Retconning Connie
Here are the retcons in today's For Better or For Worse:
1. Connie wants a daughter.
In the comic strip, you don’t see Connie wanting more children until she gets to the point where Lawrence is old and Elly is pregnant with April. She ends up getting a dog instead. This a carry-over from a conversation Elly and Connie had in the modern times, where Connie tells Elly she wants to be a mother-of-the-bride like Elly is.
2. Connie told Elly that she and Pablo were married, so when Elly asks her about getting married again, she thinks of Pablo.
Ignoring the original retcon which turned Lawrence ethnic, the bio describes the situation like this:
Connie had deliberately dropped all contact with friends from her previous life, unable to tolerate their pity or disapproval. But when her ex-roommate Elly Patterson, worried about her friend's long silence, tracked her down at her mother's house and demanded to know what was up, Connie gave in to her overwhelming need for a sympathetic ear. "Connie! That's great." Her voice rang cheerily through the phone. "Not about Pablo, I mean. �.I'm so thrilled that you have a baby boy, just like we do. He sounds darling. I'd love to see him and swap new-mommy stories with you. Why don't you come visit us? We can move Michael into our room for a few days and free up the other bedroom for you and Lawrence."
Where in that do you get the idea that Connie told Elly she was married to Pablo. It sounds like she is completely aware of the situation. And moreover, given that Lawrence is about 5-6 years old, why is the marriage reference not to her actual first husband, Pete Landry?
What has happened to Connie is:
a. Lynn Johnston has not read Beth Cruikshank’s bio of Connie Poirier, and thus forgotten how Pete Landry was married and divorced from Connie after she arrived in Milborough and before Lawrence turned 6.
b. Lynn is taking the modern Connie concerns and planting them on young Connie, whose main concern was finding a man (and not having more children).
1. Connie wants a daughter.
In the comic strip, you don’t see Connie wanting more children until she gets to the point where Lawrence is old and Elly is pregnant with April. She ends up getting a dog instead. This a carry-over from a conversation Elly and Connie had in the modern times, where Connie tells Elly she wants to be a mother-of-the-bride like Elly is.
2. Connie told Elly that she and Pablo were married, so when Elly asks her about getting married again, she thinks of Pablo.
Ignoring the original retcon which turned Lawrence ethnic, the bio describes the situation like this:
Connie had deliberately dropped all contact with friends from her previous life, unable to tolerate their pity or disapproval. But when her ex-roommate Elly Patterson, worried about her friend's long silence, tracked her down at her mother's house and demanded to know what was up, Connie gave in to her overwhelming need for a sympathetic ear. "Connie! That's great." Her voice rang cheerily through the phone. "Not about Pablo, I mean. �.I'm so thrilled that you have a baby boy, just like we do. He sounds darling. I'd love to see him and swap new-mommy stories with you. Why don't you come visit us? We can move Michael into our room for a few days and free up the other bedroom for you and Lawrence."
Where in that do you get the idea that Connie told Elly she was married to Pablo. It sounds like she is completely aware of the situation. And moreover, given that Lawrence is about 5-6 years old, why is the marriage reference not to her actual first husband, Pete Landry?
What has happened to Connie is:
a. Lynn Johnston has not read Beth Cruikshank’s bio of Connie Poirier, and thus forgotten how Pete Landry was married and divorced from Connie after she arrived in Milborough and before Lawrence turned 6.
b. Lynn is taking the modern Connie concerns and planting them on young Connie, whose main concern was finding a man (and not having more children).
posted by howard at 11:45 PM
20 Comments:
I didn't read that as Connie wishing for more children. I saw that as her wishing Lawrence had been a girl. She seems to be saying, "Lawrence is perfect, but a girl would have been MORE perfect." I have known a few men who were like this about daughters when they wanted sons.
This is not only consistent with Connie's feminist attitudes, but with her statements to Elly that made it clear Lawrence could never give her the parental moments she craved--such as being mother of the bride.
While it sucks that Connie feels this way, it is sadly true to life, in my experience. It doesn't seem that she let Lawrence know she felt that way. Her relentless manhunt and tendency to bring men home (and sometimes marry them) before really knowing them was likely far more damaging.
