Hark! A breakthrough in today’s strip! In a shocking spectacle that no one saw coming, Wally and Adeela are both going to ask Professor Forehead to assign them to different partners for this group project!
For all of the issues this story arc may have or may still find itself wading into, it’s worst crime may well be that it is unbelievably boring. I’m sorry, I don’t know what else to say.
Adeela sums up this story arc quite nicely and concisely in today’s strip. No, this isn’t working. It’s obnoxiously pandering, laughably researched, blandly written, and glacially paced. Oh man is the pacing slothful. These two are just NOW admitting what we’ve known since last Wednesday. That might be fine if they had done something, ANYTHING, in the meantime… but they haven’t.
Cameo alert! Is that the backside of the original Stuck Funky banner Anon-O-Student in panel 2? Experts say “Sure, why not? We don’t really care.”
I suppose today’s strip indicates that Adeela was the mother and not the child in last Sunday’s strip, which makes her fairly close to Wally in age.
No, that wasn’t obvious. Wally has been back in Westview for 9 years now. He was taken hostage in late 2007, BEFORE the time jump*, so he hasn’t patrolled an Afghan street in about two decades (heck, it is still a decade plus if you ignore the time jump). Adeela easily could have been that child and, oy… piecing together this strip’s timeline makes my head hurt. Still, I gotta say that Adeela has aged better than anyone in this strip except for maybe Cindy.
* Back in early Act III when Wally had apparently disappeared from the strip after the 10 year time jump, TB stated in a blog post (the infamous “it’s called writing…” post, in fact) that a “clue” in regards to Wally’s whereabouts appeared in the October 11, 2007 strip, in the immediate aftermath of Lisa’s death and just before the Act II to III time jump. That clue being the newspaper in the newspaper box that Les slumps past before he is pickpocketed by a couple of hipsters. It reads, muddily, “Soldiers Taken Hostage”.
Wally remained a hostage until July 2009…
Well, I guess Wally and Adeela compromised on yesterday’s to-be-or-not-to-be around people problem by accommodating neither one of them in any way, as in today’s strip they are neither in a crowd nor especially alone. They are also sitting at separate tables for… reasons, I guess.
Yeah, yeah, I know. They are uncomfortable with each other and neither will admit it. We established that LAST Wednesday and the strip has been illustrating it over and over and over building “tension” ever since. I’m much less curious about where this story arc is going (I think we all know where) than I am about when was the last time that TB observed college students studying in a library.
Today’s strip we find
Both Adeela and Wally
Uncomfortable
“And being around
A lot of people tends to…
freak… me… out…” – Wally
Wait, was not Wally
Just in a crowded classroom?
Seemed OK at first
Plus there was that time
He subjected Buddy to
Monsters of Metal
Rache called that concert
His PTSD final
So I guess he failed
Adeela, of course
Was also in full classroom
Uncomfortable
Crowds freak Wally out
How can he run Montoni’s
When Funky hands off?
Ha ha ha ha ha
Crowds at Montoni’s? c’mon
I crack myself up
Son of Stuck Funky 
