As much as I ordinarily despise Linda, it’s tough not to feel bad for her today. Her husband is off on some unexplained rage bender, her hair loss seems to be continuing unabated and on top of all that, Les is making his move on her. Look at him, ready to pounce on her during her moment of vulnerability, his hand perversely thrust into his pocket as he blatantly targets her…just repellent. And that rear view of Les’ head with those second-rate Paulie Walnuts wings, thanks for that, TomBan. Back when Bull was dying in front of him on the tennis court Les was flitting around and gloating in the most obnoxious way possible and now he’s pretending to “care”, what a sickening display. What. A. Dick.
Tag: Westview High School
Terribull
I actually laughed at today’s episode. Not because of the “joke” or anything, but because of the way Bull is drawn in panel one. With his oversized head, he looks like a giant, enraged baby.
And the idea of a giant, enraged baby running out onto a football field, arms a-flappin’, all red-faced and colicky, is funnier than anything seen in this strip in a long, long time.
Other than that, now that we’ve gone from three full days of talking about Bull to actually seeing Bull in action, nothing’s really changed. All this has happened about a hundred times before. Bull is a terrible coach who hates his players and is certain the season is doomed. I almost put myself to sleep just typing that out, it’s so boring. Maybe Tom Batiuk has a point in having characters discuss things off-stage; it saves him having to draw action.
Of course, we’d miss out on the giant, enraged babies dashing out onto the field. Personally, I’d miss that a lot.
Is Tom Batiuk really going to be doing this for another five and a half years? Jesus wept.
Good Thing Watch: that giant, enraged baby. Every time I look at that, it makes me happy.
We’ve Replaced Humor with Humidor
(Wikipedia: A humidor is any kind of box or room with constant humidity that is used to store cigars, cigarettes, or pipe tobacco. Just so you folks don’t have to look it up.)
This is definitely a “What?” strip. As in, “What kind of thought process arrives at this end?”
Is this in reference to yesterday’s strip, about freshmen in the lake? Now they use bottles for water, instead of a lake? If that’s the case, I can’t even. I mean, the lake thing was just last night, and now everything’s awesome?
Has The Odious Dinkle’s blathering on about himself actually solved the problem of band camp hazing?
Or is this another example of hazing–these girls are forced to drink bottles of water, because hazing? If that’s the case, why isn’t Becky stopping it, if she’s so goldurn concerned?
Sigh. I know the answer. Tom Batiuk saw the word “hydrating” and noticed that both it and “hazing” begin with an “h” and have a couple of vowels in common. But this isn’t a pun, or even amusing in any way. It’s not even a malapropism.
If Crankshaft thought of this, even he would not say it.
To Have and Have Not
Credit where it’s due: a nice touch in today’s strip is the kid with the trombone. He was in yesterday’s strip as well, walking roughly in the same place, so it’s a very good way to show that time has not passed between yesterday’s strip and today’s. In other words, despite taking a week in real-time, only a few minutes have gone by in strip-time. It would be better if he had the same color shirt as yesterday, but I’ll be generous and put that down to an error by the syndicate.
However, I find The Odious Dinkle’s dialogue in panel one to be pretty damned off-putting. What exactly does he mean? Becky mentioned problems with hazing, and that was only a few minutes ago–so, no, she hasn’t had the time to do anything, so, yeah, the problems with hazing probably are still ongoing.
What I find off-putting about this is the idea that The Odious Dinkle has been treating everything Becky says as an opportunity to blather on about himself, and now that he’s blathered on for a while, he’s surprised that his blather hasn’t solved every problem Becky has. Why, I’ve just told you I have problems, how dare you claim to have them as well. It’s this kind of total self-absorption, this hermetically sealed worldview, that makes The Odious Dinkle so odious. It makes one long for a replay of the Becky on the scissors-lift scene, only substituting The Odious Dinkle for Roberta, and including the payoff.
What I really don’t get is The Odious Dinkle’s reaction. “Old uniforms?” What does that mean? I have this horrible feeling that these are uniforms from his tenure as band leader, and as such should be treated as sacred relics. Which quite frankly makes good my point about his raging egoism, and thus makes me loathe him all the more.
Let’s hope someone hides his oxygen bottle.
You Get Too Much You Get Too High
So, more of this crap. My God this stuff is boring; it makes me want to smother myself. It looks like I’m not alone; given the crowd that takes up most of panel two, I’m starting to think ol’ Tom Batiuk is starting to bore himself.
Well, at least with today’s episode, we get an actual instance mention of an act of hazing, though hiding someone’s oxygen bottle seems like it might have fatal consequences. Here, The Odious Dinkle tosses it off as a grim reminder that nothing ever changes, but Becky appears to be chuckling to herself. Yeah, that’s what I’ll do to John. I can hardly wait.
Neither can we, Becky. Neither can we.
I’ve never been to band camp, but it sure looks like everyone has just been milling around aimlessly while The Odious Dinkle blathers away. And now that he and Becky are both leaving, more aimless milling. Aren’t there supposed to be rehearsals and marching routines and things like that? This seems like a waste of time for everyone–which makes it a perfect mirror for Funky Winkerbean.
Son of Stuck Funky 