being reluctantly pressed into action, pretending she was unprepared, then breaking into a full twenty minute set with choreography, holding the entire pub hostage until she'd wrestled out the last note.  Preferably in gold lamé.  What is going on, ITV?  Have you no regard for our nation's heritage?  Is this what I pay my licence fee for? 

Although thinking on I wonder if there was a moment in the script where Rita did a solo and La Knox told them to stuff it.  She was probably still smarting from Christmas, when Ed of all people was given the honour of leading the carolling, even though she was sat right there in the Bistro with them.  (Ed and Aggie were, incidentally, entirely absent from the VE Day celebrations, probably because it was a happy event and they wouldn't be able to shoehorn in a SERIOUS ISSUE.  Perhaps they'll come back for VJ Day and they'll depress everyone by discussing the moral implications of the atomic bomb).  Or maybe Barbara was furious that the scriptwriters took pains to mention that Rita was 13 in 1945, allowing us to work out exactly how old she is.  La Knox probably delivered her big speech about Rita's wartime memories in a single take, smiled pointedly at the director, then headed out for her Uber with a handbag full of petit fours nicked from the buffet, leaving the episode unfinished and forcing them to drag out a CD of wartime hits to dub over that final shot.

Sex work is hard work.  Poor Nicky.  I can't imagine it's any fun being a call girl, hanging around expensive hotel bars in the hope that she can persuade a middle-aged salesman attending a conference on plumbing parts to sweat on top of her for seven minutes.  I certainly wouldn't trade places.  And seeing this week's shows I can see that she earns every penny.  Imagine Daniel rolling into the room, stinking of eau de lager, then collapsing onto the bed to sob about his dead wife for three-quarters of an hour.  At some point she must've realised that she was playing madonna rather than whore; I hope she managed to extract herself from Daniel's clammy grasp long enough to help herself to something from the minibar.  Daniel, lad, there are perfectly good counsellors who charge a lot less than £225 for an hour's therapy, and you don't have to get drunk first.  In fact, nip round to see Toyah - I'm sure she wouldn't mind a little freelancing after work at the factory.  Let Nicky do her job.

Once you Pop, you can't stop.  The hairdresser flat continued to be a hotbed of suppressed passion and wounded feelings and it was dull as heck.  Let's face it, when it comes to this particular love triangle, it's very definitely not equilateral.  Emma is a precious jewel who must be protected and treasured, Alina Pop! is a perfectly nice if boring girl, and Seb is an absolute scumbag.  Talk about fickle; one minute he's handing bunches of flowers to Emma, the next he's whispering to Alina Pop! about how there's a particular girl who he has feelings for and who's not a million miles away, hint hint.  Turf him out, ladies.  Faye's moved out of number 4 so he can take her room across the hall from his mum, and you two can put him out of your mind.  There was a moment in Friday's episode when the two of them were chatting and laughing together and it looked a lot of fun until Seb sidled up with his awful man-bun and killed the mood.  Think of the sisterhood, ladies, and wait for a couple of lads who are worth having.

Look out for surprise children.  It actually makes perfect sense for Toyah and Imran to start fostering.  Remember how baby crazy she was when she first returned, crashing her first marriage because of her obsession with IVF and forcing Eva to have a baby she didn't want just so Toyah could snatch it away?  That all blew up in her face, but it was bound to come back, because if we've learned anything from Corrie over the years it's that women who can't have children are mad.  Fostering is the perfect solution, and even better, it's stirred Toyah and Imran to move out of that cramped flat.  Craig will be thrilled - he's been sleeping on the ironing board for the past year.  Thing is... it would've been nice if we'd had absolutely any clue this was happening.  A soap opera's whole reason for existing is to depict the emotional lives of its residents, and a decision to become foster parents seems like a big and compelling character beat.  Why didn't they show Imran and Toyah chatting about this, planning, working their way through it?  All we've got is "oooh look, here comes the social worker, isn't this exciting".  It's disappointing.  Not least because I can't help suspecting this is all contrived so that if anything should happen to Oliver - ahem - we get the dramatic irony of Leanne losing her child just as Toyah gets hers.  I guarantee you the writer's room spent a good half a day trying to work out if there was any way on earth they could get the very definitely infertile Toyah pregnant before giving up and shouting "fostering!"  If this ends with Leanne going crazy and kidnapping a child and threatening to chuck herself off a high building like many, many Corrie women before her, I will not be happy.

Yes, that's the only mention Oliver's going to get in this blog post.  Weirdly I couldn't find myself engaging with his visit to a city farm (a city farm that didn't have a single animal by the way) or his ongoing struggle to eat a banana.  Oliver's not a real child, he's a plot device in a pushchair.

Age ain't nothing but a number.  Tyrone and Fiz are barrelling towards 40 and it's starting to worry them.  Well, it's starting to worry Fiz; I think Tyrone would be perfectly happy spending the rest of his life in front of the telly with a beer and a multipack of cheese and onion.  Still, it must be difficult realising that your elderly grandmother has a better social life than you.  I hope this is the start of the pair of them rediscovering their lively, exciting sides.  Fiz has been a drudge ever since the John Stape affair knocked the stuffing out of her, and the one-two punch of Molly and Kirsty has left Tyrone muted.  I'd love to see the two of them trying to spice up their life and make things exciting again - become more like the sparky characters they were when they first joined the show.  Send Ruby to her room, lock Hope up in an electrified pen so she doesn't escape and bite the local children, and give nana a twenty to prop up the bar of the Rovers.  Maybe, instead of surprising Tyrone with a butty at the garage, Fiz could surprise him by wearing nothing but Evelyn's housecoat.  Maybe Tyrone could find an excuse to do this again:

Life is short, folks, and you're still pretty young and interesting.  Take it from a middle-aged old fart.  If you're not careful it'll be 2060 and you'll realise you're the new Ken Barlow and by then it's too late.

Who had "uninhibited horniness" on their "Shona's Brain Injury Symptoms" bingo card?  Put your hand up.  If you've got a full house let me know on Twitter @merseytart and I'll forward on your cuddly toy.

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