Why Bother?
Zoom! From the first date, to married with a surprise baby, all in one strip. Just when I thought Lynn Johnston could not make this story any less romantic, she managed to prove me wrong once again.
The more surprising aspect of this sequence is that it looks like she is rushing to get through to the 1979 start point of the strip after a single week of stories. For Better or For Worse started with John and Elly having Lizzie and Mike. Given the speed of the plot, she could knock that out in the next 2 days. However, why is she buzzing through this story so quickly? Why can’t we see Elly on that date? Why can’t we see Elly and John as young marrieds, without children, coping with a new dentistry practice? If Lynn Johnston is not going to expand on the story, then why is she bothering to do it in the first place?
I am reminded of old comic strips, which had a preset sequence of lead-in strips which a newspaper could use whenever a strip was introduced to a new newspaper. I remember The Phantom had a one week "origin of the Phantom" which would be run just before the newspaper would start with the current storyline. I think that is what we have here. The origin of Elly and John (and also Mike and Lizzie), which can be run before a newspaper decides to run the hybrid. Or more specifically, the origin of the hybrid strips.
The more surprising aspect of this sequence is that it looks like she is rushing to get through to the 1979 start point of the strip after a single week of stories. For Better or For Worse started with John and Elly having Lizzie and Mike. Given the speed of the plot, she could knock that out in the next 2 days. However, why is she buzzing through this story so quickly? Why can’t we see Elly on that date? Why can’t we see Elly and John as young marrieds, without children, coping with a new dentistry practice? If Lynn Johnston is not going to expand on the story, then why is she bothering to do it in the first place?
I am reminded of old comic strips, which had a preset sequence of lead-in strips which a newspaper could use whenever a strip was introduced to a new newspaper. I remember The Phantom had a one week "origin of the Phantom" which would be run just before the newspaper would start with the current storyline. I think that is what we have here. The origin of Elly and John (and also Mike and Lizzie), which can be run before a newspaper decides to run the hybrid. Or more specifically, the origin of the hybrid strips.
posted by howard at 12:31 AM
3 Comments:
Why can’t we see Elly and John as young marrieds, without children, coping with a new dentistry practice? If Lynn Johnston is not going to expand on the story, then why is she bothering to do it in the first place?
Great questions--these strips are full of needless retcons and add nothing substantive to the Pattersons' story.
Not only do they not add anything substantive, but they make The Lives Behind the Lines seem coherent in comparison. I don’t have nor I have I read the book, but your quotations over at the FOOBiverse’s Journal have spelled things out.
It specifies they met when John was in his second year of dental school and her second year of undergraduate a 4-year separation. Unlike the strip, the book does not say Elly was a first year student when she met John and decided to quit school. He notices something wrong with her teeth, which makes more sense than him giving her a dental examination, something which a 2nd year dental school student would not do. I can make a case for Elly and John being separated by 3 years in school, because her birthday is in August, and might be after a cutoff date for school. I can also make a case for Elly and John being separated by 4 years in school, if John applied for and got into the DDS program after his 3rd year of undergraduate work. I can make it work when the The Lives Behind the Lines book says John graduated and Elly’s parents expected she would have graduated the same year.
The timeline would work this way: John is born in 1949. 1949 + 18 years + 3 years undergrad + 4 years DDS + 1 year residency = 1975, the year Elly would need to get pregnant if she were having Mike in 1976. Elly was born in 1951 + 18 years + 1 year delay going into school due to birth month + 4 years undergraduate = 1974, the year Elly would have graduated and also the year John did graduate and began his residency.
You could make a case for those calculations if only Lynn had not had Mike tell Meredith that Elly was 18 when she went off to school and that she was only in her first year when she met John. Sad that we care more about these details than she seems to!
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