Answering the Criticisms
In today's For Better or For Worse, we see Elly Patterson on the verge of doing something the fans of this strip have been complaining about ever since Grandpa Jim had his first stroke---help Iris. I think Lynn Johnston must have had the idea over the last year she wanted to display the plight the elderly have when one of them gets sick and has to take care of the other. In and among itself, that is not a bad thing. However, you have to set the situation up properly.
My wife's mother works in a home as a nurse, and has frequently described to me the situation where the dutiful children call back home to their parents every week, and the parents tell them what is going on with their lives, but they leave out all the nasty stuff so they don't worry their children. Then the children make the trek from wherever they live to come and see their parents and are completely shocked to find out how bad the situation has gotten. Naturally this has happened to my wife and me on a regular basis whenever we make the trek from Arizona to Texas to visit her mother and stepfather. I remember quite well my stepfather-in-law telling me for the first time about his esophogial cancer as if I were already aware of it.
The way to do this kind of setup to get sympathy for the elderly characters is to either (a) put the younger relatives a distance away or (b) make the younger relatives selfish louts, who could care less about helping their parents. I have often gotten the impression that Lynn Johnston has not realized that with Grandpa Jim and Iris living in Milborough, the same town as Elly, and with Elly retired, she falls into the selfish lout category, no matter how many tuna casseroles or homemade puddings she brings over.
Now we are into retconning the situation. Iris is more aggressively pushing Elly's help away from Jim than she has done in any prior strip, and now Elly mentions helping out Iris (and not Jim) for the first time. Lynn is trying to answer those critics again, and the answer is "Iris has made her own situation with Jim and refused help. And despite that, Elly is going to help her."
So far, Lynn Johnston has done the "Liz gave away the WWII harmonica" criticism and the "Elly is not helping Iris" criticism. I wonder what's next?
My wife's mother works in a home as a nurse, and has frequently described to me the situation where the dutiful children call back home to their parents every week, and the parents tell them what is going on with their lives, but they leave out all the nasty stuff so they don't worry their children. Then the children make the trek from wherever they live to come and see their parents and are completely shocked to find out how bad the situation has gotten. Naturally this has happened to my wife and me on a regular basis whenever we make the trek from Arizona to Texas to visit her mother and stepfather. I remember quite well my stepfather-in-law telling me for the first time about his esophogial cancer as if I were already aware of it.
The way to do this kind of setup to get sympathy for the elderly characters is to either (a) put the younger relatives a distance away or (b) make the younger relatives selfish louts, who could care less about helping their parents. I have often gotten the impression that Lynn Johnston has not realized that with Grandpa Jim and Iris living in Milborough, the same town as Elly, and with Elly retired, she falls into the selfish lout category, no matter how many tuna casseroles or homemade puddings she brings over.
Now we are into retconning the situation. Iris is more aggressively pushing Elly's help away from Jim than she has done in any prior strip, and now Elly mentions helping out Iris (and not Jim) for the first time. Lynn is trying to answer those critics again, and the answer is "Iris has made her own situation with Jim and refused help. And despite that, Elly is going to help her."
So far, Lynn Johnston has done the "Liz gave away the WWII harmonica" criticism and the "Elly is not helping Iris" criticism. I wonder what's next?
posted by howard at 9:50 PM
7 Comments:
Possibly the "Mike is a lousy father" criticism. We could very well be in for a lot of bleating from the Delicate Genius about how he doesn't do the Mister Mom thing because of an unjustifiablr sense of inadequacy, how, since he was a hell-raiser as a child, he doesn't want to screw them up as badly as he was.
I wouldn't be surprised if some tart randomly shows up at Gordon's Garage and hits on Anthony, but he rebuffs her with some pale elbowy rage and a well-placed pun. This kills the "Anthony is boring" complaint (see! other women besides Liz are interested in him! He's badass!) as well as the "Anthony is an emotional cheater" complaint.
Lynn also re-did the "Therese was jealous of Liz" into simply Therese not wanting the traditional wife and mother role (and cheating, of course..Lynn seems to not have any other way of breaking up a romance).
It's sad that Lynn thinks addressing one little issue will wipe out literally years of behaviors that the characters have done. Mike has seldom spent time with his children in years, we've not seen Elly visit Jim and Iris but a handful of times, Anthony has pined after Liz throughout his entire engagement and marriage, and on and on. And of course, Lynn just ignored the "Therese was jealous of Liz" during the re-telling.
The entire last year has simply been too little, too late.
DJ
dreadedcandiru2,
"Mike is a lousy father" criticism. This one has already supposedly gone away now that he has quit his job at Portrait Magazine, so he has more time with his kids. We only have glimpses of his taking time from his kids to write novel #2, when Elly comes to babysit and we are told Robin has a regular sitter. On the other hand, he spent almost the entire month of September sitting with Meredith to show her that photo album and introduce her to the wonderful world of Super Teddy. This could be Lynn’s version of that retcon all by itself. “Not enough time with his kids” you say? How about a whole month of it until you are begging for it to stop?
Ellie,
I would love to see some tart randomly show up at Gordon’s Garage. That would be hilarious. However, the situation I really want to see is the return of Thérèse. I don’t know if Lynn would have her return as (a) sorry for what she did and (too late) wants back in Anthony and Françoise’s lives or (b) the greedy woman who wants to take Françoise away so she can get child support (only to be rebuffed by Françoise, who calls Elizabeth “mom”). Either would be delightful.
DJ,
It's sad that Lynn thinks addressing one little issue will wipe out literally years of behaviors that the characters have done.
Unfortunately, that is the nature of retcons. They are a terrible story-telling technique and are more typically used if one writer is taking over from another writer, where the new writer doesn’t like what the old writer was doing. In this case, both the writers are Lynn (at least I think they are), so it is yet another one of those things which has made the latter day For Better or For Worse so much fun to snark.
All those things you mention (Mike has seldom spent time with his children, Elly visits Jim and Iris but a handful of times, Anthony has pined after Liz throughout his entire engagement and marriage) are manifestations of poor story-telling. If you do one of these things once, then it is an incident. But if you get into the habit of doing it the same way every time over and over again, then it becomes a character trait. The writer has to say, “There has got to be a time where Mike plays with his kids inside the house, instead of working” or “There has got to be a time where Elly visits Jim and Iris and does something other than bring food”, and so on.
Her "Put A Band-Aid on a Train Wreck" impulse came into play shortly after the Pattersons moved in to the TTH. Remember Elly listing all the complaints April had and how grateful ChewToy was, despte Mom not really apologizing? That was Lynn retconning away "John and Elly suck as parents".
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