Monday morning, and we embark down yet another never-to-be-resolved meandering plot path…Susan Smith Westbrook, Les’ erstwhile stalker student, now faculty colleague, corners the Delicate Genius in an unused classroom. At the suggestion that Les was any help at all to his boss, even crazed Susan sees right through his bullshit and smotes him. “You know what I’m talking about…” Oooh…feeling frisky, are we?
Mutt and Jeff Funky and Les return to a typically somber Westview Welcome. Now that these birds have returned to Ohio, isn’t it time for Tony to fly home as well? Bet he’ll be pleased to see what a good steward Funky has been to the business that bears his family name. At any rate, Tony’s sure to feel happy that at least Les was able to leverage this business trip to seal his book deal, right? Right?
After a whirlwind week in the Big City, the old friends sit on their park bench like bookends…and bitch and moan about life. Please explain, if you can: who are the “greedy, amoral morons” who have ruined Funky’s life? It was barely two years ago that he was the cover boy for Pizza World magazine. Now his empire is down to just one store. And the reader is expected to believe that this is the fault of anyone besides the inept, ill-tempered, unlikeable jerk whose cost-cutting, penny-pinching management style ran the business into the ground?
Or maybe said “morons” are really those who hate on TB’s Pulitzer-worthy “writing”? It isn’t the first time that the author has used his strip to take us Philistines to task…
The sign on the door says it all: Out of Business. Funky and Les bid arrivederci to the New York store. But in a final “F you” to the landlord and to all New Yorkers, before locking up, the boys have left every faucet in the place wide open…note the water just beginning to seep out at the bottom of the window in panel 2. Take that, City of Broken Dreams!
Well, look who came back to “help”. Where the @#$% have you been?
I’m on Funky’s side this time: I was gonna get on him for responding to Les’ “big news” with the usual dreary negativity. But he brought Les along on this trip for help and probably moral support, and off goes the Delicate Genius to take a meeting with his wacko “agent” while Funky is left, alone, to schlep more boxes. Les’ schmuckiness star continues to ascend.
Son of Stuck Funky 