Five Things We Learned In Corrie This Week

Storytelling is key.  Have you ever started telling a lengthy story in the pub?  You know it's a bit of a tale, but you're confident the punchline will be worth the telling.  So you start talking, and halfway through, you realise you've lost your audience.  Perhaps your mates get a bit bored.  Perhaps there's something more interesting going on at the next table.  Perhaps the story wasn't that exciting to start with.  You twig it's going badly, that it's heading nowhere, but you've started telling it, so you're going to damn well finish it.  You overcompensate to try and re-engage your listener's interest and make it feel worthwhile.  You talk even louder.  You make bigger gestures.  You exaggerate.  But all the while you know it's hopeless, a flop, and no matter how noisily or how overdramatic the story ends, nobody cares and just wants you to shut up so they can finish their beer in peace.

In Coronation Street this week, Michelle, Ryan and Ali escaped from a gangster.

The Force is with us.  With the sad death of Carrie Fisher, the producers of the Star Wars films will need a new Princess Leia, and Tracy Barlow is clearly up for the job.  She has impeccable credentials: she's strong, vocal, and will smite her enemies with a lightsaber (or alternatively, a really ugly statue).  Be honest - if Tracy was put in charge of your platoon of space fighters, you'd do as you were told.  Let's hope Kate Ford's application goes better than Andrew Whyment's audition for the role of Fashion Forward Jedi Knight.

Help me, Obi-Wan Kirk-nobi, you're my only hope!

Recycling is in.  Sinead's hippy-dippy wedding accurately reflected the bride's personality: it was sunny, wholesome, and a little bit dull.  Her ethical principals guided the whole event.  No plasticky tinsel that could clog the throats of poor ickle sea life here; instead they got some old tights and dangled them off the railings.  I hope Daniel cleaned up after him, and there isn't some poor street cleaner being forced to strip thirty denier off the trees while the Barlow family got uproariously drunk in the Bistro.  In fact, did he get permission from the Council before he used public property for his wedding?  It would've been funny if the camera had panned across from their loving vows to a furious official demanding to know why ratepayers were being turned away from the Community garden due to an unauthorised closure.

To forgive is divine.  The McDonald-Barlow nuptials, meanwhile, were a rollercoaster of hurt feelings (though Tracy's sense of betrayal paled next to Tim's sulk at not being best man), physical violence, and wanton cake destruction.  It was all tremendous fun, even if nobody seems to know how to film stuff on their phones: video is in landscape people!  No wonder Leanne wore that unflattering pantsuit - she must've realised that if she'd worn a skirt for the constant barrage of assault she suffered there would've been upskirt pics of her knickers all over the internet by sundown.  By the end of the week, despite Steve being a horny dog who really needs castrating and Tracy being a vengeful she-beast, I was pulling for these two crazy kids to sort their differences out and stay together.  It was only a little bit of adultery, and I can't be the only one who thinks Tracy and Steve as a couple would be far more interesting telly than them apart.  Jack and Vera spent much of their relationship philandering, arguing and physically assaulting one another, and they died happily devoted to one another.  A Moroccan honeymoon where Tracy crushed her new husband's self-worth under her stiletto heel could be the perfect start to a - well, maybe not a happy marriage, but at least an entertaining one.

Elder abuse is sometimes justified.  It would've taken a heart of stone not to laugh when Liz kicked Jim's cane out from under him at the cemetery and sent him sprawling in the grass.  As Johnny later told him, "what I did was wrong, what you did was sick."  It's hard to see how Jim can possibly slime back onto the Street after exploiting the death of his baby daughter - he's not just crossed the line, but buried it under three tons of manure and then peed on it.  Plus I'm not sure Hannah and her upsetting haircut will ever let him out of her sight again; there were points in this week's episodes where I thought I was watching The Ring, with Hannah as Sadako lurking malevolently in the back of every other frame.  The one I'm really worried about is Andy.  I half expected him to turn up in a brief cameo at the end like Warren in This Life, wearing a Hawaiian shirt and muttering "excellent" as he surveys the carnage.  His phone must've burst into flames from all the shouty texts he received that day.

The author considered mentioning the Jenny/Johnny revelations, but he couldn't bring himself to screengrab any of the Amazing Jenny Bradley Faces (Heartbroken Edition).  Sympathise with him over on Twitter @merseytart.

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