Tuesday, March 10, 2009

A Week’s Worth of Strips in the Freezer

The issue I had with my kids when they were the age of toddler Liz, is similar to the one we see with Elly leaving the kids today. If my kids saw you leave, they would get upset. If you snuck out while they were playing with the sitter, they wouldn’t even notice until you came back. When I saw today’s new-run of For Better or For Worse, my first thought was that Elly should have snuck away while John was playing with the kids and Elly could have avoided that long and dramatic farewell. Then again, the nature of this strip is that Elly probably did not want to avoid it. Even though Michael goes to preschool every day, he is still upset to see Elly go.

The only real change I see from the original storyline is Elly’s comment about putting “a week’s worth of meals in the freezer”. In the original strip, I believe Panel one has John saying, "I told Elly to take off this weekend... And let me take the kids for a change." In this version, Elly appears to be gone for a week and not a weekend. It’s funny she made all the food before she left. It kind of takes the fun out of Elly leaving. When my mom went on trips when I was growing up, I looked forward to mealtime, because then I could have delicious frozen pot pies.

As for John, he has spelled out that Michael is in preschool and Liz has a sitter. Supposedly this means that John can still go to work. However, the last time I looked, preschools do not usually keep the kids all day. The preschool day is short compared to the standard work day. Either John is working shortened hours, or Lynn Johnston thinks preschools run all day. Of course, this is the same woman who has kids riding the bus to preschool, so there is no telling what kind of ideas she has.

The setup is that even though John Patterson is taking care of the kids, what we are really talking about is getting them ready and dropping them off in the morning, picking them up in the evening and warming up an Elly meal, and getting them to bed, and maybe bathing them. She has given John as little responsibility as possible and shown the kids weeping on her departure. The only thing left is to show that even with that little responsibility, John is incompetent.

10 Comments:

Blogger DreadedCandiru2 said...

howard,

She has given John as little responsibility as possible and shown the kids weeping on her departure. The only thing left is to show that even with that little responsibility, John is incompetent.

And he will be depicted as a worse blunderer than Elly; this sets him up to look worse than a monster. We could sympathize with a jerk who was behind the times a little; there'd be no such danger with a blockhead who can't do anything right.

3:41 AM  
Blogger April Patterson said...

I guess LJ has also discarded the original "Elly departure" strip. The one that ran just after the "I told Elly to take off this weekend" strip had John holding Liz as a smiling Michael looked on while John held the front door open and told Elly--smiling in the doorway--"Have a great visit, honey, ..We'll be fine!" Next panel has the kids looking at him expectantly as he opens his newspaper and thought-bubbles, "..Think I'll check out the paper while the kids amuse themselves." Third panel, John is stretched out on the couch, newspaper open, as the kids stare at him and motion lines around his head show him looking away from the paper to meet Michael's gaze. Final panel--same as the third, except Lizzie has moved to the general area of John's feet and appears to be gnawing on one of his shoelaces. John asks Michael, "..Is it foolish of me to ask for a few minutes to myself?"

Either John is working shortened hours, or Lynn Johnston thinks preschools run all day. Of course, this is the same woman who has kids riding the bus to preschool, so there is no telling what kind of ideas she has.

Aaaand this is the same woman who couldn't be bothered to notice that Michael was in kindergarten, not preschool, in the first year of the strip--or that he'd moved onto grade one in the second year (so he was already aging and it's NOT okay to dip into year-two continuity if you're officially rewound to year one--and that's not even touching the whole "which Nichols child has/has not been born when" issue). Erg.

3:46 AM  
Blogger DreadedCandiru2 said...

April_Patterson,

I have a funny feeling that her return will be altered as well; instead of her returning to find a ton of housework and a lazy jerk husband not understanding why he should have got off his butt and done it, she'll return to crying children, a haggard husband and tales of his witless flailings-about distorted in such a manner as to present his well-meaning ineptitude in a negative light. As I keep saying, Elly won't leave him alone with the kids because he's an inept dimwit. As you said, it's her way of reminding her children who they should support.

