In Saturday’s strip, H.R. “Baldy” McNightmare continues to regale Cindy with brilliant one-liners. “Women, am I right?” he’ll continue. “Can’t fire ’em, can’t ship ’em off to Cleveland.”
So, we’ve got the “Cleveland sucks” joke. Check. To be fair, Cleveland really sucked in 2010. A year ago, however, when this overcooked noodle of a strip was being conceived, Cleveland fell to 17th most miserable, beating out #11 Toledo by 6 positions.
Good thing Forbes doesn’t include Westview in its misery index. The #1 position would never change.
Cindy, like the downtrodden Westview woman that she is, meekly accepts her fate and a clear violation of 29 U.S.C. § 623. Naturally, she’ll pay for her own cab and air fare as she rushes to LaGuardia to get to Cleveland’s Channel 5 before air time. Because this is the way TV stations are run, ¼ inch from reality.
I admit I was among those astonished that these events were taking place in New York City, based on Cindy being the one to report on Les’s Hollywood deal. I keep forgetting that Les lies at the nexus of history. The pope himself was awakened to keep him abreast of the contract negotiations. So of course ABC’s national weekend anchor broke the news.
But who’ll break the news to Cindy that she can fight this age discrimination? I’m sure anything we come up with will be more interesting than what Batominc comes up with.
Son of Stuck Funky 
Besides her not actually doing anything about this, remember that this is what makes her feel empty or whatever. She hasn’t been fired and is looking at an uncertain economic future. She’s being moved to Cleveland. Lady, if you don’t have the brains to figure out that this is something you can sue for, I am now dubbing you “drama queen”.
From now on whenever I write the name Cindy, please assume that I am actually saying “drama queen” in as hammy and mocking a voice as possible.
Geez Tom, if you wanted to move Cindy to Cleveland just move her to Cleveland, there’s no need to cook up a cockamamie series of events that would have been rejected by the writers of a terrible 1980’s sitcom as being way too stupid and implausible for any sensible human to accept. “You’re all old and haggard-looking, you’re fired”. “Oh yeah, there’s a job in Cleveland if you want it, leave right this second”. Come on TB, even you can scratch out something marginally better than that. But you gotta TRY, man.
I’m sure there’s eventually going to be some point to moving Cindy back to good old Ohio but honestly, I just don’t care. I’m sure it’ll involve some of her horrible dimwitted friends from that shitty high school they all hated and whatever, but by the time he gets to that point we’ll have long forgotten when or why she went to Cleveland in the first place. Not that it will matter, mind you, because it definitely won’t.
When you look back on it, it’s definitely pretty funny how he had Cindy mention Les’ screenplay on the news that time. In fact it was the impetus that kick-started the whole Frankie mega-arc. Such a laughably simplistic bit of storytelling, much like the whole Frankie mega-arc itself.
How does he get away with claiming that ABC practices age discrimination? And why does he specifically name that network? It must have done him wrong somehow.
Yes, the subtext of this strip is if you try to improve your lot in life, you get burned. Funky tried to expand Montoni’s and it crashed and burned. Becky went to the network and got dumped. Boy Lisa has an MBA and is now working at Montoni’s. Happy! Happy! Joy! Joy!
And another thing: Since ABC doesn’t own the affiliate in Cleveland, it doesn’t have the authority to decide whom it hires. Batiuk didn’t do the research again; so what else is new?
So basically, this whole week has been about dragging down the one character who thus far managed to escape the misery that engulfs the rest of the cast. And to make a few jabs at television news that I’m pretty sure were shopworn back when Don Henley wrote “Dirty Laundry” in 1982.
Cindy will be within shouting distance of Westview, appearing on the nightly local news that Funky and Holly watch and no doubt causing some type of problem in their marriage. Is there a single male in Westview that she can date? Khan left yet?
I’m guessing TB chose Cleveland because he saw an episode of “Hot in Cleveland” and thought it was a documentary on where middle age women are shipped to.
