Five Things We Learned In Corrie This Week

The pandemic isn't all bad.  Look at that picture.  Drink it in.  Covid-19 may have utterly destroyed the lives and livelihoods of millions of people across the globe but on the other hand, it brought us Sally and Debbie looking like that in Dev's shop.  Let's have a closer look at Debbie's Bedouin chic, shall we?

Incredible.  It's lucky Sally seems to have abandoned her Gwen-from-Eldorado Marigolds because if they'd been added to the mix the sheer levels of campery would've passed the La Rue Stage and reached full Clary and the entire set would've had to be shut down to be deglittered.  I'm happy to report the pandemic has also put paid to one of my bête noires, the ticket office in the tram stop:

I've been to every single Metrolink station and they don't have ticket offices.  Half the railway stations in Manchester haven't even got a ticket office.  (Before some nerd in the comments pops up, yes, in some places the tram shares its facilities with a proper station and so there's a ticket office there, e.g. Altrincham).  It's irritated me ever since the set extension opened and I'm thrilled that the coronavirus has closed it, hopefully never to return.  Turn it into a little butty bar or something.  (And then get rid of the platform flag on top of the viaduct because that's a load of nonsense as well).

Maurice Jones is dead.  Those of us who've been watching Classic Corrie on ITV3 will have been thrilled to hear a mention of the man who built the posh side of the Street back in the late 80s.  Maurice Jones bought the factory from Mike Baldwin, knocked it down, and constructed the parade of shops and houses we're still familiar with today.  He was a regular character for a while, organising a football tournament against the Rovers and sacking Alan Bradley for being a murdery weirdo, but his most notable contribution to the show was being the father of the legendary Steph Barnes (although weirdly, he vanished from the show once she moved into number six, and never came back to visit).  So it was a little sad to hear that he went bust during the recession and then died.

Mind you, it might not be true, given that David heard this info from that dodgy bloke in the hard hat.  Maurice might be in happy retirement in Hale Barns with his glamorous third wife and his reported death is just part of EVIL RAY's convoluted and confusing plan.  He continued to try to get his hands on David's house this week, giving him free beers and offering him the contact details of various contractors he knew.  You know which builder Ray used for the Bistro refurb, David?  Ed Bailey.  You don't need a letter of introduction to get in with him, you can just toddle over the road.  (Incidentally, was Aggie ever released from lockdown?  We saw her on a Skype call six weeks ago disappearing into self-isolation and we've not had a single update.  Perhaps she's died and they've had the funeral and haven't bothered telling us, like with Robert).

Everyone continued to be incredibly un-bothered about the portal to Hades that had opened up in the Platt's back garden.  Not just David, who shrugged when told the home he has lived in for almost his entire life was damaged beyond all repair and would have to be sold or demolished.  But also the wider community, as the supposedly close-knit Coronation Street family gave a grand total of zero monkeys about this long-term resident's misfortunes.  I'm pretty sure when number 7 collapsed in the Sixties Valerie Barlow next door didn't just lean out the upstairs window and ask if anyone had a damp cloth so she could wipe the dust away.  I know he has a lot on his mind, but wouldn't Geoff have at least popped his head over the fence to enquire about the hellmouth three feet from his chicken coop?  Wouldn't people other than EVIL RAY step up to offer assistance - Fiz and Tyrone taking in Lily as a playmate with Hope and Ruby, Jenny turning over the vacant B&B rooms at the Rovers, something like that?  And given Maurice Jones built the whole of the right-hand side of the Street at the same time, wouldn't the likes of Sally, Brian and Rita be concerned that their homes and businesses were about to be swallowed up by the earth?  Nobody else in the Street seems to have even noticed - you'd have thought it would've been a vaguely interesting topic of discussion that you could take a journey to the centre of the Earth via number eight's back yard.  At least David doesn't seem to be selling up now, having found Shona's ability to act like a four year old (begging for flapjacks with ice cream) and Pepe le Pew (begging for something rather more adult) so appealing he was willing to drop the contract in the bin.  Another man letting his trousers do the talking.

