Max And Hannah, Part 2: The Valentine Years

This is Part 2 of our deep dive into Max and Hannah. Part 1 is here.

Max and Hannah bought the Valentine Theater from Ralph Meckler in 2016. October 10, 2016 was their first week of ownership. It was a disjointed mix of them fixing up the place up, receiving their first customers (Jeff, Pam, and Ed) and Max being tired from the stress of working two jobs.

Citing burnout, Max quits his job at Channel 1 on January 12, 2017 to run the theater full-time. Both Pam and Ed Crankshaft point out that Channel 1 is paying the better part of his salary (even though Max gripes about being underpaid), so this may be an unwise move. Nobody ever points out that Hannah has been working the same two jobs, and is not depicted as being fatigued, despite her having the more physically demanding Channel 1 job of camera operator.

Again, I was a broadcast journalism major in the 1990s, so trust me on this: those live TV-grade cameras are heavy. But Max is the one who’s falling asleep on the job, Peppermint Patty style.

On January 25, 2018 during a blizzard, Ed Crankshaft brings a busload of school children to the Valentine, who have to spend the night there. The incident gets positive coverage in the Centerville Sentinel, back when it still published news stories. July 26 is another round of Pam and Jeff helping to spruce up the theater.

On March 31, 2019, Jeff visits an apartment and says “I appreciate you two having me over for dinner,” implying that Max and Hannah are now living together. This apartment building isn’t the same one Max moved into in 2008. It’s probably another real-life building Tom Batiuk and his wife lived in at some point.

June 3, 2019 is almost identical to last week’s arc. Hannah and Max go to Pam and Jeff’s house with a major announcement: they’ve decided to incorporate! Which, combined with the last week’s strips, and the “we’re buying the Valentine” announcement from 2016, means they bait-and-switched a marriage announcement three different times. And I guess they never incorporated either, because incorporation was a declined option on March 6, 2026.

But it doesn’t end there. In October 2019, they invite Pam and Jeff to the theater with yet another surprise: Hannah is pregnant!

That story ends on October 20, 2019:

And we have the answer to the question many of you have been asking! Yes, Max and Hannah having a child out of wedlock is established Funkyverse lore. As Pam explained it at the time, they wanted to “focus on more important stuff.” Given the bizarre priorities of Funkyverse characters, you’re welcome to guess what those might be. Lord knows Tom Batiuk doesn’t tell us.

On February 10, 2020, Ed Crankshaft and Mary Marzipan show up for a Butter Brinkel marathon during a blizzard, necessitating a second overnight stay. This was also the very beginning of the real-life global pandemic. Why do people in this town insist on going to shows during life-threatening conditions, like COVID and blizzards? Remember Dinkle’s “Christmas Messiah” near the end of Funky Winkerbean?

It is during this second overnight stay that Hannah gives birth to Mitch. Infamously, Ed Crankshaft helps with the delivery. Which may be the most unrealistic thing in the history of the Funkyverse. I’m not a woman, but I think that if Ed Crankshaft offered to help me give birth, my immediate reaction would be DO NOT LET THAT MAN ANYWHERE NEAR MY HOO-HAH FOR ANY REASON.

Mitch is first seen and heard on February 27, 2020. Jeff “covers for” Max at the theater for a week while they adjust to parenthood. On July 27, the Valentine is showing The Phantom Empire. Max takes Mitch to the theater “because it’s never too soon to introduce a child to culture.” Even though that child is five months old, and his irregular aging hadn’t started yet.

May 9, 2021 is the first sign of trouble at the Valentine. Max tells Hannah not to bother disinfecting the seats, because “their draw was an older audience that doesn’t want to go out to a movie theater now.” By May 21, a strip club is interested in buying the place. Here’s my version of that story:

On May 27, Pam and Jeff visit. Max calls them “the biggest crowd we’ve had since we re-opened.” They’re the biggest crowd we’ve ever seen, even before COVID, other than the night Ed brought a busload of school children.

They start vacating the theater. On June 4, Pam offers to let Max, Hannah, and Mitch move into the apartment over the garage. Oh well, at least it’s not the apartment over Montoni’s for a change. This move happens in September 2021. January 17, 2022 is the first time we see Max, Hannah, and Mitch around Pam and Jeff’s house. They would start appearing as background characters at that location, much like when Max was staying there between his 2006 graduation and 2008.

