Five Things We Learned In Corrie This Week

Zed's dead baby.  Zed's dead.  Alright, I'm going to say it: ban heterosexual men from writing for Corrie.  I'm sure there are a lot of other explanations for why we're trapped in another interminable drug dealing gangster plot - network pressure, the publicity department, a dearth of imagination - but I can't help thinking that the problem lies with a load of men who grew up thrilling to Pulp Fiction and LA Confidential and Scarface thinking that kind of thing is interesting for people who tune in for the everyday stories of Weatherfield folk.  It's not.  I really don't give a monkeys about drug dealers and people with guns.  We've had Scott the Psycho and Gay Mick already in the past year and they were terrible; why are we getting thugs shouting PG-rated abuse again?  Send in the women and the gay men and let them write for Coronation Street because they seem to get that the joy of the programme lies in the ordinary lives of working class Northerners and not in interminable runarounds in hospital corridors.

You might think I'm being judgemental about one particular section of society but I can't think of any other explanation for why you'd hire Dame Tracie Bennett for the show and stick her in this incredibly boring storyline.  Tracie has Olivier awards and Tony nominations; Tracie can sing and dance; Tracie was absolutely bloody marvellous in the long forgotten 90s sitcom Joking Apart.  Only a heterosexual man would look at her glorious campness, her life of theatrical amazingness, and think "mmm, let's make her a gangster auntie."  I'm quite furious that they've decided this was the reason Sharon Gaskell should return to the Street, and that's without the number of amazing coincidences and timeline skips we've had to pass over to get here.  Have her banging on about Bend Over Shirleys without secret nefarious schemes.  

10 is not the magic number.  Poor Sam.  He's spent his whole life wondering who his real dad and now he's finally found out who he is and it turns out it's boring old Nicky Tilsley.  Now Nicky's run off and he's left to spend his tenth birthday with a random woman off the street and his aunt who clearly couldn't give a monkeys.  His uncle has taken his cousins off to some show rather than spend time with him, his mum's pretending she has business in London, and his nan - the only person who seems to care - is stuck at the hospital because his great-grandmother has had a fall.  Incidentally, I'd like to register my anger that "Audrey has a fall and has to go to casualty" was a couple of lines of dialogue and was never mentioned again.  Nothing bad should ever happen to Audrey, and a hospital visit for her should be the Friday cliffhanger and involve a lot of Platts looking anxious and concerned.  It is not a matter to be taken lightly.

Still, lucky old Sam got an enormous birthday party attended by exactly two people, neither of whom were his own age, and who couldn't wait to start chucking all the cakes in the bin the first chance they get.  These are the memories that stick with you for life, and are also the explanation for why Sam will spend his eighteenth birthday in court for abominable crimes against humanity.

Girls just wanna have fun.  There are few more pathetic sights than Asha desperately trying to suggest gussying up her new flat with fairy lights while Corey hammers at his controller.  She's sixteen years old and she looks and feels so young, treating her new life of cohabitation as a sort of thrilling adventure full of kittens.  I am utterly confused about what she's getting out of this relationship, because Corey is awful in every way, but Yasmeen is loitering on the sidelines hissing "coercion!" so I guess that's it.  Maybe this means Corey is going to get shoved off a roof in the near future.  At least we got an explanation for where Corey's family wealth comes from: his dad is the publisher of Hiya!, and since that magazine and Chit-Chat are the only ones allowed within a five mile radius of the Kabin it's no wonder he's loaded.  

Hide in plain sight.  Terrified for their lives, Leanne and family fled to... Warrington.  According to Nicky this is a brilliant strategy because the gangsters would expect them to flee far further away.  That's the gangsters and all rational human beings.  They have genuinely run for their lives half an hour down the M62 to a commuter town whose biggest attraction is Britain's first Ikea.  Go somewhere exciting, for goodness's sake!  Dundee!  Plymouth!  Lowestoft!  Find somewhere with a bit of beach and a nice sea breeze so you can go for walks and not worry some druggie thug will spot you wandering round the Cockhedge Retail Park.  It might stop Simon from being so bored he considers the liver transplant ward an acceptable day trip.  Poor Si: he's spent weeks stuck in his house, unable to go out, forced to do nothing but watch telly all day.  What an alienating experience that must be and not something literally the entire country has gone through over the past year.

Go stag.  Stag do's are literally the worst punishment known to man; if you enjoy them, you're the worst kind of human being.  The only accurate stag do on TV was that Klingon one on Deep Space Nine where everybody had to endure pain and torture for an entire night, and that's still more fun than 3 for 2 shots at the Kandy Bar, Prestwich.  Everybody hates the false bonhomie and general "wahey" of a stag night and so I am totally with Kev for reducing it down to its basics: a lot of alcohol in a pub.  However, old mid-life crisis Tyrone seems to think an evening in an ice bar would be infinitely preferable.  Kevin is a man in his fifties; you can't send him to an ice bar, he'll catch pneumonia.  Plus only a few weeks ago he was locked in a chiller and left to die - you don't really want your lads night out interrupted by him getting traumatic flashbacks and weeping into a frozen margarita.  Fortunately, Tyrone's insistence that he drag along his popsy to the ceremony caused him to give up the role of Best Man.  I'm very much here for TyLina being ostracised by the Street, because this blog is Team Fiz, and that's how it stays.

This blog is very late because all of this week's shows were absolutely terrible and I hated them all.  Complaints to me on Twitter @merseytart unless you're really annoying.

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