The Fire is Over. Let's Dance.
Taking the For Better or For Worse fire story arc as a whole, we have 1 week with fire and the next week, Lynn tries to cover all the bases of what happened due to the fire. The first week was actually pretty good, with quite a bit of excitement and Pattersons running around doing stupid things. The second week however, missed and oh, how it missed. 3 of the 6 daily strips this week were devoted to Michael Patterson talking to Josef Weeder. If you want to wring some emotion out of a desperate situation, there is no better place to go than with the kids and in the 2 strips where they appeared they were completely silent.
Imagine:
1. Michael, Deanna and kids going to the hospital to visit the Kelpfroths
2. Michael facing up to his wife and children after he abandoned them with Merrie getting a good dig in to daddy how his work was more important to him than she is, while at the same time loving on him.
3. Seeing Elizabeth and April pitching in to help with the kids as Deanna starts to weep uncontrollably at her losses.
4. Seeing a heart-to-heart between Deanna and Dr. John Patterson as they go to work together.
After going through all the trouble to set this storyline up, 1½ years of being tortured by the Kelpfroths, Lynn polishes it all off in 2 weeks. It seems like a waste to me, particularly when you consider what could have been done.
Tomorrow’s strip: Jim and Iris go out of bed, to a chair, and back up for some dancing. However, it does not match this line from Grandpa Jim’s January letter:
We celebrated the New Year with a bit of dancing; Jim was always an excellent dancer and while he can't actually get up and groove, he puts his arm around me and we sway in our seats.
Imagine:
1. Michael, Deanna and kids going to the hospital to visit the Kelpfroths
2. Michael facing up to his wife and children after he abandoned them with Merrie getting a good dig in to daddy how his work was more important to him than she is, while at the same time loving on him.
3. Seeing Elizabeth and April pitching in to help with the kids as Deanna starts to weep uncontrollably at her losses.
4. Seeing a heart-to-heart between Deanna and Dr. John Patterson as they go to work together.
After going through all the trouble to set this storyline up, 1½ years of being tortured by the Kelpfroths, Lynn polishes it all off in 2 weeks. It seems like a waste to me, particularly when you consider what could have been done.
Tomorrow’s strip: Jim and Iris go out of bed, to a chair, and back up for some dancing. However, it does not match this line from Grandpa Jim’s January letter:
We celebrated the New Year with a bit of dancing; Jim was always an excellent dancer and while he can't actually get up and groove, he puts his arm around me and we sway in our seats.
My plan is for Jeremy Jones to DJ the old person party, since the strip doesn’t show it at all. I predict Monday will be Liz going to Mtigwaki and seeing Constable Paul Wright. I think we have a breakup coming and I just know Lynn Johnston is going to make it stupendously terrible. It will be so much fun to snark.
posted by howard at 11:18 PM
4 Comments:
I presume that Paul is referring to the Childs v. Desormeaux decision of the Supreme Court of Canada. That turns somewhat on its facts. The hosts only served a small glass of champagne to each guest at midnight, and one of the hosts specifically asked the guest if he was ok to drive before he left and noticed no signs of impairment. The SCC hinted broadly that its decision would have been different if the hosts had served any significant quantity of alcohol and/or were aware the guest was impaired.
The driver was sentenced to 10 years in jail in criminal proceedings.
That is correct ruling. The on-line news articles I read on the matter though indicated that if the Supreme Court had ruled the other way, then they would be opening up any hosts of dinner parties where alcohol was served to lawsuits, despite whatever hints the Supreme Court may have been giving. After all, some people can hide their impairment very well.
I should have said "were aware or ought to have been aware the guest was impaired". If I serve a guest or know that a guest consumed enough to be impaired and then let them drive away from my home, then I'm going to be liable. Childs v. Desormeaux really only protects hosts who have made their best efforts.
I didn't see anything in what I read about the ruling, which established guidelines for that interpretation, but I will have to admit the main point of the news articles did not go into the details. They seemed to focus mainly on the idea that here was an area where there could be some lawsuits and the Supreme Court cut it off. Did the Supreme Court rule on what a "significant quantity of alcohol" was or how to interpret if the guest was impaired?
My point in mentioning it was only that it was a relatively recent ruling of which Constable Paul Wright would be aware, so he could mention it with respect to Elizabeth Patterson, who in last year's post-New Years Eve strip clearly had too much to drink. This way Paul could say Liz might be a little less than responsible for her own actions in her drinking, while at the same time show he is a constable who keeps up with changes in interpreting the law.
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