No, there is no respite from this week’s misery in today’s strip. Yep, Funky continues to make life miserable for the very medical professionals whose job it is to make his life suck a little less… medical professionals who are properly doing their job, I might add. This is the kind of shtick Les pulled back in Act I when we weren’t supposed to like him, thus further cementing Funky’s status in TB’s mind as Act III’s version of Act I Les, the dim and unlikable sap who all but deserves the awful life he leads. Of course, this is also the kind of shtick Les continues to pull, to be honest, but now he’s written as if we’re supposed to like him.
This line question is weird, though. I’ve been going to the ophthalmologist since I was a 10 year old who refused, to my mother’s certain exasperation, to wear any glasses that weren’t neon lime green and I’ve never once been asked which line is clearer. My ophthalmologist will regularly switch between lenses of different (high, in my case) powers and ask me which lens offered me a clearer view of the lines on a backlit chart, but I’ve never had to choose between lines. I’m not even sure how lines could be different clarities. Nevertheless, if my eye doctor did ask me to pick which line of two was clearer, I would answer “one” or “two”… y’know, like a human being who isn’t a miserable putz.
Son of Stuck Funky 
OK, now this is just plain grueling. It’s something you get through, something to endure, like a lengthy flight in a middle seat or an especially brutal root canal or a stale bagel. Yes, it’s technically “entertainment” but only because there’s really no other way to define it. It’s almost like he’s finally tired of our daily snarkery and decided to make the strip as plodding and uneventful as possible in the hope he’d bore us away.
Not gonna happen, there, Pulitzer (nominee) Boy. I might regret saying this but c’mon, BatYam, show us what you don’t have. You can undoubtedly do worse than this, so let’s see if you have the stones. I double-dare you. If you can top this for sheer boredom I’ll stand in line.
I have to do the “one or two” exercise every time I go to the eye doc. Maybe it’s for nearsighted people only?
My wife has informed me that she is asked to choose between lines as well at her eye doctor, so it may be some difference between going to an optometrist and going to an ophthalmologist or something.
TB gets a pass for correctly referencing what you do at the eye doctor, then. He doesn’t get a pass for building a whole week around Funky making life hell for the eye doctor.
If I went to the eye doctor with Batiuk’s attitude, I’d invest in a white cane.
It seems pretty clear that this is based on Batiuk’s visit to the eye doctor, where his witticisms were received with an obviously strained grin and a perfunctual “Heh heh.” And he decided to “edit” reality a bit.
It’s possible to have good medical humor, though this seems beyond Batiuk’s grasp. Some time back, I went to my doctor and complained about my tinnitus.
I asked him, “How is that pronounced? TIN-uh-tuss, or Tin-EYE-tuss? He wasn’t sure, so I offered that “Tin-EYE-tuss sounds like a medical condition, TIN-uh-tuss sounds like a board game.” He laughed.
It seemed genuine, so I counted that as my contribution to medical humor.
And next year these will be arcs about VIRTUAL APPOINTMENTS with doctors, which will add a whole new layer of hilarity to it all. Plus they’ll really be able to skimp on the artwork, too.
Is TomBa going for funny here? I’m actually being serious because this is not just not funny, it makes no sense. Funky as a character is not established as a person who makes annoying jokes in inappropriate situations. Maybe beckoningchasm’s theory is correct that TomBa did something like this during some medical appointment and it wasn’t appreciated, so he figured that he’d replay it here.
This scene needs one character to be consistently jokey and another character to be consistently irritated by it. Then there would be a conflict, and you’d have characters with competing goals. Think of almost any conflict between Calvin and his parents, or Charlie Brown and Lucy. Conflict over their characters’ desired goals is what made those stories great.
Here, all the characters bounce back and forth between telling jokes and not wanting to hear jokes. Funky denied the receptionist’s joke on Tuesday but made his own joke on Thursday. The eye doctor delivered the punchline on Wednesday, stomped on Funky’s joke Thursday, then delivered the punchline again today. I feel like I’m watching a bunch of amateur night comedians fighting over the microphone.
This is Batiuk’s half-assed writing at its finest .He wrote a bunch of bare-minimum joke strips that don’t add up to a coherent story. But each strip qualifies as a joke, so he’s stuffing it into somebody’s mouth, publishing it, and getting on with his day. Which mostly consists of wondering why no one will hire him to write comic books.
So, Mr. Grouchy Winkerbean starts the work week kvetching about a receptionist’s feeble attempt at an eye exam joke, and then spends the rest of it trying to top her with excruciatingly unfunny bits and mugging that would make Jerry Lewis blush? Figures.
On the plus side, good to see Violet from “Peanuts” has found meaningful employment as a medical technician.
Alternative dialogue options for panel 3:
– “A new car.”
– “A trip to the Bahamas.”
– “Allllll my lovin’.” [winks]
– “What do you get? What do you get?! You get to be done with this God-forsaken appointment so we can both move on with our lives! Jesus H. Christ.”
– “So when does your Netflix special drop?”
“You get to see the clock on your DVR again.”
So this year, I had to break down and get bifocal lenses. For that part of the exam, the doctor put a little card on the lens thing with a grid on it, and asked me whether the horizontal or vertical ones were darker. That’s the closest I’ve ever come to what the doctor is asking Funky..
Funky’s gonna get his eyes checked and dotted if he doesn’t let up on that petty jive.
An eye doctor wanted me to read the eye chart without my glasses. The lenses were a half-inch thick at the edges, but there was no point in arguing with her. So I handed her the glasses and she turned on the projector. “Which line can you read?”
All I could see was a blob of light. “You’re kidding.”
She was standing next to me so I could see her look at my glasses. “Oh.”
Still funnier than Batiuk’s idea of a joke.
Funky would look much better if his eye-dots were replaced by cartoon Xs. That goes for all of Batiuk’s characters.