Know what would have been an even bigger surprise? If she walked in through the window or the wall or the ceiling! That is one ultra-shitty slice of dialog right there, just laughably terrible. As is Cindy’s bizarre (and awfully condescending) wordplay about ladders and her stupid NYC apartment joke. Clunkier than a big bag of hammers and twice as stupid. You’d think that the guy “authoring” this thing would at least have the common decency to wait until he’s fully awake before he starts randomly filling in the word balloons with whatever gibberish comes to mind.
Speaking of things that aren’t good, what the hell is going on with Funky’s head in panel two? What a debacle, it’s all misshapen and stuck on his body in an anatomically impossible way. If you keep staring at it it’s like an optical illusion. And why is Holly holding her hand over her heart like Cindy’s reciting the pledge? What a mess.
“Yeah, things suck for me now that I have to come back to this shitty state where you losers live but I’m still pretty well-off”. LOL wow, subtle as a punch in the face there, TomBat. Poorly drawn, terrible dialog, moronic premise…it’s the Batiukian trifecta of fail.
Son of Stuck Funky 
I know someone who was a co-anchor on a network news show in NYC & was replaced because the head anchor preferred someone else. She continued to live in the NYC apartment she owned & was hired as an anchor by a better network within less than a month. She worked hard to move up to the NYC market in the first place & would never just run away from it, certainly not for Cleveland of all places. Her experience may not be typical, but I’ll bet it’s more likely than this ridiculous scenario.
Either that, or those sessions with his personal trainer are really paying off!
Well, Cindy sure went from “bitterly resentful” to “wryly self-depreciating” in a big hurry. Westview Stokholm Syndrome doesn’t take long to settle in.
Maybe Cindy will cover the suburban beat for the ABC Cleveland affiliate….then she can really live in Westview instead of Ashtabula.
She might be saying that she owns her NY apartment and earns money by subletting it and is thus ahead of those losers.
On-air talent have contracts and agents to negotiate them. Networks usually allow the contracts to expire, or buy them out, or move anchors to humiliating positions like the 5am slot.
If the set-up of Funky’s weight training and Cindy’s sudden demotion to Westview regular doesn’t lead to an adulterous affair between the two, I will be sorely disappointed. Not that Batiuk wouldn’t treat such promising material in the clumsiest, clunkiest way possible, of course (see: Becky/Wally/John and Les/Cayla/Susan).
Based on Holly’s hands in panel one, it sure seems like someone walking through an actual door is like Star Trek‘s transporter to her. Oh, wait, comic books…um, I meant Nightcrawler’s teleportation.
They look like they’ve aged 20 years from one panel to the other.
Asshole Batiuk even fucked up the grammar here. It should be “No one’s as surprised as I.”
That panel two Funky is one of the most woeful things I’ve ever seen. It’s like he was stricken with gamma rays or something. Today’s strip is an embarrassment of embarrassments.
WHY? Why does she have her luggage with her? Are we really supposed to believe that there’s some crazy reason for her going straight away to Montoni’s from New York City, without even pausing at home or a hotel or whereever she’s staying? And from Holly and Funky’s responses, she wasn’t expected, so it becomes even more inexplicable.
I’m also pretty sure that Funky mentioned something similar about falling off the ladder of success to Pete or something, which means that this is some stupid conceit that Batiuk thinks is clever. Also, you rent apartments. Apartments that you own are called condos. Sheesh.
Also, for those of you interested in the history between Funky and Cindy, part of the reason why their marriage failed was because Cindy was uppity and became more successful than Funky, and wasn’t ashamed of it at all. It was fairly clear from the tone of the strips that she should have been, and should have tempered her career to cater to her resentful husband and his insecurities. It was pretty obvious that Cindy’s success was leading Funky to drink heavily. Lovely perspective, isn’t it?
She really looks more like she their daughter then Funky’s ex-wife.
It’s not just Cindy, Holly gets unfathomably excited when any customer walks through the door. Hard to blame her, too, given how rarely it happens. It is also her only respite from conversing with Funky and his pruney toe head.
@Charles: that “ladder of success” remark has indeed come up more than once; most recently, maybe presciently, used by Funky to Les:
Wow what an epic fall. From eating Ray’s Pizza’s to having to ingest Montoni slices. Hell, indeed.
Holly knows you’re supposed to literally crawl when you come crawling back to Westview.
@Charles: that “ladder of success” remark has indeed come up more than once; most recently, maybe presciently, used by Funky to Les:
I love how Les claims that working on the script is taking up all his time, when this douche was still working on it six months later.
Again, a professional would have had it done in a week. At Les’s pace, he was averaging less than two pages a week, and still he had to quit a job to make time for it.