Queers on Coronation Street

TODD CAME OUT TO SARAH ON CORRIE STREET!!

For those who don't wake up perversely early on a Sunday morning to breathe in the sudsy airs of those scheming and scurrilous, football loving, pint drinkin' folks of Coronation Street, you may not be up on the latest and greatest controversy to hit "Corrie" in quite some time: Todd, who has been leading a double life behind the back of his pregnant fiancée Sarah, has finally come out to her. This is the opening scene in the first of the new and improved hour-long episodes now airing weeknights at 8pm on CBC (except for Thursday, when all good blokes go down the pub). But this whole mess Todd's now in seems unbelievably brutal. His pregnant fiancée is asking the killer questions: "When did you know you were gay?"; "How much did you do with him?"; "Why did you get me pregnant?"; “Why did you want to marry me?” And those are just the opening volleys…

Watching this unfold is like watching the aftermath of a stone through a hornet's nest. Coronation is a soap through and through, so everybody buzzes around any dirt that hits the street. It’s all tears, and shouts and meaningful eye close-ups of glares that bore a hole in your trashy soap watching soul. Of course there are catfights too.

As would be expected from the "mainstreaming" of this kind of storyline, it has to be over the top, dramatic and end in streetfighting mothers for people to bite. This is Coronation Street after all. What I find so excellent is how the whole thing really turns gay marriage on its head. Think about it: a closeted gay man finds a girl he loves (it may be shocking to some people to learn that gay men love women too), moves in with her, they have sex (probably his first time), and he thinks, "yah, this could work, maybe I can be normal after all." Suddenly he realizes that marriage - the unthinkable for most gay people in this world - could be his. Just to firm up his new-found normality he pressures his girlfriend turned fiancée to get pregnant and have his baby (remember that her first child, a girl, is from her last boyfriend), so they can be the picture-perfect image of 2.5 children, white-picket-fence (or whatever the equivalent on Corrie is), heterosexual in-the-eyes-of-God marriage. Mind you Todd was a bit queasy about getting hitched in a church, perhaps afraid that he'd explode into flames and sequins the second after he said "I do" - it’s possible there's no closet dark enough to hide your queer self from the penetrating eyes of God. Anyway, the whole thing sounded really nice, and probably felt pretty alright to Todd, until Karl the "male nurse" showed up (because gay men on TV are nurses not doctors), and started luring young Todd away from his heterosexual Arcadia, teasing him slowly out of his invisible closet and into the world of the pervert (the word used by Sarah's really pissed off mother after she learned the sordid truth). What everyone can’t get over is that Todd brought Karl back to the apartment he shares with Sarah while she was gone and shagged his backdoor lover in his matrimonial bed. Intense, no?

Actually, long before any of this happened Todd did kiss Sarah's brother Nick... He managed to smooth that one over somehow. Where there’s a will there is often a way, but how long it takes before you stray again is a matter of opinion.

Okay, so back to the village...or rather, the street.

The episode culminates in an explosive showdown in the middle of, yup, Coronation Street. Sarah's really red in the face furious mother (who is a meddler to begin with), and Todd's more down-to-earth but no less meddlesome mom go at it! What’s super convenient is that these two powerhouse mothers live right across the road from each other. Only on Corrie…

Long story short: Sarah's mother screams and beats at Todd's mom while Sarah stands dumbfounded and 7 months pregnant just metres away, and Todd cowers tearfully behind his mom's couch. This goes on for a bit until an over-the-top cat fight breaks out, and as would be expected all proverbial hell breaks loose. Todd races outside to face his accuser in person at which point every single character on the show has gathered round to hear Sarah's mother rip Todd out of the closet in the most degrading spiteful and humiliating way possible. And the response of these onlookers?...Much like mine: shocked but glued to the better-than-a-trainwreck-because-the-only-victim-is-that- perverted-gayboy event. Maybe I wasn’t so happy about that part on principle, but it makes for damned fine drama.

And so it ends with Todd's brother turning on his heel and disowning his bro, Sarah's mother walking back home victorious after the public defeat of her chief foe (Todd’s mom), Todd's mom looking wide-eyed and shocked, but pulling back to home turf to regroup, all onlookers muttering little snippy quips under their cockneyed breaths, until finally the street clears leaving Todd alone in agony, tears now visible, left to deal with his experiment in "gay marriage" gone horribly wrong.

I think it's too early to draw definitive conclusions, especially considering the experiment was conducted on Coronation Street, but certainly those on the opposition side of gay marriage would do well to heed the timely lessons Corrie has to offer: saying no to gay marriage is saying yes to living a lie, which as Todd has learned today, hurts everybody but most of all the last gay man standing on Coronation Street with tears in his eyes.