Five Things We Learned In Corrie This Week

Pain is forever.  After enduring a drug overdose (twice), getting caught up in a murder, getting wrongly imprisoned for the same murder, suffering a period of homelessness, losing her mother to cancer, and being informed that her mother secretly murdered her dad beforehand (while unknowingly living with her father's actual killer), this week Kelly got kidnapped.  We're running out of stuff to do to her now, surely?  Perhaps next week she'll be accidentally locked in a nuclear reactor.  Perhaps she'll get the Ebola virus.  Millie Gibson is a great actress but even she must be tired of sobbing in close-up.  Can't something nice happen to Kelly for once?  She gets a nice dress, or a kitten, or has a smashing afternoon at the fair?

Tom Allen's Evil Twin was keeping her captive for some convoluted reason that involved Rick swindling him which he was hell-bent on getting revenge for.  Rick's been dead for three years and you've only just spotted he's got a daughter, mate: I realise Covid interrupted a lot of people's plans but really, what have you been doing all this time?  Apart from preparing a dungeon just in case you needed it.  Fortunately Gary swept in and saved the day, thanks to a handy tracker he presumably got off that perv who was after Maria.  Between Kelly and Maria the women at the Rose Gold Empire really are having a time of it lately.  It seems like they can't leave the house without some random weirdo abusing them.  Again, I'm begging you producers, give these ladies a break.  Send them off on a spa day.

Everyone has a limit.  There are many reasons why one might take an overdose.  Despair.  Self-loathing.  A cry for help, perhaps.  In Audrey's case, I think she'd just had enough.  She couldn't face yet another damn lunch in the Bistro.  This was the third week in a row when her awful family invited her to the exact same table and put her in the exact same seat and then made the exact same remarks.  Why is it always lunch, incidentally?  Do they think she goes to bed at four PM?  Perhaps if they had one of these meals in the evening they might be able to invite spouses and grandkids, people like Adam and Max and Leanne and Lily and Harry, all of whom were conspicuously absent once again.  

Still: the salon's back!  Yay!  I've missed it.  Maybe now Evelyn won't have to go to that oppressively dark barbershop every time she wants her curls adjusted.  It's had a make over, apparently the result of the Platts clubbing together and working their bums off.  Can you see Nicky Tilsley wallpapering?  Or Sarah Lou whipping out a circular saw so she could do a bit of tongue and groove?  No, me either.  It wasn't enough to cheer Audrey up, probably because 82 year old women don't really like being told they've got a full time job again, one that involves being on your feet all day at that.  Let that woman retire.  

Women: know your limits.  The Platts are renting the salon back off Debbie, which is handy, because she's got a cash flow crisis.  Ed being electrocuted by a radiator has started a chain reaction which very quickly lead to her accountant suggesting she file for bankruptcy.  Now, off the top of my head, Debbie owns the old brewery, the salon, the Bistro, and the Chariot Square Hotel, plus a bunch of other, nameless properties.  The accountant reckoned the Bistro was the only one turning a profit and... come on.  Nicky's closing that every week for a party for his relatives, whereas the Chariot Square is literally the only place in Weatherfield anyone uses for events - weddings, bar mitzvahs, odd Council champagne dinners attended by psychos and weirdos and Maria.  My point is, surely she can sell one of them, or at the very least get a loan against them?  She moaned that she was going to lose everything she'd worked so hard for, but I seem to recall she got the whole portfolio by blackmailing Ray, so there may be some karmic justice in all this.

Debbie got a moment where she bemoaned the fact that being a hard-nosed businesswoman meant she never got the time to marry or have kids.  It'd be nice if just once a female character said actually, kids are awful, I prefer my freedom, I'll have a string of decadent young lovers attending to my every sexual whim and go on holiday at the drop of the hat because I am rich and I have no responsibilities.  Mike Baldwin didn't sit around crying into his Scotch that he'd spent the entire 1970s wildly bouncing from bed to bed with various dollybirds and never found time to have a mortgage on a semi in Didsbury.  

Say goodbye and don't look back.  Phill's face did that sad crumbly thing again this week as he finally twigged that he was never going to stay married to Fiz.  Having discovered she'd reconciled with Tyrone, he refused to sign the annulment, holding it over their head as a power move.  Not really much of a power move, admittedly, since Tyrone and Fiz had lived in sin for the best part of a decade anyway.  All you're really doing is tying yourself to a woman who doesn't want you while she picks up where she left off in the family home.  What he should have done is signed the annulment then immediately begun legal proceedings to recover all the money Fiz owed him.  She promised him the cash from selling number 9, and he bought a house based on that promise, and now he's stuck with a massive mortgage and no job to pay for it.  And he hasn't got a job because out of the kindness of his heart he helped out Fiz's best friend.  Actually, chuck in the fact that he hasn't got a car either because Hope rammed a digger into it and the bill is enormous.  Frankly Fiz wrecked his life completely and I hope he quickly hooks up with a glamorous and loving woman who'll appreciate him for the treasure he is.

I didn't realise Fiz(z) had a second career as a black and white minstrel.  Cancel her!

Don't let your guard down.  So Frank finally went psycho, as we always knew he would, though sadly it was against Dylan and not Sean.  Hint for the Corrie casting directors: next time you're casting someone who has a secret evil side, maybe pick an actor who isn't as cuddly and charming as Damon from Brookside, because when it came to him losing his rag it was distinctly unfrightening.  Frank bellowed at Dylan for being rubbish at football and letting other players trample all over him; given earlier the same week he said he was more of a rugby man this wasn't surprising.  It's always interesting to contrast cossetted footballers taking six weeks off because of an ouchie on their footsie versus rugby players getting their noses rearranged in real time and emerging from scrums with half the teeth they went in with and not even noticing.  

Sean took this as some personal affront to his entire being and went off on one about how the phrase "man up" offended him as a gay.  Oh honey, calm your boots.  Dylan wasn't being told to man up because he'd got teary at Barbra belting My Man at the end of Funny Girl.  Perhaps you should interrogate why Frank - who is, like yourself, a Man Who Has Sex With Men - has issues with a lack of perceived masculinity.  How this might tie in with his upbringing during the 1980s, a time of Section 28 and the AIDS crisis, and how society as a whole had serious issues with men who were coded as homosexual.  Perhaps Frank carries with him the internalised homophobia a lot of us grapple with (seriously, take a look at Grindr and find how many profiles belong to "normal guys who happen to be gay").  Perhaps - in short - perhaps talk to him?  Or, you know, you could bellow at him in the Street and steal his trainies, you know, it's your choice.  I realise this is all a bit much for a daft little soap opera to grapple with when it's got girls to imprison and pensioners to put in hospital but after weeks of Damon from Brookside being totally lovely and innocuous this sudden outbreak of nastiness really didn't work.  Send Frank off to some anger management classes then bring him back as Billy's new boyfriend.  He hasn't had one for a year, he must be ready to explode.

The Edward Snowden Award for Leaking Personal Information goes to PC Tinker, who this week refused to tell Maria about the tracker perv over the phone because it was confidential, and instead dragged her down to the station so he could announce it to everyone in reception.  Congratulations, Craig; your prize is a six week course on GDPR compliance.  Contact me on Twitter @merseytart to claim it.

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