Good Bye Owen

(Oh dear, I forgot I had this sitting in draft form and meant to post it the other week. You won't mind, will you?)

We've just seen another character leaving Coronation Street, this time in his own van rather than a taxi. Owen Armstrong has had a bumpy ride on the few years that he's been with us. The character was brought in and likened to the classic Len Fairclough. Len was a builder and was rough around the edges but had a good heart. Owen? He's a builder, too. And rough around the edges? As rough as a badger's arse. Does he have a good heart? Kind of. He does love his two daughters, Izzy and Katie but in trying to keep them safe and having to raise them on his own (more on that in a minute), he goes a bit over the top.

You see, Owen has a temper, also like Len Fairclough and Owen is a bit of a bully, too. When we first met him, he was presented as an over-protective father to disabled Izzy who was determined to be more independent. Izzy has a syndrome that means she spends most of her life in a wheelchair though she can stand and move around a little bit, though it's painful. Izzy is just as stubborn as Owen and they locked horns a lot, I think. Owen's younger daughter, Katy, almost 16 at the time she was introduced, was also a handful, kicking back at her father's attempts to keep her under his protective thumb. She is also headstrong and stubborn like her father. I can well imagine the rows in that house!


I don't think Owen ever struck his children but they certainly have implied that he lost his temper a lot. Having said that, we have seen Owen lash out and give Faye, Anna's daughter, a slap across the leg for a serious transgression, something she did specifically to hurt Owen. He dismantled the rotting shed in the back garden and built a fish pond. Faye killed the fish with creosote.  I seem to recall Izzy and Katy inferring that it wasn't an out of the ordinary action for him though I can't see him striking Izzy in any way when she was young but we don't really know. Anyway. He's got a temper and is willing to use it. He may or may not have hurt his children but he certainly can be handy with his fists with adult men if need be. We do know that he had Jim McDonald beaten up. Owen was getting close to Liz and saw her ex as a threat, which he probably was!

All in all, Owen has never really been a sympathetic character overall even if he has times when he's gentler and kinder and more understanding. One incident that reflects those sides of him was when Izzy was with Gary. Gary was in the army and was injured in Afghanistan where he saw his best friend killed after saving Gary's own life. Gary went through nasty Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome and though Izzy was supportive, Gary became very over protective of her and ended up keeping her locked in the flat, scared she would be hurt. Gary had a breakdown and freaked out and Owen broke into the flat to find Gary cowering in one corner and Izzy cowering in the other. Owen gathered Gary in his arms and assured him everything would be ok rather than thump him one for scaring Izzy. It was pretty clear at that moment that Gary was in a bad way and Owen knew it. Mind you, he was pretty strongly against Izzy wanting to reconcile with Gary a few months later and Gary's short temper was the beginning of the end of Owen, though it was a long game to get here.

Owen was offered a partnership with a man called Pat Phelan. The deal felt a bit dodgey because Phelan was bankrupt and was encouraging Owen to put his own money in to the refit of an old building into new flats. It would have made Owen a great deal of cash if it all went smoothly but the project was in Mrs. Phelan's name due to the bankruptcy issue. It might have been legal but only just. Owen was persuaded to go ahead and he and Gary and other men hired got stuck in. But Phelan, sleazy Phelan, had his eye on Anna and was putting the moves on her, making her very uncomfortable. She didn't want to cause trouble because she didn't want the deal to fall through but when Gary found out, he lunged at Phelan and assaulted him for badgering his mother. Big mistake!

Phelan now had control over Gary and Owen. He could have Gary sent to jail and financially ruin Owen if he wanted to. And he did do the dirty on Owen financially but blackmailed Anna into an afternoon of sex in a hotel to save Gary's backside. Anna felt like she had no choice and went through with it. Eventually, of course, Owen found out and it nearly broke them permanently. This whole incident, starting with Anna's son, Gary, causing the problem and ending with Anna in that hotel roo was more than a crack in their relationship, it was a chasm the size of the Grand Canyon and they may have patched it over but it's a weak spot. Owen had to sell the builders' yard (to Tony Stewart) and scraped to get odd jobs to get by while Anna was working two jobs to make ends meet. He even lost the house to the bank and they had to move to the flat over the bookies'. That's a lot of stress on that patch job.

