Now I'm feeling rather fed up today. I'm stuck in the Scottish wilderness with my leg in plaster and nothing but a Miss Marple marathon for company. As much as I do love Joan Hickson, it's not enough to sustain me. So I thought I would take my frustrations out on that nasty trollop, Tracy Barlow.God, how I loathe her.
Coronation Street was founded on characters that were real. They were neither all good nor all bad. In short, we, the average viewer could identify with them. They were like us, capable of running the full gamut of emotions and demanding sympathy or criticism as required. What made Corrie was how believable the characters were compared to the Hollywood film stars of the day. I shudder to think that anyone out there can identify with Tracy-luv.
That is why I have such a problem with Tracy Lynnette Barlow. She simply has no redeemable qualities whatsoever and for that reason alone she must go. I'm sick of seeing her on my television screen. Yes, I know I could stop watching but I still enjoy Coronation Street so why should Tracy's presence stop me? Actually the main reason I have been enjoying Corrie more recently is probably because we haven't seen much of Tracy at all. As she is set to have a gut churning liaison with Rob thanks to her continued obsession with Steve and Michelle, that is sadly about to change. The main problem with Tracy is that Coronation Street normally makes sure characters of her ilk receive their comeuppance. I know Tracy is frequently humiliated and rarely gets what she wants for long. However she has been unpleasant and downright vile to nearly everyone in Coronation Street at some time or another and has never learned from her mistakes. Life in Weatherfield has simply never been this way before.
And I know she has been sent to prison - but she was released in a highly unbelievable fashion. Her entire character is now completely without compassion, or indeed any positive features whatsoever. She happily drops her daughter on whoever she can find at the drop of a hat and has transformed Deirdre from a sympathetic, likeable woman into a stupid, blinkered character, constantly defending her daughter, regardless of the crime.So please, Coronation Street, get rid of Tracy!! She should never have been brought back in her current incarnation. I much preferred her when she spent months at a time upstairs listening to her tapes. As this is unlikely in the present day, can someone at Streetcars please call her a cab to whisk her out of Weatherfield as quickly as possible.
Where's Fat Brenda when you need her??
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Would be interesting out of the Corrie blog readers on who would like to see Tracy Barlow stay or go? she seems the least popular character. When a few months ago we all said who we'd like to see inside the Rovers if they were to blow it up I'm almost sure she was on everybody's list.
ReplyDeleteSo.... if the new Producer reads this blog (and I'm sure he does :)) I say Tracy to go - anyone else?
Well, I 100% agree, Graeme and, by the way, sorry to hear about your leg.
ReplyDeleteFor a long time, critics of Tracy/Kate have been accused of either being jealous of her good looks or of being too stupid to understand that Kate was a good actor because people hated the character. Eva and Carla almost fall into the same category but they are saved by very good actors who find the nuances in rather poor scripts. I used to hate Tracy (which was a good thing) but she has stayed in a time warp. What might have been annoying, but compelling, when she was 25 is now a complete turn-off. The character is neither a babe nor a cougar. It's fine for her to be a terrible mother and be obsessed with Steve -but why is she like this? That's my problem with Tracy; she wasn't sent away like Peter or dragged up on a rough estate like Carla. Soaps are no place for panto villains and Terry Duckworth, for example, would have soon got boring if he'd stayed. I'm only a little sorry to say this because soap actors get quite well paid compared to the rest of us but Kate Ford is not good. Add to that, her character defied the soap moral code. She's been nowhere and done nothing for the last ten years. I don't love to hate her, or even hate her that much. In real life, I would find such people utterly boring and avoid them like the plague. I feel much the same way about Tracy. A combination of poor acting, nil character development and totally ridiculous storylines means it's time for Tracy/Kate to go.
