The FOOBiverse!

The one where Elly reminds us that babies "deliberately act cute" in order to protect themselves from the savage beatings she believes them to deserve.

Synopsis: After April finally settles down, Elly gets all philosophical about how it's lucky for horrible brats that keep her awake all night that they're cute when they do sleep.

Summary: One wonders what the response of a mother who has this taped to something will be when her child asks her point blank if all Mommy sees is a burden out to get her. One also fears said response.

The one where Elly is so focused on having to speak in monosyllables that it doesn't even occur to her that April is too damned young to know what time of day it is.

You'll notice that I didn't make this a top eight and include April for the shitty way she treats Becky. This is because as far as we know, she's going to stop being an underdog the same way Fiona did: by becoming persona non grata to lazy idiot parents who let their feelings get in the way of doing their jobs. Eventually, she will simply tell her idiot parents, moron siblings and cretin brother- and sister-in-law off and stay with her 'country boy' in Calgary.

The reason that I mention this is that Number One on my list will react to this by bolting off to Connie's so she can whine about ignorant and misguided children who don't know where love and acceptance are. The late, great Marian Richards had our subject pegged in the early innings:



and I've seen nothing in the forty-two years we've spent dealing with these characters that contradicts this. All I see when I look at Elly is a nincompoop who was in a blind rush to 'grow up' that she didn't take time to figure out who was doing the growing:



and since she believes in something stupid and non-existent called fairness, she takes out her upset on the kids in her immediate vicinity:


The worst of it is that she never bothers growing out of it:



and will lose her shit about piddly crap that don't mean nothing even unto the latest of days.

Now, comes someone who reminds me of a lyric Steven Page came up with: We thought that you knew/When two become one/just for fun/they rehearse/till the worst/of each person/becomes someone new....and that's Mike. Much was made of how much he struggled over the years. Nothing was made of it being due to his many, many self-imposed limitations and character defects.

First off, we have to contend with the fact that like most aimless people who kind of need someone standing over them barking orders to get them to get anything done, Mike hates being told where to go and what to do. It's easier to watch other people live his life for him:

because television tells him that they're supposed to.

It could be said that pretty much every trouble Mike has stems from his belief that commercial television has any sort of bearing on reality. Elly is a 'bad' mother because she's a real person instead of a sitcom mutant. Liz is clearly plotting his ruin because kid sisters on television act like little adults. The girls he mistreats are believed to be soap opera bitch queens instead of the vulnerable and messed up people they are. Hell, even he himself doesn't know who he is because he sees himself as the protagonist in his life.

The one where Elly appears to be too stupid to realize that April sees the toys surrounding her as obstructions to being held.

Synopsis: April 'evilly' and 'selfishly' throws her toys out of her crib because only bad people who hate mothers think that the child wants to get comfortable and can't do that without all of the junk in the way. When she starts crying, Elly sees the empty crib and wants to put the toys back in.

Summary: This inability to understand children is brought to you by the idiot woman belief that children hate their mother's freedom and happiness.

A favourite theme of Lynn's happens to be when a character is rewarded disproportionately after a lifetime of self-induced hardship. When one accompanies this with taking active steps to ensure future success being an evil because of a lack of trust in fate and faith, one is left with the realization that Lynn has rejected Christianity and substituted a belief in the Fates of Greco-Roman myth.

The reason that I mention this is that we've come to the home stretch of this look at Lynn's cock-eyed view of reality by celebrating the life of someone who'd be seen as a winner by any objective standard: John. Lynn's need to get Rod to quit dentistry so that he can be 'kept' isn't just a jealous incompetent's need to get her thumb into the eyes of a man her better. It also points to her bizarre belief that since things seem to be handed to her, striving to succeed is just plain wrong.

The one where John reminds us that he takes pleasure in the fact that Elly is deprived of sleep.

Synopsis: It's late at night and since April can't tell time, she screams for whatever without having the least idea that she's keeping her parents up. They lay there looking stupid until she starts howling MAMA!!!!; this causes John to smile and tell Elly that it's for her.

Summary: Not so happy that she knows the word Mama now, are we, Elly?

We come to the half-way point of my look at characters who aren't actually suffering anything that isn't their own stupidity with a look at the other 'tragic victim' of 'cruel fate' who only had 'one last chance' at happiness: Lizardbreath. She is not the warm. loving figure Anthony has hypnotized himself into believing her to be. She is a deeply flawed young woman with a combo platter of personal defects:

1. Jealousy/Clinginess: Most of her hatred of Therese stems from the fact that Anthony knows a woman who isn't her.


2. Passivity: Left to her own devices, Liz drifts through this life like a plastic bag caught in the breeze....but with less purpose.


3. Vanity: The nitwit loves flattery more than anything else because she was spoiled by her idiot father....which is why she loves it that a stalker stole an heirloom she had no right to bequeath to him because it means she's 'special.'


4. Obliviousness: She hasn't the least idea of how she's perceived and doesn't much like it when people tell her what they think of her. This is accompanied by her not having the least idea of what people might be up to.


5. Entitlement: Since she is blind to how blatant peoeple are about greasing the wheels in her favor, she makes hilarious noise about being a take-charge person when the only thing she takes charge of is growling about having a kid sister.


6. Hatred Of Accountability: Simpering not to make her feel guilty about doing something really stupid reminds us that just as Mike is always going to be the whiny puke jealous of his kid sister, Liz is always going to be the dumbass howling "I LITTLE!!!!" when told she's big enough to accept the consequences of her actions.


7. Shallowness: She's so blind to the reality of who the people around her are that she's more in love with the sensation of being in love than with the person she tells herself she's in love with.

This is why all of the gentleman callers that she's ever 'loved' drift away once her spell is broken; all they see is a pretty face with nothing behind it. She might not be the schemer Therese sees her as but she's not much of a bargain what with the being too stupid to notice the conspiracy working to get her married to Anthony.

The one where John and Elly whine about how their teenage children correctly assess them to be stupid.

Panel 1: Later that night, John lies about why Mike is angry with him. Mike wanted to go around the block a couple of times and not joyride around the main drag. John only says this because he doesn't especially like or trust Mike because the boy is "ungrateful"....which translates to his having free will. That being said, Mike was in the wrong about the driving.

Panel 2: Elly moans about Liz can actually see how unflattering her haircut is while she cannot.

Panel 3: When she goes on to say that the kids think they're out of touch and stupid, John incorrectly blames it on their being evil teenagers instead of them being why people like me think boomers are the stupidest people on Earth.

Panel 4: He then says that it's the first time they've agreed on anything in years.

Summary: Mike and Liz have always thought that John and Elly are stupid and oblivious and are right to do so.

As the article that inspired this series reminds us, Lynn tends to think that adversity tends to mean whatever psychological issues she herself has to contend with. This is why we have to deal with her thinking that a shlep like Anthony is an underdog cursed by fate when the plain truth is that he's a representation of her thinking that sitting on her ass waiting for the miracle is how people are supposed to live. Connie is a representation of her disappointment that she can't have her cake and eat it. The next person on my list is a representation of her complicated feelings about her mother: Deanna.

Deanna, you see, is her idea of a poor little rich girl smothered by a parent who won't let her be free to live her life the way she wants to. When looking at Mira, we see a ham-fisted meddler with a mildly old-fashioned view of the true and good. Deanna sees an emissary of Darkseid come to enslave the world with her Anti-Life Equationfamily politics because the old doll doesn't see the point of letting her daughter live in squalor as she makes excuses for a bum who wants to leech off of everyone in sight. Lynn sees someone put upon. I see someone who looks like a boy cutting off her nose to spite her face.