5:31 AM  
Blogger howard said...

DreadedCandiru2,

And he will be depicted as a worse blunderer than Elly; this sets him up to look worse than a monster.

This is possible. I wonder if Lynn Johnston will go so far as to show that John is so incompetent with the kids that he is an actual danger to them. She's done it indirectly with Elly before (leaving the 1-year-old in the bathtub by herself), but never intentionally.

As you said, it's her way of reminding her children who they should support.

I wonder if Lynn Johnston really believes her kids will read this strip and get that idea about their father. If I were her kids, I would just read this strip and feel sad for my mother.

7:03 AM  
Blogger howard said...

aprilp_katje,

The one that ran just after the "I told Elly to take off this weekend" strip had John holding Liz as a smiling Michael looked on while John held the front door open and told Elly--smiling in the doorway--"Have a great visit, honey, ..We'll be fine!"

The obvious differences here are:

a. The original did not spell out all the help (preschool, sitter, Elly’s pre-made meals) John was going to get. In fact, since the original was set to occur over a weekend and not a full work week, the impression you would get is that John did not get any help. He was alone with the kids.

b. The kids’ reactions are completely different. Their immediate weeping could be used as a punch line that they don’t want their mother to leave, but it could also be used as an indication that they don’t want to spend “one-on-one quality time” with their father.

Originally this story is how John learns that his kids need attention, and he can’t do the same thing he always does when he is at home and Elly is around to handle the kids. That ‘s a cute little story and it fits well with the way John had been portrayed at home. Elly is going to come home and find John left her a big mess to clean up, and John gets slammed. Apparently that is not enough for Lynn Johnston.

This version is loaded with extra caveats to show that John is going to get little-to-no credit for handling these kids. Not only that but we get the extra assurances. Elly asks John if he doesn’t mind being alone. John assures her not to worry. The setup is clearly headed towards the idea that John does mind being alone and Elly should worry. The way it is going, I fully expect John is going to be on the phone to Elly the whole time she is gone asking her what to do. Or he may be leaning heavily on Connie Poirier or Annie Nichols for a rescue. Then after it is all over, either he will praise Elly for everything she does, or he will praise himself for having survived the experience.

7:06 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

This story is kind of odd to me. One thing that my friends with kids have always said is that once the grandkids were born, their parents lost interest in them and focused on the grandkids. If my friends visited their parents for a week and did not bring the grandchildren, the grandparents would be upset and perplexed.

It is especially odd in Elly's position, where her parents live all the way across the country. Surely Elly doesn't do this trip more than once a year. This means that Jim and Marian likely won't see the kids at all this year. It just seems strange to me that everyone is OK with that. The only families I have known that would be OK with that length between visits are those that are estranged or semi-estranged.

It just seems odd and an artificial set-up for John's week of incompetence that will surely follow.

However, this series of strips has made me reminisce about my own childhood. My dad never took care of us alone unless Mom was in the hospital having a baby. I do remember when my little sister Libby was born. I was only three, but the horror of it is burned into my brain. The morning after Libby was born, Dad and my sister Katie and I were going to go to the hospital to visit Mom and the baby (back in the days when Moms stayed awhile). But first Dad made us breakfast. He decided to make pancakes. Well, he likes buckwheat pancakes, so he made pancakes that were 100% buckwheat. They came out black. Not burned, just black. Katie (age 2) and I were so horrified that we began to cry and sob and refused to eat them. Then when we went to the hospital, we begged Mom to come home because Dad tried to torture us by making us eat black pancakes.

The black pancake incident was so notorious that the next time Mom had a baby, the lady next door invited us over to eat with her for every meal until Mom came home.

I need to call my sister. :)

7:23 AM  
Blogger howard said...

qnjones

One thing that my friends with kids have always said is that once the grandkids were born, their parents lost interest in them and focused on the grandkids. If my friends visited their parents for a week and did not bring the grandchildren, the grandparents would be upset and perplexed.