Humpty you're right. Why is she like this? A divorce? pah, that's not enough to make someone into an unfeeling callous bitch. Stroppy, yes. David Platt didn't take his parents' divorce well but he didn't turn into a near-psycho until Richard Hillman nearly killed him and his whole family and Gail never insisted on councilling for the kids. Tracy's father left her as a baby but she was brought up by a loving mother and adopted father. She wanted for nothing. She really didn't have a bad life and the divorce, when she was about 14 or 15, shouldn't have had this kind of effect on her. But when she returned in the guise of Kate Ford, they turned her into a panto villain but obsessed with Steve. The character, as you say, has absolutely no redeeming qualities.
ReplyDeleteI think its partly the way the character has gone and partly the awful way she is played by Kate Ford. Either grinning or clown face sad an actress she aint. Why she was brought back again and had her contract renewed is anyone's guess. Its a shame as the acting on Corrie is pretty top notch, let down by this woman who would seem bad in a school play.
ReplyDeleteKate Ford has just one or two looks she passes as acting. Second problem is she has not grown from her mistakes. There is no character arc, it is a flatline. Perhaps because the actress has no range. Is she related to the producer? With so many good actors out of work, why keep a poor one on the same treadmill? It isn't that we love to hate her. We hate seeing her on screen. We detest her predictable grin. We are turned off the one-dimensional storylines repeated ad nauseum.
ReplyDeleteThe only good that can come out of the supposed future storyline involving Rob and Tracy is if Rob kills her, then us sent down......there, done and dusted!
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ReplyDeleteI like your thinking!!
Um Graeme, you aren't watching the movie 'Misery' I hope! Sorry to hear about the leg - hope you have a speedy recovery.
ReplyDeleteNever mind Tracy, the one to watch is Amy. Given her chaotic upbringing she will become a worse psychopath than Tracy. If they keep Tracy on as they seem hell bent on doing despite our protests, then her comeuppance will be through Amy.
ReplyDeleteWhen Amy and Simon hit their teens, look out! Luckily, the UK has strict gun control laws.
ReplyDeletewholeheartly agree get rid of tracy
ReplyDeleteTo be honest, I'm a bit shocked Graeme that you say you still enjoy Corrie. Not having a go, each to their own, but that's not the impression I get from your blogs.
ReplyDeleteAnyway. I LOVE Tracy. And I think she makes Ken and Deirdre more interesting by extension because she gives them something to bicker about. The only objection I have to her recent storylines is the fact the conflict between Tracy, Steve and Becky was almost identical to that between Tracy, Steve and Karen. But I always enjoy Tracy and her flat-out ridiculousness and unbelievable callousness. I suppose it depends on what you want from a soap opera. I don't look to soaps for realism, I look to them for pantomime.
And I don't agree that Kate Ford is a bad actor either. It's TRACY who is a bad actor, she comes across as unconvincing because the character herself is insincere.
ReplyDeleteWell Vicky I hope I'm not wholly negative about today's Coronation Street - there are aspects I still enjoy and many characters/actors I love. It is still the best soap on telly and I have a great deal of affection for it.
Can't agree with you about Tracy though, but each to their own!
It's the writing for Tracy that completely kills her.
ReplyDeleteI hated Tracy in her last stint because I hate Kate Ford's lazy performances, but she is capable of some decent ones when the writing is strong. In her previous stint Tracy had moments, mostly with Blanche and Deirdre where she was a diverse character, you could feel for her, you could understand. But this time around, they are just writing her as a 2D bitch. She has lost any respect for Deirdre, talks to Ken like he's 5 and the only person she's had any sort of decent scenes with is Beth.
I'm not saying if the writing improves then she will improve because Kate Ford's acting is always going to limit the role, but with the terrible writing it's only going to make it worse than it already is.
If they insist on keeping her, which I understand why as she is a Barlow who have struggled since Blanche, they need to do some damage control.
Since the powers that be devised the implausible plot to bring her out of prison, Tracy has been a total waste of space. The actress seems incapable of expressing emotion, so the character is a caricature. When I see Tracy's grinning face, I tune right out of the programme until she is gone. Has any other character committed murder and been free to resume their life without even being on probation?
