Where's Alex?

Originally published on The State of the Street. Reposted with permission.

Inspired by an anonymous comment here.

Nessa is the mother of Alex, a 28 year old lad with Down's Syndrome. He's pretty independent and often seemed to cause his mother worry when he'd go off on his own after an argument with her. He'd sometimes end up at his Auntie Cathy's house, looking for a sympathetic smile. We first met him under those circumstances. Cathy let her sister know where he was and that he was safe. Alex showed up again a few weeks later and Nessa came to fetch him that time.

It wasn't the first or the last time Alex would go walkabout, much to his mother's chagrin even if he often complained and moaned that he was 28, after all. And mostly, other than having to be told more than once that he should at least let his mother know where he is and if he's coming home, he seemed capable of looking after himself.

Enter Ken Barlow and Nessa's new crusade to bag herself a new man. Yet another one, if Cathy is to be believed. Seems Nessa regards men like children regard sweets in the candy store window. She just can't resist. So where's Alex now? So much for Nessa's over protectiveness.

The continuity of this is really doing my head in. The first time Alex came to see Cathy, she sent him home on the train. The train, people. And that tells me that Nessa lives a little distance away, perhaps not hours, but in an area enough of a distance from Weatherfield/Manchester to be using faster transport than a bus.

Now, Nessa is working at the salon and is quickly getting her feet under Ken's table. Is she taking the train every day to commute to her job? I know people do that, but there's been no mention of it.

And what about Alex? Nessa is so focussed on Ken that she must be leaving Alex to his own devices pretty much all the time, not just in the daytime while she works, but in her leisure hours, too, because she's with Ken a lot of the time, even overnight, now. But still, no Alex. No messages, no texts. I wonder if she let him know that she wasn't going to be coming home?  She doesn't seem to be the overprotective, anxious mother now. I would love to see Alex come looking for her because she didn't come home and didn't let him know she was safe! Tit for tat, right?

Why isn't Alex invited to a meal now and then with the rest of the Barlow family? What about Christmas? If Nessa is going to be part of the Barlow Christmas, will we see Alex, too? Inquiring minds want to know why the Powers That Be seem to have dropped the ball on this. Alex appears to have been used to introduce Nessa into Ken's world and now he's been forgotten.




Deirdre: A Life on Coronation Street - official ITV tribute to a soap icon. Available here.

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Whatever Happened to Tracy's redemption?

Even more difficult times are ahead for Tracy, who, obnoxious though she is, is having a rough time at the moment.

She is still grieving for her mother, her father has taken up with Nessa, Tony has cleared out the money from the Barlow’s Buys account and, presumably, she is still experiencing great guilt at her causing the death of two completely innocent people.

A while ago, Robert seemed to be on her case. He was trying to encourage her to admit her guilt and she seemed on the very point of doing so. Viewers will recall that Tracy was arrested and there was great jubilation on the cobbles as a result. Carla, in particular, was transformed when it was revealed that she was not guilty of causing the fire and therefore not guilty of the deaths of Kal and Maddie. The drinking, the gambling, the drunkenness were all kicked into touch and now, she is experiencing one of her happiest times on the cobbles. The factory is picking up, the relationship with Nick seems to be going very well and Carla seems the least tortured she has been for some time.  

 But then, for some reason, Tracy was released and since that time, the strange thing is, that there has been barely any mention of the fire. So what is happening? Has the storyline been abandoned? There are references to Maddie, usually by Sophie, and Kal’s memory is invoked frequently when we see how devastated Alya and Zeedan are, and their grandparents too.

It also seemed for a while that Robert might have succeeded in persuading Tracy to move towards some kind of redemption, the first stage of which would have been her confession. Yet it all seems to have dwindled away.

Things are going to get even worse for Tracy. Robert will take a shine to Leanne. Soap magazines are even suggesting that Robert will leave Tracy for Leanne. But hang on a minute. Wasn’t Robert supposed to be devoted to Tracy? All through his marriage to someone else, wasn’t it the case that he couldn’t get Tracy out of his mind? At least, that was what he claimed.

Though this may be a contentious view, I like the fact that Corrie has a female villain. Many say she is surplus to requirements, unconvincing, even ridiculous, but I for one would miss her. Why? I would miss her directness, her snarkiness, her rudeness, her viciousness. the relationships she has with Amy, Ken, Liz, Michelle and the other residents.

If Tracy was redeemed she wouldn’t be Tracy any more, so maybe the whole redemption idea was shelved. In Tracy’s favour, her grief over her mother’s death was real as were her attempts to be nice to Ken and help him recover, though it has to be said that Nessa seems to have been more effective at that.

The much talked about return of Rob, even though he will be pulling strings from his prison cell, may well involve Tracy and her old nemesis Carla. By. then though, she may well have gained another nemesis in Leanne

Deirdre: A Life on Coronation Street - official ITV tribute to a soap icon. Available here.

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Cathy and Nessa, the sister dynamic

Reposted from State of the Street with permission.

Cathy was introduced to us first, on Coronation Street. She was brought in as a recent widow, shy, not very confident and having had her world tossed upside down by the loss of her husband of many years (wasn't it 30 or more?). She probably had the hoarding habit before her Alan died but his death brought it out in full force.

It wasn't all just junk either, it sounded as if she had been on a spending spree, particularly in second hand shops, picking up old items that might be useful someday. She was living amidst clutter that rose so high in some parts of her house that she had to climb up to look out the window and, likely do to this over spending, the bailiffs were at the door.

Roy Cropper lent his support and their friendship and his encouragement seem to have settled her down. She's enjoying life again and looking to her future with a glimmer of hope. Tyrone, Fiz and Chesney packed up her living room but presumably the rest of the house was still aclutter when she moved back in. The hoarding hasn't been mentioned and neither have the bailiffs, something that I guess the storyliners have hoped we've forgotten. I expect now that she's moved home, she's making an effort to clear out her house.

