Five Things We Learned In Corrie This Week

All hail the Hilary of Greater Manchester.  Campaigning busybody Sally Metcalfe is back, and I couldn't be more thrilled.  She clattered around the Street with a power suit and a clipboard, haranguing the neighbours, being community-minded but also a little bit annoying, and I love her for it.  I take a lot of screengrabs before I write this blog and I would say roughly 50% of them were of Sally looking chirpy yet relentless.  Her devotion to the cause of residents parking is winning her few friends - apart from Brian, but Brian has an awful lot in common with Sally - but it is winning my heart.  I wish she was still mayor.  She could be doing this sort of thing every week, and they threw it away so they could put an innocent woman in prison again.  

This plotline also has a delightful side effect in that, after two years on the Street, Aggie finally has a friend!  At last she's been allowed to talk to someone she isn't related to!  Even better, she's not giving an earnest speech about whatever ISSUE has been dropped on the Baileys this week, but is instead acting as a comic foil, pulling delightfully exasperated faces.  I particularly enjoyed the scene where they moved round the map in circles, maintaining two metre's distance at all times; it reminded me of this legendary waltz from Deborah Meaden on Strictly.

Because I am a total map nerd, I absolutely zoomed in on this brief glimpse of the world around Coronation Street.  I was a bit confused to see the words "Sport Centre" on there, but then I realised it was referring to the old gym and not, as I had thought, George's funeral parlour.  It's also interesting to note that Jubilee Terrace, round the back of the viaduct. seems to have been knocked down and replaced by a road running parallel with the tram line.  Sally carefully marked out who was and wasn't worthy of discussion, and we learned that the residents of Tile Street were publicly urinating during the Queen's Jubilee and should therefore be discounted socially.  Maybe take a look at all the murderers, arsonists and adulterers in your little street, Sal, before you start sneering at the neighbours.

I believe that children are our future.  Liam's back!  And he's about 46.  Bless him, he's had a growth spurt in lockdown and now looks like he should be shaving.  It's good to know he's ok though.  All these missing children have been making me worried.  Liam can now join Sam, Hope and Ruby in the "definitely still alive" column.  Max and Lily appeared at Christmas, but haven't been seen since, so they might be ok, and Joseph had a cameo not long ago but hasn't done anything substantive for a while.  The most surprising thing is that they all still have the same head - I'd have thought we'd have got at least one of them swapped out during the pandemic.

Bertie also returned this week, there to facilitate a tender moment between Sarah-Lou and Adam where she said she might be willing to have his baby.  Apparently she'd not realised how good he was with kids until now.  It's worth noting that she theoretically lives with Adam and her son Harry and has done for quite some time.  Poor Harry, always forgotten about.  Maybe Sarah-Lou put him up for adoption when they moved into Redbank, not wanting him to scuff her expensive wooden floors or get sticky fingers on her paintwork.  Harry remains AWOL, along with the quads and Jack, who must be about six foot four by now.  (You might also be asking where Jake is, but this blog maintains Jake doesn't exist, and nothing will convince us otherwise).

Put on your tin hats.  Ok, now bear with me on this one, because it's a bit of a conspiracy theory.  Here's the thing - we didn't actually see Hope start the fire.  And she doesn't seem to have any sense of responsibility towards it.  So what if... Fiz actually did do it?  What if Fiz discovered Hope had got the keys to the flat, snuck over the road, started the fire, then rushed back?  What if Fiz has, all this time, been playing the long game - blaming Hope for the fire because she knows that Ty would want to protect her and because a small child wouldn't get the same punishment?  Coaching her daughter in some of the details while they were "on the run" and alone together so she'd pass as the arsonist?  Knowing that even if she was arrested for it, Tyrone wouldn't let her go to prison for something she didn't do, and so he'd tell the police about Hope... thereby making Fiz look even more innocent?  Guys, this is some galaxy brain thinking here, and I'm not sure if I can cope with the ramifications.  This is bigger than all of us.  Now contact me on Facebook if you want to hear my theory about how the Covid vaccine is turning us all into lizard people.

Having their daughter up for possible imprisonment did at least bring Ty and Fiz together in a snog, and wasn't that nice to see?  Not for any particular story reasons but because, after eighteen months, it was lovely to have two people sat on a sofa together, in a single shot, actually kissing.  Hopefully this means an end to social distancing and with it the end of contrivances like the one at the start of Monday's episode where Adam and Sarah-Lou and Daniel walked down the Street having a conversation while in single file.  Ot the scene where Tracy stood two metres away from her husband, and they both stood two metres away from close friend Tim, in a little triangle.

I may have edited that photo slightly by the way.  Look, that company might have paid ITV a huge amount of money for an unsubtle advert in the background, but we here at the Coronation Street Blog have had nothing at all, so we're not giving them free advertising.

Here's to the ladies who make lunch.  Wednesday's episode contained so much menu chat I thought I'd put on Masterchef by mistake.  There was an entire scene that was characters discussing lunch options and eight course tasting menus.  Well, I say "characters"; Debbie and Leanne were there being great, and Nicky Tilsley was also present.  They then teamed up to aggressively pillory a fishmonger for giving them pollock instead of cod.  More of this please, where awesome women act awesomely, though if you could let it rest with the tired "load of pollocks" gags that would be swell.

Debbie also took time out to flirt outrageously with Ronnie, causing many an Amazing Jenny Bradley Face behind the bar.  This was all part of her scheme to extract the maximum amount of cash from Nicky and Leanne, and I commend her for it, and especially her decision to try and get some action on the side.  What does Ronnie actually do?  Can anyone tell me?  He seems to be in "business" but he spends most of his time hanging round the bar of the Rovers.  We did at least learn this week that he's never worked in hospitality before, and I think we can rule out the garment industry because then he'd be able to get hold of a shirt that fits.  That still leaves thousands of options.  Financial planning?  Drain cleaning?  Nuclear physics?

Cut the Daisy's head off.  The writers had another of their periodic attempts at making Daisy resemble a human being this week, with Jenny lurching out of the ginnel to tell Daniel she was distraught when her half-brother died.  It's too little too late - frankly, at this point, it wouldn't surprise me to learn she held Tom's head under the water.  She is an unpleasant ball of spite with absolutely zero redeeming features, hankering after Daniel purely because Denise gave him a four hundred thousand pound house.  (Apparently Daniel doesn't want to live in it because there's a lot of burglaries in the area; that's because everyone has a really nice house full of nice stuff).

I can't decide if Daniel is taken in by Daisy's machinations or if he's playing with her.  Thrusting Dylan Thomas and teaching materials into her hand when she expressed only the slightest interest in the job would seem to indicate that he's taking the mickey; surely he's not stupid enough to believe her tales?  On the other hand, it's a long time since Daniel was getting that prostitute to wear a cardigan for him, and we know what the Barlow men are like.  If they go for too long without a girlfriend their brain starts to collapse.  Certainly Daniel's announcement that he'd spent the morning "on prep" would seem to indicate that he's single and wanting to mingle, unless I misunderstood the statement and he was actually talking about schoolwork.  That might be possible too.  To be honest it'd almost be worth them hooking up, just to see the expression on Daisy's face when he tried to get her to wear Sinead's Sex Cardigan.

The author is off to burn down his stepmother's house, as apparently that sort of behaviour just gets you a little slap on the wrist.  If there's anyone whose home you'd like me to incinerate, let me know on Twitter @merseytart.

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