Ten Things We Learned In Corrie This Fortnight

Because of Reasons, I was unable to write my usual load of old guff last week, even thought I'd made notes and everything.  Instead you can have double the blog this week!  To compensate, I've halved the number of jokes.

Long live the new flesh.  After months of being unseen, we finally got an appearance from a much discussed character.  No, not DeeDee Bailey - we'll get to her.  I am in fact talking about Tim's penis, which went from being the subject of innumerable lengthy conversations and innuendo to actually flopping out in front of Fiz and Mary.  Once again I am asking if there is a writer with some kind of personal obsession with the contents of Joe Duttine's trousers.  That sort of thing should be discouraged.

Goodness how did that get there etc etc.  Anyway, now that Tim's Penis has appeared in person on the Street, I look forward to him continuing to pop out and cause a stir. It wasn't very impressive, according to Fiz, but (a) it was a cold day in October and (b) all new characters are a bit rubbish until they've had time to settle in - look at Daisy.  By this time next year Tim's Penis will be running Underworld and will have its own tankard behind the bar at the Rovers.

Murder is easy (again).  Yes, I'm getting to Leo's murder after discussing Tim's chopper, what's your point.  After Big Murder Week culminated in a grand total of zero actual murders the writers had to satisfy their insatiable blood lust somehow so Leo was dropped into a bin, leaving me feeling very smug for noticing Stephen was transforming into Richard Hillman.  I'm not often right; let me have this one.  Poor Leo was destined to die the minute he went up on that balcony; new bits of set only appear when they are to be used for nefarious purposes.  Tina got a balcony on the builder's yard flat about a week before she was shoved off it, and nobody's used it since.  

Sadly this means Jenny will probably never cop off with his hot dad Teddy, as he now seems to hate her guts.  Meh, Leo was kind of boring, and certainly not good enough for Dame Jenny Bradley, and he was actually a bit useless at fixing sinkholes too so it's not a great loss.  Stephen, for his part, spent one week having black and white flashbacks, then the second week larking around in the back of shot with a double Scotch he suddenly had the money to pay for.  I'm simultaneously rolling my eyes at yet another murder spree and hoping he clubs his awful ex-wife to death and drops her in the Irwell.  I don't like murder in Corrie, but if you're going to do it, make it stupid and accidental and a little bit daft.  More people inadvertently falling off furniture, fewer thugs running around with "shooters".

Murder is boring.  Speaking of killers, I really, really don't care about Stu's murder plot.  I don't care if the real killer was his wife or his daughter or J Edgar Hoover.  This is all an irrelevance, something that happened to people long before I knew them, and contains none of the details or interest to make me engage with it.  It's like tuning into Broadchurch at episode eight and expecting to find it engaging - this all happened decades ago to a character we never met, who gives a monkey's?  

On top of that we've got a whole "restaurant in financial trouble" storyline about six weeks after the last "restaurant in financial trouble" storyline.  Presumably Roy's Rolls is going to hit the skids somewhere around Christmas.  I'm really not sure why anyone is bothered there's a murderer in the kitchen.  I've never gone into a restaurant and demanded a CRB check on every member of staff before I eat, and with good cause.  Kitchen work is a perfect environment to rehabilitate prisoners; it's low skill, with the opportunity to acquire new knowledge and qualifications, it's not customer facing, it's providing a service.  Jamie Oliver founded an entire restaurant based on the concept of training ex-cons, while The Clink charity opens up eateries staffed by prisoners actually inside prisons.

And if it's really that much of a bother... sack him.  In a nice way of course; he can still live at number 6.  Stu's been basically begging to be let go for months so fine, give him a nice reference and a glowing CV, pass him on to one of the many restaurants in Greater Manchester looking for capable staff, and put an ad in the Wethy Gazette saying you have a new chef.  Then take Stu back on in six months when everybody's moved on with their lives.  

Kick your way down south.  Goodbye James; good luck to you in That London.  I'm sure a handsome homosexual sportsman will have a devil of a time making friends in the south.  It's hard to really be bothered that James is gone because he was always a plotline that was somehow given a pair of legs and allowed to walk around the Street.  James was a GAY FOOTBALLER and he had no existence beyond that.  All his storylines - both of them - revolved around him being a GAY FOOTBALLER, until they ran out of material for that and he became a GAY FOOTBALLER WHO IS ALSO BLACK.  The fact that he was created purely to explore homosexuality in professional football, and then they utterly fudged the story, makes it even worse.  Nobody really cared that James was geh, I mean, gay.  He came out to his teammates, and there was a token homophobe, and everyone else was supportive.  He came out to the fans, and there was a token homophobe, and everyone else was supportive.  He came out to his family, and Ed was homophobic for about four minutes, and then he changed his mind offscreen and basically pushed James into Danny's bed.  It brushed the whole storyline under the carpet, positing a fantasy world where nobody really cares and gay footballers should just get on with it.  If it's that unimportant, why was James so afraid of coming out in the first place, and why was Jake Daniels coming out earlier this year such a news event that even the Prime Minister was motivated to issue a supportive statement?

James has now gone off to London to be with Danny, that character we'd all forgotten about the second he left the show, and I suspect he'll go the same way.  Don't be surprised if in a couple of years Dee Dee is talking about being an only child.  (Yes I know there's Michael too but would you miss him if he left?)

