No Contest

No, there is no respite from this week’s misery in today’s strip. Yep, Funky continues to make life miserable for the very medical professionals whose job it is to make his life suck a little less… medical professionals who are properly doing their job, I might add. This is the kind of shtick Les pulled back in Act I when we weren’t supposed to like him, thus further cementing Funky’s status in TB’s mind as Act III’s version of Act I Les, the dim and unlikable sap who all but deserves the awful life he leads. Of course, this is also the kind of shtick Les continues to pull, to be honest, but now he’s written as if we’re supposed to like him.

This line question is weird, though. I’ve been going to the ophthalmologist since I was a 10 year old who refused, to my mother’s certain exasperation, to wear any glasses that weren’t neon lime green and I’ve never once been asked which line is clearer. My ophthalmologist will regularly switch between lenses of different (high, in my case) powers and ask me which lens offered me a clearer view of the lines on a backlit chart, but I’ve never had to choose between lines. I’m not even sure how lines could be different clarities. Nevertheless, if my eye doctor did ask me to pick which line of two was clearer, I would answer “one” or “two”… y’know, like a human being who isn’t a miserable putz.

Futz Said Funky

Just two strips ago, Funky was being a pill to the office’s receptionist for a joke he completely walked into… and yet here he is in today’s strip indignant that Dr. Droopy won’t sanction his buffoonery. Stay in your lane, Funky. Les is supposed to be the guy who gets huffy when other people make jokes but then expects everyone to laugh at his pathetic stabs at humor.

I was going to suggest that Dr. Droopy here was being presumptuous here bringing up Captain Kirk, not that it would make Funky any less insufferable. I thought perhaps Funky was referencing the legend of Admiral David Farragut or perhaps he is actually a big fan of the band Pain, regionally-popular purveyors of late-90s pop punk (from whom I pilfered, purloined, and repurposed today’s post-title). But nope… a brief search of the SOSF archives reveals that, in a rare bit of Batiukverse continuity, Dr. Droopy is correctly referencing when Funky previously pulled this miserable excuse for a joke back in August 2019.

Callback or not, Funky ought to be tossed out of the doctor’s office window.

DVR You Serious?

ComCast your eyes away from today’s strip if you don’t want the unvarnished TRUTH! If this strip doesn’t make you believe in the conspiracy between big cable and America’s ophthalmologists, then I don’t know what will. The doctor all but admits it!

This doctor, though, I feel like I’ve seen him before…

Can’t quite put my finger on where, but I’ve definitely seen him before.

Comed-eye Central

Today’s strip is best read in print… on a popsicle stick, or maybe a Laffy Taffy wrapper. I would even guess TB took lifted this gag wholesale from a Bazooka Joe strip but for, um… obvious reasons.

My only question is, where is this snarky Funky when Les gets to thinking he’s Shecky Greene?

Eye Don’t Have Any Idea…

First, a big hand for Epicus Doomus for taking a three week stint writing these posts. Yeoman’s work, truly. I can’t tell you how many times this strip has had me wanting to tap out after one week day.

Looks like today’s strip continues what we saw last Friday and Saturday, and what has dominated 10 of the 18 strips printed since Christmas Day… yes, it is yet another installment of At Home With The Winkerbeans. Part Pluggers… part Lockhorns… It somehow manages to fall short of even the absolute worst that those two mockable comics page mainstays have to offer. Heck, I’m not even sure what is going on here.

Is the joke that Holly’s vision is even worse than Funky’s? (Believe it or not, there is 4 year old precedent for this.) Is it that Funky’s vision is so bad that he thinks their DVR has a clock when it doesn’t? Is it that neither of these characters wear glasses regularly even though they both demonstrably need to? Does TB think DVR clocks are ubiquitous in the way VCR clocks once were? (They aren’t.)

One down, thirteen more to go…