Cardigan Vet-er

What is this? New named student characters in today’s strip? A rare sight indeed.

I think our last new named student character was Travis Tanner, who we have not seen since Bull told him to go back to class back in November 2014. I like to think that Travis left Bull’s office, went right past his classroom, and did not stop walking until he reached whichever ocean Westview High School’s front doors face. Good for him.

Anyways, Les seems to think he’s hosting a revival of “The Dating Game” with today’s panel 1 expository dump. Apparently, he is the faculty sponsor of “The Bleat” (which I guess is what TB believes to be the “modern” equivalent of a school newspaper), a position he takes so seriously that he is letting Owen and Cody decide which of these three oddly-named freshmen make up the broadcast’s staff after they finally graduate.

Let’s see, we have:
Contestant #1 – Maris Rogers – Maris is presumably the blonde in the foreground and is very thankful her parents didn’t name her Ruth Babe. Owen has already chosen her, but Les informs him that he will still have to play the game because the syndicate requires the show to fill its entire time slot.

Contestant #2 – Bernie Silver – Bernie may or may not be a vicious mid-century London gang leader looking to add Westview High School to his criminal empire by seizing control of the media. He sports a winning smirk.

Contestant #3 – Logan Church – Logan is “eclectic” because she thinks that is what high school kids who wear cat-eye glasses and over-sized earrings call themselves. Chien, sitting in a dark room far from Westview with a smoldering cigarette in her left hand, is not impressed.

Gallup and Doper

Just look at today’s strip. Kids these days… I tell ya.

With their chullos and their scarves and their short haircuts and their closed circuit television broadcasts and their disagreeable opinion polls and their polka dot boxer shorts that they expose to the world because they refuse to properly tighten their belts because they are all disrespectful punk hoodlums who will destroy America after we retire.

Those ungrateful seniors want to chose where they go on a trip meant to celebrate their impending graduation. How dare they?
Not that Owen, Cody, and company have earned much sympathy from us over their decade at Westview High School, but given that they endure Les and Kablichnick on a daily basis, they are definitely the lesser of two evils here. I politely applaud their efforts to stick it to the administration via sarcastic opinion poll.

Not Going Anywhere

Link To Today’s Strip

Flog, flog, flog. Mason is reading the SJ script today, which indicates that there is a script to be read…I guess. Otherwise it’s a pointless rehash of a premise that was (for lack of a better word) resolved yesterday. When you think about it just running this Sunday strip instead of devoting an entire week to the premise might have been a better idea. But then he would have only had fifty-one weeks worth of strips, which would have left him one short. Sure, he could have probably just thrown an old one from a few years ago in there and no one would have noticed, but it’s all about the integrity, man.

And with that I turn over the reins to billytheskink, who’s going to steer you through next’s weeks installment of annoying claptrap! And based on the header pic above, I have no idea what that claptrap might be. I don’t like the looks of it though.

Schlock Solid

Link To Today’s Strip

Wow, Cindy is actually given the chance to (gasp!) smile today AND she actually enjoys a brief flickering moment of (gasp!) security too as Mason reassures her that there’s no way he’s banging Marianne Winters because he’s already combined (chortle) their CD collections. It’s better than nothing, I suppose.

But the artwork today is really something else again. Mason strikes a Boy Lisa-esque pose in panel one, his unruly thinning hair bursting right into his dialog bubble. Then in panel two all rules of perspective go flying out the window as he futilely tries to keep his enormous freak head from falling off his body completely. Then in panel three we wrap things up with a wry smirk and a truly frightening hatchet-face straight from hell’s infernal depths. What a display.

But I can’t complain too much here. I mean sure, this idiotic story went absolutely nowhere, SJ is no closer to being finished (or started) than it was a year ago and it made no sense whatsoever, but he did manage to go one entire day without mentioning Cindy’s age, which is quite rare indeed.

All Bias Herself

Link To Today’s Strip

Things get darker in Hollywood today, as Mason becomes disturbed by Cindy’s increasingly deranged jealousy. Meanwhile, Cindy begins cyberstalking Marianne Winters as her plan to destroy the Starbuck Jones franchise and Marianne’s career begins to emerge. Will she push Mason too far and trigger his bi-polar disorder somehow? Will she suffer a breakdown and retreat to the safety and comfort of her old home town pizzeria? Will Marianne use her youth, looks and stable personality to wrest Mason from the grip of the tired old insane hag Cindy? Will anyone lose a limb? Will anyone DIE?

Nah, just kidding, nothing is actually happening, as usual. The same internet Cindy snidely dismissed on Monday has suddenly become a source of absolutely rock-solid and totally verifiable proof that the Winters woman is a shameless man-stealing hussy of the first magnitude. The internet is just so funny like that, you know? One day it’s killing your career, the next day you’re using it to undermine your boyfriend’s career.  One day you’re making terrible jokes about how useless it is and the next day you’re furiously blogging about things that used to be or never were. There’s a word for it…yes, Batiukian, that’s it.

Note how she isn’t wearing her sunglasses in panel one, so he can really capture the desperate panic in her eyes. Well done. Ever since she skulked back to Westview in shame after meekly shuffling away after a national TV network discriminated against her because of her age she’s been nothing but an endless pit of ponderous “over the hill” tropes, one after the other. He hasn’t pounded on a character like this in a while, Funky excluded. “I was fired for being old”, “my ex-husband and I are old”, “I can’t get a job because I’m old”, “I got a lousy job because I am old”, “will this guy like me even though I’m old?”, “he likes me even though I’m old!”, “he’s bi-polar but so what, I’m old”,”note to younger self: you’re gonna get old”, “we’re getting married! I’m old!” and now “he will immediately succumb to the charms of his younger and hotter co-worker because I am old”. It’s like wave after wave of it, like an ocean of imminent defeat and self-loathing. Not only doesn’t he allow her any joy, he won’t even allow her to just be safe in the knowledge that everything is OK right now. I don’t know what he has against Cindy but it’s all pretty dark and brutal comic strip fodder if you ask me. Too bad it’s in the hands of AnAuthor with no imagination at all, you know?