Recently, Owen's ex-wife landed on the doorstep. We had always been told that his wife, Linda, abandoned the family after Izzy was diagnosed and Katy was just a toddler. She never came back and Izzy always felt it was because of her illness that their mother left. Owen never said any different. But now we discover that Linda did have an affair and had left but only for a short time. She had trouble dealing with Izzy's diagnosis at first but knew she'd made a mistake. Owen refused to take her back and was adamant that she would never be allowed to see her children. She tried but he blocked every attempt, threw out every letter and card. Eventually, Linda left the country for Portugal. Now, 16 years later, she's back and she wants to get to know her adult children, much to Owen's annoyance. He couldn't get out of it because Katy caught him on the doorstep. She had no memories of her mother but Izzy was horrified.

And of course, the real truth came out about what Owen did. Izzy was absolutely crushed that her father let her believe all her life that it was her fault that her mother left. That's not something you get over easily. Anna saw the beautiful Linda as a threat to her little family and indeed, she had something to worry about. Linda told Owen she still loved him and wanted him to come to Portugal with her and the girls. That's even more pressure on that papered-over crack and it looks like it's starting to pull away at the edges.

I can't quite understand why you would still harbour feelings for someone who never forgave you and kept you from your children for nearly 20 years but there you go. Does Owen have unresolved feelings? Possibly. But to give him credit, he did come clean right away to Anna about what Linda asked. It didn't really help matters when Katy decided she was going with her mother.

Anna has had to carry most of the financial load for the family over the past couple of years. She's had to do things she never thought she would to keep her family together. She's worried about her son, and her adopted daughter Faye. She's seen Faye's father return to her life and worried he might take Faye away. She thought she might lose Owen to his ex. The stress and worry have built up over time.

The straw that crashed through the camel's back was her 12 year old daughter Faye giving birth at Easter. Faye herself didn't know she was pregnant until she was about 7 months gone, only worried she was getting fat. Nobody noticed that Faye's weight gain seemed to be solely in one spot of her body which she hid under baggy clothes. Anna was too distracted by everything else to really pay attention to the finer details of Faye's life. Once the shock of the baby's arrival wore off, she had Owen to contend with. He was positive that Faye's friend Craig Tinker was the father and roughed him up. That's Owen's usual response, violence.

Anna wants Faye to keep the baby but Owen knows that Faye, at this point, doesn't want anything to do with the child. He thinks the little girl should be adopted but Anna won't hear of it. Family is important to her and in all likelihood, in true soap fashion, Faye will eventually bond with the baby but she has gone past her ability to handle anymore stress and has made him leave. He thought he could go for a little while to make her realize she'd miss him and need him but since she was adamant, he's gone for good.

While I didn't like the character much, he was always interesting and the actor was quite good. 

Linda Armstrong's return, Falling flat for me

First off, you're right. There was no State of the Street for January because my PC packed up just before the end of the month. I had a document saved that had all my thoughts and I can't get to it. No point in reviving it when I get the data copied over to a new machine so we'll just skip January. February's State will be posted, though, at the end of the month.

Now that's out of the way.

What I really wanted to write about was the current storyline with the Wind-Strongs and the return of the native, Linda Armstrong as was.

A bit of back story: From what we've been told to date, Owen's ex and the mother of his two children abandoned the family when Katy was a baby, a toddler perhaps. She has no memory of her mother at all. Izzy, a few years older, remembers her mother. She had just been diagnosed with the syndrome that has disabled her and mainly keeps her in a wheelchair. She, as most children do, thought her mother left because of something she did or because of her illness. Her father, greatly hurt at his wife's departure, allowed her to think that and stepped up to the plate to be as good a dad for his girls as he could. He might be a bit strict, a bit over protective of Izzy and a lot rough around the edges, but his daughters knew he loved them very much.

Still, Izzy grew up feeling guilty that she was the reason her mother left. She's got confidence and a lot of bravado but some of that is to cover that insecurity and guilt.