Of course she’s moving to Cleveland. She’ll just leave all her possessions and run to the airport to start her new shitty job after being fired for being too old by the network that employs a woman in her 60s as the lead anchor.This is exactly how it happens. Quarter-inch from reality. Yep.
Check out the current female news anchors at the ABC affiliate in Cleveland ..aka “The Mistake on the Lake”.
Ya Cindy will fit right in with these hotties.
http://www.newsnet5.com/about-us/staff
That blog is a real piece of work. The scrolling content within a scrolling page is an innovation. You just don’t see much web design like that. And the prose! After name-dropping fellow Kent State “alum” Joe Walsh, who wrote the forward to the Crankshaft book, he lays down a sentence that I never hoped the English language would produce. It is so utterly sublime a sentence that I present it to you in its entirety, with no further commentary:
It is obvious why Cindy is being moved to Cleveland. So she can be back in Westview and make the moves on her ex-, Funky. Cindy has retained her looks while Holly has not. Does Funky dump the getting fat Holly, get off the wagon and start back with his sexy ex again? It sounds like a few months of storylines to me 🙂
JOE WALSH???? Wow, that’s unexpected. The “official” FW site never fails to amuse me, especially the “group shots” from 1996 featuring characters no one has seen for ten-plus years (at least).
It is obvious why Cindy is being moved to Cleveland. So she can be back in Westview and make the moves on her ex-, Funky
My thought is that it’s so she can cover a bunch of local stories (*cough* Les’s movie *cough* Summer’s basketball career *cough* Cory’s impending dismemberment *cough*) without asking his audience to suspend their disbelief that a national news organization would be devoting its time to such trivialities.
Funky being married to a whale is his end-point. Remember, he’s not supposed to be happy with what he is. He’s supposed to be happy with what he was. Besides, Holly’s not going to get all uppity and self-determining, and that’s the only way TB would justify married-Funky tail-chasing.
You’re sure we’re not watching a Hallmark Channel Christmas movie? That’s the only media developed by humanity that would use a premise this stupid.
Wow, that blog entry is amazing! TB puts all the baseball-related strips together at the behest of some Holllywood producer and discovers, hey, that almost makes them a real story! Looks like he and Ayres managed to be coherent despite their best intentions!
Note how in FW, TB has the Hollywood types out of touch with the source material of Les’ genius, but 1/4-inch-away TB does not even realize how to shape his mass of meandering “plots” into something that would make a worthwhile movie–or book–without professional guidance. I’m sure that guy ended up as the inspiration for Lenny, Frankie’s shady reality-show producer.
You can already see bits of haggardness creeping on Cindy’s face. (Say, anyone remember that stupid hairdo she used to have?)
The hairdo that looked like a funnel cake? I never knew what Batiuk was trying to depict there, some type of Farrah Fawcett thing I guess.
“It is obvious why Cindy is being moved to Cleveland. So she can be back in Westview and make the moves on her ex-, Funky.”
Ah, but this exercise in poorly thought out storytelling begain with Cindy IN A BAR!!! No doubt Funky will be helping her get over her drinking problem that has never be obvious until she was back in spitting distance of Westview.
I’ve been torn with how this played out. Yes, TB screwed up royally by having Cindy pushed out of her spot at the network that has kept Diane Sawyer, Martha Raditz(sp?) and Barbara Walters in high profile on air positions on grounds that she’s getting too old. BUT, it is a screw up of his own making as (IIRC) he established her as being with ABC when she and Funky split up. I’m guessing of the 3 networks that do a national nightly newscast, TB gravitated to ABC over Brokaw or Rather at the time. Now that he has to get her to Ohio for whatever reason, rather than make it her decision – perhaps to be closer to her elderly parents – he makes it the most ham fisted, ageist and borderline misogynistic way he can come up with.
Kudos Tom. Kudos.