Five Things We Learned In Corrie This Week

Be prepared.  I was delighted when Roy revealed he'd packed a Thermos of tea for his confrontation with Carla.  At least, I assumed he did it specially; now that I think about it isn't it entirely in character for him to have a flask of PG Tips at the ready at all times?  You never know when you're going to need a soothing mug of char.  He seemed pretty horrified to learn he'd nearly burnt Simon to death while sleepwalking.  Cast your mind back a year and Roy was fighting Simon off when he mugged Audrey and getting robbed by the little scrote's gang of thugs; I'd call that karmic retribution personally.  Anyway, it ended up with Roy handing himself into the police; we've now reached the stage where the coppers don't even have to come out and arrest people for crimes they didn't commit - the cast save them the leg work and do it for them.  

You can go off a bloke.  I have been nurturing a not-so-secret crush on Paul ever since he arrived.  I'm not sure what it is about him, but I think about 85% of it can be boiled down to that nose, which is adorable.  However, last night's episode made me reconsider as he declared he didn't like Madonna because though he is gay "I'm not a cliche."  I found myself rolling my eyes.  Paul is one of those gays.  I bet his Grindr profile says "ordinary bloke who happens to be gay" and "masc4masc" and he is very keen to tell you he really likes football and never got bullied at school.  Homosexuality is a broad church, Paul, and you don't have to put one lot down to make yourself feel better; we welcome all sorts here.  Also, not liking Madonna is just plain wrong.  You're denying yourself thirty years of absolute top notch pop music.  You need to buy yourself The Immaculate Collection and educate yourself in how ace she is before Sally's Night of 1000 Madonnas party - if that's still on after Kevin robbed the money for a conveniently phone-free holiday.  I hope it is, because I really want to see the outfits.  With any luck it'll be better than the Madonna episode of RuPaul's Drag Race where everyone turned up in a kimono.  Though wouldn't you love to see Beth wearing Valentina's Sex-era inspired outfit?

RuPaul's Drag Race!  That's another Good Thing you're missing out on, Paul.  It's so much more fun than Top Gear.

Food innovation should be encouraged.  Mary turned up at the garage with a huge pile of sandwiches for Tyrone, announcing that it wasn't his lunch, but was instead his "brinner" - a mid-morning meal between breakfast and dinner.  As a hungry lad I am very pro this new mealtime, and would suggest further meals at "dinea" (dinner and tea) and "teaper" (tea and supper).  Get it right and you can be chomping on grub 24/7.  Of course they'll have to take the roof off to winch your bloated corpse out of the house with a crane but you'll die happy.

It's too little, too late.  There's no point threatening to perform a vasectomy on Tyler now, Tracy; the damage has been done.  It did seem to knock him straight though, as by the end of the week he was working hard in the Bistro, having serious and thoughtful chats with Amy and looking all puppy dog lost.

Bad boys in the Street never last long (remember when Gary was a thuggish scally rather than the clean cut family man he is today?) but that may be the quickest clean up act in history.  Perhaps we should get Tracy in the probation system delivering short sharp shocks to young offenders.

If you want a job done right, do it yourself.  Kate spent most of the week whining because Rana had invited everyone on their list to the wedding.  Apparently they had an "A" and a "B" list of guests, and I found myself wondering how Kate has that many friends in the first place, because she is incredibly dull.  The invites got previously unmentioned school pal Lolly out of the woodwork, burbling away like a one-off character who really wants to do a Gemma and be made permanent.  Lolly invited herself to the wedding, and also demanded to be put at a table full of eligible men; you do know this is a lesbian wedding, don't you Lol?  Kate, of course, sulked the whole time and complained that Rana had completely overstepped the mark and should sort it out.  Tell you what, if you want only the absolute top drawer people at your wedding, why not take some responsibility and send out the invites yourself?

Amy has been up the duff for ages now and we've still had no reaction from Ken.  Has he been kidnapped?  Is he locked up in the cellar?  Has he gone to wherever Adam went for a lad's holiday?  If you've seen him, please let the author know on Twitter @merseytart.

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Five Things We Learned In Corrie This Week

There's a place for everything.  They're rushed off their feet at Webster's Auto Centre, probably because they still haven't replaced Abi.  (Ok, we get you don't want to take her back, Kev, but I'm sure that there are other unemployed grease monkeys in the Greater Manchester area).  That doesn't mean you should let standards slip.  That board up there has carefully marked out spots for the spanners and not one of them is in the right place.  Just looking at it is making my OCD itch; if I'd been Dev I'd have had to stop the conversation dead so I could sort them out.  Put things back where you got them from, Ty, you lazy swine.  No wonder you need help looking after that tiny little child if you can't even be bothered to match your tools up properly.

