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“Coronation Street” recap: Merry Snogmas and a Happy Shag Year

When last we left our Corrie crew, Baby Jack survived an explosion, but Molly bought a single fare for that great big tram in the sky. Before she boarded her train, though, Molly dropped a little bomb of her own on Sally Webster’s head: Kevin is Baby Jack’s father.

It is the day of Molly’s funeral and if you think that means Sally is going to compartmentalize her feelings of outrage and betrayal for the good of the mourners, you are wrong. Oh, how you are wrong. And all the better for us, because I have scarcely seen a person eat as many crazy cakes in one sitting as Sally Webster. She is storming around and huffing and puffing so huffily and puffily that even the Big Bad Wolf would cower before her. There’s this face Sally makes every time she’s on screen in these episodes, just totally indignant about every single thing. Every sound. Every smell. Every weather pattern is a personal affront to her person.

At the funeral, Tyrone loses his s–t when he’s trying to talk about his dead wife – as you do – and sobs, “Help me. Help me.” The church is the echo-iest place on earth, but still it takes Sophie seven times of hissing, “Dad! Dad! Dad!” before Kevin skulks to the front to take over Tyrone’s eulogy. He begins reading it verbatim: “I always wanted a baby son.” Sally’s head starts spinning around and around and smoke comes out of her ears and a cartoon train whistle, and then she storms right the hell out of that church.

Kevin stumbles over Tyrone’s eulogy, all, “I always loved … er, I mean he – Tyrone, that is – always loved Molly.” Then, halfway through, he stops reading, drops the paper on the floor and sprints out of the church. “What were you thinking running out like that?” Kevin shouts, running out after Sally like that. Sally screeches, “‘I always wanted a son’?! You suck at grammar, you illiterate pig! ‘I’ is first person. ‘He’ is third person! Your inability to change pronouns on the spot proves that you wanted Molly to bear you a child from her slutty womb!”

Later, she literally says these words: “Why didn’t God just strike [Kevin] with lightining? If there was a God, he’d be dead in that grave!” And then these: “I think your father’s beyond prayers, Sophie. I think the devil’s at work in him.” And then these: “Oh, you’re back; I was hoping you’d been run over.” And then these: “He stayed with me last Christmas when all he wanted to do was climb into that tart’s bed! Mince pie, then, Jason?”

Everyone goes to the graveside. Except Sally, who is still storming around and howling like a werewolf inside that echo chamber of a church. Kevin starts to cry. Tyrone looks back and forth between him and the grave, him and the grave, him and the grave. He thinks about Facebook. About how Kevin kept poking Molly. Poking her. Poking her. Poking her. And then he figure it out. “You were the one whoring around with my wife! You were the one who contributed to the sperm to my baby with the weirdly huge head! It was you!”

Sophie shouts, “Dad?!” But before Kevin can answer, Tyrone slugs him and he lands in the grave. Nobody does funeral comedy like the British. As Kevin’s head is thudding against the coffin, the priest tries to calm the row by shouting, “Let’s pray! This is a place of worship!”

Over her own squawking and thrashing around, Sally somehow hears Sophie crying. She runs outside and says, “Sophie, what’s happened?” Sian is chasing after her shouting, “Don’t run away from me, Soph. Don’t walk away from me, Sophie!” And Sophie shouts back, “Leave me alone!” Sian turns and looks at Sally, tears in her eyes: “Why does she push me away?”

Sally ignores Sian, though; she throws her head back and hollers like a banshee. (Sally is a lot like my beagle; she just likes the sound of her own howl.)

After the funeral, Sally drops by a friend’s house. Said friend is watching over Baby Jack. Sally says she’ll put on the kettle, and as soon as her friend’s back is turned, Sally actually gets into a staring contest with newborn. I’m not even joking. This is the face, the one Sally keeps making. It is a wonder to behold.

What happens next is that Sally and Kevin work out their living arrangements like two mature adults. Just kidding! Sally demands that Kevin move out. Kevin pleads with her to show a little compassion. Sally calls the police and reports a domestic disturbance. Kevin brings Baby Jack to live with them. Sally kicks Kevin in the gonads. Kevin pokes Sally in the eyeball. Sally ostracizes Kevin to the conservatory. Kevin steals the television. Sally divides up their food up, and lets the girls eat from her “cupboard overflowing with goodies.”

