Five Things We Learned In Corrie This Week

If you love something, let it go.  In Monday's episode, Yasmeen proudly announced that she was feeling a lot better.  She felt happy, confident, able to take whatever was thrown at her; under Soap Opera Law this obviously meant her life was about to collapse horribly.  And so it did, with the combination of a magician hunting customer, a pair of bailiffs and Geoff's will sending her into another tailspin that saw her hiding in her house and getting emotional over menu changes.  The only solution to her debt problems, it seemed, was to flog Jamila House.  Yasmeen couldn't bring herself to do this, however, because it provided such a valuable community resource.  Erm... since when?  It spent much of 2019 being used as a makeshift sweatshop, and has seemingly been closed for 2020 while Yas has been in prison.  I found this picture of it from the 60th anniversary episode:

Does that look like the heart of the neighbourhood to you?  Jamila House has always been a weird part of the set anyway.  Before its current incarnation it was Eliot & Son butchers, and I've never been convinced that there's enough space to hold any decent events.  Imagine trying to do Zumba in there; any more than half a dozen participants and they'd have to dance in shifts.  Plus how many privately owned community centres are there?  Isn't this something the Council should be doing?  Flog it off, Yasmeen; apparently there's loads of interest from buyers, which seems unlikely in a pandemic, but it'd be nice to get a new shop in there.  Maybe Debbie can devote the ground floor of Nuttall's Brewery to a new community space as penance for trying to knock the street down; there is at least plenty of room there, and she's got to do something with the building now there's not going to be a skyscraper built.

The Connor ladies are cheap dates.  Once again Jenny got absolutely smashed in the back room of the Rovers, which is always worth seeing.  This time though, we got a good look at how much it takes to get her going, and it was something of a shock.  At the start of the evening, Daisy poured out a glass each and the girls began to chat:

By the time Jenny was refusing to go out with Jon Hamm because he has a meaty surname, the bottle was barely any emptier:

And by the time they finally emptied it, all three ladies were absolutely paralytic:

Admittedly Carla has a dodgy kidney so perhaps her tolerance is lowered but come on: it's Carla Connor.  She's been swigging shiraz since the age of fourteen and you can't tell me any different.  She could have a bottle of white wine as a mid-afternoon tipple and it wouldn't even touch the sides.  

Death is hilarious, apparently.  I'm fascinated by the thought process that went on in the writer's room for this week's episodes.  "So we're in the middle of a global pandemic, death rates are astronomical, people are locked up in their homes unable to see their families.  You know what we need?  A comedy funeral involving the father of one of our most beloved characters!"  It meant Ted's death was completely overshadowed by Tim and Steve acting like four year olds (why were the owners of StreetCars so utterly uninterested in getting a potentially lucrative driving contract with the funeral parlour?) and Eileen being even more shouty and rude than usual.  Poor Gail and Audrey were blubbing off to one side, Ted's partner didn't even get to appear onscreen, but no, what we really wanted to see was a load of nonsense about ghosts and Tim using his chauffer hat for kinky sex games with Sally.  George seems to have reignited the Gail/Eileen feud, which has been played out so many times it's become predictable and tedious.  I liked the cessation in hostilities that happened after Pat was revealed to be a murderer, when the two women bonded over accidentally marrying a serial killer.  We've had Eileen and Gail fight over a man before, with both that giant Scottish reflexologist and Les Dennis, and George was involved in a love triangle with Eileen and another woman about six months ago.  Something new would be nice.

Literally the only funny part of the whole storyline was seeing chats between Eileen, Tim and Steve in the cafe rather than in the StreetCars office.  Someone had clearly been out with the tape measure and realised there was no way to film three people in that tiny set without breaking the social distancing rules so the scenes were all relocated to Roy's.

See you on the other side.  With Simon busy smoking the biggest onscreen spliff since the Camberwell Carrot, Leanne was free to invite a mystic into her home to provide her with a link to Oliver in the spirit world.  Surprisingly, Toyah let her.  I know she has her hippy-dippy side but I can't believe Toyah would happily let her sister hand over a wad of cash to an obvious fraud.  Leanne has been in desperate need of counselling for months and Toyah - an actual trained counsellor - has apparently been doing something far more interesting.  She might not want to do it herself, fair enough - I'm sure there are ethical issues about working with your family - but she'll know techniques to help Leanne, and she can probably recommend someone to help her properly.  Instead she sat around while a man in a polo neck did some cold reading on her sister in her front room.  (Why do mediums always wear polo necks, by the way?  Is it a uniform?)

I'm sure this isn't the last we've seen of the psychic; from the look of him, if they don't bring him back as Chesney's long-lost dad, they're missing a trick.

Here's to the ladies who love.  Dev and Mary's continued campaign to show just how cool they are with Asha's new relationship reached delightful heights on Friday with a cauliflower wellington and Portrait of a Lady on Fire.  I could've watched a Gogglebox-style commentary from the four of them as they watched the film instead of almost everything else in this week's Corrie; in fact, add in Aadi at the back making smart remarks and that's a perfect evening for me.  Sadly I don't think our two young lovers will be together much longer.  There's only a couple of years difference between them but that feels like a chasm; Asha sulked and blushed like a little girl while Nina remained effortlessly mature and cool, to the extent that even if they split up I can see her popping round to watch French cinema with Mary and Dev for years to come.  Nina is listening to spoken verse about women's identity and resistance and Asha is struggling to get her hair in a plait.  

Special mention to Aadi for rightly objecting to Dev giving the house to the girls so they can get intimate with one another, and to Dev for pointing out he might do the same for him if Aadi ever actually got a girlfriend.  Bless him and his lovely floppy hair.

This week's Five Things is shorter than usual because the author is writing a report for Social Services after Sam was seemingly left loitering in the street on his own for hours.  If you have any additional evidence please send it to me via Twitter @merseytart.

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