Drawn a Complete Blank
In the past, we could count on new-run Elly to display a new level of loathing for John Patterson. We could also count on new-run John to be even more sexist than he had been before.
With today’s new-run of For Better or For Worse, as we see Elly considering what to buy for John Patterson. She has no idea what to get her husband. Elly says, “You get a shirt and tie for someone if you don’t know what else to buy. You get a shirt and tie if you’re at a total loss – if you’re desperate and you’ve drawn a completely blank.”
For the first time I can remember, Lynn Johnston is taking the characters further than just their humorous loathing for each other. Not only do the Patterson parents not get along very well, but Elly knows nothing whatsoever about her husband. She doesn’t know what he needs. She doesn’t know what he wants. She doesn’t even know what she wants him to have. Although The Lockhorns and Andy Capp are comic strips notorious for their husband / wife hatred; I never got the impression that the characters in those strips did not know each other’s personal likes and dislikes. With today’s strip, the relationship between John and Elly Patterson actually becomes worse than the husbands and wives of those strips.
Who would have thought such a thing was possible? Only Lynn Johnston. Yes, Lynn. Now we understand that your relationship with ex-husband Rod Johnston was a complete blank even at the very beginning.
With today’s new-run of For Better or For Worse, as we see Elly considering what to buy for John Patterson. She has no idea what to get her husband. Elly says, “You get a shirt and tie for someone if you don’t know what else to buy. You get a shirt and tie if you’re at a total loss – if you’re desperate and you’ve drawn a completely blank.”
For the first time I can remember, Lynn Johnston is taking the characters further than just their humorous loathing for each other. Not only do the Patterson parents not get along very well, but Elly knows nothing whatsoever about her husband. She doesn’t know what he needs. She doesn’t know what he wants. She doesn’t even know what she wants him to have. Although The Lockhorns and Andy Capp are comic strips notorious for their husband / wife hatred; I never got the impression that the characters in those strips did not know each other’s personal likes and dislikes. With today’s strip, the relationship between John and Elly Patterson actually becomes worse than the husbands and wives of those strips.
Who would have thought such a thing was possible? Only Lynn Johnston. Yes, Lynn. Now we understand that your relationship with ex-husband Rod Johnston was a complete blank even at the very beginning.
posted by howard at 10:35 PM
6 Comments:
Like I said in my blog the other day, these people not only don't know one another, they regard said knowledge as a form of spiritual pollution. Elly doesn't want to know what John needs or likes because if she did, he'd have somehow dominated her by making her anticipate his needs.
I think Lynn Johnston was after a sort of anti-Christmas shopping kind of statement. It would have made more sense had the shopping subjects not been her brother and her husband. With my wife, Christmas shopping is her way of molding me, via the clothes I wear. As much as Elly has been shown to hate what John wears, it's hard to believe she would miss that opportunity to correct.
If the subject had been John's parents, for example, it might have made more sense for Elly not to know them. However, in the case of Lynn Johnston, where there is so much subtext behind the John and Elly relationship in her own relationship with her ex-husband, she may have intentionally picked these subjects for secondary personal message of "I don't know you."
Wow, this is just sad. Elly may as well get him a gift card for all the care she's shown.
Apparently Elly was going for more personal than a gift card with the impersonal gift of the shirt.
If the subject had been John's parents, for example, it might have made more sense for Elly not to know them.
Elly doesn't know them, as evidenced by the early strips you found, where she seems to think that they're named Vern and Alice. Or else they really are named Vern and Alice and Elly just called them Will and Carrie for some reason. Like Anthony's parents at his wedding, John's parents were just those people on the groom's side of the church.
Like Anthony's parents at his wedding, John's parents were just those people on the groom's side of the church.
Even in Anthony and Elizabeth's wedding, John's parents fell into that category. None of John's side of the family showed for Elizabeth's wedding, including the beloved Bev Cruikshank. Rod Johnston moved his parents to live closer to him after he moved to Corbeil; but Lynn kept their avatars in Winnipeg. That pretty much tells you what Lynn Johnston must have thought about their move.
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