Rosie has exactly zero qualms about choosing sides. She’s Team Sally, and when Tyrone dumps Baby Jack off and refuses to take him back, Rosie says, “What do you think you’re doing, bringing that in here?” (“That” being a human child.) Then, “Right. That’s it. I’m moving in with Jason. My birthday is not going to be spoiled by a screaming little brat.”

So Sally isn’t allowed at your birthday party, then, Rosie? Oh, well – she’s got a lot on her mind at the moment anyway. Jason buys Rosie some new shoes to ease her pain. It works. (Rosie Webster, I would take you as my lawfully wedded wife.)

Sophie is ripped up. She’s angry at her dad for the affair, but also she loves him, and Baby Jack is her half-brother after all. She flips and flops between shouting at him to leave and begging him not to go.

Sian is sheepish about taking sides, too, but she’s no dummy. She knows the world is not divided into Good People and Death Eaters. And so she says, “I know why Sally and Soph are mad at you, but it’s not like you’re an evil person or anything. And it’s obvious you’re sorry.”

As thanks for her benevolence, Kevin turns on her the next day and starts whinging about how she’s a freeloader who doesn’t pay rent, and so why should she get to eat food from the tasty cupboards, huh? Where is his Curly Wurly bar? He pays the mortgage. Sophie raises her eyebrow and calmly says, “If you say one more unkind thing about my girlfriend – the only person on earth who has shown you compassion, by the way – I will end you. In the meantime, if you need a place to sleep, Sian can move into my room.”

Sally says the the lezzers will not be shacking up together (Spoiler Alert: WRONG!) and that Kevin can sleep in the car.

Upstairs in Sophie’s room Sian says maybe she should move out. And Sophie shuts her down. She says if Sian leaves, she leaves. And her mum needs her too much right now for her to do that. So it’s settled. I have to show you this setup shot because it’s going to come full circle in a minute or two.

On New Year’s Eve, Sian suggests she and Sophie have a cozy night in. Kevin interrupts their interlude to say he’s decided to bounce up out of Sally’s lair after all. He’ll ring when he and his new son get settled somewhere. At that point, there’s nothing for it: Sophie tells her mum some girl from church invited them to a party and that they’ll be home before midnight. It’s a lying lie from Lie Town, UK. She and Sian go to a Feelings Bench – where they got their little gay start! – and toast with some kind of electric blue liquor.

Sian giggles about “girl from church” and is adorable in every way.

Sophie and Sian stumble home and Sally immediately knows they’ve been drinking. “Have you two been drinking?” she demands, kind of affectionately actually. “You know, sometimes I don’t believe you Sophie Webster.”

Sophie explains that “Jesus was well into wine. That’s what he turned water into it.”

And then they nick all the sandwiches and scamper up to Sophie’s bedroom.

Sian: I like it when you’re like this.

Sophie: What, splattered?

Sian: No, just like letting your hair down. Having fun. And you look great when you smile.

Sophie: Can you see two smiles? What, are you not seeing double?

Sian: No. And I wouldn’t mind if I could see two of you. The more of you, the better.

Sophie: You know what, though? Seriously? I don’t know what I would have done these past few months without you.

Sian: Well, you have me now.

Sophie: Forever?

Sian: Yeah, forever.

Sophie leans in to kiss Sian sweetly, like she’s kissed her a million times before. And then that thing happens, that almost imperceptible shift where one person nudges things just beyond the other million kisses, and who ever even remembers what it was after the initial push? An accidental brush of one person’s fingertips in a new place, or the uncommon pressure of slightly tipsy lips. Whatever the catalyst, Sophie and Sian are on their knees, tearing at each other’s clothes. Sian falls back on the bed and Sophie pushes her hair out of her eyes. They’re dead sober. They’re both dead sober. And Sophie says, “Stay with me tonight? I want you. Please stay with me.”

Sian searches Sophie’s face. They both took a vow of celibacy. They said they were going to wait. Sian smiles (just a little), breathes (just a little). She nods.

