Elly Patterson: Full-Time Parent
It was sort of a joke in yesterday's For Better or For Worse when Elly said that she couldn’t leave her babies with strangers, but apparently Connie Poirier did not take it as a joke at all. She actually asks the question, “Do you really want to be a full-time parent again?” to Elly. And Elly actually answers the question seriously. Is she saying that Michael and Deanna leave their kids with her for such long periods, that Elly could think of herself as a full-time parent? Thank goodness this is Saturday and will hopefully put an end to this nonsense. Otherwise tomorrow we would have Elly talking about the labour pains she experienced bearing Robin and Meredith, and how she is responsible for paying their expenses for the rest of her life.
I know when we saw Elizabeth come back from Mtigwaki to live in Elly’s house, I was astonished to see her in the fetal position in her bed holding a stuffed bunny. I could not believe that Lynn Johnston had taken her character that low, and I still can’t. It was unbelievably excessive, as if Elizabeth had serious mental problems.
Now, the way it is coming off, Lynn Johnston is taking Michael and Deanna’s parenting to such a low that Connie is sincerely asking Elly if she wants to be a full-time parent to her grandchildren. Are Deanna and Michael, who took care of these kids for the first years of their lives with very little help from Elly, now being dragged as low as fetal-position Elizabeth? This storyline dumbfounds me.
Fortunately Elly breaks away from that subject and once again confirms her favourite child was Michael, and credits him with making her the woman she is today. I am not sure that is intended to be a compliment, because the woman she is today is “tired”. Connie laughs at that one, for some reason. However, if what she said before is true, then incompetent parent Michael is making Elly tired. At least this time, when Elly leaves out a child, she includes Elizabeth in that list along with April for a change.
I know when we saw Elizabeth come back from Mtigwaki to live in Elly’s house, I was astonished to see her in the fetal position in her bed holding a stuffed bunny. I could not believe that Lynn Johnston had taken her character that low, and I still can’t. It was unbelievably excessive, as if Elizabeth had serious mental problems.
Now, the way it is coming off, Lynn Johnston is taking Michael and Deanna’s parenting to such a low that Connie is sincerely asking Elly if she wants to be a full-time parent to her grandchildren. Are Deanna and Michael, who took care of these kids for the first years of their lives with very little help from Elly, now being dragged as low as fetal-position Elizabeth? This storyline dumbfounds me.
Fortunately Elly breaks away from that subject and once again confirms her favourite child was Michael, and credits him with making her the woman she is today. I am not sure that is intended to be a compliment, because the woman she is today is “tired”. Connie laughs at that one, for some reason. However, if what she said before is true, then incompetent parent Michael is making Elly tired. At least this time, when Elly leaves out a child, she includes Elizabeth in that list along with April for a change.
posted by howard at 10:01 PM
10 Comments:
howard,
At least this time, when Elly leaves out a child, she includes Elizabeth in that list along with April for a change.
Elly's semiconscious hostility to her daughters has always bothered me. Given how warped the family dynamics have become, I almost think she thinks of them as competition somehow. Watching John tuck Liz in last winter put the fear of Patterincest in my head and I can't dislodge it.
Maybe I come from a strange family, but when I was a teenager, my parents still considered themselves full-time parents. ;)
What had me laughing in disbelief is how Elly claims Mike was a child "just like her," and then brags about how smart and funny Mike was. Excuse me, but "smart" and "funny" are not the adjectives anyone would use to describe Elly Patterson.
As for her intelligence, it's never been demonstrated. On the academic and career side, she never finished college, struggled through a night school creative writing program, and has never had a job for long except for her own business, which was provided to her by her husband and his money. On the common sense side, we constantly see Elly stubbornly persisting in doing things that don't work, and she is still perplexed by common kid and dog behavior even after having 30 years of experience with both.
Funny? When has Elly ever made a joke that wasn't a lame pun? Elly has a truly inflated sense of herself.
As for her daughters being second-class citizens: I am totally unsurprised. This is just par for the course.
qnjones,
Elly is smart and funny like Liz is decisive. She has all the sparkling intellect of an embalmed llama and it shows. Not only is she flabbergasted by child and animal behavior, she doesn't even have the brains to see what a revolting turd she's forcing on her daughter. As for having a sense of humor, let us not forget her screaming about being done with motherhood because of a mild inconvenience.
dreadedcandiru2,
Watching John tuck Liz in last winter put the fear of Patterincest in my head and I can't dislodge it.
Yes. Moments like that with John make me glad he is barely in the strip.
aprilp_katje,
Maybe I come from a strange family, but when I was a teenager, my parents still considered themselves full-time parents. ;)
Yes, this business of every character being Lynn has pushed to the point of being a joke in itself these days. From Anthony talking about Woodstock to about the millionth time Lynn Johnston has forgotten that Elly still has April in the house, even if Lynn Johnston has no daughter in the house. Lynn wants so desperately to talk about her experience as an empty nest mom, she cannot stop herself. This whole week seems like a bizarre storyline to praise an Elly that didn’t exist until this week. Can you imagine what the wedding dialogue is going to be like?
Minister: Do you take this woman to have and to hold, for better or for worse?
Anthony: I will, but first I think I need to take at least 3 panels to praise my future mother-in-law.
qnjones,
Funny? When has Elly ever made a joke that wasn't a lame pun? Elly has a truly inflated sense of herself.
Well, she has Connie Poirier, who laughs at everything Elly says. I dated a girl a few times, who thought she was hysterical, because she had a best friend who laughed at everything she said. Then she would get mad when I didn’t laugh at everything she said. We didn’t date for very long.
qnjones, I also caught the implication that Elly considers herself smart and funny. Neither she nor Mike qualifies as either.
howtheduck, I had the same thought as you--since Lynn herself has been an empty-nester for some time, she keeps forgetting that Elly is not.
april patterson I had the same thought as you--since Lynn herself has been an empty-nester for some time, she keeps forgetting that Elly is not.
Even so, even so, we know FBOFW is created by a team. Surely the syndicate has someone called an "editor." And while I know the great Creatrix is above all concerns here on what we call earth, how is it that so many insanities continue to occur?
Has Lynne gone into some kind of reclusive fugue state where she makes everyone close their eyes until the strip is printed? Does the sycophancy extend beyond her compound so completely that absolutely no one in the chain says, "Do you really want Ellie to come off as such an a-hole?"
Or maybe they do, but only when they're new, because Lynne will fire off pages of screed that if they only really understood her, they'd see that she can create characters that are complete jerks but that could not possibly be jerks, because Lynne doesn't think they're jerks.
She has to have made enough money for therapy by now. Private therapy. With just a therapist, not with all of the rest of us.
thursday next,
And while I know the great Creatrix is above all concerns here on what we call earth, how is it that so many insanities continue to occur?
For Better or For Worse is one of the top 5 strips being in more than 2000 papers. That gives Lynn Johnston a lot of leeway. And to be honest, it's still not the worse thing in the comic strip section today."
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