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with this blog. Bringing back Tracy was Collinson's second worst decision, (after making Betty Rovers' landlady).
ReplyDeleteWhen you see documentaries about prisons, people who have done very evil things appear quite reasonable most of the time. Not Tracy. She is unremittingly poisonous, even to complete strangers. No-one is like that.
There's nothing interesting about her. She's predictable and only there for that section of the audience who like to hiss at characters. She has no place in a programme for grown ups.
I agree 100%. Her character is not a redeeming feature of the street - a huge disappointment that she is still in the show. How can one person be so nasty in everything she does and is still around. Get rid or send her to rehab!!!
ReplyDeleteI just love how whenever there is a blog post criticizing something about Corrie, there is one Pollyanna who responds wondering why any of us watch the show if we obviously hate it so much? As this is a soap, having amoan about the state of things seems very natural and how dull would it be if we all posted how wonderful we all think the show is? Clearly we are fans or we wouldn't be tuning in to this lovely blog in the first place, so having a collective carp about the insanity of storylines that have played across our screens for the past two years brings us all together. If you're tuning in for kudos and warm fuzzies, I would suggest that you avoid soaps all together, for your own mental well-being.
ReplyDeleteFor the record, I've always thought Kate Ford the most unqualified actress I've ever seen on the screen. Add to this her public comments about acting not really being her thing and that she sticks with Corrie because she has bills to pay and knows which side her bread is buttered on, and I think we have full proof that she should be replaced by one of the plethora of unemployed actors out there.
Any storyline which would remove both Tracy and Rob permanently would be like an answer to most Corrie fans' prayers:)
ReplyDeleteI really like Tracy. I do think she adds to Deirdre's and Ken's storylines. I think it's kind of fun to have a bitchy character around who you know will be stirring up trouble.
ReplyDeleteKate Ford is only as good as the direction she's given. She's a one dimentional character than cannot be redeemed. They tried when she came close to death with a kidney infection last fall but...nobody cared. As it was just a foil on her part to get Steve back (again) it was a ridiculous storyline that left viewers (me) shaking their heads at the waste of good air time. Why this character has not been done away with years ago is beyond me. We have a character that has committed pre-mediated murder because she didn't like the way her then boyfriend treated her and waltzed out of prison in a couple of years time. Steve has treated her worse than Charlie Stubbs IMO, but he's still walking around. Maybe Tracy can finally try to kill Steve after she has a total mental breakdown..if she can't have him, nobody can scenario and it'll be a case of attempted murder and a sucessfull suicide by Tracy that will finally rid this show of the parasite she is.
ReplyDeletePart of the problem with Tracy is that the character has no interests, hardly any interaction with the rest of the street, and seems to live only for her obsession with Steve. For a brief moment she actually had a friend (Beth) but that thread never went anywhere. She's either sitting in the kitchen having a moan with mother or scheming to get back at/with Steve. What the hell does she do all day?! We've seen that she can scarcely be bothered to look after her daughter and tends to pawn her off on Ken or whoever else is willing to pick her up from school. The vacuum she lives in is not realistic.
ReplyDeleteIt would be nice if Tracy has more scenes with Beth. I can't stand her usually but the storyline when Steve was selling number 13 and Beth and Tracy were pulling all those pranks was comedy gold. Tracy should have a bit more interaction with characters other than Deirdre and Ken and maybe give a bit of attention to her daughter. However, I don't see a future for the character when the new producer takes over, she would surely be the first on everyones axe list,
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ReplyDeleteTracy and Beth were ok together but that particular storyline was incredibly daft! I would rather see Beth interact more with the likes of Eileen and Julie
I agree that they made a huge mistake giving tracy her get out of jail free card esecially as kate ford is not a great actress. But after watching the doco dierdre and me recently i could see that kate and anne and bill get on really well in real life and that probably has some influence on her future in the series.
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