Thanks to the wonderful world of divorce and remarriage, my kids have 4 sets of grandparents. I cannot say your example is true for all of them; although it is definitely true for some of them. In fact, some of the grandparents have very little interest in dealing with small children and prefer to spend time with adults.

This means that Jim and Marian likely won't see the kids at all this year. It just seems strange to me that everyone is OK with that.

We saw the visit with Jim and Marian and the grandkids from the first year of the strip reprinted last year during the hybrid when Mike was reminiscing about Saint Grandma Marian. In that strip sequence, it appeared that the sainted Grandma Marian spent almost no time with little Lizzie and Mike, while Grandpa Jim was the one taking the kids to do things. As presented, it looked like Marian was much more interested in spending time with Elly than the grandkids. If that is the case, then an Elly-only visit would probably only upset Grandpa Jim.

It just seems odd and an artificial set-up for John's week of incompetence that will surely follow.

Odd and artificial and definitely snarkable, because Lynn is so obvious in what she is trying to do.

The black pancake incident was so notorious that the next time Mom had a baby, the lady next door invited us over to eat with her for every meal until Mom came home.

That’s a very funny story. I wish I had a story like with my son after my daughter was born, but my wife was booted out of the hospital so fast, we didn’t get the time. We basically got home, slept, got up and went back to the hospital to take her and my daughter home.

10:54 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

My dad was responsible for dinner quite a bit when my mom was in grad school. He wasn't really a cook because he wasn't raised to be. So he knew his limitations and stuck with spaghetti, frozen dinners, pizza, pbj sandwiches, etc. He knew how to take care of kids, though, and enjoyed it. Well, until I became a teenager anyway.

It's kind of ridiculous that John, who at his new-run age should be of my generation and not my father's, doesn't know how to provide food for his kids, but I can swallow it. I can't swallow it being some big honking deal that he's going to take care of his own children for a week. My dad, of John's original generation, might not have been a great cook (great with a bbq though), but he was always completely capable of taking care of me and often the neighbor kids as well. Sometimes better than my mom, because he liked little kids more than my mom did, and was 5 years older than her.

2:10 PM  
Blogger howard said...

clio-1,

I can't swallow it being some big honking deal that he's going to take care of his own children for a week.

It is hard to swallow. The strip is running into that area of humour we have seen with movies like “Three Men and Baby” and that sort. It’s funny because the men are so incompetent with the baby, and their reactions are so extreme. Of course, I have seen similar kinds of jokes in the entertainment industry with career women suddenly finding themselves saddled with a child. “Fish out of water” stories are a pretty common idea for storytelling.

The interesting part of this sequence is to see how Lynn Johnston is rewriting her original story via new-run. New-run John has more pride in what he is going to do. He is more confident there will be no problems. And he has been provided much more help to accomplish the task. This is no longer going to be a simple story of a man unable to find things and leaving a mess for his wife when she comes back after a weekend trip. Lynn Johnston is escalating the scale of everything, and the only real question is how far will she take it. The weekend trip may have been lifted from Lynn Johnston’s own life; but I have a feeling this new-run sequence is going to be lifted straight from a Hollywood movie and reach epic proportions.

2:29 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Either John is working shortened hours, or Lynn Johnston thinks preschools run all day. Of course, this is the same woman who has kids riding the bus to preschool, so there is no telling what kind of ideas she has.

Or, alternately, John has left instructions with the babysitter to go pick Mike up when preschool ends for the day.

'Course, that would make sense, so it's unlikely we'll see that. If Lynn acknowledges the time difference between John's usual working hours and when Mike usually gets out of school, it's probably going to be in a "Mama! Daddy abandoned me at the school!" kind of way.
Or she'll have the preschool instructors calling the office to inquire, icily, as to when Dr. Patterson plans on coming over to pick up his son; preschool and daycare workers really don't like being kept late to watch over someone's kid. And if Lynn's going to pick up on any fact, you know it'll be one that she can use to make Rod - er, John - look bad.

9:19 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home