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“Coronation Street” recap: ‘Twas the night before mayhem

For as long as I’ve been catching up with Corrie, people have been sending me emails and PMs and Tweets about the show’s 50th anniversary and how the writers planned to set the whole world on fire. My initial response was “eh…” and “meh…” because I’ve clocked too many hours of mad-hyped game-changing American TV in which my favorite shows delivered neither “game” nor “changes.” But then, I should have learned my lesson ages ago about doubting Corrie, eh?

The week of their 50th anniversary, Corrie blew up a shop and crashed a tram into the street. It’s a tricky thing to recap because Sophie and Sian didn’t feature too much in the actual crash drama – though Brooke Vincent and Sacha Parkinson acted the hell out of their limited scenes – but games were changed for pretty much everyone around them. Sophie and Rosie are going to be feeling the ramifications of the crash for … at least the next 18 years.

So, ‘Twas the week before Christmas and Sally just could not stop inviting Molly and Tyrone to spend the holidays with her family. Kevin kept telling her to leave it, but Molly phoned and faxed and Tweeted and texted and Facebooked and Tumbled and blogged and hollered and hand-signed and owl posted invitations for Molly and Kevin and SECRET BABY to come on over for some egg nog and pudding. Perhaps SECRET BABY could even stay with the Webster’s on Christmas Eve!

The best part of all Kevin/Sally exchanges are, of course, Rosie’s responses to Kevin/Sally exchanges.

Rosie: You hear that, Soph? Baby Jesus is coming to stay!

Sophie: Or maybe it’s Santa for you with some clothes that actually fit!

Sophie and Sian are in for the night (and thank Santa for that; I’d heard several rumours that Sian was going to get smashed by that tram!). They ask if Sally is going to the stag night/hen party situation happening at the pub, but she sends Kevin out for pudding instead. At the shop are Molly and SECRET BABY. Molly has just come from a six-hour breakup with Tyrone, in which he kept emptying her suitcase and standing in front of the door and stomping his feet and demanding that Molly do something to hurt him even more. And so she did: “Yes, I’m leaving you at Christmas, and I realize that makes me seem like a serious dick, but for my next trick: SECRET BABY is not your baby!”

Molly begs Kevin to leave his family at Christmas too, and he’s like, “But the ice cream will melt.” And Molly fully goes, “Crazier things have happened!”

Kevin leaves the shop and pretty much as soon as he’s out the door, there’s an explosion and then the tram derails and crashes directly into Coronation Street. The graphics are really good. I mean, I watch a lot of British TV with SFX – God bless you, Merlin – and this is top-notch stuff. Everyone rushes to the scene and there’s screaming and crying and more explosions and just fire, fire everywhere.

Molly and SECRET BABY are trapped in the rubble of the shop; so is Saunita. My darling Rita is also trapped in her shop, and when I saw her there I was more than willing to trade Molly, SECRET BABY, Tyrone, Ashley – who is also trapped – and both of Sian’s parents for her life. Possibly some other people on the street, too, if you want to know the truth. That guy who kidnapped Rosie, for starters.

The emergency team arrives and places everyone behind a barrier so they can cry and wail and break my heart. Tyrone and Kevin dig around and try to save SECRET BABY and also possibly Molly. Rosie’s boyfriend, Hot Jason, is a hero. Remember that kid who knocked his noggin on the floor and almost died? And everyone thought Sophie and Sian had been smacking him ’round the head? That kid’s got perspective. When Jason pulls him out of the fire, he literally goes, “It’s a bit smoky in there.”

Kevin and Tyrone and the emergency team manage to unearth SECRET BABY and so Kevin and Tyrone ride with SECRET BABY in the ambulance to the hospital (starting what will be one long night of back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth for Tyrone. “Ring me if you hear anything!” he always shouts, before returning ten seconds later, all, “Anything new?”)

