Like I often say, this Pulitzer (nominee) Boy guy really, REALLY needs to get out more. While it’s nice to see Rachel the green pitcher again, this is a weak, weak gag, even by FW standards. I mean sure, it’s the second weekend of January 2018 and the 2019 strips are finished and ready to go into the prepaid CK envelope but he’s still a few strips short and has to come up with something fast or the whole weekend will be ruined so he throws together a few slapdash strips on the fly. I get that, but still, at least pretending to try would be the polite and decent thing to do for the readers, CK and himself…or so you’d think if you knew nothing about FW and the guy who writes it. But alas, I do. Every minute spent on FW is another minute he can’t spend at that pizza place, the post office signing books or looking out the window and as Lisa showed us, life is short.
Tag: pizza
Ignorance is Bliss
First, hats off to SpaceManSpiff85, who had to suffer through one of the strip’s worst storylines in recent memory. Glad to see you lived through it.
As for today’s offering, well thank whatever gods frown down on us that “Lisa’s Story” is no longer the focus. I’m not sure what’s beginning here, but it almost looks like…whimsy? Can Tom Batiuk do whimsy? I’d have thought that he felt such things were beneath him, but who really knows.
At any rate, looks like someone’s build a costume out of pizza boxes. I’m guessing it’s Corey.
I Can Think Of One Person Who Isn’t
This is Batiuk attempting witty sitcom style dialogue. And it is painful. “So what brings?” is not something a human would say. And the way Funky is poking into the second panel saying his little line reminds me of a cheesy sitcom character chiming in with his trademark catchphrase. Also, if you go to a pizza place and just order “the pizza”, I think it’s maybe not a great pizza place.
Why in the world anyone would want to meet Les is beyond me, although it does seem like the kind of thing you’d do after a funeral. “Oh, we spent the past hour or so thinking about death, I wonder what Les is up to?” Bull’s dead and barely cold in the ground, so I guess that just means more time for Les. Yippee.
And As I Logged Off The Chat It Occurred To Me, This Tale Is All About Me, It’s All About Poor Poor Me*
* I like to finish what I start.
As usual, BatYam’s big mega-prestige arc so far has mostly consisted of a bunch of sad gags and time-killing tropes that sort of loosely circle around the premise in a wishy-washy orbit that kind of dulls the impact of the big emotional sledgehammer moment. And I really hate to drive this point into the ground yet again but to be honest, debilitating brain disorders in the Funkyverse quite frankly don’t seem all that bad. Like with Mort Winkerbean’s hilarious and nutty Alzheimer’s, the main CTE symptoms in the Funkyverse seem to consist of various zany blunders, goofy mishaps and a general sense of harmless bungling idiocy. Just speaking for myself here, but I’d have been thrilled if my dementia-stricken loved one had ordered a pizza, much less organized an entire pizza-delivery contest. Unfortunately though, she had the real kind.
One also has to wonder why Linda bothered joining a support group at all. She can’t accept support nor does she offer any, thus the whole thing seems kind of pointless. Again, we haven’t been given any indication as to why everyone, including his kids, has totally abandoned Bull, just that Linda is desperate and all alone. Like I just said above, the premise just sort of hangs there in this nebulous sad gag-filled haze. It honestly just makes Linda seem sort of hapless and whiny, which I don’t think he was going for here.
My Spouse Lit A Fire Just The Other Day, Tried To Cook A Pizza In An Unusual Way*
* Nope, not letting it go.
Linda reading Batiuk’s NYT interview.
“And then I asked my cognitively impaired husband for a bite. So he bit me! (rimshot)”. Apparently Linda’s online support group is all about one-upmanship and exchanging daffy anecdotes about who’s got it worse. Sounds real helpful. No wonder she’s so miserable all the time, even her “my husband is so cognitively impaired…” gags aren’t that good. Leave it to Linda to find the wryest support group on the internet. In any other support group she’d undoubtedly be the wryest by far, but not this one.
“Take my CTE-afflicted husband…please! Why did my CTE-afflicted husband cross the road? He doesn’t remember! But seriously folks, is this thing on?”
This weird mix of weak sad gags and unbearable human misery has always been FW’s stock in trade but man, it sure does take a terrible toll on the readers. Perhaps he feels that by zany-ing things up a little it’ll increase the dramatic impact when Bull dies. And maybe it would have, if he didn’t go and spoil the whole story for no good reason like an imbecile. But alas, we’ll never know.
Son of Stuck Funky 