Well, after a week spent rehashing Funky’s failed fitness program, today’s strip is a change of pace indeed!
Six months after we learned of it, Funky finally gets around to telling Holly that his father has started smoking. As he’s telling her this, a nurse passes by pushing a wheelchair in which sits the crumpled, soulless husk of Ed Crankshaft! But that, that’s not the big news! Today we learn that Funky’s dad has a name!
No doubt his friends knew him as “Mort.” His daughter-in-law, however, in the first time we’ve seen her come to visit, stiffly addresses him: “Hello, Morton” (I imagine her intoning this the same way Seinfeld would say “Hello, Newman“). Without imparting a hug or a kiss, she proceeds to lace into him about his recently acquired habit. Mort gives no fucks: he proceeds to smoothly light two cigs with his Zippo, proffering the second one to his lady friend.
Six months ago a doctor took Funky aside and raised the prospect of moving his father into “full-time nursing care.” But Mort seems happier and more engaged then we’ve ever seen him.
I’d been of the opinion that these “Funky and Fitness Girl” arcs are all about how Funky is made to suffer at the hands of his personal trainer. But the torture is reciprocal…how does she put up with his idiocy? She’s been working with him for nine months and 

Perhaps feeling at last remorseful for having worked him so hard,