Sorry, snarkers: the catfight between Cindy and Marianne will not be televised, or uh, comic-strip-tized, uh…we don’t get to see it. It doesn’t happen, apparently, because Mason’s explained to Cindy that it’s not as it seems, and very quickly and convincingly, too. This plotline has become a complete shit show, even by Batiuk’s nonexistent standards. He spends months setting up this conflict between Cindy and Marianne, brings it to a climax in the most contrived way, and then Mason explains it all away and Cindy buys it…offscreen. The paternalistic Director Guy chimes in: “Hey! Hold it down, kids. Don’t get excited! (Who’s excited?) We’ve already put out a corrected story.” Who’s “we“? Don’t “corrected stories” come from the source of the incorrect story? Is he talking about their publicist? “We” have no idea. Nor have we any idea why that massive-headed freak in panel 3—we’ll have to assume it’s Marianne in a “wife beater” undershirt—is just now seeing and is completely aghast at the “DMZ” story.
Tag: Cindy
Exclamation Point!
“Amazing” is one of those words that’s completely lost its meaning from overuse. What amazes me is that Jess is still standing there holding up that giant video camera. Something else that amazes me about today’s strip is how Cindy checks her phone and the first thing she sees is the tabloid headline and photo of Masone and Marianne. Did somebody see it and send it to her? Does she subscribe to “DMZ’s” mobile alerts? No matter. Batiuk has spent months establishing Cindy’s insecurity and self-doubt, and almost as much time setting up a showdown between her and Mason’s sexy (though sweet and innocent) co-star. Shit’s about to get real, yo.
St. Anger
So having served his six months in the joint, Cliff decided his acting career was over and retreated to New York to spend sixty years awaiting rescue by those meddling Westview kids. Thankfully, other blacklistees, such as Lena Horne, Orson Welles, Arthur Miller and others, managed to pick up the pieces and go on to continued success. Cliff basically blacklisted himself.
Contempt of Continuity
Gerard Plourde
December 1, 2016 at 8:29 am
I wonder where he’s going with this. Does Cliff defect to the USSR and end up in the Gulag until 1992?ian’sdrunkenbeard
December 1, 2016 at 1:39 am
“How would you characterize your shipmates, Mr. Anger? Were they communists? Were they virile? Strapping? Did they have tattoos?”
These questions and many more will sadly go unanswered as today Cliff wraps up his story. And your genial host must, unlike Cindy Summers and Tom Batiuk, do at least a modicum of research to come up with something to say about this plodding plot. While I could find no actors from that era who were sent to jail, I did find a Wikipedia entry about the Hollywood Ten, a group of screenwriters and directors who refused to cooperate with McCarthy’s HUAC and who were indeed blacklisted, fined, and sentenced to prison terms of up to one year.
oddnoc
November 23, 2016 at 2:49 am
Oh, hell. He’s going to ruin Trumbo.
Yep, Dalton Trumbo was one of The Ten, and I’ve put his words from a 1976 interview into Cliff’s mouth here,to lend a little eloquence.
McCliffyism
Hiya, snarkers and snarkettes. Here’s hoping everyone had a delightful, long Thanksgiving weekend. And isn’t it just my luck to have my turn in the SoSF host rotation come up in the midst of the dullest FW story arc of the year. So far in the course of this interview, Cindy’s gotten in one question (“You went to prison?”), and for her lack of basic interview prep is forced to feign attentiveness as ol’ Cliff recounts how it went down in the days of the Red Scare. Cindy’s “two hour documentary” threatens to turn into Gilligan’s “three hour tour” without the laughs.
bayoustu
November 21, 2016 at 12:02 am
Well, BuddyBlog is certainly moving up in the world- they’re now using an actual camera instead of an iPhone!
True enough! And pretty soon, who knows, at some point they might spring for a tripod. I’d actually forgotten that Jessica had moved out to Hollywood last January. Naturally, like the rest of the Westview transplants she’s found employment as another cog in the StarBuddyBlog complex.
Son of Stuck Funky 