Sally inexplicably convinces a rescue worker to let her climb down into the rubble of a collapsing building to comfort Molly. Sophie, Sian and Rosie take it in turns to scream at her that she is insane and they’re scared too and how f-cking dare she leave her own children to risk her life to hold some random neighbor’s hand in a burning building. As soon as she gets down there, Sally’s like, “Molly, you never replied to my invitation. Are you and Tyrone and SECRET BABY coming ’round for Christmas?”

What happens next is so well-acted and dramatic that I didn’t breathe for about 20 solid minutes, but I’m not going to reacp the actual dialogue. What’s important is that Molly’s like, “I’ll be dead in ten minutes; how many lives can I destroy before I stop breathing?” And then she tells Sally the whole sordid truth about her affair with Kevin and how they loved each other but that Kevin chose her and the girls in the end and – *death rattle* *death rattle* *huff, huff, huff* – SECRET BABY was fathered by … KEVIN’S PENIS.

Sally’s face, you guys. Just … here.

And that’s the last thing Molly sees before she dies.

Sally confronts Kevin when he finds her sitting in the cold in the dark in their home, and it’s horrible. It’s so horrible. The way she leads up to it and talks around it and just – gah! Heart-wrenching. She tells him to get out of her house and that it’s over between them. Never mind that the street’s burning down and their kids are just camping out at the pub. They gotta work this shit out right this second.

The end result of the tram crash, as far as the Websters are concerned: Mistresses dead, 1. SECRET BABIES’ paternity revealed, 1. Marriages in mayhem, 1. Lesbians still alive, 2.

And guess who else lived – because she is INVINCIBLE?

Oh, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes, my darling Rita! You gorgeous oracle! You lone reed of reason swaying upon the moors of myopia!

Tyrone moves in with the Websters for some inexplicable reason. Actually, maybe there is an explicable reason. Another thing we learned during the tram crash is that Tyrone has never held SECRET BABY before. In fact, it is possible, Tyrone has never held ANY babies before.

Good thing for everyone, Sophy knows what she’s doing. In fact, she’s pretty much the sole caretaker of the baby right now. And by “the baby” I mean “SECRET BABY” and SECRET BABY’S “dad” and her own “parents.”

She has to ask her mum to put on the kettle to calm everyone down; she has to ask her dad to buy nappies so SECRET BABY doesn’t have to sleep in his secret piss; she has to tell everyone to STFU with their SECRET DRAMA because SECRET BABY has finally drifted off to sleep. (Sian’s gone to stay with her mum for a bit, by the way. Sometimes a queer teenager faces the ultimate dilemma: Parental homophobia/apathy or random train explosions.)

This frees up Rosie to do some sleuthing. And her sleuthing leads her to believe that something weird is going on with her parents.

Rosie: Sophie, do you think this is a bit too dark? I mean, I know it’s a funeral, but I don’t want to look look like some tragic emo.

Sophie: I don’t think anyone will notice because – believe it or not – today’s not actually about you.

Rosie: Well, at least I’m going – unlike Mum.

Sophie: Maybe she’s too upset.

Rosie: Yeah, whatever.

Sophie: And what is that meant to mean?

Rosie: Haven’t you noticed: There’s been a really weird atmosphere around here recently, like, I don’t know, Mum and Dad are trying to hide something from us?

Sophie: Well … like what?

Rosie: I dunno – because they’re hiding it.

I will tell you right now: I want to see a Corrie spinoff in which Rosie Webster is a private investigator. I would pay actual money to watch that show.

After the funeral, Rosie finds Kevin drowning his sorrows/guilt in a bottle of Scotch. She’s like, “Dad, seriously, WTF?” And he’s like, “Here’s fifty quid; go buy yourself something nice.” And she’s like, “Oooh, shiny! Cheers!” But on the way to the door she does have the good sense to turn back and say, “Dad, do yourself a favor and don’t become an alcoholic. Mum already hates you.”

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