State of the Street: February 2010

So Becky was officially pregnant (but spoilers say she's going to lose it in early March). First of all, after everything she went through with Steve, I can understand how she wants to be cautious. Second of all, she made a remark about what she dared to want. See, she wants a baby but she's scared. She knows things might fall apart like they usually do in her life. At least she has enough respect for Steve, no matter how bad things got with him, she didn't take any action before she told him about the baby. Rumours say that eventually it'll be known that she can't carry a baby. More fodder for her low self esteem, poor kid. If that's the way it goes, i'm glad. I can't see Becky as a settled down mother figure on the show. She's better off as a step mum, I think. I thought, oh maybe they can adopt a child that has had a similar rough upbringing as Becky, someone who's life she can help turn around like Roy and Hayley did for her. I think that would work. Then after i thought that, spoilers came out with the exact same thing. Psychic, me.

Jesse and Eileen are all but finished i think. He didn't like it when Jason and Tina moved back in and he had to shift his stuff outside. Why didn't he put it in the van or at his mother's house where he kept it before he moved in? A bit petulant really. He always was a mama's boy but they're making him very dislikeable which is the entrance to his exit. Too bad they wasted John Thompson, he can be so good and there was loads of potential. If you ask me, i kind of think that Trev, Janice's lodger, might make a good bloke for Eileen, but it's early days yet. He could have no spine just like Jesse though he does seem to have a bit more about him. Time will tell.

Ciaran is back and wasted no time chatting up both Michelle and Carla straight away with all the Irish patter. But Peter, who had found staying dry not too much trouble, wasted no time dipping into the booze minutes after hanging out with his old mucker, missing the cameraderie no doubt. You didn't think Peter wouldn't have at least one backslide? And it's going to lead to worse things. I'm glad they went this route. It's realistic and very much in line with Peter's personality and character that he would start hanging out with his old drinking buddy and fool himself into thinking he could handle a few drinks. It's heartbreaking to see the effect on poor little Simon especially but that's realistic too.

I really thought George was going to be the bad guy, someone with ulterior motives but it seems he really is just trying to be a good granddad and look out for Simon after all. Maybe. Someone has to, for Peter's sake. Ken questioned whether George cares about Peter. Good point.

Joe's dead! While i'm not happy to see anyone die, when it's on a tv program, that's different. And don't get me wrong, i'm not happy Gail has to go through losing a spouse YET AGAIN, and have reason to be miserable YET AGAIN, i am glad to see the back of Joe "Mr. Miserable" McIntyre. It's so wearying to have to watch his face whinging and whining and crying and self pitying. He could have been a better character but they made him a loser. That's 3 out of four husbands of Gail's that are dead. Martin should count himself a very lucky man. And i know, in real life, people get into desperate situations but this isn't real life, it's a soap so i am allowed to belittle the late Joe. I never liked him.

I don't know why Gail thought lying was such a good idea. You'd think she'd have learned that protecting people just digs you in deeper and you get found out in the end. By that time, it goes harder for you for covering it all up! Now she's changed her story to the police and it made her look more guilty. Including lying about the text and flowers.... to protect David. Well she's made her bed now. It's going to be lie upon lie. First mistake was bringing that boat back home. It's all going to fall apart from there. Poor Tina, though, she's the victim of all of this. Where's her mother? I wonder if we'll see Tina's mother come to the funeral?

Molly continues to make desperate puppy dog eyes at Kevin, hoping to lure him away but she can't be blatant about it. Kevin remains loyal to his wife and family. But the secret has to come out, it always does on soaps sooner or later. In the meantime, Jackie's back! She was the one bright pink spot in the sadness and misery of Gail and Tina finding out Joe was dead. Gail and Tina sobbing and miserable and cut over to Jackie and Molly chucking flowerpots at each other on the cobbles! Brilliant! I know people really detest Jackie Dobbs and she really is awful, Gobzilla we used to call her, but she's fun to watch because she's just so out there and audacious! More nerve than Dick Tracy, me dad used to say! With Jackie, short doses are best and this was a great one!

Joe, we hardly knew ye

I can't say I'm unhappy to see the demise of Joe McIntyre. He wasn't in Coronation Street long enough to really form any attachement to as a character and he was rarely a sympathetic one. He leaped from weakness to weakness, dragging Gail down with him. She even moaned to her mother at one point that she was too old to be looking after a man, and wanted someone to look after her for a change. It's a lot of stress and baggage to take on but she stood by her man, even after his addiction drove him to break into her workplace to try to steal painkillers from the drugs cabinet.

