Tag: Bedside Manor

The Feast Of Maximum Occupancy

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“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.

Boreds Of The New Church

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Thanks to everyone who held down the fort since my last stint! So based on all available evidence thus far, Dinkle went over to Bedside Manor, told the Manorisms they had a gig, then loaded them into some sort of cargo van without telling anyone where they were going. That nursing home’s ombudsman must have quite a full schedule. Bedside Manor might want to consider some sort of key card entry system or something, as right now anyone can just wander in and lead the residents God-only-knows where.

And speaking of God, what’s Walt’s problem? Is he skittish about churches specifically or being indoors in general? I believe it’s the former, but the gag here is so weak it leaves itself open to multiple interpretations, all of them boring. Now if we were in Act II, we’d eventually learn that Walt was involved in some sort of ghastly and tragic church fire, collapse or explosion as a youth, which would explain his pensive reaction. But this is Act III, which means it’s probably just a time-killing aside that seemed a lot funnier jotted down on a pizzeria napkin than it ended up playing out in the strip. And that’s certainly nothing new.

Say Hello to Your Aunt Alicia

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Boy, those leaves are sure zipping around! They look like they’re having the time of their lives. Of course, that has to be a pretty strong wind, so I bet some trees will come down and people will be without power.

But who cares! We have old people to celebrate. They, in fact, are all going to celebrate another old person who recently stopped aging, if you know what I mean and I think you do!

Bonus–here are my original notes for today’s strip: Dinkle Cell Phone Bedside Manorisms Terrible melting faces.

And Not A Creature Was Stirring, Except In Mort’s Pants

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Good old horndog Morton, fully recovered from his advanced Alzheimer’s disease and as randy as ever. Gross. I honestly forgot all about Melinda, who apparently still lives with Funky and Holly in Pizza Mahal. And Cory and Rocky…apparently they’re still characters in the strip. Who knew? Other than the fact that they’re engaged we really know very, very little about Cory and Rocky. Comic books, pizza, the army, engaged…and that’s about it. They’ve had one or two arcs at most over the last six or seven years and those were when he first came marching home.

Where do they live? Where do they work? What do they do? Why are they even in the strip in the first place? Continuity? That’s, uh, “inconsistent”, let’s say. As far as Morton is concerned I don’t want to belabor the point as I’ve ranted about it many times, but his transformation from “advanced dementia patient” to “sassy and adorable old coot” is one of the more offensive things BatYarn’s done over the course of Act III. He milked that Alzheimer’s arc for a shitload of pathos, it really takes a lot of balls to just suddenly drop it and have Mort jamming with jazz combos and hitting on elderly women.

Nocturnal Dietitians

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So they left an hour after the fair closed…and then drove a funnel cake to the Bedside Manor? How late is it? Our county fair closes at 10:00, and I’m guessing that is about standard. It’s got to be approaching midnight. What kind of nursing home lets people just wander in at midnight?

And poor old Gramps has been abandoned alone in his wheelchair, completely clothed, in the middle of the night. Where’s the nurse on call? The only reason he’s calm and smiling is from huffing the cheap nitrous oxide they slip into his ‘oxygen’ tanks to keep him passive and pliable. What kind of cut-rate elder warehouse is this? The kind where the miserable staff hide from the patients in their break room snitching jello snacks and swapping pills.

I mean, look at the heavy lidded eyes of the lady in panel one and tell me she isn’t baked out of her mind on a delicious cocktail of the nursing home specials, oxycontin, seroquel, vicodin, and Miralax. Dinkle could come marching in with an entire rock band, and she would barely be able to blink.