Now, out of the blue, Owen's ex, Linda has appeared. She has decided she wants to get to know her daughters. That's an uphill battle with Owen doing everything he can to undermine her with Katy and Izzy. Katy, though, doesn't have that guilt and was too young to remember her mother leaving. Katy wants to get to know her mother. Izzy is horrified and has too much resentment and guilt to want anything to do with her mum.

But now the truth comes out. Right from the start of her visit, we the viewers could see that there's more to this story than meets the eye and recently, Linda told her girls the truth. She took Izzy's diagnosis badly, had an affair with her boss and left. She soon regretted her actions and wanted to come back but Owen wouldn't let her. He wouldn't even let her see the girls and returned every card, gift and letter she ever sent. He was determined, mainly due to his own heartbreak, that they would either forget her or see her as the villain of the piece. Katy and Izzy believed their mother's story, mainly, I think, because she said she had the proof of the returned letters and cards. Katy has the added experience of something similar, having a fling with Ryan Connor when she was with Chesney but it didn't mean she couldn't be a good mother and Chesney agreed to that concept.

Owen is now the villain of the piece and Izzy's reaction in particular is heart-rending. She accused him of letting her feel bad about herself so that he could be the hero. That's how she sees it and even if he wasn't thinking that specifically, that is in effect what he did. And the truth hurt. Good! I hollered at the telly. You deserve what you get. It's a big betrayal, isn't it? It is going to be difficult for the girls to forgive this one in a hurry. Maybe they never will or if they do, it will be a long time coming.

The storyline, as a whole, is good soap fodder. But I do have one thing that dissatisfies me. Suspending disbelief, I can accept that even though Owen has lived in two different homes since he left the family home where Linda would have lived, Linda was able to find them with no problem. Presumably she either asked at a nearby business and we didn't see it on screen or there is information online available that she could find or even more likely, there are still relatives in the area she could contact. The thing that makes it a bit more difficult to buy into the storyline is that I don't think I like the actress that plays Linda, or at least, don't like the way she's playing it.

I have no previous experience of the actress and don't know if this is her usual acting style. It seems to me she's a bit too bland and low key. She's not really getting shouty and angry like I thought she would, fighting back against Owen's bullying. She's not cowering but she's not putting a lot of obvious anger in her reactions either. It doesn't even come across as an under-the-lid simmering, like someone really trying to hold it in, avoiding losing their temper else be reduced to his level. It just doesn't feel like anything at all. She ought to have eyes a-snapping and teeth gritting, telling him in no uncertain terms where to go and where to shove his attitude. She doesn't have to scream and shout, but I would think most women in that position would be a bit more passionate in their response, too. It doesn't feel realistic in my view.

The other issue I have with this is another reality point. I read a comment on the Coronation Street Blog and fully agree. Why didn't Linda ever try to gain access via a solicitor? There was no reason for Owen to withdraw access to the children. Was she an abused spouse? Was she afraid of him? Did it take her this long to return because he had browbeaten the confidence out of her? It can take some people a long time to work their way through it and get the confidence and strength to face their past fears. We haven't been told that was the case but seeing Owen's temper and sometimes violent outbursts, could that be the case? It would at least make more sense as to why she finally fled and didn't take legal action.

I do think the reactions of Katy and Izzy are spot on. Katy has been cautiously giving her mother a chance, a small foot in the door but ready to shut it if her mother didn't manage to say the right things. Izzy has been resentful and defensive, with grief and guilt mixed together, trying desperately to keep her walls up and armed. Now, finding out what Owen did, Izzy is crushed. Katy is furious because she can identify with her mother to an extent and she's protective of Izzy, too. Anna is just shocked and I do agree, that Owen's showing signs of never having got over his hurt, it's resurgence a worrying sign that he could still be teetering on that love/hate borderline.

Without spoiling it, I do know the end result of all this but it will be interesting to see the rest of it play out, including watching the girls finally get to know their mother.

SurrogaTina?

I have to say I really didn't see this coming though I should have.

I didn't think that Katy would end up carrying a baby for Izzy in the end. I thought it would probably come down to the cash. It's so expensive and neither of the couples has any money. Katy doesn't have a job, Chesney sells dog collars on the market, Gary works with Owen as a builder and Izzy sews knickers. I thought there might be an outside chance that Katy carries the gene for the syndrome that Izzy has and that might come into play but my money was on the cash. So to speak.

