Another one bites the dust. Of course Natasha died. Of COURSE. First of all, she's a sparky, funny woman, young and attractive, with a good business brain, played by a charming and talented actress. That can't be allowed to continue. For some reason Corrie absolutely hates that kind of woman, and so she must be culled for the good of the nation. What a waste of an interesting character. (As @yeahfuego pointed out on Twitter, this is yet another in a long line of Corrie parents dying and leaving their children alone). And what a horrible way to die, alone in hospital, from a bullet wound that wasn't even intended for her. Didn't Natasha have any parents, siblings, friends? Did she bring up Sam in a bunker, like Brie Larson in Room, and they only emerged in the last year?
And of course she had to die, because they wanted to get Sam in the show properly. I hate it when you can see the contrivances, the joins, as the scriptwriters beat the story into shape for a desired outcome rather than letting it happen naturally. Sam could've carried on visiting his dad, no problem. Maybe Nick could've got joint custody, so he stayed in Victoria Court a few days a week. Maybe Natasha could've got a job offer in That London, but didn't want to disrupt Sam's schooling, so she left him with his dad in Manchester. Maybe there could've been a nice, charming storyline, something that makes us all happy. But no: this way, Sam gets to be emotionally traumatised, Nicky gets horrific flashbacks to his own father's murder, and Leanne gets to revisit the horror of her son's death and her fear of mothering again. Wonderful.
Incidentally, and they've constantly skipped over this, but Nicky never actually got real confirmation that Sam's his son. When Natasha first left the show, as far as everyone was concerned, she wasn't pregnant; then she turned up with a child ten years later and said it was his. I think the experience of Michael over the road has taught us all to say "that's lovely and everything, but how about we have a quick DNA test before things get serious?" It'd be sort of hilarious if some other bloke turned up, said "I'm Sam's real dad", and snatched him off to Marbella.
Have you seen this man? During the first Friday episode in "Horrornation Week", Imran left everybody in the Bistro to go to Victoria Court in search of Nicky Tilsley. He also said he'd check up on that little girl they'd fostered a week before and had already abandoned to babysitters so they could get drunk at a Hallowe'en attraction. He walked out and... vanished. We've not seen or heard from him since. Is he ok? Did he fall down one of the sinkholes and nobody's noticed? Admittedly, there is a space-time aberration between Viaduct Street and Victoria Street. We know this for a fact, because in the same episode, Leanne set off for Victoria Court, but Nicky was able to visit the Bistro, chat to Toyah, walk over to his flat and then discover Natasha's wounded body all before Leanne actually turned up. Has Imran fallen into a wormhole? Is he in another dimension? Or maybe he got sick and tired of all these whining Battersby women and got a cab into town and stayed there. I wouldn't blame him.
Incidentally, isn't it lovely to get some location filming again? I know a tent city round the back of a viaduct isn't exactly the Maldives but it was great to see somewhere other than the set and Salford Quays. The directors have done their best over the past eighteen months but I don't think there's a single square centimetre that hasn't been used multiple times. It also means that Billy's soup kitchen no longer has to set up in the loading bay of Victoria Court, which I'm sure will delight all the residents.
Save Aadi! Aadi is a delight. (I'm talking about the Adam Hussein version of course, what with the previous versions basically being animated props). He's smiley and cheery and fun. But now he's full of angst and it must not stand. I know having it confirmed that your dad likes your awful sister more than you will be a bit upsetting, but cheer up! I don't want Aadi being depressed. I want him trying to boss Evelyn about and suffering under her withering tongue. I want him making sarcastic comments from the sidelines as Asha has another disastrous relationship. There was a moment this week where he went from this:
You know who should be livid with David and his sinkhole? Yasmeen. Because she's living next door to a hellmouth that's growing and her house and garden could be its next victim. Apparently she has no opinion on this matter, however, which doesn't really make sense, but does any of this? David mentioned that the water board had come round and pumped concrete under the house to stabilise it; so does that mean it's the water board's responsibility after all? All the holes that opened up seemed to drop people into sewers so it certainly seems so, but now he's got a huge bill to pay for it, so apparently not? But then again he agreed with Debbie that it was all Ray's fault for creating it in the first place, and we've still not had it explained to us exactly how you manage to deliberately create a sinkhole in a suburban back garden without anyone noticing. My conclusion is that the sinkhole is actually sentient, like the Sarlacc from Return of the Jedi. Ray employed it to wreck David's garden, then got arrested before he could hand over the cash, so the sinkhole is sticking around until it gets paid. This would also explain how it knew to open up smaller sinkholes only at moments of maximum drama rather than, say, simply collapsing under the weight of the big tent or David's house. And let's be honest, after the nonsense of the last couple of weeks, a living, breathing sinkhole wouldn't be much more of a stretch of credibility. Give it a couple of years and Steve McDonald will be marrying it.
The author is tired of telling Toyah Battersby to stop working at the factory because everyone keeps turning to her for counselling advice so she's obviously quite good at it. If you'd like to take over this role please contact me via Twitter @merseytart.
