The FOOBiverse!

The one where we're reminded that Elly is just too stupid to actually truly defend her daughters from male ratfuckery.

Synopsis: Mike's continued inappropriate behaviour leads to Liz tagging in super-ineffectual non-parent Elly who stands there looking like a gaffed trout when he makes a mean girl comment about Liz stuffing her bra with tissue paper.

Summary: The whining puke never learns better. Meredith is going to have to cremate an ass of a father who insisted that he was the victim in his toxic relationship with his sister with his dying breath. This is owing to the fact that his mother incentivized conflict by saying crap like "I love him but I don't like him" when he reacted poorly to being shoved aside for the new baby.

The first one where Mike won't shut his filthy trap about Liz's bra.

Synopsis: We have Mike being a pain in the ass about Liz having to wash clothes when for some stupid reason that's probably either Lynn's long-standing vendetta against her son or her inability to understand gendered behaviour (as is evidenced by comparing it to a sleep shade), he won't shut the fuck up about her wearing a training bra. This leads Liz to snap the thing in his stupid face.

Summary: I don't even know where to begin with this one. I don't see a normal boy doing anything remotely like this. I can see one girl doing it to a younger one but a normal boy, no, not at all.

The one where Liz walks blindly into a lecture about how Elly wasn't put on this Earth to wash other people's clothes.

Synopsis: Liz comes home with her gym clothes and expects what always happened before to happen when she asks Elly to wash them. When Elly says that's her job now, her baffled objection leads to an angry lecture and Liz's snarky thought-bubble about said lecture.

Summary: If Elly weren't so in love with the idea of Liz being old enough to do things now, she would have spared her from Mike channeling one of the Plastics from Mean Girls.

The one where we start to think that Liz has no sense of smell.

Synopsis: We find passers-by be offended by the reek of Liz's gym clothes; this leads her to conclude that Dawn was right about their needing to be washed.

Summary: Personally, I blame Michael for this. If he would clean his sty once in a century, Liz would have kept her sense of smell.

The one where we learn why Lynn hates binders so much.

Synopsis: Liz's binder snaps closed on her fingers. Dawn blames it on her putting it in the same locker as her rancid gym shoes.

Summary: Perhaps Lindy took to the carrying around sheaves of paper because she feared the binder snapping a finger.

The one where Elly is perplexed by the fact that Mike responds well to consistent messaging, honesty as to motivation and positive reinforcement.

Synopsis: We find ourselves at Parent Teacher Night watching Elly risk input failure because she can't reconcile the swell kid Mike is at school with the kid he is at home.

Summary: She'll go right on being perplexed because the alternative is admitting that she and John are worthless failures at parenting.

The one with the deus ex machina ending that is supposed to make everything okay despite that not actually happening in real life.

Synopsis: We end the arc with Gord talking about how his dad cried about waling on him when he sobered up the following morning. This is supposed to make everything okay.

Summary: The problem is that it totally God-damned doesn't. Ol'INeverCameUpWithANameForHim is just going to get gooned again and use Gord as a punching bag again and whine about it the morning after again.

^ The funny side of pregnancy, as seen by cartoonist Lynn Johnston, from The Australian Women's Weekly; by Yvonne Crittenden; published 1 March 1978; retrieved July 8, 2018

https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/51398776?searchTerm=johnston&searchLimits=l-decade=197

I found this article on Lynn Johnston in the time period just before she started the syndicated comic strip and just before she moved to Lynn Lake.  It is interesting to look at it now.  I will quote the article and then comment on it after the break.




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The one where Gordon likens being a teenager to being the employee of a scab foreman.

Synopsis: Now that we're actually at the mall, we find Mike and Gordon comparing notes about being grounded every time parents want to give a kid a hard time for nothing; Gord makes a dumb joke about parents not being able to fire kids.

Summary: Given what happened to him, I would tend think that he might see that as being a better deal than what he's got right now.

The one where no one wins anything that I can see.

Synopsis: Now that his grounding for being the victim of his mother's pea-brained ignorance of how her car works is over, Mike essays to go out for school evening. Instead of setting a time like an adult, she gets to think that she wins by bargaining with her kid. Meanwhile, Mike thinks he wins because he gets to set his own curfew.

Summary: Forget about Mike being fired.....have Elly shitcanned IMMEDIATELY!!! She has one job and she's terrible at it because she wants to do two different things at once: win all the time and not be hated.