And eye (ugh) *s-eye* (no no no) *sigh* (that’s better) sorry… I am about out of patience with this anti-majestic glacier of a story line. Every single thing in today’s strip happened in yesterday’s strip as well. I’m not sure even Garfield or Family Circus recycle at this level… I don’t know if this will help, but I have cut the 62 words in these last two strips down to 20 in an attempt to make this never-ending story stronger and more concise.
Dr. Droopy: Cataract surgery is pretty common nowadays. It is quite safe and not especially complicated. Funky: I'm worried! WORRIED, I TELLS YA!
Son of Stuck Funky 
Fine, Tom. If you’re going to just recycle yesterday’s discussion, I’ll recycle yesterday’s comment…No Doctor And Patient Would Have This Frackin’ Conversation In The Waiting Room!!!
Funky? If you don’t stop this you’ll go blind! Same to you, Batiuk.
So what’s the current record for FW premise re-hashing? The answer is a shitload, which has happened many, many times in FW history, most recently this week. If they gave out Pulitzers for dreaming up weekly comic strip premises BatYam would have a dump truck full of them parked outside that studio of his. But if they gave out Pulitzers for successfully turning those premises into some semblance of actual stories that someone somewhere would actually want to read, he’d have just as much shelf space as he does now. In fact I think there might be some sort of correlation there.
I do have to wonder whether TomBa or someone he knows recently learned s/he has cataracts (a pretty common occurrence for those of us over 65). Being devoid of story ideas, he has produced a two-week arc in his usual “throw something on paper and get it out the door” style.
It may not be in the best of taste, but (given the commonly held belief that Battyuk “plots” these storylines up to a year in advance) I’d like to think that the cataracts of whichever acquaintance he based this arc on several months ago have advanced to the point that at least they don’t have to read the strips themselves.
So here’s a fun little game to pass the time while we wait for our next talking murder chimpout: What arc can you think of that had less going on than this? I’m thinking Dinkle ranting at Becky about squirrels for a week was worse, but then again, I was in the captain’s chair for that one, so I’m biased.
Though an entire week of Funky having a dream that he forgot his locker combination and then remembering to order cheese, was also classic, edge of the seat, pacing.
Linda taking an entire god damned week to pick up a letter and walk from the mailbox to the bedroom to open it and read it.
A letter from the NFL. When she and everyone reading the strip knew that Bull never had a NFL career. When it was never established why having any more money would have changed anything else that happened before or afterwards. When the rejection changed nothing with how they behaved afterwards.
Fifteen minutes of nothing into a week.
Lottery winners face peril from family and poor management. Hedge fund managers, day traders and the like face risk and loss from bad decisions. For every millionaire actor or musician or athelete, there are a million others who never had their break, and those lucky few generally put in the work to get there and stay there.
Is there anyone who exerts as little care and effort into his work and still gets handsomely paid as he does? Is there anyone with a greater ratio of money earned to lack of craftmanship? Anyone?
Back in Act II it once took Boy Lisa an ENTIRE YEAR to open one piece of mail. It might have just been a week that seemed like a year, but nevertheless.
That stupid CTE arc really showcased Batiuk’s worst failings as a writer:
– inappropriate tone
– introducing a plot point and not explaining why it’s relevant
– introducing a plot point and never speaking of it again
– introducing a plot point that contradicts what the audience knows
– Introducing a plot point that contradicts verifiable reality
– introducing a plot point that contradicts itself
– massive plot holes
– unsympathetic characters
– not resolving important story points
– spending time on unimportant story points
– excessive use of fetish objects
– unfortunate implications (Linda basically commits insurance fraud)
When you put it that way, The Room starts to look pretty cohesive by comparison.
Any “worst ever” questions should be tabled until after next week. Holy cow, is next week going to suck. We’ll all be begging for a return to the halcyon days of Funky and his shticky eye doctor who hates jokes. Because we’te going to the Ohio Music Educators convention! The absolute rock bottom of Batiukian pandering. So much Dinkle, so many shots of Becky’s missing arm, so many of Batiuk’s friends in the background, so many dumb signs that don’t even resemble a joke. Ugh, I can feel my blood pressure rising already.
Dinkle telling Lefty about his squirrel book took one of this strip’s worst recurring dynamics, “retired” Dinkle pestering Lefty at work, and added to it something inexplicably bizarre and yet somehow also incredibly uninteresting. I think that might have been the worst because I felt like I should be able to say something other than “I hate this!” but I just couldn’t find the words. I assume there were plenty of others in the same boat.
A more challenging question might be, what arc can you think of that had ANYTHING going on?
By the way, I think the reason Dinkle went on about squirrels was because, if you look at the picture of his books on his blog, you can see the logo at the bottom looks like…a squirrel
You’d think somebody whose life was saved by medical professionals would have a little more trust in them. If Funky keeps bugging his eye balls out like this, Dr. Droopy will have to collect them off the floor an reinsert them before cataract surgery.
We should already be at the part of the story where the surgery was a complete success and Funky can see better than ever and tomorrow should feature Holly and the doctor goofing on Funky for being such a whopping man-baby, but BatHam doesn’t do “stories” anymore. They’re all premises now, premises that hang there like a stink in the air for days and weeks and months at a time. I mean we still haven’t learned of what happened to the “Lisa’s Story” production after the Big Fire and that plot thread was abruptly dropped months ago.
“Funky, you can enter a coma early or die late.” Convoluted and pointless enough for the Funkyverse?
Hey-Zeus Key-riste! Did Fungy not ever hear the adage that getting old isn’t for pussies? Fifty years ago my granny had cataract surgery and for two days she lay in bed with her head restrained to prevent post-op damage.
I’ve had this procedure done on both eyes and it’s done under local anesthesia. Do you know what would make this BWAWHAHAWHAW! funny? Fungy gets both eyes done simultaneously!
“You were face-down when we operated on you, Funky! That’s why you ended up with eyes in the back of your head!”
“Didn’t see that one coming!””