The Feast Of Maximum Occupancy

Link To This One

“Hi, Mom! Listen, we’ll be by to pick you up at around eleven. We made the stuffing you like and we picked up a few pies and…what’s that? Harry Dinkle? Who the f*ck is Harry Dinkle? But…but…your grandkids are looking forward to…uh huh, uh huh, yeah, uh, OK, I guess, but this is certainly unexpected and odd and…what? Why would WE eat Thanksgiving dinner at a band director’s house? Have you been taking your medicine?”

It’s pretty funny how Halle Dinkle re-appeared and was immediately pushed into the background by every single person Dinkle knows, plus quite a few he doesn’t. I count TWENTY-NINE people, which seems like WAY too many folks to cram into Dinkle’s cheap clapboard house for anything, let alone dinner. But hey, at least BatYam didn’t have to exert himself too much by, you know, writing a story or anything like that.

Always Room For Six More

Link To Today’s Strip

I guess calling Becky the “current band director” would have bruised Dinkle’s ego a tad too much. By the same token, I guess having John putting on a normal shirt would render his character unidentifiable. And I guess Rana is still a Muslim, Billy is still alive and Wally Jr. joined the circus or the army or something. And why didn’t Wally arrive with the rest of the Winkerbeans? Why was he relegated to the B-team? My God, what a slog.

A Very Winkerbean Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving, loyal SoSF readers!

It’s a virtual cavalcade of stars today, featuring TWELVE of FW’s most beloved and adored characters. That’s over ten percent of the cast, in case you’re keeping score at home. I certainly hope Harriet started cooking early, or it’s gonna be a long, long night. I can’t imagine for the life of me why the entire Winkerbean clan would go to Dinkle’s house for Thanksgiving dinner, but hey, no one ever said a holiday garbage dump arc has to make logical sense. I assume that Rocky’s forgotten mom is sitting by the phone, forlorn and alone.

Coming tomorrow: Thanksgiving dinner at Dinkle Manor ends abruptly when Morton gets into the Sambuca and ends up exposing himself to Harriet in the hallway. Fortunately, though, it’s played for laughs and everyone smirks knowingly at the old coot’s perverse antics. Happy Thanksgiving!

Chair Man Of The Bored

Link To This One

And suddenly the strip is TEEMING with new characters, one after the other! I wonder if they’ll ever be named? So the seldom-seen Halle Dinkle is back, which is weird, as it always is when one of those Act II/early Act III characters suddenly re-emerges. Otherwise, this one is so uninteresting it’s tough to really find much to complain about and or mock here. Halle’s husband sort of looks like a cut-rate Paulie Walnuts, except for that orange sweater that Paulie wouldn’t be caught dead in. But otherwise, this barely rates a “meh”.

The Less Things Change

Link To It

Settlement school? I looked it up, but I’m still not 100% sure what the hell these idiots are jabbering about. As far as Halle Dinkle goes, I have no memory of the character at all, so feel free to fill us in on her no doubt compelling character arc if you’re so inclined.

It’s kind of interesting how BatHam wrote these 2021 strips under the assumption that COVID would be old news by the time they ran, and by “interesting” I mean “not really”. Mildly amusing is more like it. And could the gag here possibly be any weaker? And why doesn’t the most legendary band director who’s ever lived have any friends? No local pals, no former students, nothing. Oh, wait. I know why.