Accidents will happen.  It was another Stunt Week, as Peter's boat went up in flames and he carried out a one man rescue mission to drag Simon out of the cabin.  Not to belittle his achievement or anything but the crowd gasped at his jump from Underworld's balcony like he'd performed the bungee jump from the start of GoldenEye rather than dropping about six inches.  His derring-do meant that Simon survived, the boy's incredibly clever idea of "closing the door and hoping for the best" having inconceivably failed to work.  The real star moment was in a casual line of dialogue dropped by Gail, where she revealed she'd taken Max and Lily "over the back fence" the minute she realised there was a fire.  Now that I would've liked to see: Gail haring down the lawn in her dressing gown then toppling over the wood one pyjama'd leg at a time.

The mystery of who was responsible for the fire wasn't really a mystery at all - I'm sure we all recognised those slacks knocking the lamp over - though Carla is doing her best to keep it all hidden, for some reason.  I'm not entirely sure why; it was clearly an accident, there was no malice intended, and chucking Roy's jacket in the tip raises more questions than it answers.  Perhaps she's realised that it's been a whole month since Sally was released from prison so the producers need to lock up another innocent woman quick to get their money's worth out of that set.

Pass on your immunities.  Monday's episodes included a random game of Pass the Banana.  Not the usual kind of pass the banana on this show, the one that usually involves Steve McDonald getting yet another woman pregnant, but in this case a wholesome game where a single piece of fruit was forced into the unwilling hand of a passer by; the winner was the one who actually managed to eat it.  Paul started off with the banana, then gave it to Summer once he realised she'd not had any breakfast (trying to get in with the dad by befriending the kid eh, Paul?  Sneaky).

Summer gripped it for about a minute, Billy clearly never having told her not to accept gifts from very strange men,  before she found a reason to pass it on to Amy.  Pregnant women do need all the potassium they can get, even if, as in Amy's case, they very clearly don't want to have a baby at all and just wish you'd all shut up about it.

But who would end up the victor and get to finally consume the magic fruit?

Well played, Peter Barlow.  Well played.

Chesney serves an unimaginative picnic.  Gemma's mouth got her into trouble with Joseph and Chesney a couple of times during the week.  Most obviously, there was her loud exclamation after she burnt her hand on the dinner.  I ran a poll on Twitter debating what she actually shouted out and the verdict seemed to be the F-word, though I secretly wish it was something from the more obscure pages of the Profanisaurus like "Flying Horse".  Gemma also caused blushes earlier on when her suggestion of a "quickie" was explained away by Chesney as a "quiche".  Shockingly, Joseph didn't know what a quiche was and Ches had to explain it away as an "eggy pie".  I know Weatherfield is still a salt-of-the-earth, working class, pie and flat cap world, but quiche isn't the middle-class obscurity it once was; I'm sure that Co-op by the tram stop has got an extensive range at inexpensive prices.  Treat yourself, Chesney, if only to stop yet another kid on the Street turning orange due to excessive consumption of cheap fish fingers.

Gurns are forever.  There's something weirdly touching about that picture of Steve in what should be a charming family shot.  All he had to do was smile, but no, instead he pulled the widest of grimaces, like he was guest starring in a Wallace and Gromit.  He doesn't even know he's doing it any more.  I can practically hear Tracy stood next to the photographer, sighing as they took the eighteenth shot of the day, Amy's legs cramping up and her requests that Steve look just a little bit normal, just once, going on deaf ears.  "Just send us the best one," she says resignedly, while Steve wonders what the fuss was about.

I'm pretty sure there's one person out there who actually cares what happens to Clayton.  If you are this person - and you're not Shona - please contact the author on Twitter @merseytart.

