Five Things We Learned In Corrie This Week

Put the blame where it belongs.  We bid a sad farewell to Roy, as he departed for one of those convenient Third World charity endeavours that pop up whenever an actor's decided they don't like the plotlines they've been given.  Hayley went to Mozambique for a year after Julie Hesmondhalgh registered her displeasure at the "secret son" storyline; Emily departed for Peru after years of being generally overlooked.  Now it's Roy's turn to go and cook for the needy in South America; for some reason I'm picturing him in the Amazon with a load of half naked indigenous people, still wearing his raincoat.  

Roy was leaving in the Black Cab Of Significance (why not StreetCars, Roy?) because he blamed himself for Natasha's death.  Elsewhere, Abi blamed herself for facilitating Natasha's death by bringing a gun into the Street, while Sam still suffered, meaning Nicky blamed himself for bringing death into his son's life.  I think we need to stop all this and blame the person who's really responsible: Oliver.  If he hadn't died, Leanne wouldn't have got depressed, so Simon wouldn't have become a drug runner to pay the bills, so Harvey wouldn't have known Coronation Street even existed.  It's all Oliver's fault for being selfish enough to pass away, and with any luck everyone will realise this and stop banging on about him.

The other advantage of everyone forgetting about Oliver is Jane Danson might be able to finally get some time off.  She sounded like she had terrible laryngitis or at the very least a rotten cold and ITV still wouldn't let her stay at home.  I think you need to have a word with HR, Jane, or perhaps the police, because this is starting to feel a lot like modern slavery.

Spielberg has nothing to worry about.  Troubled kids always have a secret talent, don't they?  They might appear to be horrible little scrotes but it usually turns out they're actually brilliant at sport or art or something and they can then channel their passions into this rather than being awful.  Just once I'd like a Demon Child to be simply evil for the fun of it with no redeeming features; I have my fingers crossed that when Hope hits puberty she'll start strangling cats or kicking walking sticks out from under old ladies and there won't be a single hint that she's actually a brilliant trombonist on the sly.

In the meantime, Daniel - who is apparently Barry Norman in his spare time - spotted genuine filmmaking talent in Max's libellous conspiracy theory video and suggested he parlay those skills into a documentary about Billy's soup kitchen.  Can't wait for that; YouTube will be aflame with the heartwarming tale of a vicar doing his job.  Perhaps Max can combine both his camera skills and his taste for lurid speculation to look into the phenomenon of the strange graffiti under the arches where Billy works?

For some reason the wall is covered with complex mathematical formulae.  Are these really homeless people?  Are they servants of the illuminati?  Are they calculating how to bring about the end of the world from beneath the Manchester-Liverpool line?  Or is this the work of a set decorator who realised there should probably be something scrawled on the wall behind Billy but realised he couldn't put dirty language on telly at 7:30 of an evening?

You wanna live like common people, you wanna do whatever common people do.  Speaking of homeless people, we must of course address Kelly's descent into the lowest rings of Hell.  We all know why poor Kelly is being made to suffer like this - it's so that the viewers and the people of Weatherfield will feel sorry for her again, even though she, you know, belted Nina for no apparent reason, and was an accessory to Seb's murder.  They need to send her to the murky depths so we can feel happy when she comes back up.

She ended up taking some Spice, which feels very five years ago; even Summer's taken Spice, and she's a massive goody-two-shoes.  This was despite the intervention of Railings Boy, back from whatever plot cupboard he was hidden in, and there to give a meaningful speech about being trapped in a life you can't escape from.

The trouble is: Kelly could escape it all at any time.  It was only her own bloody-mindedness that was stopping her.  There was a queue of people willing to help her, starting with Aadi, Toyah and Imran, and including social services and the police.  All she had to do was contact them and the whole nightmare would end.  It meant that it was hard to ever feel she was properly at rock bottom and desperate - she was just being stubborn.

Still, she's back on the Street now, following a flashback-strewn encounter with some deeply unpleasant scallies.  I imagine when Susan Oudot wrote the scenes where Kelly got a beer poured over her she imagined a dark urban hellhole, a truly nightmarish location to amplify the terror.  She probably didn't imagine that the director would instead say "nah, I can't be bothered going all the way to Moss Side to film - let's do it outside the studio then I can be in the pub by six."

Kelly's ordeal therefore played out against a backdrop of immaculately tended lawns, luxury apartment blocks and the Imperial War Museum North; if the camera had tilted up a little bit above their heads it would've caught the massive CORONATION STREET sign on the side of the building.  It was hard to feel like anything bad was going to happen to her when she was a three minute walk from a Wagamama.  The experience has now caused Nina to start to experience traumatising anxieties, mainly in the form of dramatic zooms on props in the cafe; my favourite one was when we got a big terrifying close up of a horse brass.  What she should really be scared about is the fact that Roy has left her in charge of a business at the age of 19.  Roving gangs of thugs are nowhere near as terrifying as having to file a VAT return.

Go west, young woman.  Faye was freed from prison on Monday, as we all knew she would be; you can't fight an unstoppable force like Debbie Webster.  She returned to number 4 and was met with an enormous outpouring of passion from Craig, the love of her life.  Nah, just kidding: in reality the two of them never went near one another, not even sharing a sofa.  I'd blame Covid protocols, but in the exact same scene Gary walked straight up to Faye and hugged and kissed her:

Perhaps Faye's time in prison has made her realise that she has literally zero sexual chemistry with Craig and that she'd have a better and more passionate relationship with a sock with a couple of googly eyes stuck on it.  She's clearly in an emotionally fragile state, anyway, as we discovered when she went back to work at the Bistro and immediately broke down.  Who knew that returning to the place where you were sexually assaulted and committed GBH would be triggering?  Not to worry; Tim intervened and got her a new job in the sales team at the factory whether she liked it or not.  I'm not sure why she couldn't take the valuable skills she'd learned at the Bistro and presented her CV to any number of restaurants in the Greater Manchester area; I'm sure Debbie would've been amenable to a little white lie to cover up the gap in her résumé, and the hospitality sector is currently desperate for well-trained staff.  But that would've meant Faye would've had to work more than fifty yards from her front door, and obviously, that cannot be tolerated.

Politics isn't for everyone.  Sally pressganged Maria and Mary into a meeting to discuss the very important matter of the Christmas Market.  Maria claimed she couldn't make it because she had an appointment to do a graduated bob; given she works in a male hair salon, I have to congratulate whatever gentleman was getting that cut for his progressive attitude to styling.  What actually happened was Maria and Sally exchanged barely veiled insults while Mary sat in the corner muttering "bratwurst"; it was of course incredible.

We learned that a councillor had been suspended for dodgy behaviour, because of course he had; you didn't think they were going to make us wait until May for this political storyline to play out?  At the moment, Sally seems to have the upper hand, persuading Maria that she can simply turn up at public appearances for her as a kind of Politics Barbie.  Sally is still wildly overestimating Maria's talents if you ask me, but Gary seemed to think that his wife would make a great politician and should still go for it.  Maria and Gary really are a meeting of minds, aren't they?  I'm surprised it took them a decade to finally get together.

Out of respect for Sam's trauma, I have decided to maintain a similar silence about his plotline.  Unless you DM me @merseytart on Twitter, where I have all sorts of bitchy comments to make.

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