Making Serious of a Light Situation
In today's For Better or For Worse, Lynn Johnston stacked the deck against Becky McGuire by choosing to make two of her band member "stoned". Whether or not she is trying to indicate marijuana use or the old-fashioned alcohol intoxication by the word, I do not know. Most of the For Better or For Worse commentaries were concentrating on the "April and Eva are teenage beyotches" idea, but it occurred to me that what may be needed was an examination of what would really happen if this occurred in real life.
Becky McGuire is a pop star, but also a student at R.P. Boire and brings in her band of over 18 adults to play for her school, during school hours. 2 of the musicians are so stoned that they are unable to play. In Tucson, Arizona, where school officials get into deep doodoo just by having speakers to high school bodies who make any kind of political statement, a drunken pop act, would be a giant pile landing right on their heads, and they would take it out on Becky and anyone associated with her.
By implication, if Becky's band is stoned, then this means that Becky and Jeremy Jones both regularly associate with people who use illegal drugs, and are severely addicted, considering they are so wasted, they cannot play music. In my imagination, the R.P. Boire school officials would come down on Becky and her band like the same giant anvil Lynn Johnston has been using to write her current script. So, I decided to take it that direction. Jeremy is trouble and will be punished. Becky is in trouble. And Constable Paul Wright kindly points out all the evidence that Becky has a problem too, and when I went through websites showing the signs of drug or alcohol addition, Becky had quite a few of them.
Overall, I liked the way it played, even though it wasn't snark of the funny ha-ha kind. I was going for more like a "let me point out the ginormous plot holes that you have left open by writing such garbage" kind of snark. Ultimately, different from the usual stuff. But it's good to do something different from time to time.
Becky McGuire is a pop star, but also a student at R.P. Boire and brings in her band of over 18 adults to play for her school, during school hours. 2 of the musicians are so stoned that they are unable to play. In Tucson, Arizona, where school officials get into deep doodoo just by having speakers to high school bodies who make any kind of political statement, a drunken pop act, would be a giant pile landing right on their heads, and they would take it out on Becky and anyone associated with her.
By implication, if Becky's band is stoned, then this means that Becky and Jeremy Jones both regularly associate with people who use illegal drugs, and are severely addicted, considering they are so wasted, they cannot play music. In my imagination, the R.P. Boire school officials would come down on Becky and her band like the same giant anvil Lynn Johnston has been using to write her current script. So, I decided to take it that direction. Jeremy is trouble and will be punished. Becky is in trouble. And Constable Paul Wright kindly points out all the evidence that Becky has a problem too, and when I went through websites showing the signs of drug or alcohol addition, Becky had quite a few of them.
Overall, I liked the way it played, even though it wasn't snark of the funny ha-ha kind. I was going for more like a "let me point out the ginormous plot holes that you have left open by writing such garbage" kind of snark. Ultimately, different from the usual stuff. But it's good to do something different from time to time.
posted by howard at 10:57 PM
7 Comments:
"Ugh" was me bracing myself for the awfulness yesterday. :)
I thought the direction you took with Becky and Jeremy being in trouble made perfect sense. I agree about exposing the plot holes.
Thanks. I enjoyed the awful plotting, but I must admit I was surprised Lynn Johnston tried so hard to make the moral that Becky chose the wrong backup band. If it had been Becky who had the problems personally, I doubt April would have been as nice.
On a totally separate note, can you remind me how old Paul and Rosemary should be right about now? I always forget who is older. (This is for a top-secret project I'll unveil whenever I finish it--stay tuned!)
Paul would turn 10 and Rosemary 7 during this year of school, but I don't know exactly when their birthdays are.
Do you mean the academic year or the calendar year? :)
BTW, are you having trouble accessing LiveJournal? I can't get into Foobiverse or the Meta this morning at all. :(
Academic year. I have a tendency to think of my kids with respect to their friends in terms of their common grades as opposed to their common ages. When they were younger, I thought of their friends more in terms of their actual ages. One of Mike's monthlies indicated Rosemary entered Grade 1 in the academic year starting 2005, so I have to presume she it Grade 2 this year. Paul is 3 years older.
Yes. I can't get into LiveJournal or Foobiverse. It says Maintenance and rather consistently.
I was able to get into Foobiverse for a little while, but it's gone to the "maintenance" error message. :(
Thanks for the scoop on Paul and Rosemary's ages.
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