Recycling Jokes
I think it is highly appropriate that Lynn Johnston has opted to make today’s For Better or For Worse Sunday colour strip a repeat of a joke she has done before back when April was much younger (9 or 10 years old), i.e. she has too much stuff in her new backpack and can’t carry it. Considering the hybrid strip starts on Monday, and they are going to be a mixture of old and new strips, where we get to enjoy the repeated humour of old strips, it makes sense for today’s strip to also repeat humour from old strips. It gets us in the mood for jokes we have seen before.
I remember back in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when I went to high school and college, I did not have a backpack. I carried all my books and school supplies to and from school in my arms, and that was a treacherous business. When you are loaded up with books, it is easy to drop them and difficult to get them all picked back up. I would have loved to have had a backpack in those days. So, it is with mixed emotions I see Lynn Johnston making fun of overloaded backpacks.
Monday begins the hybrid and Mike Patterson starts his story of John Patterson and Elly Richards falling in love. I have some doubts as to whether Lynn Johnston can put together a convincing love story. The whole time Mike and Deanna were dating, I had this idea in the back of my head, “And eventually this guy is going to realize someone who puts him off this often, isn’t really into him.” Then it didn’t happen. Up until their first marriage ceremony, I was convinced Mike was going to wise up. Obviously, it did not make much of an impression on me, as far as a love story goes, and I did not examine the strip anywhere near as critically then as I do now.
As for Liz and Anthony, I have written much about their romance over the last several months. The clearest example I have found to compare to it, and this still applies, is that Liz and Anthony’s love story is like the reality TV series The Bachelorette, where the producers of the show want to leave the audience guessing which guy the girl will choose, and in order to do that, they intentionally leave out most of the romantic bits between the two who end up being the final couple. So, when the final couple is revealed, the viewers who like to see romance feel as though they have been robbed. We are the viewers of For Better and For Worse and in the last year, we had red herrings of Paul Wright, Warren Blackwood and Mason the best man to try and throw us off. All they really did was make Elizabeth Patterson look like a woman who could care less about the men interested in her.
With Elly and John, Lynn Johnston has the advantage that we already know they are going to end up together and get married, so she really can just focus on the romance aspect of their relationship and not anything of that “will she or will she not” stuff. Without all those other constraints she had with Mike, Deanna, Liz, and Anthony; it will be a true test to see if she can fashion a romance story. If she can’t with John and Elly, then there is no prayer for her to pull off Liz and Anthony, who have a whole lot more baggage.
I remember back in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when I went to high school and college, I did not have a backpack. I carried all my books and school supplies to and from school in my arms, and that was a treacherous business. When you are loaded up with books, it is easy to drop them and difficult to get them all picked back up. I would have loved to have had a backpack in those days. So, it is with mixed emotions I see Lynn Johnston making fun of overloaded backpacks.
Monday begins the hybrid and Mike Patterson starts his story of John Patterson and Elly Richards falling in love. I have some doubts as to whether Lynn Johnston can put together a convincing love story. The whole time Mike and Deanna were dating, I had this idea in the back of my head, “And eventually this guy is going to realize someone who puts him off this often, isn’t really into him.” Then it didn’t happen. Up until their first marriage ceremony, I was convinced Mike was going to wise up. Obviously, it did not make much of an impression on me, as far as a love story goes, and I did not examine the strip anywhere near as critically then as I do now.
As for Liz and Anthony, I have written much about their romance over the last several months. The clearest example I have found to compare to it, and this still applies, is that Liz and Anthony’s love story is like the reality TV series The Bachelorette, where the producers of the show want to leave the audience guessing which guy the girl will choose, and in order to do that, they intentionally leave out most of the romantic bits between the two who end up being the final couple. So, when the final couple is revealed, the viewers who like to see romance feel as though they have been robbed. We are the viewers of For Better and For Worse and in the last year, we had red herrings of Paul Wright, Warren Blackwood and Mason the best man to try and throw us off. All they really did was make Elizabeth Patterson look like a woman who could care less about the men interested in her.
