Five Things We Learned In Corrie This Week

Appreciate what you've got.  It was Sarah-Lou's 35th birthday and... no, hang on, I'm going to have to take a moment to process that.  Sarah-Louise Platt is thirty five years old.  How did that happen?  And more to the point, why does she still look fourteen?

Anyway, Sarah-Lou turned 35 and she got in a right nark all day because Adam rushed off to defend his uncle from a criminal charge instead of paying attention to her.  He then compounded his error by giving her an oven for her present.  Actually, he didn't even give her the oven; he wafted the instruction book in her face.  You could have got it installed and wrapped a big red bow around it or something.  Unsurprisingly Sarah was less than chuffed, and spent the rest of the episode sulking.  On the one level, fair enough; if somebody I cared about bought me a household appliance for my birthday, they'd spend all day trying to extract it from their rectum.

On the other hand, come on Sarah-Lou; your life is great, so appreciate it.  Just this week you finally got a house - the Barlows have been living in Redbank for ages but the producers have only now got round to building them a set.  

It's very dark and masculine; for once this looks like a flat where you would need to have your lamps on all day.  It's got a distinct whiff of Carla's flat in Wethy Quays, that one with the spiral staircase running up the middle, but that's probably because it reeks of money and glamour.  It is, if anything, a bit too nice for Weatherfield.  Adam and Sarah-Lou have great careers and plenty of cash so it's no surprise their house is beautifully laid out, but it also raises the question of why don't they move somewhere better?

Sarah-Lou should also be happy that Harry has been let out of whatever cupboard he's been held in.  I hope she hugged him close throughout the meal because at the end of it he was snatched away and returned to the child slavery mine he usually works in.

And finally Sarah should be grateful that she is married to Adam.  Yes, he gives out rubbish presents, and is a bit of a hound, and works way too much, but she can look at him naked any time she wants.  That's the gift that keeps on giving.

Hair today, gone tomorrow.  Oh no!  Kelly and Liam's French game has resulted in Maria's portfolio for a big hair contest being covered in water and destroyed.  Who knows what brilliance was lost when that bottle smudged all the text?  Who knows what innovative fringes will never again see the light of day?  Fortunately, I managed to get hold of Maria's ambitious plans for the hair contest, and I can exclusively reprint them here:

Foolproof.  Kelly managed to rescue the portfolio and, with the help of Aadi, turned it into a multimedia slide show with whizzy graphics and hyperlinks.  Although let's be honest, that was no doubt all Aadi's doing, while Kelly concentrated very hard on what colour to make the header font.  It's lucky they didn't rely on Maria to rescue the portfolio because judging by the way she uses a computer she's no Alan Turing.

"I'm very busy INTERNETTING, Liam, come back when I've finished."

Save Asha.  Yes, yes, they're in love, but at what point are we going to stage an intervention for poor Asha?  This week she missed an open day at her dream university in Glasgow because Nina was being dangerously psychotic.  Incidentally, can we retire the plot device of someone leaving their phone behind and it getting robbed?  It's 2022; people take their phones everywhere with them, even to the loo, and especially if they're a teenage girl.  Nina was concerned that a storm front would cause Asha's train to Scotland to crash and that she'd be a lot better off sitting in an empty cafe being stared at all day.  Fortunately the combination of Asha and Roy convinced Nina she should get some psychological help; I look forward to her going on the waiting list and finally getting her first NHS counselling appointment in about four years time, by which time Asha will be tied to a commode in the attic being force fed baby food.  Still, Nina's new hair is very nice.

A brief mention for Devendra, who heard that his daughter wanted to go to Glasgow and was overjoyed.  He suggested she stay with his cousin Nita and those of us who watch Classic Corrie were thrilled - twenty years later and she's still running Freshco in Scotland!  He also launched into a soliloquy that made us think his knowledge about universities all came from Brideshead Revisited.  He suggested Asha would spend her time "hanging round the quadrangles, and discussing Keats 'twixt tea and toast."  Yes, Dev said "twixt", and that is why he is a treasure.

Here come the girls.  Shona's time in the Kabin continues to delight.  Her big idea this week was to go to a Barbra Streisand karaoke night with Rita and I have never wanted a storyline to happen more in my life.  Disappointingly the rest of the episode featured other characters and plotlines and wasn't just Shona and Rita doing No More Tears (Enough Is Enough) at top volume while lathered on Jägerbombs.  (In this scenario, Shona is Babs and Rita is Donna Summer, obviously).  There was a characteristic moment of false modesty where Reet suggested it wouldn't be fair if she attended a karaoke night because she used to be a professional singer.  You and I both know that she'd have elbowed every other contestant out of the way and been belting out Papa, Can You Hear Me? before she'd even taken her coat off.

It lead to a temporary ceasefire between Audrey and Rita as Reet persuaded her to give her slightly tired looking hair a once over.  Because I am a gentleman, I will refrain from commenting further about the logistics of Rita's hair getting a colour, and whether she even needed to be in the same room while it happened.  Instead I will simply enjoy the two old dames swapping insults while Audrey knocked back the Sav Blanc.  Everyone seems to think Aud drinking a couple of glasses of white a day is a massive problem.  Clearly they can't remember her in the 80s and 90s, when she was on the gin, and would be swigging a couple of them every lunchtime before returning to work in the corner shop.  At least she's not on the spirits any more.  

Eat, drink, don't be merry.  Craig got absolutely hammered on about three pints of beer this week as his career went down the toilet and all I'll say is acting drunk is very hard and they don't get any rehearsal time on the show any more and move on politely.  He's given up his career in the police force because he is now bent as a nine bob note; apparently "being useless" wasn't a good enough reason to quit.  It's funny how this is the violation of his principles that has sent him over the edge, and not when he continued his relationship with a convicted felon in secret or when he lied about a racist incident to protect his colleagues.  He's finally found his line in the sand and it involved him opening up a u-bend.

The police's obsession with searching Ted's flat is almost as much a waste of resources as Craig's fingerprinting a crutch.  The autopsy concluded Ted was covered in bruises, and so was probably hit by a car; unless they're hoping to find a Ford Fiesta hidden under the sofa I'm not sure what good searching the place will do.  You and I know that Faye took him home but most hit and runs don't involve the perpetrator making their victim a cup of tea.  They'd perhaps be better off scouring CCTV or body shops to see if anyone got a pensioner shaped dent hammered out of their bonnet.  

One more thing - FOR THE LOVE OF GOD WILL YOU THROW THAT CRUTCH AWAY.  Chuck it in a skip, bury it, set fire to it; anything to get rid of it.  Stop clinging to it like it's a holy relic.  These people are rubbish murderers and it's frankly very disappointing.  Bring back Pat Phelan; now there was a man who knew how to cover up a death.

This week we also learned that Daniel likes to preface foreplay with sonnets and that he is the worst lover Lydia has ever had.  If you have some bleach I can inject into my brain to make me forget those facts, please contact me on Twitter @merseytart.

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