Now it seems that Owen does have the cash but he's not willing to part with it to give Katy the opportunity to give her sister a baby but he is willing to donate it so that Izzy can have the baby she wants, just with a different surrogate mother.


Enter Tina McIntyrel

Her boyfriend Tommy owes Tyrone big bucks and he was working several jobs to try to pay him back but he's going to be injured in a car crash and won't be able to work. The debt is hanging over their heads. Owen is offering money to the one woman on the Street who really needs it and it looks like she's going to consider it. Why didn't I see that coming? It does make sense, doesn't it?

Tommy's not going to be too happy, though I reckon he'll come around in the end. Will she be able to get pregnant the first time? That's £7,000 PER SHOT, as it were. Owen isn't made of money.  Will she be able to carry the baby full term? Will we end up with yet ANOTHER sprog on an already crowded cast of under-5s?

Some have said this storyline is very unbelievable. I don't think it is, necessarily. What's wrong with Katy and Izzy, Chesney and Gary exploring the possibility? Family members certainly have gone this route for each other so it's not out of the realms of possibility. Is it probable in this case? Not likely, because, as many have pointed out, none of them have the money, and there are a lot of huge road blocks in the way to make it more difficult.

For once, I'd like to see the storyline play out but not with a happy ending. It's a soap, it's allowed. I don't want things to work out for them. I think there are more than enough little sprogs on the street now. We don't need yet another one. I can understand Tina making this huge decision to help Tommy. He won't be happy with it. Will he find some other way to stop it happening? If she's only doing it for the money, will someone else step up to the plate and lend it to her? Rita's been known to do that for Sally and Kevin, why not Tina, whom she thinks of as a daughter/granddaughter/great-granddaughter?

I still don't think it's going to happen in the end. I'd like for it not to happen in the end.

But I could be wrong.

Owen, Bully du Jour

This week's Corrie, or at least the last few episodes, have been non stop misery haven't they? Even the slight bit of humour around Tyrone and Julie wasn't enough to lift it up. Hand wringing, friends falling out, revenge...It felt like non-stop nasty. The Dev/Steve money thing was bad enough but what really got on my tits was Owen getting in the face of Dev and Sunita and then taking his revenge on Eileen.

Owen is such a bully! Oh i really, REALLY dislike him. He's nasty and sly and most definitely has that cocky "little man" syndrome. He treats his daughters like posessions and certainly treated Eileen like dirt.

Her stealing from him was merely lashing back at his attitude. She'd never have done it, desperate for money or not, if he wasn't so horrible to her. And look how he's treating Dev! Only a couple of weeks' non-payment and he tries to bully them and downs tools and apologizes to Jason for taking a day's pay away from him. Why would Jason have missed a day's work just because the shop isn't being worked on? Owen's doing the Joinery and the Kabin as well as the flats over it and he's not finished. Surely he's being paid by everyone else via insurance. It's all blackmail tactics.

I know Eileen did wrong by stealing but she did pay it back almost right away. There was no need for him to be as hard on her as he was. She also shouldn't have told Sunita about his accounts which embarassed him. She should have known better. She should have known he'd have come back at Eileen. As usual, her gob gets her into more trouble.

He made sure he was standing on the street watching when Eileen was taken away and even waved at her with a big shit-eating grin. I'm sorry for the profanity, but he really was horrible. I hope his face freezes in an ugly knot when he finds out Eileen's been cautioned and set free. She's told the police she knew he was fiddling the books though he's got rid of the evidence. I wish they would put him on notice that they'll be checking his tax records and keeping an eye on him but I doubt that will happen.

I've got no problem with the actor, Ian Puleston-Davies,  he does a smashing job of making Owen thoroughly dislikeable. I can't even say that Owen's redeeming quality is his love for his children because even that is a power trip.

Charlie Stubbs was pretty much the same but had a little bit of charm at least and he's certainly not cut out of the same cloth as Len Fairclough. Len could be rough but was ultimately a nice fellow. Owen is not.  If Owen's not careful, he's going to end up with a statue shaped dent in his head and all!