On August 1, 2022, Max and Hannah go back to Channel 1. This is what 17-month-old Mitch looks like now:

Amazingly, Channel 1 hands them their old jobs back. One wonders what happened to the cameraman and director of yesterday’s show, roles that must have been filled by someone. Which is another highly unrealistic depiction of media jobs. Max and Hannah are about as replaceable than fast food workers. Year after year, universities are still cranking out dozens more journalism graduates than there will ever be jobs for again. Not to mention the scores of self-made content creators thanks to YouTube, and affordable consumer-grade video production tools. So Channel 1 would have plenty of qualified applicants on file.

August 2022 saw the ransomware attack on Channel 1. It was Hannah who had the brilliant idea to air old John Darling episodes, since they were stored on physical tapes that weren’t held hostage by the ransomware. This kept Channel 1 on the air without having to pay the ransom of…

Next month, a Deus Ex Comic Books arrives to save Max and Hannah from their own passive idiocy.

It’s Mason Jarre and Cindy Summers! Note that the Valentine livery and movie theater entrance is still up, even though it closed down a year ago, and a strip club existed there in the interim. Timemop must have been a regular.

Mason immediately offers to buy the building from unlicensed guest character Lois Flagston from Hi & Lois, looking like a deranged psycho the entire time.

Ed Crankshaft happens to wander by during this conversation. Like most American small towns, Westview/Centerville has no concept of privacy, so they discuss this celebrity couple’s financial business right in front of this complete stranger. Ed conveniently mentions that his grandson and his wife once ran the theater, so Mason wants to take them to dinner. Of course, they go to Montoni’s. Mason tells Max and Hannah he wants them to run and manage the theater “based on their experience there.”

Which is even more ludicrous than them being re-hired at Channel 1. At least they were competent Channel 1 employees, which is more than can be said for their management skills. They’re the ones who ran the Valentine into the ground with their endless Phantom Empire screenings, and insistence on remaining open during blizzards. Once again, the story acts like they’re the only two people on earth who could possibly do this job.

On October 1, they get their first paycheck from Mason. Of course, it’s gigantic.

And the Funkyverse business cycle is complete!

1. Be from the remote outskirts of Cleveland.
2. Have Tom Batiuk-approved opinions on How To Do Media Things Correctly.
3. Find a rich person who shares those opinions.
4. Wait for the rich person to throw money at you to manage it for them. Because rich people have zero interest in ever making a profit, or in hiring people with any useful skills.

Mason became to the Valentine Theater what Chester Hagglemore was to Atomix Komix, what Pink Productions was to Lisa’s Story, and what Mordor Financial was to the Centerview Sentinel. They’re the faceless entities that exist solely to swallow huge losses, so Batiuk’s beknighted small-town yokels can have mainstream media careers with complete creative control. And, of course, be paid big money themselves.

In spite of their new-found tax bracket, December 2022 shows Max and Hannah are… still working at the TV station?

Despite getting huge paychecks from Mason Jarre to do their dream job, and a Channel 1 paycheck on top of that, they were never seen moving back to an apartment. And they continued to make walk-on appearances in household stories. Which implies that they’re still mooching off Pam and Jeff to this day.

In 2023, Skip Rawlings shows up to ask about the theater’s reopening, which happens in May 2023. His interviewing skills weren’t any better then. The next month, Mason flies in for the grand re-opening. And we all know what the main attraction is!

The pandering continues. Mason also wants to premier Starbuck Jones III: The Rise Of The Disney Lawsuits Bandelorians at the Valentine. And he wants to meet with Harry Dinkle, because he wants to use Claude Barlow music in the movie.

Which is mind-bendingly stupid, but isn’t worth any further deconstruction. Because Max and Hannah were never constructed in the first place.

Max and Hannah are the same as Atomik Komix. And Les Moore. And Lillian McKenzie. And Skip Rawlings. And Mason Jarre. And Harry Dinkle. And Batton Thomas. They exist to fuel stories about small town people who run a media empire the way Tom Batiuk thinks it should be run, and be handed ego tongue baths and piles of money for it.

Despite this couple’s obvious purpose as story enablers, Tom Batiuk has decided that their marital status was a loose end that needed to be tied up. He made a similar decision that near the end of Funky Winkerbean, that Cory Winkerbean and Rocky Rhodes needed to put a ring on it.

But that was justifiable in the context of Funky Winkerbean ending. Weddings are a great excuse to get all the characters in one place, so we can see them one last time. As stupid as that arc was, it was also the final appearance of characters like Keisha Williams, Maddie Klinghorn, and Rocky and Cory themselves. That’s not the case this time, though.

Or dare we hope?