First, a big hand for Epicus Doomus for taking a three week stint writing these posts. Yeoman’s work, truly. I can’t tell you how many times this strip has had me wanting to tap out after one week day.
Looks like today’s strip continues what we saw last Friday and Saturday, and what has dominated 10 of the 18 strips printed since Christmas Day… yes, it is yet another installment of At Home With The Winkerbeans. Part Pluggers… part Lockhorns… It somehow manages to fall short of even the absolute worst that those two mockable comics page mainstays have to offer. Heck, I’m not even sure what is going on here.
Is the joke that Holly’s vision is even worse than Funky’s? (Believe it or not, there is 4 year old precedent for this.) Is it that Funky’s vision is so bad that he thinks their DVR has a clock when it doesn’t? Is it that neither of these characters wear glasses regularly even though they both demonstrably need to? Does TB think DVR clocks are ubiquitous in the way VCR clocks once were? (They aren’t.)
One down, thirteen more to go…
Son of Stuck Funky 
Given the characters we’re seeing on the screen, I am going to imagine that Funky and Holly were watching Fawlty Towers with John Cleese.
I think they’re watching “Dumbshit Abbey,” the serial produced by Les Moore’s A/V club and telling the story of how Lord John Howard of Skunkhead brought comic books to the savage Americans. Local-access TV lives in Westview!
Silly me, I thought it was the Banks children’s parents in “Mary Poppins.”
It’s a shame that Hunky and Folly apparently only have one pair of eyeglasses and have to share it. Of course, they could squint all they want and still be hard-pressed to find anything funny here.
FYI, this joke was done much better in the Three Stooges short “Three Little Pirates,” when a bespectacled Curly takes part in a knife-throwing contest with Larry as the target to avoid.
No one in Westview would ever watch anything as good as Fawlty Towers. I’m guessing Mr. Belvedere. That’s about the right timeframe, location, and tone for something Tom Batiuk would like.
You always hope that you’ll see your first Monday strip and it’ll be the start (or the continuation) of some big fat prestige arc where you can really tee up and haul off on it. Then it’s “Funky has eye problems” and it’s just so incredibly deflating. But nonetheless, it must be snarked upon, that’s the law. So we endure.
On top of that you know it’ll be something goofy because Funky is pure sad-sack slapstick now. The last really “serious” Funky arc I can remember was when BatYam tried to kill him right after he put his father in a home and almost relapsed that time. There was that one time he flew to a doctor’s appointment and it turned out to be nothing, so I guess that counts.
I can’t think of a more depressing statement than “Tom Batiuk gets paid for writing this.”
He did use “DVR” and not “DVD” or (God help us) VCR. So technologically speaking he’s made it to 2010.
Looks more to me like Funky needs to call whoever made the toupee that the Carter Pewterschmidt look-a-like on the television is wearing.
Funny decrepit old people.
Holly needs to lay off the OxyContin, she looks wasted in panel 1.
I’m tickled by the idea that Funky put on his glasses solely to check the time, and now that he’s done that (or rather, failed to do that), he’s going to take them off again. Because who wears a watch these days?
In the Funkyverse, seeing your surroundings clearly is neither pleasant nor desired.
Just be glad you are not writing for MaryWorthAndMe. The new Mary Worth prestige arc hasn’t moved along at all in two weeks. It’s and arc Batty would love as it features two elderly people.
What clock? See that blinking 12noon!
When you can’t stand the sight of one another, going “glassesless” is a mitigating factor.
In the context of their video viewing leisure and absolutely needing to know the time, why in the flying eff is Skunky Funkybuns so irritated about reading the clock on the electronic device? Why is it that in Westview a character’s level of anger-agitation-reaction always outpaces the alleged problem/stimulus?
I don’t know if he’s that irritated. He might just be squinting.
Tuesday: The dial on the toaster doesn’t work and the toast is subpar.
Wednesday: The label wore off of the pill-minder
Thursday: The cat needs a bath
Friday: The car door gets iced over
Saturday: The latch on the gate is loose
Sunday: Atomic Komix Presents: Prince Valiant Ripoff
Monday: A potato peeling clogs up the sink.
So is Holly going blind? Or are we in for a wacky cataract surgery arc? Either one would be cause for serious depression.