Saturday, 4 September 2021

Five Things We Learned In Corrie This Week


Say it with jewellery.  Poor Nina.  She's lost her boyfriend, she's getting yelled at in court, and worst of all, Abi's found that awful tacky ring Seb gave her.  Now she sort of has to wear it, doesn't she, what with it being his last ever gift to her.  She's stuck with a massive wodge of nasty pink plastic clashing with all her outfits until the day it "accidentally" falls down a drain.


This week did, of course, belong to Mollie Gallagher as Nina, as she finally regained her memory of the attack thanks to a quick tour of the scene of the crime as suggested by Roy, a suggestion which included I am pretty sure Corrie's first mention of the works of Marcel Proust.  She managed to look past Summer's horrible denim jacket and went through a load of artily-shot flashbacks on quaysides.  I'm old-fashioned when it comes to Corrie; I like it as a slice of life, filmed as simply as possible, so having ghost images of Kelly and Corey shouting at Nina wasn't my cup of tea.  I do accept that they couldn't really film the attack properly six months ago, so it makes sense that they take advantage of the relaxed social distancing laws to get the gang back together and film it properly.  I was impressed that everyone still looked the same; if I was Seb, let go by the producers against my wishes, I'd have turned up on set weighing three stone more and with a shaved head to make things as awkward as possible.  Good luck fitting that in with the old footage.


After another chat with Roy - seriously, where is the two-hander where Roy and Nina have a gossip while they clean the deep fat fryer?  I'd watch that - she regained her Goth mojo and resumed looking like an emissary of the dead.  This was good for two reasons.  Firstly, non-Goth Nina was never as interesting, and seeing her lope around in a procession of sad tracksuits was kind of depressing.  Secondly, it provided high camp every time they angled the camera up to her in the public gallery, hovering over the scene like a really dramatic owl.  She looked like she was permanently on the verge of hurling herself over the rail to swoop down on the proceedings with a flourish of her cape.


Still, I hope Roy at least Febrezed her frock before he gave it to her.  If it's been crumpled up in a bag for three months, unwashed, it'll be less than fresh.


Do what you can to get away.  I'm not saying Sean is annoying, but thirty seconds of deathless chat with him and Curtis was hurling himself to the floor with heart murmurs to get away.  Yes, it's a condition that could kill him at any moment, but on the plus side, you have a great excuse to get out of listening to Sean wittering on.  He soon checked himself out of the hospital because the medical profession wouldn't be able to do anything for him; aren't you training to be a doctor Curtis?  It's a bit like being a vicar in a crisis and not bothering to pray because you don't think God would be any use.  (In other words, Billy).


Emma invited him to live with her, which sounds nice, but the living room is still smoke damaged after all these weeks.  Can nobody run a damp cloth over the walls?  It must smell like the inside of a box of Swan Vestas in there.  Curtis is happily moving in, which seems sweet, but the last time we got a couple shacking up after an extremely short period of time it was Nina and Seb, and look how that turned out.  He'll be dead before Emma updates her Facebook relationship status.


Know your place.  In further "Amy is awesome" news, she happily pointed out to Simon that she was about the only member of the Barlow clan who's never seen the inside of a prison cell.  Not only is this accurate, it also demonstrates that teenage characters don't have to be rampaging psychopaths to be interesting.  Amy's fun and sparky and clever and - brief foray into teenage pregnancy aside - she's hardly any trouble.  I hope she passes all her exams and is heading off to university next year.  Simon, meanwhile, is doing a lot of his frowny faces while he tries to work out if Kelly is innocent or if, as Corey implied, she really is a ninja capable of delivering flying kicks from across the street.  I don't think Simon should be going into the police force now he's finished his studies, put it that way.


For her part, Kelly is managing to look tinier and younger with every appearance; by the end of next week I fully expect her to be a toddler.  The only time she looked a little grown up was when she chatted with Imran and I sincerely hope I didn't see any hint of romance there.  Yes, Imran is gorgeous Kelly, but he is to be admired from afar; please don't make it weird.  


The first step is the hardest.  Quick question: has Hope actually even apologised to Alina?  Just sat down with her and said "sorry I tried to burn you to death"?  It would probably be hopelessly insincere, but this girl is set to be her stepmother; some kind of rapprochement would be ideal.  Alina is being gracious about it but until Hope showed any sign of remorse I certainly wouldn't let her back into my home.  Not without a fire extinguisher by my bed.  Hope has at least started family therapy, so with any luck she'll start to calm down.  Although the cynic in me saw her take a second lollipop for her sister and thought "no way is Ruby getting that sweet".


Dignity, always dignity.  Imagine your elderly mother has passed on.  You tearfully turn up at the funeral parlour to view the body and there are the undertakers whooping because they just scored a great hand at pontoon.  It wouldn't exactly fill you with confidence, would it?  Roy Hudd would never.  Still, it couldn't get worse, could it?  It's not like they could scatter a corpse all over the soft furnishings.


Whoops.  It's Chekhov's Cremated Remains; if you introduce a bunch of ashes in the first act, they must be accidentally spilled while everyone pulls "yikes" faces in the third act.  This is merely the latest in a long stream of astonishingly unprofessional behaviours committed in the funeral parlour by Todd.  He's still not been punished for robbing the money from that dead homeless person, and he finds it a shock whenever George asks him to do any work.  It's lucky his boss wants to diddle his mum because otherwise he'd have been sacked a long time ago.  To be honest, given Pat Phelan's amazing skills at cheating death (remember when he fell off a lighthouse and swam to Ireland, or something?) it wouldn't surprise me if it went Nightmare On Elm Street 4 and Peanut peed on the ashes and he came back to haunt us all.  Corrie must be the only soap that's never brought a long-dead character back to life, so we're probably due one by now.  

The author has also drawn a comic book related to events that may or may not have happened in Weatherfield.  It involves Curtis, Imran, Ryan and Gary, with a guest appearance from a jar of Vaseline, and copies can be obtained by contacting me on Twitter @merseytart.







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