I've decided to step into the breech.
Paul Magrs's
Coronation Street blog,
Think On, Lady, is on hiatus. It seems that Paul hasn't been enjoying the show enough recently to bring himself to write about it. I know the feeling. I've had a lot of issues with what's been happening in Weatherfield of late.
There's been a couple of "edgey" storylines running recently that have been equal parts 'preposterous' and 'icky'. Now, I love a bit of 'preposterous', me, but can take or leave 'icky'. It depends on the how and the why. What really is beginning to grate with me is what finally rendered
'Stenders unwatchable about a decade ago - it's when characters do things because the script demands them to do it, not because it is how the character would normally behave.
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| Tina, yesterday |
Tina McIntyre is no more. The events leading up to this tragedy have been arduous, irritating and, most of the time, not in any way convincing.
Tina had been played by Michelle Keegan since 2008 and for the majority of that time, the character was no push-over. She was sharp, often fond of a slanging match and fiercely loyal to her friends. Exactly the sort of young, working-class woman you would expect to find living on Coronation Street at any time between 1960 and the present.
That is until recently.
In the run-up to Keegan's departure from the series, Tina had been transformed into a dopey, clingy, bunny-boiler in order to suit the requirements of a particular storyline "Event". Yeah, I know, girls do strange things when they fall for the wrong sort of boy. But, Tina fell for the middle-aged, alcoholic bigamist; Peter Barlow. For some reason.
The Tina/Peter affair was a hard-sell from the outset. Not only did we have to accept Tina's sudden bout of stupidity, but also a corresponding bout of dumb inflicting Peter's wife.
Carla Barlow (nee, Conner), played by Alison King, is a ruthless business woman, nobody's fool and fully aware of her husband's extensive history of weakness. None of these details mattered, however. An 'Event' was scheduled. It was in the script. Carla had to act just as dumb as Tina. Nothing could prevent the 'Event'.
All of this
might have been saved,
if, at the end of all the duplicity, we had a Tina/Carla payoff. If both characters returned to their senses and we got Keegan and King confrontation, it might
just have all been worth it. They could have traded insults and punches. They could have spat home truths as their blinkers fell and personalities realigned.
Then, Tina could have black-cabbed herself away from the emotional devastation and, with a bit of luck, achieved Sarah Lancashire Velocity and escaped the gravitational pull of the Street forever.
Instead, they fridged Tina.
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| "Who drunk all the... oh.." |
"
Fridging", for those unfamiliar with the term, is a trope first identified by the comic book writer,
Gail Simone. It refers to an infamous issue of
Green Lantern (Vol.3 #54) by Ron Marz, Darryl Banks & Romeo Tanghal, published in 1994. In this issue, incumbent Green Lantern, Kyle Raynor, comes home to find his girlfriend, Alex DeWitt, dead and stuffed in the refrigerator; murdered by the super-villain, Major Force.
Identifying the frequency of female comic book characters being murdered, depowered, cut-up, raped or otherwise abused, seemingly for the sole reason of motivating a male protagonist; Simone founded the website,
Women In Refrigerators in order to discuss the motif.
And so, Tina fell, like Wile E Coyote, from a balcony which her flat never previously had, onto the cobbles far below. But, who pushed her? Was it Peter or was it Carla?
Neither! It was Carla's brother, Rob! Didn't see that twist coming, did you? Probably because it made no sense whatsoever, but hey! Now, we've got Rob Raskolnikov-ing his way up and down the ginnel for months on end to look forward to! Won't that be exciting?
Won't it!?
It's pretty creepy how many these unconvincing affairs have ended with the much-younger, female adulterer paying with her life. Molly Dobbs had a tram dropped on her head, Sunita Alahan was incinerated in the local boozer. I understand that on Albert Square, Lucy Beale is now pushing up daisies after some skin-crawling dalliance with her best friend's dad.
It's a shame that
Coronation Street has got this departure of a major character so drastically wrong. Especially when the other recent departure of a major character, Hayley Cropper, was so perfectly
right. The contrast between the two scenarios is stark. In the events leading up to Hayley's death, all the characters behaved in a way true to what we already knew about said characters.
Character was the motor of the story. The complete opposite is true in the lead up to Tina's death.
Character went out the window long before Ms Mcintyre did.
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| Roy & Hayley - Proper Corrie |
At best we missed out on the Keegan/King face-off that might have saved the story. At worst we've added a new name to the list of the fridged and for a show like
Coronation Street, with its USP since the start being the home to a pantheon of iconic female roles; that's a crying shame.
Anyway, this is Kate Tempest.
