Passive Aggressive vs Total Manipulation

According to the definition, "Passive Agressive" is a personality trait said to be marked by a pervasive pattern of negative attitudes and passive, usually disavowed resistance in interpersonal or occupational situations. That sounds a bit complex. What it means is when someone seems to be on your side or seems to go along with things, but they're putting obstacles in the way either consciously or unconsciously. For instance, someone asks their partner to take on a household job such as the laundry or the grocery shopping. That person doesn't particularly want to but agrees anyway and then does it wrong all the time. Therefore, the original requestor ends up redoing it or taking the task back. Result! thinks the requestee, because they didn't want to seem to be negative or unhelpful and can now say, "well, I did try my best" when really, they didn't.

It can also be seen as a bit controlling, especially if they are doing it and they know they are doing it. They're making the other person do what they want without having to directly persuade them. They can use the behaviour to cause trouble, to control, and to manipulate and some people are very, very good at it.

There are two characters on Corrie that deserve the Olympic gold standard in passive aggressive behaviour, and both have crossed the line. One is more classic than the other, more weak and more likely to show P.A. only somewhat consciously where the other is very much in control and uses P.A. to maneouver people like pieces on a chess board.

The latter, of course, is Tony Gordon. He's a master manipulator and control freak. He doesn't appear to have a conscience, not often at least. He is arrogant and selfish, cold and sarcastic. Did he truly love Carla or was it an obsession? Was she a possession that slipped through his fingers due to his own manipulations? Carla was probably the only woman that was close to Tony's equal, both in intelligence and in ruthlessness though she did show a softer side now and then.

Tony lost Carla to Liam and he had Liam killed in revenge. He then actually got his hands dirty and nearly strangled Jed Stone, one of the flies in the ointment but Jed was instrumental in Carla finding out the truth about Liam in the end. Maria discovered evidence of Carla and Liam's affair and leaped to the conclusion that Tony had Liam killed. She nearly got herself locked in the mental ward after weeks of hysterical campaigning trying to get everyone to believe her. Now, it looks like she's falling in love with Tony and he with her. Or is he? My feeling is that he started wooing her to put her off the scent. He also has shown a guilty conscience for killing Liam but only because Maria was pregnant. If she hadn't been, she might be as dead as Liam now for all the bad PR she was hurling Tony's way.

I think Tony may see his helping Maria as a way to atonement. He may actually be developing feelings for her and he has surely been touched by the birth of the baby, the baby that he brought into the world on a remote beach. Don't get too comfortable, Tony is already showing those signs of possessing the woman he "loves" by subtly pushing visitors away and making sure Maria's in-laws know he's been staying nights by retrieving his razor while they were there. That was calculated and it pushed the right buttons. The end result? He's hoping they'll get so upset that they'll leave and never return, thus cutting Maria and the baby off from Liam's family. Classic P.A. move.

Granted, Tony does not really have a classic P.A. personality, he just uses it for his own ends. The character that really is classic, is John Stape, aka Prisoner 666. (I love that moniker, the one Sally hurled at Fiz in the factory one day!) He knows exactly how to keep Fiz where he wants her and get her to do what he wants without seeming to be a controlling bastard like Tony. But he's equally destructive, maybe moreso. He puts on the hurt, puppy dog eyes, he uses flattery and poetry. He puts subtle ideas into Fiz's head and lets her run with it in exactly the right direction he wants. He lies with ease. He's weak and has no self control.

Recently, during a prison visit with Fiz, he talked about his anti-depression pills and being well enough now to be off them because of her, talking about weddings before giving her the idea of getting married while he's still in prison then pretending it's a mad idea, pretending it's not what he wants. Fiz has grabbed onto the idea, however, and is now determined to make it happen. When she left the visitation room, he had that tiny little smirk on his face, the smirk in this photo. Result! See, the sooner she marries him, the sooner he has her trapped. Then when he gets out of prison, he can put her firmly into an invisible walled prison. He's not as obvious about it as Charlie Stubbs was when he was manipulating Shelley but the end result will be the same.

He's already chipping Fiz's self esteem away. He's ruined her sparky fire and turned her into a needy puddle of tears. She's turning into the kind of woman that thinks that she is nothing and has no self worth if she doesn't have the man she loves. Last year, before he kidnapped Rosie, he thought it would be a good idea to move Fiz out into the country to his gran's house, away from all her friends and family. He didn't think about bringing Chesney along, only as an afterthought. He didn't think about her job, her friends or her responsibilities. He just wanted to get her away because her friends didn't like him or what he'd done, cheating on her with Rosie. But that went a bit too far, and Fiz, still with a modicum of backbone, balked.

What does John do? In a fit of temper, blaming Rosie for his downfall, kidnaps Rosie and keeps her in his gran's locked attic for 5 weeks until Fiz discovered her. Fiz thought she'd never set eyes on him again but she still couldn't help seeing him sent down and when she couldn't deal with Ches, she gravitated to him again and he's ramped up the PA behaviour even more. She is completely under his spell, even though Chesney is rebelling hard against it, she continues to blindly slip further and further into Stape's web.

How will it all end? Will she see what he's doing to her when Chesney goes right off the rails? Or will Prisoner 666 ensnare her and leave her a shell of her former self? Will Fiz come to her senses eventually? I hope so. I hope the writers have a purpose behind all this and we get a sadder, wiser Fiz back after it's all over.