When Lynn said she didn't plan on doing any more research, she meant it. She can't even be bothered to look back through the old collections to see what Connie's real concerns were. Instead, she hybridizied the Connie who brought man after man home in an effort to Have It All wuth the Connie who envies Elly her MOBZillahood.
Poor Connie. She's been murdered, tossed in a ditch, and replaced by Retconnie. Also, new-run Elly has a much narrower face than original-run Elly did.
I've never been able to get over the retcon from little Lizzie finding out that Lawrence's dad returned to Brazil after the divorce into "Lawrence is an unknown- to- his- dad love-child". I don't care if there was another divorce with Pete or not. Heck, I don't care whether Connie was married to or just living with Lawrence's dad - it's the "he left Lawrence" turning into "he never knew about Lawrence" that bugged me.
Not that leaving the country where you have a kid is a good thing to do, but that was the original constraint, and good writing would have acknowledged and used this. Lawrence could have found and confronted his absent dad. Lawrence could have learned about extenuating circumstances why his dad didn't remain in contact - or that he just didn't want to deal with his kid. The dad could have been accepting of Lawrence - or not. There was a wealth of story possibilities thrown by the wayside.
There's been so much "OMG I MUST BE MOTHER OF THE BRIDE!" stuff lately ... is it really that big a deal? I mean, I think my mom mostly cares that I'm happy and is actually pretty relieved that I'm not into wedding stuff at all. Is there some secret MOTB ceremony that no one has told me about where they drink the blood of virgins and get their youth back or something? Is that the big draw?
Also, "Retconnie" made me laugh hysterically:)
Hey, canuckdownsouth--I've already gushed about "Foob's Paradise" over at CC and Foobiverse, but I'll do it again because I love it so much! :)
I agree about the retconning. I really don't understand why Lynn seems so allergic to sticking with her established continuity. I suppose she's also going to pretend she never referred to their town as "Scarborough" or "Eastgate" in the strips. Nope, nope, it's always been Milborough.
nav, my mom was happy for me when I got married, but being MOB didn't seem to strike her being oh so super-fantastic. I don't understand it, either!
Don't get the MOB stuff either. I was always, fortunately, MOG. Both my daughter's in law and my sons were professional people with their own incomes, and planned and paid for their own weddings - sticking to a budget. Very nice, smaller affairs - none of the huge yuck to do of the Liz and Anthony shindig.
qnjones,
This is not only consistent with Connie's feminist attitudes, but with her statements to Elly that made it clear Lawrence could never give her the parental moments she craved--such as being mother of the bride.
I have seen this with women too. There was a woman I knew back in Dallas who was having children about the same time I and my wife were. She had 4 boys in a row and desperately wanted a girl. When my wife was pregnant with our second child (a girl), it was with great reluctance she informed this woman we were expecting a girl. She was very jealous. Some women like the matching mother-and-daughter outfits and the frilly dresses that only little girls can get away with wearing. The woman we knew eventually ended up putting her sons in matching outfits with her dress, and it looked odd.
DreadedCandiru2,
Instead, she hybridizied the Connie who brought man after man home in an effort to Have It All wuth the Connie who envies Elly her MOBZillahood.
After Lynn talked in one of her interviews about eliminating reprint strips with typewriters in them because they were not modern, I am beginning to wonder if her intent really is to rewrite this story, by picking out specific strips to reprint and then adding strips to enhance the point-of-view of those strips.
aprilp_katje,
I suppose she's also going to pretend she never referred to their town as "Scarborough" or "Eastgate" in the strips. Nope, nope, it's always been Milborough.
I don’t really have problems with there being a consistent name. I was more surprised by the disconnect between Beth and Lynn over the Connie bio. Beth managed to find a way to put in both Peter Landry and Pablo da Silva and have them work, and Lynn just went with the “Connie has never been married” story. I wonder if she plans to pull all the strips with Connie’s dating life, to stay with this "I am really still in love with Pablo" idea.
CanuckDownSouth
Lawrence could have found and confronted his absent dad. Lawrence could have learned about extenuating circumstances why his dad didn't remain in contact - or that he just didn't want to deal with his kid. The dad could have been accepting of Lawrence - or not.
