Five Things We Learned In Corrie This Week

What goes around, comes around.  One positive of a show like Corrie airing for sixty plus years is it can draw on its rich history and back story.  It's not just casual mentions of characters like Bet or Mavis, but it's also how stories we saw twenty years ago inform the actions of characters today.  It means you can see characters' personalities shift and develop - and you can see them become what they fear the most.  Tracy, for example, looked absolutely terrified throughout her time at Amy's side in the hospital - no doubt because she remembered how a bad drug experience in a nightclub changed her life forever back when she was 18.  

Meanwhile Steve objected vociferously to Amy's choice of boyfriend, thinking he was clearly dodgy and too good for her.  Once upon a time, he was that boyfriend, and it was Alec intervening to try and drive him away from Vicky.  He might want to take a moment to consider how that turned out.

Leanne went off on one about Jacob's crimes as a drug dealer and how she didn't want him anywhere near her or her family.  Is this the same Leanne who we've seen on Classic Corrie the last couple of months getting off her face on cocaine and cosying up to drug dealers?  Yes.  Yes it is.

And David, the gold standard of wayward teens, the original child from hell, is being forced to deal with an equally unpleasant son as Max leaves a trail of destruction throughout Wethy High.  We all turn into our parents in the end.  There's something delightful about seeing it happen to Corrie's former wild children in real time.

Stay closeted.  Put down what you're eating because I'm going to discuss Sean's love life.  He's always been the most neutered of the Street's gays.  Billy is notorious for his absolutely filthy snogs, James is a geh poster boy, Paul is a real bit of rough, and Todd loves to flirt with any bloke he can, but Sean has all the wild sexual charisma of Bovril.  It's hard to believe he even possesses genitals.  We certainly never see him with boyfriends of any kind; he often introduces new gay characters to the Street but they almost immediately run off with someone a bit more exciting.  While Todd and Billy and Paul hopped between one anothers beds Sean was sat behind his machine at Underworld humming Dancing On My Own.

This week, however, he announced he was going straight to Canal Street once the Rovers closed, and all became clear.  Sean does have a sex life, except it's so filthy, so disgusting, so debauched, there is no way they can show it on ITV of a weekday night.  Oh, he might have turned up at the factory next morning with an innocuous story of what he'd got up to, but this was him self-censoring so he didn't frighten the straights.  Sean spends his nights being passed around at the raunchiest sex clubs, poppered up, barely pausing for breath, as he becomes the Gay Village's Good Time Had By All.  That's why he doesn't look for a boyfriend any more - he can't be trapped by tedious notions of monogamy and loyalty.  From now on, I will be imagining that Sean is wearing a full leather harness and studded thong under every outfit he wears on screen.  And now, so will you.

It's Nan vs Nan.  Katy's mum Linda made a return to the show, years after her last appearance, to remind Chesney and Gemma that it is possible to occasionally brush your hair and look nice.  Linda is played by Jacqueline Leonard, who I mainly know as the mum of Joe "be still my beating heart" Wicks on EastEnders in the 90s.  No, not the overactive PE teacher Joe Wicks - this one:

I'm going to need a moment to process that picture.

Joe suffered from schizophrenia, and I'm sort of hoping Linda will break out her EastEnders catchphrase "Joe!  You're rocking!" on little Joseph.  She'd nipped in on the way back from a six week retreat in Belize to visit Weatherfield, but surprisingly didn't immediately go into a coma from the culture shock.  She was quickly appraised of the whole Joseph situation and turned on Bernie; Bernie, for her part, fought back over an afternoon tea.  I know we should be on Bernie's side because she's the permanent member of the cast but we learned that Bernie pronounces "scone" with a long o while Linda correctly pronounces it "skon" so frankly I'm torn.

Linda promised Chesney he'd only have to ask for help and she'd be right there; a quick reminder that she lives in Portugal.  She eventually put off her return to her glamorous villa so she could stand in the middle of the street staring moodily at Bernie. There's only one way to solve this fractious situation, and that is to bring back the third grandparent in this family: Cilla Battersby-Brown.  Bernie and Linda would take one look at the tiny ginger ball of bile and immediately join forces to make sure their family was protected from whatever horrific scheme she had planned for the quads.  

Absence makes the heart grow fonder.  Welcome back to the show Simon Barlow, making his first appearance since November last year with a new haircut.  His job was to hiss at Amy and grass Jacob up to the police; there was no word on where he's been for three months or, indeed, what he's currently doing for a living.  He finished his exams last summer and since then we've had no word.  Is he at uni?  Has he got a job?  Is he sitting around the flat all day playing XBox in his pants?  We simply don't know.

I bring this up because we were very ostentatiously informed this week that Geena is struggling and really Sally should go and see her for a few weeks to make sure she's alright.  This is presumably to cover Sally Dynevor taking part in Dancing On Ice; ITV don't want her doing both shows at the same time in case she breaks an ankle and wrecks filming on Corrie.  I understand that, but couldn't she simply disappear like Simon did?  We don't need a whole storyline about it.  After all, this week Amy was at death's door in hospital, and even when she returned home to number 1 Ken didn't bother turning up to check on her.  This forces us to think about Geena again, and I was quite happy forgetting she ever existed, thank you very much.  Instead they could've sent Sally upstairs to listen to her tapes for a month or two and we'd never have noticed.

Stalk and stalk again.  We should really give Lydia some credit.  Ok, yes, she's clearly off her rocker. I loved all those ITV press releases saying viewers were "shocked" to learn she was Adam's stalker, even though she's had DEMENTED written across her forehead right from her very first appearance.  She made Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction look like a model of understated feminist iconography.  (Incidentally, there's still time to catch Kym Marsh in Fatal Attraction: The Play at a theatre near you; presumably in this version she doesn't get shot in the bathtub but instead the Michael Douglas character admits she was right all along and apologises for ever disagreeing with her).  

So while Lydia is obviously four cans short of a six pack, she's also extremely resourceful with great improvisation skills.  That whole business about the champagne and oysters at the hotel was very clever, though admittedly she was helped by Sarah-Lou having all of her conversations with Adam on speakerphone so everyone could hear them and note down pertinent details.  This is where I point out that Adam was staying in Room 237, which is also the room with the naked woman ghost in The Shining.  Ironically, the haunted Overlook Hotel in that film would still be a better place to stay than the Chariot Square Hotel.  Why do they keep going back?  It's such a grim little set and nothing good has ever happened there.  There are loads of bars and hotels around the ITV Studios in Salford Quays - can't they borrow one of those instead so I don't have to keep staring at that awful carpet?

Adam and Sarah have now resumed their schedule of non-stop rutting as they try to produce a new heir to the Barlow name.  This cannot be allowed to happen.  If you follow back the family trees, this would be a baby with genetic material from Ken Barlow, Mike Baldwin, Gail Platt and Ivy Tilsley; it would be a concentrated soap behemoth, 100% pure Corrie, and so powerful it would almost inevitably conquer Weatherfield and rule it with a dictatorial fist.  The sooner Lydia's evil scheme reaches fruition and breaks up Adam and Sarah to stop 1000 years of dystopian Barlow rule the better.

There was sadly no time to mention Imran and Toyah getting engaged, mainly because the author is crying into a glass of chardonnay and singing "It Should've Been Me" at top volume.  Please send caring thoughts via Twitter @merseytart.

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