Five Things We Learned In Corrie This Week

If it's yellow, let it mellow.  Back at the turn of the year I didn't write a blog about the New Year's episodes.  Part of that was down to the fact that it was still the holidays, and so I was three parts panettone, two parts vodka, but a large part of it was down to the fact that I really didn't want to write about Sally Metcalfe peeing in Victoria Gardens.  That decision has come back to haunt me as they have returned this storyline a month on.  (Yes, this storyline gets an update, but we still don't know if David's got the sinkhole filled in, or if Robert is ever going to get a funeral).

So let's recap: Sally and Tim went to the Rovers on New Year's Eve, and because there was a queue for the pub toilets, she ended up weeing in the gardens on their way to the Red Rec.  Literally not one part of that sentence is realistic.  For a start, I can't believe any of the regulars at the Rovers ever use the pub toilets anyway.  They all live a couple of doors away.  Is Ken Barlow really going to perch himself on freezing cold, unclean porcelain, with all the neighbours hearing his grunts and groans, when he can go to number 1 and relax on his very own lavatory?  Even if we accept that Sally, for some reason, didn't want to leave the pub while they were still drinking, once they headed out for the Red Rec, she had to literally walk past her own front door.  Are we meant to believe that she was perfectly fine when she left the pub but, after walking another twenty yards towards the tram stop, she reached such a state of incontinence that she had to squat in a public place and couldn't even dash home?

And this is all without the added detail that it was Sally Metcalfe micturating behind the children's grow your own area.  Sally, a woman who buys Farrow and Ball paint and who boasts about her chimenea.  If it was Bernie or Beth, fair enough, but no, it was Weatherfield's Hyacinth Bucket.  She wouldn't dream of doing such a thing, not least because as a former mayor, she's well aware that the gardens will be maintained using Council Tax money and she would literally be splashing all over the efforts of public workers.

So that's the first half of this ridiculous story.  The second half is that someone took a photo of her squatting in amongst the azaleas, passed it to Councillor Cameron, who passed it on to the Gazette, who put it on their front page under the headline New Year's Wee which is, let's be honest, a terrible pun.  Then the police arrived and carted her off to the station and she resisted arrest so fiercely she put her foot through a vending machine.  It was, on every level, incredibly stupid.  Although perhaps the most unrealistic part was a maintenance man turning up that same day; I've seen vending machines in hospital waiting rooms and they typically offer only Aztec bars, Toffos and prawn cocktail Tudor Crisps.

All this was a genuine distraction from the proper, real drama of Sally's hurt over Tim hiding his triple bypass from her.  Fortunately they found a way to get round this by making the couple reconnect over... Tim weeing in a cardboard urinal.  Yes, we, the viewers of Corrie, got to watch in real time as Tim slipped his old chap inside the potty then emptied his bladder, in a moment which I think was meant to be heartwarming.  I'm forced to wonder if there's someone on the writing staff with a fetish they're expressing via the Metcalfes; remember when Tiny the horse kept letting go all over people in their back garden?  Save that sort of thing for the restricted area of AO3, thank you very much, and stop putting those of us who watch Corrie with a meal off our tea.

Also, can we take a moment to dwell on the fact that there is now nothing standing in the way of Maria becoming a councillor?  MARIA.  I can't wait for her to miss her first meeting at the Town Hall because she kept pulling a door marked "push".

There's a Woman About The Hospital.  The only good part of Tim's time under the knife was the reappearance of Elaine.  When she sold her share of Speed Daal entirely second hand, without making an appearance, I worried that Paula Wilcox had decided not to come back to the show for some reason.  She was great in her appearances and Elaine has real potential as a dithering, slightly irritating worrier, a Mavis Riley for the 21st Century.  She was also friends with Yasmeen, and I always want Yasmeen to have friends.  Now that Last of the Summer Wine is off the air, ITV should be going round contacting all those aging comedy legends it normally scooped up and casting them on Corrie.  Perhaps they've all been put off by them getting Les Dennis on the programme for two years and never once giving him a joke.  It's a joy to see Paula back, anyway, and the idea of her butting heads with Sally over Tim's care is delightful.  Give her whatever she wants to be permanent, even if it means her getting Barbara Knox's dressing room and Helen Worth's parking space.

When it rains, it pours.  Jenny's problems continued to mount up as her hot rugby playing boyfriend turned out to have an equally good looking dad who also fancied her.  Why do bad things keep happening to good people, eh?  Fortunately, everyone found it amusing rather than creepy, and I hope Jenny keeps Teddy's number for when she wants someone to watch The Gilded Age with while Leo's out clubbing.  Perhaps Teddy could go out with Daisy for a slightly weird foursome.  (Incidentally, Teddy mentioned that when they were at school together, he snogged Joanne Cresswell - who is an actual character who was Jenny's mate in the 80s!).

As usual, Kate Connor tried to ruin everything, even from 5,000 miles away, as she went to Carla to whine about not getting her inheritance yet.  Maybe Jenny would've been more inclined to hand the cash over if you'd actually bothered coming home for the funeral, eh Kate?  There was no mention of what she needed the money for, but in my imagination she's currently being held hostage by Malaccan pirates, demanding a huge cash transfer or they'd boil her in hot tar; unfortunately the lateness of Jenny's handover means she's going to suffer a horrible demise which means she will sadly never be able to return to the programme.  We also learned that Debbie and Jennie have put aside their rivalry over Ronnie and have become mates; this is very much A Good Thing, and I hope leads to several scenes of them putting the world to rights over a half dozen bottles of Shiraz.

Squint and you'll get it.  Are budgets so tight at Wethy Police that they're calling that an e-fit?  It looks like it was drawn using an Etch-a-Sketch.  No wonder they were so livid about Craig wasting police resources - he probably used up their last remaining supply of fingerprint powder and now they'll have to resort to talc.  Faye finally confessed everything to Craig, which made him pull this face:

...and I don't know about you, but it was worth it just for that.  Craig spent an hour and a half deciding what to do about the situation, then announced he was going to sacrifice all his moral standards to conceal the truth.  Yep, he's turned into another bent copper, just like Cres[the rest of this post has been deleted on legal advice].

Have some self-respect.  Lydia has seemed quite sparky and interesting so far, so what is she seeing is dull old stick Daniel Osbourne?  An answer came when she got them tickets for a poetry slam.  For those of you unaware, a poetry slam is a competition where poets read out their verse with dramatic delivery for prizes, and it is worse than having your genitals nailed to a horse's hoof.  Clearly if Lydia is willing to go to a poetry slam it means she is very, very desperate, and he could basically have sex with Daisy right in front of her and she'd still let him get away with it.  Daniel delayed the pleasure of listening to unwashed twenty year olds trying to rap about socialism for a little longer because he had to get Daisy to post something about consent on her Instagram.  They naturally flirted like mad the whole time, which seems wildly inappropriate.

Max, incidentally, refused to attend the consent workshops on the basis that he "wasn't a pervert".  He's right in a way because he really doesn't need to attend.  If he keeps wandering around wearing that hat consent won't be a problem because no girl in her right mind will come within five hundred yards of him.

The author is now off to play a quick game of All Around The Milky Way on his generic un-named console.  If you want to join him for a multiplayer session his username is @merseytart.

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