It's deja vu all over again. It was nice of Coronation Street to, in her final week, give Kelly a sort of "greatest hits" storyline. It was a bit like when somebody gets an Honorary Oscar and they show clips from all their films before handing over an award that's basically "please take this before you die". Over the course of the week, Kelly...
...had extreme daddy issues...
...got kidnapped again (apparently by Andrew Pierce from the
Daily Mail)...
...and inadvertently caused the hospitalisation of one of the Street's more charming younger cast members. She also went off to Thailand without sorting anywhere to live, so I guess they're revisiting the homeless storyline as well; let's hope there's a Thai version of Homeless Stu waiting for her in Bangkok. If they'd managed to chuck in a drug overdose they'd have got the full set. I'm sure Millie Gibson was thrilled, because we all get that tinge of anxiety after we hand in our notice that we might not be doing the right thing. After a final week of yet more unrelenting grimness and terror she'll be glad to be shot of the place. Quick hint, producers; if you want to keep your blossoming starlets, give them some nice plotlines, some jolly, fun ones that make going to work a pleasure, and maybe they will stick around a bit longer.
It's deja vu all over again (again). Of course, you can't have just one criminal storyline in a week of
Corrie episodes, there has to be another one or people will get bored and start watching
The Repair Shop or something. As a result Stephen plummets even further into desperation in a way that is starting to feel a little... familiar. You know who else had a meddling ex-wife who turned up at an inopportune moment to demand money? You know who else started telling people that Audrey was confused and possibly had dementia as a way of concealing his shifty property shenanigans?
Let's keep an eye out for any purchases of black leather gloves, and encourage Maria to start wearing a crash helmet at all times in case Stephen decides to kill a local hairdresser.
Murder is surprisingly difficult, actually. So if we are to believe the show, Kelly offered Evil Tom Allen £10,000 to kill Gary, then changed her mind, asked him not to kill him after all, and offered to give him the ten grand for doing nothing? And he decided to instead not only murder Gary, but also kill Kelly, which would mean he would be a murderer twice over instead of none and wouldn't even get the second instalment of £5,000 she owed him? There's a long history of rubbish gangsters in the programme but this one is particularly rubbish.
His plan to make Kelly look like Gary's murderer also made no sense. For a start, Gary disappeared long before Kelly did, and she remained at a party gathering an alibi the whole time while he was in the woods. She then went to a hotel at Manchester Airport with Aadi - continuing that alibi - before vanishing. Evil Tom Allen is suggesting that the police would have to conclude that she left the airport hotel, went all the way back to the woods in Weatherfield, murdered Gary (who was hanging out in the woods for some reason and decided not to resist being killed by this tiny teenage girl), buried him, went back into town, got a pang of guilt, went to the top of a random warehouse, and chucked herself off it. All (a) without any transportation of her own and (b) while wearing a little red dress and high heels that didn't have a speck of mud on them. Oh, and since Gary would be buried in a wood miles away from Kelly's body, nobody would even
know he was dead to be able to blame Kelly for his murder in the first place until someone finally found his body. Plus the tiniest bit of forensic analysis would reveal Kelly had never fired a gun in her life, and anyway where would she get a shotgun from? (Actually, Gary simply chucked it into the undergrowth for anyone to find; between this, Harvey having a gun literally fall at his feet and Eileen dumping one on the Red Rec, perhaps you simply can't go for a stroll in Weatherfield without tripping over a firearm).
Also, how did they know to take Gary to the exact spot in the woods where he killed Rick? There was only the two of them there and Rick's body was found somewhere else, because Gary moved it in the middle of the pandemic after people started showing up with metal detectors. It was all contrived, inelegant nonsense that failed on pretty much every level. It wasn't even very exciting. And after all that, nobody even died, so it was a bit of a waste of time.
PS: note for ITV's PR department. Before you go boasting about the revolutionary special effects processes used in the filming, maybe have a look at them?
BUMPWATCH! I didn't realise Julia Goulding was pregnant until very recently, but now I know that fact, it's all I can see. I hope they have a better plan for her maternity leave than giving her brain damage again. In the meantime, let's amuse ourselves by watching out for how they conceal her pregnancy. There's her inexplicable attachment to her jacket, above.
