Other than taking place at Montoni’s, I don’t see how “date night” has been “ruined” in any way. Unless the BMV was hundreds of miles away, Wally and Adeela should have gotten back well before any form of “night” started to fall. Perhaps, once back at Montoni’s, Adeela talked and talked forever about how awesome it is to have a driver’s license (which I would not put past any character in this strip), but it should still be late afternoon at most.
And even if she was excited about her achievement, she knows that Wally’s generosity put him on thin ice with Rachel; a decent person would have said “Wally, thank you for your help, enjoy your date tonight!”
I’ll grant you that decent people are not found anywhere in this strip, but it would have been the right thing to do under any circumstances.
Not to mention, prior to the test, “Say, Wally, are you sure you can do this? Isn’t tonight your date night?” Of course, we would have missed the last two scintillating weeks, but….
Oh! I’ve got it–there was another Time Jump, though only a few hours this time! Sure, that’s it!
And the kicker is, Wally and Rachel are right there at Montoni’s, where (for some reason) they wanted to end up anyway. What’s to stop their “date night” now, other than Batiuk’s fear some lightheartedness will detract from his serious “talking about driving” arc? Rachel looks as puzzled as I am. Well, she looks like she’s rethinking this whole “Wally” thing, but close enough.
And Batiuk’s plugging of Crankshaft is definitely irksome. I’m surprised Adeela didn’t follow up with “Is there a convenient link a person could click on to learn more about this Crankshaft? Thank you!”
Son of Stuck Funky 