The Return of April
I honestly thought we would never see April at R.P. Boire Senior Secondary School again in For Better or For Worse, since Lynn Johnston was so adamant about focusing on Liz and Mike Patterson in her remaining non-hybrid strips. However, she does have the loose ends of April in the band, her boyfriend Gerald, and her commitment to become a vet. Lynn has hinted in the monthly letters for months that April would leave both Gerald and the band, and commit her life to veterinary school. She also hinted that Becky would take over Gerald as her boyfriend. It will be interesting to see how many of these things she will accomplish. I would rate it like this:
a. April quits the band – This is definitely going to happen.
b. April breaks up with Gerald – There is a pretty good chance of this. April already did it once back in June, and she hinted about doing it again if Gerald went on tour with Becky.
c. Becky takes over Gerald – Not that likely. That whole idea was tied into the Evil Becky storyline, and I think that storyline was officially over at the Hearts Together telethon.
d. Becky returns to Evil – Possible. Lynn Johnston has reversed on April’s opinion of Becky over and over again.
e. Shannon Lake comes back to comfort April because her former band is mad at her, and announces she is going to Washington, D.C. to make a speech. – Probable. And the tag line will be, “Your band may be mad at you, but that’s nothing compared to having U.S. Senators mad at you.”
f. April makes a statement about something she has to do to prepare for veterinary school which will be something no one actually has to do in preparation for veterinary school – Probable. Lynn Johnston has proved time and time again to enjoy making outrageous unresearched statements.
g. April mentions Grandpa Jim's stroke and the loss of his harmonica - Possible.
h. April does something which will indirectly hint that Rod Johnston left Lynn Johnston for another woman - Probable.
a. April quits the band – This is definitely going to happen.
b. April breaks up with Gerald – There is a pretty good chance of this. April already did it once back in June, and she hinted about doing it again if Gerald went on tour with Becky.
c. Becky takes over Gerald – Not that likely. That whole idea was tied into the Evil Becky storyline, and I think that storyline was officially over at the Hearts Together telethon.
d. Becky returns to Evil – Possible. Lynn Johnston has reversed on April’s opinion of Becky over and over again.
e. Shannon Lake comes back to comfort April because her former band is mad at her, and announces she is going to Washington, D.C. to make a speech. – Probable. And the tag line will be, “Your band may be mad at you, but that’s nothing compared to having U.S. Senators mad at you.”
f. April makes a statement about something she has to do to prepare for veterinary school which will be something no one actually has to do in preparation for veterinary school – Probable. Lynn Johnston has proved time and time again to enjoy making outrageous unresearched statements.
g. April mentions Grandpa Jim's stroke and the loss of his harmonica - Possible.
h. April does something which will indirectly hint that Rod Johnston left Lynn Johnston for another woman - Probable.
posted by howard at 11:15 PM
8 Comments:
The sad thing is that, handled properly, this could actually be where April starts to escape the bland suburban hell-world of marrying a selfish, passive-aggressive moral bully and raising whining, destructive brats Lynn posits as the sovereign cure for mankind's ills. However, Lynn IS writing this so April just set herself up for more serfdom.
dreadedcandiru2,
If Lynn follows her usual trend, the Patterson child on the way to university starts to put into motion the events which will cause the end of the high school romance, in preparation for the university romance. Liz did not get dragged back into high school romance until she was a few years in university. If we were to see April go to university, it would probably run the same way, since Lynn loves repeating storylines. So, I expect a Gerald breakup, and if Lynn decides to keep running new stuff for the next 2 years, I expect a university romance for April, who is not Gerald.
We should also expect to see that the college romance, like all the potential suitors that are not Gerald, would be somehow 'unworthy' of April's affection as would be the woman whom Gerald would have ended up marrying. Since they would be judged inferior by Lynn's, shall we say, idiosyncratic standards, we would end up finding them more sympathetic that the Destined Couple.
dreadedcandiru2,
This is of course, assuming that Lynn does not dredge up some old character from April's past who knew her before Gerald did. Then that new person could qualify as an even older childhood sweetheart and fall under the "Deanna rule of earlier childhood sweetheart replacement."
There is that possibility. After all, she's always said that we don't know everything about these people. It would be a simple matter to create a pre-school aged love interest (let's call him Joey Ecks) out of whole cloth. His absence from Classic Foob could well be explained by our attention being diverted by the Lizthony non-romance, Elly screeching at non-events, John developing a keen interest in model railroading and so on and so forth. Not only would the bleaters at Coffeee Talk blindly accept Lynn's Comrade Ogilvy, we ourselves would have to grudgingly admit he might have been there all along, unseen and unremarked upon.
dreadedcandiru2,
Unseen, perhaps. Obscure is more likely. Deanna Sobinski was well gone from the strip when Mike Patterson started his dating years.
Good point. Unfortunately for me, I can't recall all the names of the children April went to pre-school with off the top of my head. Otherwise, I've have a fair idea of who'd displace Gerald as her Twoo Wuv.
dreadedcandiru2,
I don't remember them either, except for Becky and Duncan; and I don't have that collection.
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