Five Things We Learned In Corrie This Week

Show, don't tell.  Tim finally, finally, realised that his dad was a wrong 'un this week, and it was wonderful to see.  Partly because if he hadn't realised soon I was going to pay for a skywriter to fill the skies over Weatherfield with "WAKE UP TIM".  Partly because it meant that Joe Duttine turned in a marvellous performance as he wrestled with the knowledge that Geoff was, in fact, awful, and everything about his life may have been a lie.  This blog could've just been a series of screen grabs of Joe's face as he allowed confusion and regret and horror and sadness to wash over it - to whit:

Whoops, sorry about that, uploaded a picture from the wrong folder at the end there.

Geoff's downfall coming from a video on his laptop was very satisfying - I think we all realised it would come back to haunt him when he made it - but the fact that Faye couldn't get any CCTV footage underlines how weird and pointless that whole subplot was.  Hopefully now he's been found out Geoff will vanish off into the distance and never be seen again and we can put this whole miserable affair behind us.

TASH!  I really liked Natasha in her first stint on the show.  She was one of those odd side characters - a little bit weird and funny - who gets promoted to the main cast when the producers realise how good the actress is.  Unfortunately they comprehensively ruined her, with her first having an abortion, then faking a pregnancy to keep Nicky around.  She went out in a blaze of glory, getting Gail sacked for reading her medical records and telling the Tilsley/Platts they were a really weird family, but the damage had been done.  So on the one hand, it's good to see her again.  On the other hand, it looks like she's hamstrung right from the start, because she's saddled with a child by Nicky, the poor thing.  Either the whole abortion was a lie - in which case, justice for Gail, because Dr Gaddas must've faked the records to set her up - or she managed to get pregnant for real on the way out the door.  Both storylines have been done before (Adam was a retcon of Susan Barlow's abortion, and one of the show's hairdressers leaving while pregnant and secretly raising the child was used as a plotline just last year) and I'm not really keen to see it again.  Hopefully Rachel Leskovac can find a little bit of that spark and fun she had in her initial appearance and make Natasha more than a plot device.

Kill your darlings.  Of course the reason Nicky was at the hospital in the first place was Oliver had suffered another fit - offscreen, of course, because they can't have any children on set.  I bet the producers are wishing they didn't keep getting characters pregnant now.  The high point of this was a plot about Lily running away where they didn't actually show her at any time - in a way you have to admire the gall of the producers.  Perhaps all the children are upstairs listening to their tapes.  I'm assuming this dearth of child actors is why Oliver's suddenly got a lot worse.  They must've been glad to be able to write one of the kids out; don't be surprised if Jack is suddenly spirited away to a Paralympian training camp in Dorset while Hope and Ruby get their letters from Hogwarts and vanish off to boarding school.  Between Toyah fostering a child and Nicky suddenly acquiring a son, it's becoming increasingly obvious that they're going to send Leanne doolally when Oliver finally dies, surrounding her with moppets until she finally caves to the inevitable and kidnaps one of them.  It's five years since Jenny Bradley went mad with grief and kidnapped a child so I suppose we're due another run of it.

Smoke if you got 'em.  Drugs in Corrie are always presented as a Bad Thing.  Nobody can be allowed to have fun if they succumb to an illicit substance - they will immediately be punished.  Just ask Tracy Barlow, who took one Ecstasy tablet and immediately went into a coma and had to be given a Moroccan kidney.  The only way they can get away with it is if they hide it offscreen and don't tell you.  I have fond memories of that time Jason and The Lovely Violet came in after a night out clubbing quite clearly off their heads on some leisure drug but didn't actually admit it.  I assume the same thing happened in this week's episodes.  David must've been serving some special pot brownies at that barbecue because a literal hellmouth opened up in the garden and nobody cared.

Look how relaxed they are!  You can see all the way to Australia through the lawn, and they could've all plummeted to their death, but sure, just wander inside and yap about parakeets.  Even David seemed more grumpy than distraught that his home was literally falling to pieces about his ears.  That must've been some really strong stuff they all ingested; the comedown will be a nightmare.  

Of course a mildly diverting sinkhole plotline was immediately ruined when they revealed that Ray was behind it all, for some reason.  The logistics of this were truly baffling - has he been secretly pumping water under the garden of number eight for months?  Where's the real man from the water board?  - as was the reasoning.  Presumably he wants to own all the houses so he can build another of his "five star" hotels.

(No way is that a five star hotel bar).  It was a very disappointing twist, a bit like when the roof of Underworld collapsed, and it turned out to be sabotage.  Can't things just happen without there being a criminal plot behind it?  Plus this means that Ray, who I previously liked, turns out to be EVIL all along.  How dull.

Talk to yourself.  Weirdly, for a show about a community and the way people interact, this week's Corrie contained a fair few monolgues.  There was Cathy, practicing her part as a woman in love with a cyborg called Kurt as part of Brian's new theatrical piece.  It sounds dreadful, and so I naturally demand that we get to see the entire production being performed at the Palace Theatre.

Then there was Dev behind the counter at the kebab shop, forced to juggle a load of mistaken orders and deal with chicken-loving customers called Hutch and Peck.  Although technically that one wasn't a monologue since it also included a second character in the form of Dev's Beard.

But obviously the greatest monologue was Sally Metcalfe and her dealings with a narcoleptic councillor called Francesca Pettigrew.  Everything about it was brilliant, mixing Sally's delightful snobbery with genuine anger at her reputation still being tainted and finally mortified horror as she realised she'd crossed a line.  I demand one of those online-only spin offs where Sally is forced to man the switch and we listen in on her dealings with the customers.  StreetCars would go bust in a week as she alienated every customer with judgemental criticisms ("another cab to the pub, Mr Sutcliffe?  Are you sure that's wise?"  "Does your wife know you're visiting 38 Hamilton Crescent every other night Mr Cope?"  " Yes, I remember you, Mrs Ballantyne, you're a rather large lady so we'll send a van.") but it'd be worth it.

This blog post was written from underneath a giant lacy parasol.  Pictures can be seen on Twitter @merseytart.

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