Literature professors will tell you everything is about sex, that there’s some kind of Freud/Weston/Frazer/Jung thing happening in all the stories in all the world, even if the symbolism is only written subconsciously. Swords and guns and keys for blokes. Grails and chalices and bowls for gals. Every scene is about sex. Except sex scenes. Actual sex scenes – porn withstanding, of course – are about a billion other things. Psychological neediness; the desire for power; liberation; political nullification; artistic revolution; commitment; rebellion; enlightenment; supplication; domination; the quest for autonomy. (Sex can be about the simple awesomeness sex; don’t get me wrong. But in story, it tends to take on more concentrated significance.)

I mostly agree with that narrative paradigm, except for lesbian sex on TV, because writers usually have no idea what the f–k they’re doing. I don’t mean that technically, in a Jenny Schecter “Yes, with your hand – unless you have some other apparati that I don’t know about” kind of way. I mean writers either have to keep it inexplicably chaste so they don’t upset networks/viewers/The Parents Television Counicl. Or they go the ratings whore route and use it to titillate and exasperate.

I’m amazed at how right Corrie got it. I mean, frankly, I’m amazed they broached it at all. They had an out with the vow of celibacy thing, and Sophie and Sian’s age. They had an out because it’s a 50-year-old soap your grandmother has been watching her whole life. But they didn’t take it.

This scene works on a variety of levels. It works on a physical level because Sian’s been teasing this thing out for months: the festival, the one-man tent, the quiet night in. It works on an emotional level because Sian is Sophie’s refuge, her respite – she just said so – and she knows the peace and the pleasure can go even deeper. It works on a commitment level because the thing Sophie reached for in the wake of the destruction of her parents’ marriage was “Forever?” And, best of all, as far as I’m concerned: it works on a subversive religious level. ‘Cause watch this: Remember that set-up shot I showed you earlier? Here it is again, with an open Bible.

People love to take the Bible out of context (narratively and historically) and pretend that it says things about sex that it does not say about sex. (That gays are gonna split hell wide open, for example.) But the Bible is not silent about sex. Oh ho, no! The Old Testament book “Song of Songs” (Or “Song of Solomon,” depending on which translation you’re holding) is about the raciest thing you’re even going to read. And it was written in 950 B.C.! Some religious scholars like to pretend that “Song of Songs” is an allegory, that it’s sweet talk from God to Christians about how he wants to pinch their wittle cheeks ’cause they’re just sooooo cute.

But no.

“Song of Songs” is about falling in love and about sex, sex, sex. Old school Jewish scholars knew it; they wouldn’t even let teenage boys read it. The fourth chapter is where things get really erotic, with the lover praising the beloved’s naked body with every metaphor imaginable. In chapter seven, the lover starts at the beloved’s feet and works right up to the top of her head, and this is the best part:

Your stature is like that of the palm,

and your breasts are like clusters of fruit.

I said, “I will climb the palm tree;

I will take hold of its fruit!”

Dude. Do not tell me that is how God feels about the Church. Do not tell me God wants to climb my palm tree and take hold of my fruit. Because: Gross. No. That little stanza is not about God. It’s about what awesome people think about boobs.

After Friday’s episode, I read that loads of conservative Corrie viewers were torn out of the frame because girls kissing in the same room as an open Bible?! How dare they?! And I love that. I love that. Let’s f–king talk about that. Let’s engage in that conversation. Let’s stop with the hoodwinking about how the Bible condemns gay people. It doesn’t. And let’s stop with the masquerade about how the Bible doesn’t talk about sex. It does. I swear, you guys, this is like TV from the future. This convergence of religious and social themes and beautiful girls kissing beautifully. This is a dialogue I am excited about; this is a story I want to be a part of.

So Sophie and Sian fall on top of each other on top of Sophie’s bed. And the Bible is open. And let me tell you what it says.

I have come into my garden, my sister, my bride;

I have gathered my myrrh with my spice.

I have eaten my honeycomb and my honey;

I have drunk my wine and my milk.

My lover has gone down to the garden,

to the bed of spices,

to browse in the gardens and to gather lilies.

I am my lover’s and my lover is mine.

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