The Bedside Manor sign makes another appearance in today’s strip because sight gags get funnier every time we see them, right?
I guess the word “sexism” makes what actually happened, sexual harassment a bit easier to swallow. Adding to the strip’s confusion is that it looks like Dinkle is addressing Funky in the last panel, which raises the squick factor by 100x. Miss Violin needs to get herself a can of bear spray.
It sure took long enough, but today it finally occurs to Dinkle just how far from the big time he has fallen. The director whose band once marched in the Tournament of Roses Parade, the author and autobiographer, the egomaniac who envisioned his band marching from his giant, inflatable head, must spend this Christmas conducting for an audience of one.
I mentioned yesterday how Mort Winkerbean’s mental acuity has vastly improved since he’s been in the home. But lately it’s Batiuk’s mind that’s got me worried: is it mere laziness or encroaching senility that produces what passes for jokes around here these days? This must be a repurposed Scapegoat marching band gag. Dinkle’s disparaged his musical proficiency before, so I gather Mort hasn’t the chops to handle first trombone. But…”a third trombonist” joining the band? Mort’s the only trombonist, regardless of which part he’s playing. Would another trombonist automatically promoted to first chair, bumping Mort to third?
The first impulse is to ring the “Batiuk’s making light of mental illness again” bell. But I think TB’s merely guilty here of employing the old cartoonists’ “psychiatrist cliché” (Google “psychiatrist couch cartoon” to see just how cliché). It was reliable enough schtick when Batiuk’s idol Charles Schulz used it (nearly 60 years ago). Anyway, whatever therapy ol’ Mort derives from this dog, it’s doing wonders! When Funky dumped him in “the home” five years ago, he was practically catatonic. Since then, he’s taken up smoking, has picked up the trombone, and is now nearly indistinguishable from his son.
‘Twas the Sunday before Christmas, when most cartoonists use the larger, colorful Sunday format to confer Christmas greetings to the reader. But take away the snow and the trademark black yuletide greenery from today’s strip and it’s just another punny, unfunny day at Bedside Manor. What to call the “BM Band”? “Midlife Chryslers”? For one, y’all are well past “midlife”, and everyone knows that the “old people’s car” is Buick, not Chry…what’s that? The Midlife Chryslers is a real band? From Cleveland? Ah, I get it. Try again. “Cardiac kids”? Usually used to denote “kids” who could give you a heart attack, not those who are on their third or fourth. Well, how about a play on the name of an incurable eye disease? No? Well, then, let’s resort to a punchline that makes no sense.
Son of Stuck Funky 
