Is Shannon the new Best Friend?

Constable Paul Wright is in Mtigwaki today and tomorrow. I went back through the strips involving Jesse Mukwa and saw that his primary obsession with Liz is that he is afraid she will leave. I know we have been playing that up on the ARB as his being in love with Liz, but there may be something more to it. I was thinking 2 things. (1) the previous teacher to Liz was so horrible that Jesse is afraid she might come back or someone worse, if Liz leaves. (2) Liz represents a mother figure for Jesse. Jesse’s mother was mentioned in one strip, but to my knowledge, only Jesse’s aunt Margaret has made an appearance. There may be something going on with his mom, where he is drawn more deeply to Liz. Given these 2 thoughts, I opted to have Paul explain to Jesse that nobody was leaving. While I was investigating the Ontario Provincial Police, I found a spot on their website that talked about detachments and their durations. In this spot, the detachments near to Toronto and that part of Ontario had no durations listed. The detachments in the Northwest and Northeast all had mandatory durations. It said that you do not get to pick you assignment in the OPP until you had served a duration in a place you did not pick. In the detachment closest to the presumed position of Mtigwaki, the duration was 6 years. So, I picked this time for Paul Wright. Not knowing how old he is or when he started OPP, Paul Wright could be close to finishing his duration or not. I doubt Lynn will research it. She can’t even make Shannon the same height from panel to panel.

Jeremy Jones. Nothing much today. I don’t want to involve him in anything spectacular, since I will very busy doing vacation preparation tomorrow.

Becky McGuire. Judging from the Tuesday strip, I think that Becky can safely leave on Wednesday for her trip to turn Howard human. I intended Becky to lead Howard over to Connie Poirier’s for some Connie snark, but I could not find any inspiration. I poured over the monthly letters and it was all, “I drank coffee with Connie. Connie and I went jogging.” It doesn’t look like Connie has done anything interesting since Lawrence announced he was gay. I wanted to do something with Sera the dog and Doris Day, but I couldn’t make it work.

Gerald. The strip today made Gerald’s work easy. If April were to use some 1920s phrase every day, the Gerald snark would write itself.

Tomorrow’s strip. Shannon…is…the…best…friend? Good…God…no. I went back to the strip where April rescued Shannon in the card shop and realized that Monday/Tuesday strips are basically a replay of that with Becky playing the insensitive villain both times. In both cases, Becky judges April’s looks and April gets upset. In both cases, Shannon comforts April. The big difference this time is that April does not help out Shannon to show she is deserving of Shannon’s comfort. This time, April is a little condescending to Shannon, when she tried to comfort April. Given that attitude, I would be surprised if Shannon…is…the…best…friend. Maybe it’s time for a life lesson from Elly about Shannon. After that, the possibilities are endless.