Here's a link to today's strip
Her bedside manner sucks, but at least give Dr. Patella credit for not being the usual smirking, sarcastic, condescending type of medical practitioner usually depicted in this strip. But maybe that's the kind of medicine Summer needs, to snap her out of her denial. Meanwhile, Les' pussified expression of horror in panel 2 provides today's laugh.
"What's this now? You came to me, a knee specialist, excepting to find out options to have your knee healed?!? *Huff-huff*, the very idea, *huff-huff*! That makes my mouth shrink into the dainty pout of pure rage! Oh, very well. If you're one of those silly Sues who actually want to do something to better their injury, then I can't stop you. I'll throw on some rubber gloves and get an icepack or some crap like that."
"Great! I knew invoking my Royal Scion status would pay off! Time to go and woo-hoo all over the court, because I'm the greatest basketball player of all time! As talented and as skilled as my Dad is a Wise Author!"
"WHAT?!? No. No. NOOOOOO! No one is as skilled as I'm wise. NO ONE! You lousy brat, I'll pop your other knee! SICKO!!!"
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I wonder if I could skirt the copyright issues if I reproduced the strip, but replaced Batiuk's "writing" with "John's" comments. Would be a funnier strip, for sure!
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I'd presume Summer would be penalized for illegal use of crutches on the basketball court, but I have a feeling Coach Bull will be too much of a wuss not to allow it.
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Les (thought bubble): “This sucks. No one's asked about or even mentioned Lisa or my cancer book all weekend! Yawn. How much longer am I supposed to just sit here and fake concern over this trivial crap while my middle aged female fans are….WHAAAAA???”
Dr. Patella: “Mr. Moore! This is a medical office! Either control your forehead concern lines or I'm going to have to ask you to leave! Someone could lose an eye! And by the way, have you seen a specialist about those wrists? One firm handshake and they'll snap like kindling!”
Hang on, She-Goats, "Hopalong" Moore is on her way to save the day!!!
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To the surprise of nobody, Mister Passive-Aggressive Father doesn't bother to discuss this with his daughter here.
Nope. In fact, I'm betting he's going to try to talk her out of it. In Les' experience, actually DOING something to improve a bad situation is bucking for a lightning bolt. He's going to try and wheedle away at her. He never actively pursued anything in his life! He moped. He sweat dropped. He dithered and dwaddled. He hemmed and hawed. And look at him now! A beloved book tour expert with two girlfriends, a zombie wife, and a sweet pizza job on the weekends.
Why reach for actual health, Summer, when you could gain all THAT?
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Summer has a game tonight, meaning the game she got injured at? When in the hell is this strip taking place? The same night of the forfiet or a week later?
That's the problem with a strip that takes a week for a character to answer a phone yet then zooms everyone ahead ten years without warning.
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Well, it's at least the next day. But I canNOT believe Summer is that stupid. They should let her play (in the improbably rescheduled game) and totally destroy her knee while suffering great agony – no performance-enhancing drugs! – just to teach her a lesson. How far up the river of denial is this child?
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Sum-mor can now be an inspiration from court side. Lordy knows that Coach Bull never provided any inspiration. Maybe Sum-mor will now become co-coach?
HEY…. what happened to Rana and the girl cherleaders?
Of course….another dangling non-ending of TB's
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And now we know Summer’s fate in the Westview tragedies. She will sit on the bench to cheer her team on, but will be forced to play in order to score the game winner. Doing so will so damage her knee she’ll never be able to walk again without a cane/walker. She will eventually become the school’s athletic director in Act V and occasionally regale her charges with tales of the life she could have had, had she had the corrective surgery and not played in an ultimately meaningless game.
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Panel 2 Les appears to have Gil Thorp exploding eyeball disease… on his forehead.
Or perhaps he's IBM's Jeopardy-playing computer.
Love the title bar, TFH.
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Summer will be the assistant girl's basketball coach, guaranteed. Sorry, m' dear, no college or summer trips to Europe for you! Get in line with the rest of the lifers as a day manager at Montoni's with your dad and spend the rest of your pathetic life at school, with your dad.
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This is such bullshit. One team forfeits midway through a game leaving the coach/AD stupified. Then the other team unforfeits. Now this is a tournament, with a handfull of other schools involved, staff, players and parents are all adjusting and readjusting schedules based on what the players on two teams are cooking up. TB treats this like it all occurs in a vacuum. It's really mind-bending what TB asks us to accept so that his characters can be all cute and shit. It makes that "quarter-inch from reality" statement seem all the more crazy and detached.
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Yeah, that pesky 1/4 inch again. It must be the 1st Annual Summer Moore Dunk-Tastic Tournament because the entire thing apparently revolves around her.
And correct me if I'm wrong here, but didn't Summer and Keisha have something of an on-court rivalry going at one time? In the "real world" would it be so hard to imagine that Keisha might use this turn of events to show everyone that it's not just Summer and four other girls on this team instead of openly embarrassing her own coach and quitting mid-game?
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Summer can't unilaterally decide she's ready to play. She's got to be cleared by a doctor. No sane doctor is going to clear a player with a freshly torn ACL to play in a basketball game, and no school is going to allow this. The potential for litigation is just too great if something goes wrong. That's the way it works in the real world, at least. As we've seen, things often don't work the same way in the Funkiverse.
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She never said she's going to play. She just "has a game". Likely she'll appear at the game as an emotional catylyst to send Special-K, and I suppose Snap, Crackle and Pop to vanquish the Central Catholic Our Ladies of Perpetual Misery. Her mere presence should be sufficient to convince the Caths that a miracle has occurred and they will fold up like cheap vestments. More likely, the GoatGirls will lose miserably, and Sunday will find us back in Montoni's listening to Crazy rave about the price of gin on Mars.
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