He first seemed to be a great guy. Lots of humour and zest, he persued Gail with zeal but not in a stalking kind of way. He liked her, she liked him. She had reservations because their children were a couple and quite rightly too, because when it did come out, neither was too happy with the revelation. He thought they'd be good together and didn't let her put him off. It seemed like a very long time since someone really put such a smile on her face and although his temper seemed a bit quick to boil, he could be the right man for Gail.

Couldn't he?

Well, no. That's never going to happen, is it? Gail seems to be a loser magnet, I'm sorry to say. And very bad luck for husbands. She's had four of them and three of them have died, two by drowning and one stabbed to death. Mind you, she was about to divorce both Brian and Richard (who she found out was a murderer). Fate has funny ways of taking care of your problems for you, doesn't it? Even this time around, Joe was mired under debt to a nasty loan shark who might have come after Joe's family so very likely his death will mean that she's off the hook as far as the debt goes. As to the insurance fraud? Hmmmm... maybe not so off that hook.

It didn't take long for Joe's finances to crash and burn. The economy took a downturn and Joe's business as a kitchen fitter suffered. He took odd jobs with Bill Webster and even worked part time in a DIY shop. He humiliated himself and worked for a contractor through the despicable Len Windass who, thankfully, seems to have disappeared off the screen. The problem with that contract is that he had to borrow money for supplies (though why the developer building the properties didn't pay for it is a gaping plot hole never addressed. Nor was the fact that the building to be converted was little more than a shell yet Joe was putting in kitchens straight away? Maybe Len just met him in an out of the way location and that wasn't the building site, but that, too, was never clear.) Did Joe go to the bank with the signed contract to prove he had a way to pay back a loan for supplies? Of course not, that would be too easy. He borrowed from a loan shark.

And promptly threw his back out, meaning he couldn't work. He got coerced into paying Gary Windass and Jason to do some of the work which probably stretched his finances even thinner while he struggled to stay on his feet with the help of painkillers. And things went downhill into addiction from there.

Poor Gail, it was one thing after another. David and Audrey both tried to make her see that Joe was a loser. Yes, i know, people in real life have financial trouble and you should stick by your man but this is a soap, not real life. We can be hard on Joe if we want to. Especially when he kept making one bad decision after the next, ending with a fatal plan to fake his own death for the insurance, which wasn't going to pay out for 7 years anyway. Desperation makes strange bedfellows.

How was that plan really going to help Gail? wouldn't anyone notice her taking regular weekend jaunts to Ireland where Joe said he'd go and hide under a new identity? Did he really think she would be able to maintain the pretence for all those years? And then what? He's declared dead, she gets the cash and leaves town, home and the family she's so tied to? Well, she wouldn't have to find out. Joe couldn't even do this right. He got knocked overboard when the boom caught a gust of wind (on a glass-clear lake, another plot hole, but I digress.) Because he'd had a sprained wrist, he couldn't haul himself back on board (why didn't he swim to the dingy he was chasing instead?) and finally just gave up and slipped beneath the surface.

Gail is frantic, thinking he really did go through with his plan but she didn't hold up her end of things. She was supposed to report him missing but because she thought he'd change his mind, she refused to go to the police in spite of David's urging. That's going to be her undoing. Spoilers say Gail will go to jail for his murder in the insurance scam because he forged her signature on the application for the life insurance. No health checkups, and i think it would look suspicious that someone would drop out of sight two weeks after signing a new policy even if it wasn't to pay out for 7 years? The insurance company and the police agree. So Joe is dragging Gail even further down from the grave. Naturally it looks suspicious and Joe's daughter Tina will think the worst of Gail even though she knows her father's situation with the loan shark. Why on earth would she think Gail would kill Joe? Wouldn't it make more sense to assume he killed himself on purpose if you didn't know about the fake-death plan?

Ah well. It doesn't matter. Joe's death and the aftermath will to have repercussions that will last all year long and to tell you the truth, now that he's off the canvas, I'm going to be looking forward to the ride! Gail is one of my favourite characters even if she can be headstrong, bossy, blind to her children's faults and miserable. Even if she's turned into Mini-Ivy Tilsley, she's still a lot nicer than Ivy and hasn't turned into a bitter middle aged harpy in spite of having a lot of good reason to be that way. Not yet anyway. But it could be on the cards after this year is over!

State of the Street - January

Kevin might be staying with Sally now that he knows where his priorities lie, but Molly got fed up with Tyrone and left him after she found out he wasn't going to take a job and move away. Only Tyrone figured she must be having an affair and jumped to the wrong conclusion and thought it was Dev. How on earth he would think that, I don't know but after all, this *is* Tyrone, not the sharpest tool in the box. Didn't you feel sorry for him though? He loves the bones of Molly but his loyalty to Kevin kept him from taking that job offer once he found out that Sally was ill. Really, though, Molly probably made the right choice. There's no point staying in a marraige when she couldn't have been happy or she wouldn't have had an affair only 6 months into it.