There's a conveniently placed convertible car.
And there's a large yellow cushion. Keep your eyes peeled for future favourites such as "big basket of washing", "high counter", and, of course, "small child being hugged right in front of her at all times".
Keep your treasures close. The obvious highlight of the week (apart from Dev's drunken speech at the party) was the Saga of Hayley's Coat. I particularly enjoyed all the significant shots of the coat in the box, peeking out like the Ark of the Covenant at the end of
Raiders of the Lost Ark, and culminating in the man from the charity shop carrying it away in this extremely natural and not at all contrived fashion:
But who cares, because it lead to a storyline where Roy and Evelyn palled about, with Nina and Bernie in support. I can't be the only person who'd have been happy if this week's episodes had been purely about them scouring the charity shops of Greater Manchester and then in the last couple of minutes someone said
"oh yeah, Kelly's moved to Thailand, what a shame." The coat storyline was sweet and funny and had actual stakes I cared about - I
really want Roy to recover it, while I wasn't particularly bothered if Kelly got pushed off that rooftop. It also lead to some great comedy, like when the aggrieved old lady retrieved her coat and hinted that she needed volunteers, leading to Evelyn replying
"of course Roy and I... will be happy to ask around". I know it doesn't look like much but it made me giggle furiously. You can chuck as many CGI bottles and gunshots and high speed chases at the screen as you like,
Corrie: you'll never be
Die Hard and you should give it up. You're just no good at it. Be the small, cheery domestic drama you were created to be and actually succeed at.
If they kill Aadi I will be absolutely furious. Contact me on Twitter @merseytart if you want to join my protest outside the ITV Studio gates.
5 comments:
The only thing I agree with you is I'd be furious if they kill off Aadi. And I do enjoy the plotline with Roy and Evelyn, but it was slightly unrealistic, of course the red coat would be found immediately because charity shops are easy to find. Or to call around. It is in Manchester, not London!
I throughly enjoyed Kelly's final storyline, and thugs are thickhead as usual. That is why it wouldn't work. I enjoyed the special shots and I hope to see more of it in the future. I am glad that no one had to die. I was convinced that Kelly would die. The producers must have learnt from previous mistakes.
I also really like Stephen's storyline because, it brings all the Platts together which is a real treat. I wonder if Stephen will off Shona so she leave the show altogether? Whilst it may be a repeat of Richard Hillman's storyline, it could be simply just an inspiration for Stephen and it is slightly different because Audrey refused to think badly of her son whereas Audrey was sure Richard was rotten to the core. Nick is the neteural one here, where David is suspected and Sarah, Audrey and Gail are blind. I look forward to see the story unfold even more. A great call, brining back Stephen.
Great post Scott.
I agree - the Kelly plot was contrived nonsense and it looked very hastily written, because framing Kelly for Gary's murder didn't make sense.
She's a fab actress but I'm just wondering if Millie Gibson was in fact, written out of the soap?
The Neelan family had reached the end of the line but I feel there was plenty of mileage left in Kelly - she could have married Aadi at Gretna green, they could have settled into a flat and then, bored with domestic life, she could have an affair and got pregnant - and there's another 'Who's the daddy?' storyline.
(By the way, I'm still convinced that Alfie is Kevin's).
Although Millie has said she's sad to leave Corrie, I haven't read that she made a decision to quit.
If Roy was that bothered about Hayley's coat, why did he dump it in a cardboard box and shove it in back of the wardrobe?
Ha ha brill read. Steves is a bit like richard hillman, well a poundland version
Love Kelly and Aadi. And Aadi and Dev-they're great together. Stephen is great, the sauve, self-important manner concealing a hair trigger temper. At the moment he reminds me more of Stape, the accidental killer than Hillman. But Audrey, with her history of suicide attempts, had better watch out. Once Stephen steals her money she'll be the obvious target with a faked suicide to get her out of the way...Now it's clearer why the PTB had her try to kill herself (out of the blue). It's setting up this story with her son.
What these soap opera writers (and writers of a lot of TV dramas) forget is that story comes from character. Get this right and you don't need dramatic plot driven storylines, which don't work.
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