There's a thin line between love and hate.  Wonderful, adorable Mary was thoroughly riled up this week by a snarky funeral director who accused her of having droopy gerberas.  Filthy animal.  Of course, she wasn't really annoyed, as this was George Shuttleworth, and her irritation covered for the lust which always dwells beneath the surface of Ms Taylor.  Even as she listed his bad points she was all aquiver.  To be fair, he does have extremely lovely eyes.

I expect poor Mary is headed for heartbreak again, because when isn't she?  At least we know she has a type, and that type is a chunky middle-aged gentleman with a faint whiff of lavender about him.  There was Norris, there was Huw from EastEnders as the drama teacher, and even Ted Robbins was a little bit flowery.  The heart wants what it wants I suppose but you could at least try to avoid the fall.  

On the plus side she seems to be forming a comedy power couple with Emma, and I am very much pro anything that puts these two actresses together on our screens.  Now we're back up to six episodes a week, I'd be happy if they simply devoted the second Wednesday episode to these two chatting over the bar at the Rovers.  None of that pesky plot nonsense, just the two of them drinking sambuca and putting the world to rights.

There's a lot of rubbish in the waterways.  We got confirmation this week that the man fished out of the Bridgewater Canal wearing a security guard uniform was, in fact, Kel, and not just an unfortunate actor on his way to an amdram performance of The Full Monty.  Paul took this news surprisingly badly.  Personally I'd have thought that if his abuser received the ultimate in rough justice Paul would've broken out the Prosecco but he's a far more complex individual so instead he got drunk on Stallion lager in the community garden.  Billy was filled with despair and tried to help Paul by sharing how he wasn't perfect and once punched Peter Barlow.  I note he didn't confess that he was also responsible for Susan Barlow's death; maybe he's saving that for Christmas Day.

On the plus side the "who said he was murdered?" subplot only lasted a couple of episodes, as Craig turned up and informed them that they had CCTV footage of Kel slipping and cracking his head and falling in the water.  Of course you do Craig; we all know that Kel is really the latest victim of notorious urban legend the Manchester Pusher, the serial killer who lurks the towpaths sending late night revellers to their watery graves, and you're covering it up.  Craig's been a qualified policeman only a few months and he's already been sucked into the murky underworld of corruption.  What a loss.  

Oliver's Arm is here to stay.  That up there was the only time was saw actual evidence of Leanne and Oliver being in the same room together: an arm poking into the edge of frame.  No, actually, there was another shot where Jane Danson emoted at a pillow with a wig poking over the top.  I can't get over how much fun all these missing children are, though the most enjoyable one this week was Jack, who seems to have acquired a cloak of invisibility: other characters talked about him, to him, called into the house for him, but Jack never once appeared onscreen.

You have to take what pleasure you can from the Oliver storyline because most of the time it's just Leanne and Steve in a corridor getting upset and it's not fun at all.  Grace Dent, the Guardian columnist who used to write the wonderful World of Lather soap rundown, once described the Ryan/Ali baby swap plot as "something ripped from a copy of Pick Me Up magazine and read to me laboriously over 22 weeks", and I feel much the same about this one.  I'm sure it's raised a lot of awareness and so on but it's incredibly boring and it doesn't look like it's going to end anytime soon.  Tracy Barlow being nice is weird but pleasing, and Doctor Gaddas's "oops!" face when Leanne laid into her was hilarious:

...but otherwise it's thin stuff, endlessly repeated.  And I'm extremely anxious that they're going to go with the hospital arguing for Oliver's right to die, taking inspiration from some recent news stories, and I really don't want to see the NHS monstered, thanks very much.  If he could either (a) just quietly slip away or (b) be miraculously cured next week we could all move on.

I'm happy to announce that Nicky doesn't really enjoy al-fresco lager with boring old Daniel; she's simply using him to expand her client list, and will be dropping her card in the top pockets of all the male characters over the next few episodes.  Rates and availability can be obtained via Twitter @merseytart.

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