With Susan
In today's For Better or For Worse, we see Gary Crane spill the beans on Paul and Susan with the phrase "with Susan." Elizabeth, amazingly, showed no sadness at all, but immediately leaped to thoughts of revenge. I remember years ago, when I dated a girl off-and-on for 3 1/2 years. The last year of the relationship was pretty awful, because she kept on breaking us up, and then calling the next day and saying she had made a big mistake and asked if we get back together again. I always said yes, until the last time. It's obvious to me now it wasn't going to last, but back then I persisted on, thinking things would get better. When we did break permanently, I was amazed how sad I felt, even though in many respects it was a relief to finally be free of the woman, and my inner demons which drove me to continue trying over and over again.
Back in 2002, when Liz was freeing herself from Eric Chamberlain, and sought revenge against him, it felt more realistic to me; because there had been several sequences of Liz trying to make the relationship work, and dealing with grief over her mistreatment by Eric, which occurred months before the revenge sequence took place. This time with Liz and Paul, I could hear Lynn saying, "I have less than 9 months. Let's go straight to revenge." Of course the problem with this is evident in the hundreds of comments being written in the FOOBiverse's Journal and many other places. Unlike the situation with Eric, where the readers might root for Liz to punch Eric, with Constable Paul Wright, they are actually rooting for him. The person who has been dishing out the cheating is Liz herself. By Liz standards, if you have spending time "with" another person, then you are cheating. And by those standards, she has been cheating with Anthony Caine and with Warren Blackwood.
I was quite pleased to read comments in the FOOBiverse's Journal which said that they regretted that this storyline would mean the loss of Constable Paul Wright posting on April's Real Blog, and threw a lot of really nice compliments out there. It did my ego quite a bit of good.
My problem now with the good constable is not determining if Paul and Liz will break up and Paul will not transfer his job. That seems to be pretty clear. What is not clear to me, is Susan Dokis' involvement in the situation. In other words, will Susan be surprised Paul has not already broken things off with Liz? Will Susan be aware that Paul got his transfer? I have been playing it as Susan knows all about the transfer and Paul is still involved with Liz, and she is trying to convince him to drop Liz and his transfer; but I may have to retcon that away if Lynn Johnston has decided to repeat the Tina / Liz / Eric situation where Susan and Liz will pummel Paul with their fists. In order for that to happen this must be the situation:
Susan thinks Paul has already broken up with Liz. She thinks Paul has given up his transfer to Toronto. The problem with this scenario is that it would be very hard for Paul to continue cheating with Chipper, if he moved to Toronto. The other problem is that Gary Crane seems to be very aware Paul is still officially with Liz, and it seems unlikely Chipper wouldn't know it too.
The other possibility, and the one I am going with, until I learn differently, is the from the original John Patterson letter description / prediction:
John's Letter, June 2006
Liz's young man sounds like he wants to stay in the bush! Too bad, when you fall in love with a certain tree, only to discover it has deep roots. My bet is that they will have to break up. Still, it really has been her first adult falling-in-love experience, and that is always good. You learn that it's about more than infatuation. It's about negotiating, and questioning what it is that your principles or wants really are. At first you think you can give up anything to be with that other person, but as the time wears on, the glow comes off, and chee, maybe you don't want to give up some of your comforts and things that are important to you, after all.
If I go with John's interpretation, then Susan is a part of Paul's root system and knows all about Paul's transfer and Liz. Susan's opinion is that she and Paul are together now, and the only thing left for them to do is to let Liz know and apologize for hurting her feelings. If the writing is good, then Liz will also realize the part she played in destroying the relationship with Paul and that those comforts John talked about really were more important to her than Paul Wright. The problem with this situation is I don't know how Liz can do her Jesse Mukwa visit, with the Suds and Chipper thing hanging over her head.
posted by howard at 9:21 PM
4 Comments:
Gah, I really hate John Patterson. What a stupid tree analogy. If you fall in love with a tree, do you really expect to dig it up and move it? Dumb choo-choo boy.
You can hate John Patterson for his analogies, but his predictions of the future have been spot-on. His prediction of how the Becky / band storyline would end up was exactly the way it ended up.
I was disappointed that Lynn gave Mike the job of predicting how the Liz/Paul relationship would turn out, with the "absence makes the heart go wander" statement. Mike has a job in the strip: being an insufferable ass with a not-so-secret crush on Weed. All John gets to do is play choo-choos and get the smackdown from Elly.
You made me LOL with this passage. And it's so true.
I agree about Liz deserving to be dumped. And called on the horrible way she's failed to conduct this relationship.
You may be right about Lynn defreezing Liz's age just enough to let her have an Antony mini-me.
Then on top of it, in the strips, Liz did not make much effort to keep in close touch with Paul.
I did review this for the record. 2 stories where Liz e-mails Paul. 1 story where Liz calls Paul and not finding that satisfying, chases her cat for a snuggle. 1 story where Liz calls Paul and April interrupts her.
For a 6-month period in a comic strip, that's not too bad. Of course the letters had them talking every night for 2 hours, and the Skype letter upped it to all evening. The letters definitely try to make it work in Liz's direction, with her even thinking about marriage with Paul for the first time. And in the letters was the only place where the words "love" and "Paul" were in the same sentence.
I'm not sure about the mini-Anthony. Lynn still maintains that she draws, inks, and letters all the characters in the strip herself. But the art styles are so different, that is an obvious lie. But if she has a spare artist (I suspect the lady with the blacked-out head in the pillow-fighting model picture on the website), then that artist could be employed to write the framing sequences for the rerun strips. Greg Evans does this for Luann from time to time, when he takes a vacation. He has a bunch of pictures of Luann, he can plug in and add a new word balloon. When I first heard about this hybrid strip, that's what I thought. That way the spare artist can still be employed, but not be given anything which will actually affect a character. The lady who does backgrounds, can re-background the really old stuff as can the lady who does colours. That keeps them busy, along with the rest of staff, merchandising the old material, along with possible new editions of the old material. But if that's the way it is, then there really will be no character development or plot whatsoever.
Unless, of course, Lynn Johnston retires about as well as Elly Patterson does.
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