With Elly and John, Lynn Johnston has the advantage that we already know they are going to end up together and get married, so she really can just focus on the romance aspect of their relationship and not anything of that “will she or will she not” stuff. Without all those other constraints she had with Mike, Deanna, Liz, and Anthony; it will be a true test to see if she can fashion a romance story. If she can’t with John and Elly, then there is no prayer for her to pull off Liz and Anthony, who have a whole lot more baggage.
posted by howard at 11:17 PM
8 Comments:
I'm glad I'm not the only one who remembers the first time Lynn did the overloaded backpack as a gag, when April was around ten.
Someone at Foobiverse expressed doubt that someone Merrie's age would care to ask about how her grandparents met and fell in love. ISTM she'd be likely to think that Grandma Elly and Grandpa John have always been old and have always been together. :)
Howard, I agree that the Liz/Anthony story needs a lot more development, but I have fond memories of the depiction of Michael and Deanna’s romance and marriage.
Someone at Foobiverse expressed doubt that someone Merrie's age would care to ask about how her grandparents met and fell in love.
By the age of 4 or 5 many kids (especially girls) have a large collection of romantic fairy tales that they know by heart. Isn’t it realistic that a child who knows all these stories would be inquisitive about family members in photos?
When my daughter was a young child she loved looking at our old photo albums. She still does.
Anon NYC
By the age of 4 or 5 many kids (especially girls) have a large collection of romantic fairy tales that they know by heart. Isn’t it realistic that a child who knows all these stories would be inquisitive about family members in photos?
Maybe. I have a boy (age 4 1/2) and we haven't done romantic fairy tales with him. He thought it was very interesting that his grandparents are his parents' parents--I don't think he has any concept of courtship and marriage. He knows his parents did this thing called getting married, which we celebrated by going out to dinner. But I think that's all pretty abstract to him.
Both my parents and my wife’s parents are divorced and remarried, so my kids have effectively 4 sets of grandparents. When my kids were younger, they had trouble even remembering grandparents they did not see all that often. My wife’s mother was the grandparent they saw most often, and because she looks a lot like my wife, my kids had no trouble grasping the idea she was their mother’s mother. However, the concept of who my wife’s father was eluded them for a long time. Based on my experience, I would say Meredith and Robin, living with Elly and John for 7 months in the Sharon Park Drive house, have picked up on the idea that Elly and John are Mike’s parents.
As my kids have gotten older, they have become more interested in my courtship and marriage to my wife, with only this subject in mind: If daddy had married this girl he thought he was going to marry, then what would have happened to me? Likewise, similar thoughts when they were told their mother dated other men before me. They have no romanticized idea of our courtship. In fact, when we showed them our wedding video, they hooted with laughter all the way through it.
As for albums, my daughter bears a strong resemblance to my wife at her age, so their albums discussions have centered along this point. “That’s a picture of me.” “No it’s a picture of me. There’s my Mrs. Beasley doll.” “No, it’s me. It looks like me.” “I looked like you when I was your age.” “Why don’t look like me now?” “I dye my hair.” “Don’t you want to look like me?” And on and on.
As for fairy tales, my daughter and her friends enjoy dress up. At least she did when she was about 3 years younger. Nowadays, she prefers movie character costumes and is thinking about going on Halloween as Luna Lovegood, the only blonde (like her) among Harry Potter’s Dumbledore’s army. When she was little, she liked the Disney princesses because she liked their outfits. It seemed to have little to do with romance and courtship.
We did get to go to Disneyland once to the restaurant where the Disney princesses live and visit with you at your table. I found it to be a much more satisfying visit than say, with Winnie-the-Pooh or Mickey Mouse, who are mute. The young lady who portrayed Snow White had the voice spot-on, and when I asked her what her favourite fruit was, she gamely said, “Oh bananas, pears; anything but apples.”
But I digress. I can’t speak for all children, only for my own. When I have tried to look at old pictures with them, where they were not in them, they could not have been less interested. And this includes their current ages of 12 and 9.
Halloween: my son wants to be a sheltie this year. Not to be confused with Dixie, who is part rat. ;)
That would be just adorable. However, I still have fond memories of when my daughter went at age 2 as a mouse. She was quite cute.
He got the idea because he has an aunt and uncle who have two very friendly shelties. :)
Shelties are nice dogs. It's too bad Dixie isn't one.
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