Pearls Before Swine
I am really not sure where Lynn Johnston is going with this new-run in today’s For Better or For Worse. We have seen that Elly Patterson, thanks to knowing virtually nothing about her husband, ended up buying him a shirt and tie. We saw yesterday that John Patterson, thanks to only knowing his wife in relationship to food, planned to buy Elly a food sealer.
In today’s new-run, Dr. Ted McCaulay has Dr. John Patterson in a jewellery story buying Elly a pearl necklace, which Ted picks out and the jeweller gift wraps. You would think that Elly would love a gift like this. However, we have a few clues that this gift will go horribly wrong:
1. Elly only bought John a shirt and a tie, and since the theme for the last 2 years has been “John Patterson is an asshat”, I cannot imagine John outdoing Elly in terms of generosity.
2. The person giving the gift purchase advice is Dr. Ted McCaulay, who never gives good advice when it comes to women. Never. The mere association of Ted with this idea should set off alarm bells that John is doing the wrong thing.
3. The final panel joke is about how impersonal the gift is, since John didn’t pick it out and John didn’t wrap it. That’s not a good sign, and is probably a clue to how things will go horribly wrong.
4. The only time that I have been able to find in the Comic Catalog or AMU reprints where John gave Elly jewellery (as opposed to Elly buying it for herself on a Mexican vacation), was this strip. In this strip, April finds a pearl necklace in a closet that John was planning to give to Elly sometime. That’s kind of an expensive thing to forget. Maybe today’s necklace is that pearl necklace that John planned to give Elly, only he loses it in the closet, and ends up buying Elly the food sealer, which she decides she loves because John picked it out himself and wrapped the present himself and it’s not as good a present as a shirt and tie.
In today’s new-run, Dr. Ted McCaulay has Dr. John Patterson in a jewellery story buying Elly a pearl necklace, which Ted picks out and the jeweller gift wraps. You would think that Elly would love a gift like this. However, we have a few clues that this gift will go horribly wrong:
1. Elly only bought John a shirt and a tie, and since the theme for the last 2 years has been “John Patterson is an asshat”, I cannot imagine John outdoing Elly in terms of generosity.
2. The person giving the gift purchase advice is Dr. Ted McCaulay, who never gives good advice when it comes to women. Never. The mere association of Ted with this idea should set off alarm bells that John is doing the wrong thing.
3. The final panel joke is about how impersonal the gift is, since John didn’t pick it out and John didn’t wrap it. That’s not a good sign, and is probably a clue to how things will go horribly wrong.
4. The only time that I have been able to find in the Comic Catalog or AMU reprints where John gave Elly jewellery (as opposed to Elly buying it for herself on a Mexican vacation), was this strip. In this strip, April finds a pearl necklace in a closet that John was planning to give to Elly sometime. That’s kind of an expensive thing to forget. Maybe today’s necklace is that pearl necklace that John planned to give Elly, only he loses it in the closet, and ends up buying Elly the food sealer, which she decides she loves because John picked it out himself and wrapped the present himself and it’s not as good a present as a shirt and tie.
posted by howard at 9:39 PM
4 Comments:
It is sort of silly of us to expect that John can be allowed to outshine Elly; since Lynn cannot let go of the past, what would be a thoughtful gesture from anyone else is, of course, a disaster in the making when he does it.
It may be silly of us, but I am genuinely curious how Lynn will try to turn this against John. The usual rule is that if Lynn tries to make someone look bad, she ends up making them look good. It's hard for me to imagine how she is going to make a pearl necklace gift go horribly wrong.
*eyes artwork in linked strip* That's a pearl necklace? At best, that's a pearl pendant.
You're right. It looks like a long string with something on the end. Good catch.
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