“Where Is He When You Need Him”? Give. Me. A. Break.
Today’s episode of the ever more execrable “For Worse or for Worser” sinks to its lowest levels yet.
I’m not going to go into my usual background about the Lizzie-Paul-Granthony triangle of innuendo and ungratifying sex.
You can find that story here, here, and here, with a really awesome rant here.
But today’s strip takes the fucking cake.
So let me get this straight.
Lynn Johnston went out of her way to add a big fuckin’ sign in her September 21, 2005 strip to let her readers know that Paul Wright is “Mr. Right”.
We saw Lizzie’s Lambada of Love a few months later.
We know that Wright has requested a transfer to be closer to Lizzie.
No one who reads the strip regularly has forgotten the “WAIT” bullshit, when Lizzie runs 700 or more miles home to Millborough, leaving poor old Paul in the lurch, and demanding he request a second transfer, as if he can afford to just go jumping from precinct to precinct with no effect on his movement up the career ladder.
And we know plenty about the manipulative Anthony,who’s described here as “honest, hardworking, smart, funny, and kind” even though he lied to himself and his wife about his motivations for marriage (so much for honesty), is working the same job he’s had since graduating high school (so much for hard working and smart) has never cracked a joke that I’ve seen in the years of reading this strip (so much for funny), and put the moves on his supposed best friend immediately after she was sexually assaulted (so much for kind).
But the question here is “Where is he when you need him”, as if Paul left Lizzie, not the other way around. Oh. Ok, that makes a lot of sense.
I have been a writer pretty much my entire life. When I was a little kid I used to write stories at home when I was bored. As a teenager, I wrote songs for my hardcore bands. I was an English major and through college, I dabbled in everything from essays to fiction to poetry. Today, I write grants for income and blog obsessively.
The result of all this writing is that I know my strengths: the reason you don’t see fiction or poetry on this blog is that I’m no damn good at it. I don’t have the patience for the navel-gazing gobbledygook that characterizes so much poetry, and I can’t write a denouement to save my life. That’s why I traffic mostly in personal essays and criticism.
That said, Lynn Johnston should have never stopped being a gag-a-day cartoonist. She simply does not have the writing skills to put together a coherent storyline with characters who consistently and logically. It is as if the strip is authored by committee, except none of the committee members communicate with each other. Why else would a character like Paul, who has been set up as Mr. Right, the knight in shining armor, be thrown under the bus for a character as winey and annoying as Granthony? It just doesn’t make any sense.
And more than that, it seems really shitty on the part of Lynn Johnston, who at this point is inseperable from the character of Elly. Frankly, it reminds me of my de facto mother in law, who did nothing but talk smack about me to my son’s mom during the year I was unemployed. There is no doubt that all the bad vibes coming from my son’s grandparentse helped feed my ex’s decision to dump me, and the promises to help out with the baby were the icing on the cake.
So screw you Lynn Johnston for throwing a decent character under the bus. And screw you for being a racist as well: if you think it’s escaped anyone’s notice that Paul is aboriginal and Anthony is white, think again. Screw you, screw your shitty writing, screw your piss-poor fan fiction crush on your characters, and screw your dumbass strip.
Just end it. Please.
November 29th, 2006 at 9:33 am
You’re not the only one who’s been appalled at the Liz/Anthony story arc in FBoFW. The 11/28 strip is the topper that sent me to the blogs and message boards to commiserate with like-minded souls. I really appreciate your cogent analysis of the strip and its characters, as well as your righteous rants about same.
The thing that really irritates me about FBoFW is Lynn Johnston’s smug promotion of the idea that growing up, dating, getting married, having kids, getting old, and dying IN THE SAME FRIGGIN’ TOWN is somehow an admirable goal. I had high hopes for Elizabeth when she took the job in Mtigwaki and was adventuresome in her choice of male companions. I thought, “Ah! At least one of the Pattersons will have interesting stories to tell at family gatherings!”
But, noooooo. Lynn had to drag Liz back to boring ol’ Milborough and have her adopt Mom’s frumpy hairstyle as well as her taste in men. Liz gave up a rich, independent life in exchange for family meddling and soul-numbing predicability, and Johnston presents this as a GOOD thing?!? I mean, what. the. fuck.
I see parallels between the transformation of Liz from an independent spirit into a FOOBot and the metamorphosis of Katie Holmes from a promising young actress into Tom Cruises’ zombie bride. By chance, is Lynn Johnston a Scientologist?
And, like you, I take great offense at Johnston’s implied racist message that Liz and/or Paul will be better off with “one of their own kind” rather than form a multiethnic bond (and have hot interracial sex!). The only saving grace is that LJ’s story arc is so odious that I’m starting to feel glad that Paul and Liz won’t get together, because he obviously deserves someone much better.
January 17th, 2007 at 11:26 pm
Holy crap. I just today found all this foob stuff online, and here I thought I was the only one ready to climb into the strip and strangle Lizard. My people!
February 24th, 2007 at 9:47 pm
[...] attacker, but outright mocking her romantic past, which is just cruel coming from a parent who actually pushed for Lizzie to dump one of those suitors to begin with! In sentence one, the ellipses after “Or” clearly indicate some kind of dramatic [...]