In today’s action-packed segment, we see Bull fly off the handle after a bad call. The Scapegoats are probably like 3rd and 50, it’s no wonder Coach is so tense.
Also this guy. What the hell is going on with his shoulder? Is his arm growing out of the side of his neck or something? And aren’t penalty flags yellow? Maybe the ref is surrendering so Bull will back off.
I actually laughed at today’s episode. Not because of the “joke” or anything, but because of the way Bull is drawn in panel one. With his oversized head, he looks like a giant, enraged baby.
And the idea of a giant, enraged baby running out onto a football field, arms a-flappin’, all red-faced and colicky, is funnier than anything seen in this strip in a long, long time.
Other than that, now that we’ve gone from three full days of talking about Bull to actually seeing Bull in action, nothing’s really changed. All this has happened about a hundred times before. Bull is a terrible coach who hates his players and is certain the season is doomed. I almost put myself to sleep just typing that out, it’s so boring. Maybe Tom Batiuk has a point in having characters discuss things off-stage; it saves him having to draw action.
Of course, we’d miss out on the giant, enraged babies dashing out onto the field. Personally, I’d miss that a lot.
Is Tom Batiuk really going to be doing this for another five and a half years? Jesus wept.
Good Thing Watch: that giant, enraged baby. Every time I look at that, it makes me happy.
He’s been spending a lot of time in the past, Batiuk has, dating to this past spring when Les got yoked into being reunion chairman. The reunion committee meetings reacquainted us with Junebug and Barry Balederman, and set the stage for a Lisa tribute. The reunion itself of course was the setting for the time pool silliness, in which the Act I cast were trotted out to meet their present-day counterparts (uh, sorry Lisa!). We’ve had a couple Sophmoric Sightings sightings. And speaking of sightings, we saw Les sharing the park bench again with Lisa’s ghost. And speaking of Lisa, we’ve once again dragged out those damned VHS tapes , this time to bake ’em and digitize ’em and preserve ’em for. Ever.
Along the way, Batiuk has of late altered his visual shorthand: the flashback scenes retain their photo album corners but are in full color instead of washed out sepia. Like the central triptych of today’s strip, which offers a perfectly passable gag and which for all we know is a redraw of a published strip from that era. Compare and contrast Coach Jockstrap’s humorous, deadpan style with that of his protege Coach Bushka, who harangues his players with Crankshaftian malaprops.
Displaying a surprising amount of awareness of sports movie tropes, in today’s strip TB casts the generally unpleasant Linda in the “classic” Wet Blanket Girlfriend role.
She plays the role well too, waiting through Bull’s truly unrealistic expectations (national attention, ESPN) to play her passive-aggressive “rein in the chariot” line only after he spouts something entirely realistic. New helmets and uniforms arrive with new coaches at all but the most tradition-rich college football programs. Really though, Bull’s found an escape pod out of Westview, don’t screw this up for him Linda.
While more or less the same conversation as yesterday’s strip (including the DUI AD’s awkward use of “we”), in today’s strip we learn two things.
1. Bull went to college (surprising)
and
2. Bull’s college friends hated him enough that he suspects they are pranking him (not surprising)
As a bonus, in panel 2 Bull does a Ziggy impression that rivals that of the blobfish.
Son of Stuck Funky 