Enter her 28 year old nephew, Alex who showed up at the cafe one day. How he knew that she was living there, we were never told but presumably she did mention it to Alex's mother, her sister, Nessa. But Alex didn't tell his mother where he'd gone. He might be 28 but he's also got Down's Syndrome and once we met his mother, it became clear that she's got a tendency to be overprotective of him, something he seems to be chafing against. There may be a point, though, because he doesn't seem to understand how worried his mother would get when he takes off without notice. In my books, if you're living with someone, you let them know if you won't be coming back overnight or if you'll be later than expected.

Now we meet Nessa and we can see that the two sisters are very different from each other. Where Cathy is quiet, artistic, sympathetic and kind, Nessa is jolly, outgoing, selfish and vibrant. Cathy was married for 30+ years, but Nessa, a live wire, was divorced and is being portrayed as a man-eater. She's certainly enforcing that with her single minded persuit of recent widower, Ken Barlow. That in itself will tell you that she's not thinking of anyone but herself. This isn't a friendship blossoming like Audrey's feelings, this is a woman determined to latch on to a single man, never mind that he's still in heavy grief over his late wife. She's acting a bit like a preying mantis, and Cathy, who values her new friend Ken, is embarassed.

Cathy and Nessa have already had a few confrontations over her persuit of Ken and Cathy has expressed several times that this is not a new thing for Nessa. If she was a man, we'd be calling her a ladies' man who can't keep it in his pants. Calling her a "man's woman" doesn't have the same effect so we use a more mysogenistic term "man eater" which is unfortunate but does get the picture across.

Aside from her unwise quest, I do like Nessa. I like the actor and the character's personality that they've created. I also like the sibling dynamic between Cathy and Nessa, the bickering and the exasperation each seems to carry for the other. Siblings are often very different from each other and quite often there is one that dominates and one that feels pushed to the corner, overwhelmed and jealous of the force of the personality of the one that's always the center of attention. As children, that's difficult at times.

It's also not unusual for that jealousy to hang on into adulthood. It may temper down a lot as the siblings mature and live their own lives but there's always that little fleck of it in the background that rears its ugly head now and then. Cathy was probably always envious of Nessa's ease in social situations and jealous that she always had lots of boyfriends and friends where she herself probably only had a couple of close mates. Perhaps Alan was her first and only love. She wouldn't regret that at all, looking back but as a teenager, while she may have been happy to spend Saturday night in with a good book, may still have been a bit green with her sister rushing around getting ready to go out on yet another date, wishing it were easier for her to talk to boys and have them like her as much.

And maybe we'll also find out that Nessa was jealous of Cathy and her long time stable marriage with a man that loved her very much. Maybe each of them regarded things in the other that they wished were part of their own personality or lives. Nessa loves her son but Cathy never was tied down to the responsibility of a child nor had to bring up a child with disabilities. Cathy would have loved to have a child dearly under any circumstances although if Nessa has always been as flighty as she seems, I think probably Cathy was a second mother to Alex.

I will be interested to see if more of the sister dynamic is explored at all, even if just in dialogue during an argument or conversation one of them has with someone else, that will reveal more insight to each woman. I am not sure I'd like to see Ken and Nessa go the distance only because Nessa isn't really that sympathetic by running after Ken. He's a lonely, grieving man and wouldn't have looked twice at her as other than a new friend but she's determined to draw him in and I can't help thinking it will end in tears.

Meanwhile, it's amusing to see Audrey having Nessa, her rival, working in the Salon and flirting with Ken right under her nose. I can't wait for Tracy to find out and I think Nessa might have met her match there. I don't know how long Nessa is meant to be with the show but I wouldn't mind if they kept her on even if the duo with Ken doesn't last.

Tvor (Twitter @tvordlj)



Deirdre: A Life on Coronation Street - official ITV tribute to a soap icon. Available here.

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Nessa vs Audrey: The fight for Ken's affection

Thursday's Corrie saw Cathy's sister, Nessa Warner, frantically show up on the cobbles searching for her son Alex, who we met a couple of months ago.

As you may or may not know, I was given the privilege of visiting the 'new' set back in August, and I was given an exclusive viewing of scenes that will air next week. It's surreal now seeing pictures like the one below, knowing that I was stood in the same room when they were being acted out.

The scenes I watched will unfold across the coming week, with Ken ultimately being fought over by Audrey and Nessa, who is played by the lovely Sadie Shimmin. From the scenes I've watched, I can see true potential in Sadie's character, as she is sure to rock relationships in No.1 and the Salon in the coming weeks. 

In tomorrow's episode, Nessa's new found friendship with Ken will strengthen, and she will even crack open a bottle of wine at the Barlow's, as the picture above shows the set shortly before the scene commenced. But for poor Audrey, she will begin to feel that her relationship with Ken is threatened by Nessa's presence. 

Be sure to tune in tomorrow, and across the coming week to see the events unfold. You can get a preview of them here. 

You can follow me on Twitter, @MichaelAdamsUk.

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Cathy's sister arrives - and gives Ken the glad-eye

There's a Coronation Street spoiler in The Sun which says Cathy's sister Nessa will arrive on the show - and she sets her cap at Ken.

Nessa is being described as "a man-eater" and it seems likely that she'll be the mum of Cathy's nephew - played by Down's Syndrome actor Liam Bairstow. Read more on him here.

But while Nessa makes it clear that she fancies Ken and give him the glad-eye, it's not clear whether Ken feels the same.

I do hope not, it's far too soon after Deirdre's death.  What do you think?

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