And Sally's prognosis is good and she's only got to have radio therapy. I guess it would have been too long and drawn out of they'd had to show her go through Chemotherapy. I gotta say I am as impressed as I knew I would be about how Corrie has been handling this storyline. They've really shown how it affects everyone around the person who's got cancer. Sally was one of the lucky ones. And it also seemed to take Rosie down a peg too, and she backed out of a boob job that would have been far superfluous to requirements anyway.

I felt so sorry for Tyrone. Does Molly really not love him? She thinks so. She's desperate to get Kevin back but he has seen the light and realized he really does want his wife and family. She begs, she manipulates, but he still rejects her and she might start to realize that Kevin probably was just using her, a crush, an infatuation. But it did my heart good to see that Kevin was forced to support Tyrone, listen to him cry on his shoulder, even return his wife's wedding ring and that is karma coming round to bite him on the arse well and proper. And I relish every uncomfortable moment he's going through after what he did to his best friend and business partner. Pam and Bill both know and now they know each other knows. If Molly and Tyrone are going to get back together eventually, they'll be the ones that engineer it.

More Grandad wars... Ken went off the deep end when he found out that George wanted to pay for private education for Simon. Ken figures it's bad for Simon, who won't have a happy life if he's brought up in a posh school. Deirdre was just more concerned about the smart uniform. Peter was very forthright at the planning meeting which George probably already had sewn up anyway, much to Ken's chagrin. I loved Deirdre's rant at Ken after the hearing. She knows darn well it's got more to do with the rivalry between Ken and George and he should have been supporting Peter rather than pushing him right at George. Maybe Ken's give up the battle because as much as he disapproves of the bar and the private school, he seems to be backing down a bit.

Then there's Gail and Joe, the newly minted McIntyres. El Desperado is in debt up to his eyeballs and illegally so. Surely he could go to the police once he'd paid off the loan shark who keeps coming back and threatening his family? He's scammed money out of Ted. He tried to get money out of Peter and an advance out of Bill. He gleefully accepted Gail's decision to sell the house (and yes, David, she *can* just sell the house you grew up in. Except, he hasn't really grown up has he? Most lads his age would be pleased to be able to move out on their own.) He even eyed up the charity collection jar in the pub! I really thought she was finally standing up to him when she told him she wasn't going to sell the house and Joe gave her insult after insult. I always knew he had a temper and and this just proved it. But no. One apology and one sob story and she took him back. No wonder she's a jinx with men, she has Doormat stamped on her arse! Next up, a life insurance scam by forging Gail's name on a crumpled up form. And obviously making one payment and then pretending to drown immediately after will not make the life insurance company suspicious. Or not.

Yay! Mary's back to be a carbuncle on Norris's backside. She seems a bit more obsessed than she was before she left. I feel a bunny boiler coming on, don't you? It's nice to see Mary back anyway. And it's nice to see Sunita back and with the fiance out of the picture, can a reunion between Dev and Sunita be far behind? Dev is all worked up and Sunita just thinks they'll mess it up again. But really, it wasn't all messed up until she found out he kept the fact of his other children from her.

And there's Becky and Steve's upset. Becky doesn't want kids because she's had a horrible childhood and doesn't want to feel tied down. She's also scared of pregnancy as well. There was a scene with her taking a test on New Year's we found out at the end of the month it's positive. She's been smoking and drinking all month. For as much as she didn't want a baby though, she didn't go get a terminatin behind Steve's back. He'd have never known. So somewhere, she did want a baby and probably not just because she knew he did, too. Probably the fear is stronger and so she pushed Steve away. And because she says she won't have kids just when Steve thinks he might like to have more, Steve goes off the deep end in a major sulk. That makes her dig her heels in and one's almost as bad as the other though i think he's pushing harder than she is. He keeps upping the stakes, with expensive gold clubs and a motorbike (don't you need a bike license for those?) and pushing Kelly in Becky's face.

But Becky's mom died and though there wasn't much of a relationship, it still gets you right in the heart when you lose a parent. I think what really bothered Becky is how little her mother had to her name and how she ended up, and it seems to make her think how she could very well have ended up the same way if she hadn't fought to get a life. It hurts that Steve just doesn't take any notice that something is wrong. He really thought that winding her up would make her come running back instead of pushing her away. Finding out about her mother's death was nearly the death of the marraige but you knew that wasn't going to happen, didn't you?