Embrace the theatrical.  Now Strictly is back on BBC One, ITV may as well pack up of a Saturday night and show the test card because nobody's bothering with the light channel.  As such, I have a suggestion: mount and film the play that they're rehearsing on Corrie.  I really want to see this production.  I can't work out what it's about or where it's set.  The accents are baffling, the performances are astonishing, the script has been written by Huw out of EastEnders and Ken Barlow so is bound to be incredible; really, what have you got to lose?  Admittedly I'm still irritated that we never got to see An Evening With Mary Taylor but come on, this has got to be better than The Masked Dancer.  Although the strangest plot twist is that Huw fancies Wendy Crozier.  He's... heterosexual?  This flamboyant theatrical director has been one of the straights all along?  What a waste.  I'm hoping he is at least bisexual, and will hook up with Todd at the earliest possible juncture.  Or bring in Lenny from EastEnders and let them finally bow to the secret love we all knew they harboured for one another.

Just say no.  I would like to make a formal apology.  Over the past few months, I have called Summer and Aaron boring, tedious and soul sucking.  I have found their endless wanging on about diabetes the televisual equivalent of mogadon.  I have found the wallpaper in Billy's flat infinitely more fascinating than the machinations of these two at the front of screen.  I'm very sorry for all this.  Because it turns out there's something worse than these two being earnest, and it's them trying to be fun.  "Let's do something spontaneous!" said Summer, and they decided to buy a kite.  Woah, slow down there you party animals!  Instead they ended up stoned, and became somehow even more irritating.  Wow man, they've got the munchies!  Space brownies!  Duuuuuuude!  If only their drug-addled brains had mixed up the quantities in the recipe; they could've overdosed on sugar and done us all a favour.

It was fascinating seeing Billy's horrified reaction to Summer getting a little bit out of her head.  That's Billy who was once a heroin addict.  Be glad she's only doing a bit of weed Billy, and not, say, shooting up in a pew.  Similarly, Paul was absolutely disgusted to hear about it, and come on, are we meant to believe Paul is anti-cannabis?  Paul, who grew up on a rough estate and has been in prison?  Paul, whose mum is Bernie?  Bernie is constantly talking about being off her face at the Hacienda in the 90s.  You probably couldn't see the front door through the fog of pot smoke when he was growing up.  I suppose ITV doesn't want to be accused of encouraging drug use, and to be fair, making Summer and Aaron the resident stoners is a great way of doing it.  No teenager is going to look up to those two slices of white bread as cool role models.

Let's all play jig tig.  One sad result of Johnny Connor's death was the end of the Rovers Monday Night Quiz.  I loved that as a subplot, as something they kept returning to; it was a proper pub staple that the Rovers absolutely should be doing.  So I was delighted when it was brought back this week, and even more delighted when it was an absolute riot.  Glenda obviously turned out to be the perfect hostess, getting the residents to do increasingly insane games that she probably learned on an 18-30 holiday.  I'm disappointed she didn't find an excuse to sing but it's early days.  Even more delightfully, the ladies of the Rovers all went in the back room and talked about how awful men are, which is brilliant.  More of that.  I miss when every episode of Corrie had the bar staff turning up for work and Bet pouring them out a cup of tea for a gossip before they started.  Admittedly there's about eight hundred members of staff at the Rovers now, but the women can all go in the back and Sean can stay behind the bar.  He won't be missed.

Also, how lovely was it to see the Rovers absolutely rammed with people enjoying themselves?  I've really missed that.  I know Covid numbers are back on the up, but can we please all be sensible out in the real world so we can have a nice full pub again.

Don't threaten us with a good time.  There was a delicious hint of a storyline during the Hayley's Coat Saga when Evelyn was forced to volunteer in a charity shop.  She duly turned up on the Monday, was berated for being late, and handed a box of manky rubbish to go through.  By the end of the episode she was a ball of frustration and anger and we waited for her to unleash her sharp tongue on the manageress.  Instead she did... nothing.  She simply walked out of the shop.  Worse was to come, when she walked out of the show, so Maureen Lipman can go and do a one woman play.  What a waste!  What an utter waste of a fantastic set up!  Evelyn vs a charity shop could've gone on for months and instead it was used as a ham-fisted way to get Dame Maureen out of the programme.  It's not filling me with hope for when Shona goes on her maternity leave, let's put it that way.  And does this mean that Hayley's Coat is definitely, finally lost forever?

Give me a Dee!  It's nice when a new character arrives in the show and they're just... good.  George had it, Glenda had it, and now Dee Dee's got it.  She's charming and clever and fun and I want to see more of her.  She's finally given Alya a friend, she's obviously ready to take over Imran's empty desk at Barlow Legal Services, and she has a nice healthy dose of sexual tension with Zeedan.  I'm not so keen on this idea that she's also a bit scatty; that feels like one idea too many, a bit like Aggie's terrible cooking, but it can be quietly dropped over time.  As usual though, we are forced to ask where she's sleeping at number 3.  And actually, why is she sleeping at number 3?  Spend some of that LA money on a hotel!

Perhaps Aggie can confide in her only daughter about her friendship with Tim.  I'm not sure why she's keeping it a secret, other than for plot reasons so everyone can think they're having an affair later.  It's 2022, Corrie, men and women can be friends without having sex with one another!

Make mine a double.  Bernie's subterfuge, pretending to be Fern at a driving skills course, went swimmingly, so she offered to do it again for her.  My question is, how much doubling work does one person need?  Is Fern regularly having to hide from the paps or something?  Maybe she can't be bothered attending a Brookside reunion or a Blackadder convention and she can send Bernie along, but that seems like an irregular occurrence.  Besides, Bernie's not going to have much time on her hands now she's back with Dev.  I get the feeling those two are absolutely filthy together and will spend much of the next few weeks in bed.  I hope Aadi and Asha have got some industrial strength earplugs.

Well that was a bit much, wasn't it boys and girls?  I'm off for a lie down in a darkened room now.  Send messages of support via Twitter @merseytart.

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