So yes, Seb is dead and Nina is in the hospital. and none of this is acceptable. Nothing bad should ever happen to Nina, ever. Just as I don't want to see Mary dropped into a mincing machine or Jenny Bradley run over by a steamroller, Nina should float through life in a wondrous state, dropping sarcastic remarks and wise advice for the next sixty years until she retires to Capri with her supermodel wife. I do not want to see her scrabbling for incriminating evidence while covered in blood. This isn't fair, Corrie.
Eli, Eli... oh. I'm sorry, but I can't take the threat from a boy called Eli seriously. Were Malachi and Zachariah busy? Was Jethro bringing in the harvest and couldn't help out? I know older names are now the fashion, hence a lot of Harrys and Johns and Edwards, but Eli is so Old Testament it sounds like he should've been smiting passers by. It would certainly explain that haircut. Presumably when Eli finished stealing hot hatches he had to nip back to Pennsylvania for a good old fashioned barn raising with his Amish brethren.
This means that Corey is left as the ringleader-slash-scumbag in chief, larking about on his XBox and gaslighting every teenage girl within a fifty yard radius. I'm not sure how he's managing this given he's about as charming as a Komodo dragon with a personal freshness problem but hey, maybe he's imbued with an in-the-flesh charisma that fails to be conveyed onscreen. Or maybe he picked up The Geoff Metcalfe Guide To Dominating Women in Yasmeen's yard sale.
I knew he was a bad 'un the minute he rejected a seeded batch for a bog standard white loaf. Do you know what that's going to do to your intestines, Corey? You may as well swallow a load of chalk for all the nutritional good you'll get out of it. I don't mind Corrie occasionally dipping into the world of the Street's youth - it's certainly an improvement on the days when Tracy Barlow did nothing but shout "rotten cowing tart" and then go into hospital with kidney failure - but if I wanted nothing but teens skulking in alleyways looking guilty I'd watch Hollyoaks. Hopefully next week's episodes will have some more grown ups in them.
Wind them up and let them go. Sometimes I wonder if the writers on this show even bother with a script. Sometimes I think they simply write "David Neilson delivers an awesome monologue that is absolutely character appropriate and it tears at your heart", knowing full well that a brilliant actor knows his role so well he can improv something astonishing. But then I realise that actors are nothing without great writing, and that Ian Kershaw wouldn't write a lengthy, emotional monologue if he didn't realise there was a wonderful actor available to deliver it. And if you didn't cheer when Carla appeared to support him, I'm sorry, you're dead inside.
Meanwhile, Sally Carman was busy being incredible as a woman losing the last scintilla of good in her life. Much like previous trainwrecks like Becky or Kylie I desperately want Abi to overcome her demons and succeed, and I'd kind of like her to have a storyline where, I don't know, she wins a couple of grand on the lottery, or she buys a nice dress and someone's put a "reduced" sticker on it, or she just has a good time for once. I want her to have a couple of months where someone she loves isn't hospitalised or criminalised. I really don't - and I don't know how hard I can emphasise this - I really don't want her to use Seb's death as an excuse to go back to being a drug addict. Please have her try to cope with such a terrible loss with the help and love of her friends and family rather than jamming a needle in her arm.
Into each life some rain must fall. Of course, no week of Corrie can be 100% pure compelling drama, and so Monday's episodes taught us to really, really appreciate the brilliance of Wednesday's and Friday's by continuing the interminable gangster drug plot. If you haven't been keeping up, here is the format:
- Sharon turns up at the house of some person on the Street she has only the slightest connection to.
- Sharon steals their virtual address book and passes the info on to her criminal mates.
- Sharon skulks in the Street shouting into a mobile phone while a big bald thug pursues the target.
- Her target escapes with ease.
This has already happened twice and Sharon's only been back in the show a fortnight. The Battersby-Tilsley-Barlows escaped the criminals, off to another safe house; as Warrington was too dodgy they're probably somewhere safer like Salford or Rosamund Street or the top of the Beetham Tower with a big neon sign on top saying "SAFE HOUSE". Why don't they just ask Toyah where she stashed Eva that time she was giving birth? Nobody could find her and it looked like she had a really nice bathroom. Or alternatively they could go and live with one of Leanne's many relatives who are abroad but, no, let's instead rent an Air B&B off Deansgate and act surprised when all your neighbours turn up on the doorstep.
No really, the author is distraught at Seb's death. Send flowers and red wine to him via Twitter @merseytart.
