Where is "FBOFW" going with this? Elly drives home alone from Mtigwherever, gets sleepy, pulls over and falls asleep in the car by the side of the road.
Yikes, Howard is still loose, isn't he? Is he going to come after her? Shouldn't she have called home? Will John and April go frantic with worry, sending Mike out to find her, and he'll fall into the river like Farley? I'm so confused.
Note to those of you (ahem, my mom, ahem) who think I post about this strip because I hate it, and that I need to give Lynn Johnston a break, please understand, it's the complete opposite. I love the strip, and spent a recent sickly Saturday chuckling over the "Suddenly Silver" 25-year collection. The older strips are funny, they're character-rich, they're suspenseful, and they're often heartbreaking.
One strip especially stuck with me. There's a great, absolutely touching strip where Elly and her mom, Marion, both know that Marion is dying, and Elly asks her mom if she'll look after her children for her when she gets to heaven. Her mom tells her she promises to, and a grateful and yet grieving Elly thinks "My mom has never broken a promise to me." If that doesn't make your eyes well up, I don't know what would.
It's because I love the strip that sometimes recently I feel like Homer Simpson when Garrison Keillor is on TV, and he bangs on the set and yells "BE MORE FUNNY!"
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7 comments:
Huh... so am I the only one who thought, "Elly, don't you know that's how Michael Jordan's father got killed???" Guess so.
On another note, I had not read FBOFW regularly for well over a decade... but then I started reading your blog. And clicking on the FBOFW link occasionally to see whether I agreed with your assessment of a given day's strip. Long story short, my morning routine now includes reading FBOFW immediately, then heading over here to read your take on it (and all your other witty observations as well, of course). Curse you for making me addicted to yet more websites (but also, thanks, clearly)!
"I feel like Homer Simpson when Garrison Keillor is on TV, and he bangs on the set and yells "BE MORE FUNNY!"
Exactly!! It's a soap opera strip now. All the elements that made us smile in the 80's and 90's are gone.
I'm hoping the worst that happens is a bear attacks the car and she gets mauled or killed. If it's a person and there's drama, I will throw my paper out the window.
Howard is probably in jail, something only those who've read Liz's September letter on the FBOFW official site would know. Lynn likes to tell, not show, and sometimes she doesn't even bother to tell.
I concur on the this-strip-used-to-be-good assessment.
I actually only revisted FBOFW recently after discovering this blog. Not to just chime in with a "me too", but I must concur with your general assessment of things. I gotta say I'm baffled and a tad bit unnerved by the seeming aimlessness of the plots and the weird shift in tone. Is this strip being plotted by ouija board or a haywire supercomputer?
I don't know what may happen, but it certainly augers ill.
And I, for one, still really adore this strip. Yes, I complain about some things, and yes, I occassionally think Lynn's choices are less than inspired, but I've read the strip since the beginning, and I read it every single day. I actually care about the Pattersons, and I think that they have (mostly) lived very human stories. We all occassionally do stupid things....and I've always wanted to date a helicopter pilot.
Like mcm, every day I go from the paper directly to here, to see what you've said about the strip. And like you, I'm getting a bad feeling about this little rest stop... (Maybe I'm the one who needs a FBOFW intervention!)
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