Lawrence did meet his dad in October, 1999, when he pretended to be his chauffeur and then waited to see if he would figure out he was his son, and he eventually did.
Nav,
There's been so much "OMG I MUST BE MOTHER OF THE BRIDE!" stuff lately ... is it really that big a deal?
My wife has a step-mom and birth mom. During our wedding, the wrangling over making sure each got the “mother of the bride” attention was probably the most stressful part of the wedding.
Anonymous,
Very nice, smaller affairs - none of the huge yuck to do of the Liz and Anthony shindig.
For all her talk about mother-of-the-bride, Elly did almost nothing mother-of-the-bride-like in Liz’s wedding. There should have been at least one moment where Elly had a “moment” with Liz on her wedding day. The only time they spoke was when Elly was forced to tell her about Grandpa Jim. As for my wife, our wedding was a huge bonding time between her and her step-mom and her and her mother, as they went about picking out this and that for the wedding. If we had seen one moment where Elly and Elizabeth did something for the wedding instead of having everyone contribute something, it would have been a much better strip.
Howard, you're right that some of the story possibilities were still there post-"my dad never knew me"-retcon. And one part, as you point out, was done - it was the majour retconizer.
But the story could have been done within the pre-retcon constraints. And there were other interesting stories that were tossed - like, oh, Connie's reaction to Lawrence going to find the guy who left her.
So I'm still not past the retcon :-)
hoawrd,
I am beginning to wonder if her intent really is to rewrite this story, by picking out specific strips to reprint and then adding strips to enhance the point-of-view of those strips.
That seems to be what she has in mind. She doesn't seem to care that she can't turn back the clock and fix things without making it look like she wasted three decades of her life on a first draft.
CanuckDownSouth,
But the story could have been done within the pre-retcon constraints. And there were other interesting stories that were tossed - like, oh, Connie's reaction to Lawrence going to find the guy who left her.
That would have been interesting considering that the way Lawrence found his dad was because Connie had been keeping track of him and told Mike where, when and why he was coming to Canada, which he then passed to Lawrence. That’s a pretty good hint, if you ask me.
When I go back through those old strips, I can see that although Connie talks to Elly a lot about Lawrence, we never see Connie with Lawrence, and she mentioned that when he went to university, he left her house and never came back (unlike Mike who always returned home during university breaks). I had thought we might see Connie and Lawrence and Greg and Nicholas together during Elizabeth’s wedding, but that did not happen. There was a good story opportunity there for Lynn to show why Connie and Lawrence are separated, but she did not capitalize on it.
I got the feeling that Lynn chose to do the retcon the way she did, was so she could contrast Mike worried that Deanna was going to cheat on him with the doctor Kevin Smythe while she was on her trip to Honduras, with Connie in a similar situation with Pablo da Silva. It seemed like a retcon of convenience. The two stories were not exactly alike, and so Lynn decided she would make them alike. That way you can build the tension of whether or not Deanna was going to cheat. Then later you feel the same relief Mike did when he finds out that Kevin Smythe was married (as if that would stop Deanna from cheating.)
That was the idea. At the time I was reading it, my thought was “You think your girlfriend you want to marry is going to cheat on you? Why do you want to marry her then?” I was convinced Mike and Deanna were not going to get married with all the plotlines Lynn kept throwing at us. I was quite surprised when they did get married.
DreadedCandiru2
That seems to be what she has in mind. She doesn't seem to care that she can't turn back the clock and fix things without making it look like she wasted three decades of her life on a first draft.
I have been told many times to never go back and fix an earlier work, because it is never worth it. I wonder if Lynn Johnston will come to this same understanding the hard way.
canuckdownsouth, I love your installment from yesterday with April opening a can of whup-ass in Mike's direction. And Dee not getting why April's upset is so fitting. :)
aprilp_katje,
Years of doing April's Real Blog have clearly affected you and your opinion of poor Mike.
howtheduck, that's probably true--OTOH, I think Lynn's character (mis)development has contributed to my anti-Mike animus, as well. ;)
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