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Five Things We Learned In Corrie This Week

Scousers here, Scousers there, Scousers every ****ingwhere.  It's always a pleasure to see comedy stalwart Victor McGuire back on our screens; it was a shame was he didn't get a scene with Cathy, thus reuniting Jack Boswell with Aveline Mark II.  The real problem was here was it was a Liverpudlian actor turning up in the show and, of course, he was dodgy as hell.  Can we stop doing this?  I wrote a blog about it on this very site five years ago and we're still only getting Scousers when there's something bad happening.  Big Garth's appearance comes hot on the heels of Marcia and her thick Merseyside accent beating seven bells out of Sally, while the soil has barely settled on Pat Phelan's grave after years of causing havoc.  Add into that Evelyn telling Tyrone that when his mum disappeared to Liverpool she came back a drug addict and Clayton wanting to be moved to an open prison in the city (fact: the nearest open prison to Manchester is Thorne Cross, near Warrington).  Let's have a nice, wholesome Scouser for a change, eh, Corrie?  Hilda and Len were both from Liverpool, and they were great.  Bring in David Morrissey as a homeless outreach worker.  Paul O'Grady as a kennel worker.  Kate Robbins as a friend for Mary.  Anyone.

Don't bring your morals into Get A Groom.  You'd think that, after so recently reuniting and rediscovering their passion, Nicky and Leanne would only have eyes for one other.  Apparently not as Nicky spent most of Wednesday's episodes trying to hire a buxom hair stylist for their increasingly horrific looking barbershop (table football?  A stuffed weasel?  Urgh.)  Poor Jessica was smiling and enthusiastic and immediately marked down as an 8.5; that missing 1.5 was presumably because her outfit had absolutely no hint of cleavage.  Both of Gail's boys were absolutely gross throughout, sniggering behind their hands and gleefully telling their niece of their plans to exploit women for their physical attributes.  That would be the same niece who spent much of 2017 being sexually exploited by pervy men, so well done on the sensitivity front.  It all collapsed when Leanne and Shona intervened, though all they did was a little public humiliation, rather than, say, kneeing them in the crotch and leaving them incapable of rubbing themselves over interviewees in future.  Hopefully the next applicant is a woman who looks like a hot water heater in a pac-a-mac and they have to employ her to stop Imran starting a class action sexual harassment suit.

You can forget your roots.  Looking at Rita granting Brian an audience in her gracious drawing room, it was easy to mistake her for a minor member of the Royal Family - one of the Kents, perhaps.  All that white wood and artfully placed crystal and flowers; it's like she went up to the mezzanine level at Weatherfield Dunelm and said "I'll take it all!".  Poor Brian up there is one step away from genuflecting.  It's easy to forget that when our Reet started in the show she was a singer-slash-dancer who was living over the brush with a married man, and she spent much of the early Seventies in tight spangly outfits being a sort of Northern Shirley Bassey.  Now she's one step away from being carried round the Street on a sedan chair.  In Friday's episode she even affected ignorance about what a "Snakebite" was.  You don't fool me, Rita - if Bet Lynch came back to town and spat "pals" at you again you'd have leapt over the counter at the Kabin and ripped out her extensions before anyone could say "clapped out chorus girl".

Roy now serves apple slices in peanut butter.  Bless him.  He has a successful cafe that serves up nothing but grease, fried food and cakes, but now there's a Costa down the road he's decided to try something a bit more healthy and wholesome to get the Yummy Mummies in.  I'll stick with a bacon barm, ta.

Emma is a treasure.  To be honest, I could've made every single one of these Five Things about Alexandra Mardell and her delightful creation Emma, because she continues to be one of the best things to happen to the show in years.  She started the week with Chesney, still, and helping him to rescue Gemma by turning in a spectacular performance as his over-enthusiastic fiance.

When their scam was finally discovered Garth referred to her as "Dame Judi Dench", a comparison she was thrilled by. (Imagine if Emma decided to go into acting.  It could be like Raquel's attempts to be a model, only with dreams of Mother Courage at the National being downgraded to "chorus girl in the local am dram Dick Whittington".) 

She followed up her award-needing performance with a selflessly classy act, stepping aside so that Chesney and Gemma could have a big slobbery kiss.  This is good news all round: if Gemma has Chesney's tongue in her mouth she can't do any shouting (seriously, when you're locked in the back of a van and afraid of discovery, try whispering instead of bellowing) and Emma can go on to find a boyfriend who appreciates her brilliance.  By the end of the week she was behind the bar of the Rovers, admittedly in a very ad hoc fashion, but it was still wonderful to see.  I love you Em; you should be in every scene, calling gravy "a hug from the inside" and overcharging Cathy for two small orange juices.  Long may you reign.

Thankfully, this week also saw the end of Johnny and Jenny's aggro.  Hopefully this means he'll start treating her like the Queen she is.  Celebrate with the author over on Twitter @merseytart.

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