Category: Son of Stuck Funky

There is a Light That Never Goes Out

As she wanders ’round Westview, hopefully Summer’s head is beginning to clear. The rest of us, meanwhile, are getting dizzy trying to figure out what, if any, significance these locations hold for her. On Monday we saw her pass by Dinkle’s house, but Summer was too involved with sports to be in the band. The high school was certainly an important part of her life, but from there, she continues on past the first home of the Fairgoods, Fred and Ann.

I’m embarrassed to admit I immediately recognized the house in today’s panel 1 as “the Lighthouse.” It was another site that Fred and Ann pointed out ten years ago as they took Darin and Jess on their impromptu nostalgia tour. It was formerly “a home for troubled youth” where Ann had worked early in her career. Maybe the locale stuck in my head because of Ann’s ominous answer when asked by Darin why it had closed: “Long story short…the guy who ran it turned out to be more troubled than the kids who stayed there.”

I searched the Act I strips in vain for some background. One of the “troubled youths” who spent time at the Lighthouse was young “Crazy” Harry Klinghorn:

But I gave up before finding any dirt on “Neal,” who appears to have been a pretty nice guy.

In the second panel, Summer gazes fondly at yet another Fairgood landmark, the second apartment where once lived Fred and Ann. Really, what gives? Yes, this is the couple that raised her half brother, and “Eight Track” Ann did (assistant-) coach Summer’s team to the state championship. It just seems so random, but who are we to question Summer’s legendary “ability to detect patterns“? At least we’re out of that goddam janitor’s closet.

.

Not Fair, Not Good

today

Great Moments In FW Arc Recap History

October 15-22
The wedding of Cayla and Les.

October 23-28
After the wedding, Fred and Ann inexplicably decide to take Darin and Jessica on a tour of the neighborhood where they lived when they first were married.

What’s this got to do with anything?

Thursday

That’s the house. Now what this has to do with Summer, or anything else for that matter, is a mystery to me. And Fred and Ann needed to drive there, yet Summer strolls right by, like it’s right down the street from Moore Manor. So it’s even more baffling than previously assumed. BatYam is throwing these weird, extremely obscure details out there, presumably to amuse himself, as who the hell else is going to recognize it? (Turns and glances at SoSF staff, shakes head in bemusement and wonder. Man, you people are good. When we stop devoting all the brain power to this strip, we’ll no doubt conquer the world).

What is she doing there in panel one? Blowing on her hand? Vaping? Picking a piece of apple skin out of her teeth? It’s really odd. I guess we’ll never get that map of Westview I’ve been clamoring for, as obviously the entire town is some sort of geographically impossible optical illusion of some kind, like an M.C. Escher drawing or something, where nothing is as it seems and everything kind of folds back upon itself into infinity.

Coming soon: Summer walks by more things. Nothing happens. Everyone is agog that FW is ending this way. Then we all realize it couldn’t possibly have ended any other way.

But When We Wake It’s All Been Erased

today

We’re in the homestretch now, folks, and guess what? The last twenty weeks (or thereabouts)? Just a dream…MAYBE. “Interviews clogged her brain”…no, that was all the grit settling in your head while you slept, dingus.

The “it was all just a dream” trope is possible the hoariest, moldiest trope of them all, and if it was anyone else, I’d wonder how the writer in question could possibly live with the shame of having resorted to using it. But this is BatHam we’re talking about here, so, you know.

Great Moments In FW Arc Recap History

August 3-10, 2008
Summer apparently turns sixteen, attends a party at the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit where she spent the first weeks of her life, and watches a video made by Lisa. She learns about the horrors of cancer, PSA screening, and teen pregnancy in one take.

I don’t hate Summer based on recent history, oh my heavens no. It goes way, way back. I don’t even remember the one noted above, but they were all more or less like that. BatYam saw Summer as being the “anti-Les” as a teen…good at sports, confident, gritty…but with her mother’s wisdom and beatific insight, too. Very much like Lisa, but different than Les in every way. And it was pretty much the whole gag.

In a way, Summer is the perfect microcosm of Act III itself. He developed a premise with all kinds of possibilities…the Anti-Les with a heaping side of Lisa…then went absolutely nowhere with it. By the end of her early Act III run, she was a bland basketball nerd who’d mention Lisa a few times a year, and very little else. As always, the premise was just too ambitious for him, and he quietly let it die. After she appeared in 2013’s legendary Frankie bio-son date rape arc, she was barely even a background character until she reappeared this year. It’s almost like he suddenly remembered her, felt guilty, and wanted to make up for lost time. Lucky us.

Summer’s Time Done Come and Gone, My Oh My

If nothing else, at least today we are rewarded with this howler of a punchline. Give me a friggin’ break.

The comments over the course of the last few weeks have been magnificent, and there’s not a whole lot I can add here. It is indeed disappointing that, whatever the circumstances behind Batiuk retiring his flagship, he chose to go out this way. Instead of even trying to put a neat bow on things, he pulls out this dreary, mysterious “Custodian” to explain how he “gently nudged” events over four decades, to ensure that Summer writes a book that, it turns out, she would have written anyway.

Put this in your book, Summer: