Five Things We Learned In Corrie This Week

Drugs are BAD.  It's been a few years since that bloke dropped dead on Ryan's kitchen floor so it's about time for Corrie to pull on its Public Information Film hat and let us know that drugs will muck you up.  This time it was Kelly who took her first ever ecstasy pill and immediately started doing that flicky eyelid thing actors do to let us know they're overdosing.  Asha told her not to take any pills, but faced with the prospect of spending an evening with boring Summer doing big box little box cardboard box to Billy's tapes of evensong she necked them straight away.  Kelly of course follows in the footsteps of Tracy Barlow, who had her first ever ecstasy pill and promptly ended up in hospital; medical advances in the intervening thirty years mean that while Trace was in a coma for weeks and woke up with two wrecked kidneys, Kelly is having a little sleep in casualty overnight and she'll be fine in the morning.  

I have a great deal of sympathy for actress Millie Gibson, who was no doubt signed up for a full-time role on the show last year with the promise of a big dramatic storyline involving her missing father, only for the pandemic to swoop in and completely wreck all their plans.  It's meant she's floated round on the periphery of the show with not much to do.  Did she ever actually find out what happened to her dad?  There was all that fuss with the stolen watch a few months ago and now it seems to have stopped.  Did the police give up looking?  It was hard to care if she lived or died when it's hard to remember who she even is.

It's also hard to root for her survival when she's sitting there graffitiing the seating area in the community gardens.  After that I wouldn't have cared if she'd fallen under a tram; she deserved everything she got.

Look to your sins.  Look!  LOOK!  Two people in the factory actually doing some sewing!  And they both actually work there, and haven't just wandered in off the street for a coffee!  Wonders will never cease.  This turned out to be Sean's farewell to machining as he nearly broke Kirk's back with a batch of spilled All-Over Body Caresser and had to leave Underworld.  He then immediately irritated Eileen by stacking the living room with boxes of overpriced make-up and she handed him his notice.  This keeps happening to Sean, doesn't it?  All his friends and employers turning on him and kicking him to the kerb.  Maybe he should have a moment of self-analysis to consider what it is about his personality that means people find it very easy to turn their back on him.

In the meantime Todd and Rhydian engaged in a camel coated battle for Sean's soul, which is odd because in Monday's episode he was practically chucking his stuff out on the pavement.  Only in the world of Corrie in 2021 would Todd be the good half of this battle.

Just walk away.  There are some people - the show's producers, for example - who refer to Peter and Carla as Coronation Street's Burton and Taylor.  They seem to have fatally misunderstood what it was that tied Liz and Dick together.  They were an incredibly passionate couple who spent their lives in a state of heightened excess and decadence that spilled over into every aspect of their existence.  When they fought, it was spittle and scratches and screams; when they made love, it burned up the skies.  That was why they broke up and reconnected over and over, because the highs were so good that they made them forget the lows.

Peter and Carla on the other hand are all lows.  Not passionate, destructive lows, just mildly depressing miserable times.  One of them does something, the other one skulks around, decides to end it, then a convenient fact emerges that means they change their mind, and we return to the cycle.  Do they actually enjoy being together?  When do they ever laugh or have fun?  There's not even a hint of an intense sex life off camera that is somehow making up for the drab days; they don't even sleep in the same bed.  Just go, Carla, and be happy.  And by "go" I don't mean "go with Lucas", because you are a strong woman who's more than capable of standing on your own two feet - you don't need to exchange one man for another.

The true horror is inside.  As anyone who's walked past the school gates at three thirty will tell you, the most terrifying creature on earth is a teenager.  Admittedly, teenage girls are worse, ready to dispense astonishingly cruel insults that cut you to your very soul, but boys are just as bad.  You can be old enough to be the fathers of everyone in a gang of teenage boys and still find yourself shrinking back and crossing the street when you spot them.  And if they've got a football, it's a million times worse.

It means I had a great deal of sympathy for Leanne this week as she found herself trapped in her own home by Simon and Jacob as they took over the flat.  They got their mates round, they divvied up drugs on the table, they left the place in a state.  Jacob did it all with a wicked leer on his face, dominating the room without really doing much more than existing.  It was compellingly horrible, like a Northern remake of Funny Games; I half expected him to start smashing eggs for his own amusement.

Sadly, this twisted thread didn't last long, as Jacob was promptly put in hospital by the often mentioned but never seen Harvey.  Part of me hoped that, as an homage to the Jimmy Stewart classic, when he did finally turn up he'd look like a six foot tall white rabbit, but instead he looked like Will Mellor.

Poor Gay Mick by the way; he's been showing up to be a gangster thug for a few months but they've dropped him now they need some proper menace.  Harvey was genuinely scary in his single scene, because he is played by a very good actor, but I was disappointed to see him.  Will Mellor has done a lot of drama, yes, but he's also well-known for his comedy work, and it would've been nice to see him in the show as a proper, fun character.  It feels like a bit of a waste to get in an actor who's had his own sitcoms and then make him skulk around the gardens boasting about kicking in the heads of teenagers.  They should've left the villainy to Jacob, who apparently is now out of the show.  Let's remember him in better times, shall we?

Farewell Railings Boy (© Paul Lang on Twitter).

Gizza job.  I've long given up hope of working on Corrie.  For one thing, I've spent years taking the mickey out of the show, so I can't imagine they'd look on me too fondly in the green room.  Secondly, while I'd dearly love to be a storyliner on the programme, my tastes would send it crashing to the bottom of the ratings in about four days.  There would be episode after episode of Jenny and Emma gossiping in the pub, Bryan falling over that paperboy outside the Kabin, and Mary giving monologues about her travels in the camper van, and somewhere in the background people would be having affairs and getting shot and I wouldn't care.  However, I do have other skills, and I'd like to offer them up to the Art Department, because clearly they've not quite got the grasp of the Spelling and Grammar Check.  There's the errant comma in that pub sign up there, so that it reads All our usual, pies and hotpots ready to order.

Then there's Sean's make up poster, which misspells "caresser" as "caressor".  I am available to run my eye over any props, guys; my fees are very reasonable.

The author considered putting in something about Alina blubbing over her dog, but he didn't want to get hate mail from dog lovers.  All other hate mail can be directed to him via Twitter @merseytart.

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