(Strip Number 7175, Original Publication Date, 13 January 1985)
Panel 1: We start things off with Michael and Lizzie contentedly watching television.
Panel 2: This bothers the Hell out of Elly because she doesn't like one bit that they've been reduced to passive box-watching.
Panel 3: This spurs her to the action of telling them that they've spent too much time in front of the idiot lantern already and thus must therefore find something productive to do with their time.
Panel 4: Mike does something VERY, VERY stupid and points out the flaws in Elly's argument by stating that it's too cold to play outside and there is nothing else they can do.
Panel 5: As expected, Elly's face twists into the Hideous Narrow-Eyed Frown Of Theatrical Rage™ as she turns her back to her children (after all, how can ANY PARENT be expected to LOOK at a child who DARES to question his pooooooooooooooooooooooooooor mother?), jabs her finger into the air, decrees the absence of alternatives to be completely irrelevant forever and tells them that the box stays off.
Panel 6: Remember last Christmas when I made all that high-sounding noise about Elly using her brain and teaching her kids about not pointing guns at people even if they're toys? You can freaking forget all of it because Dumb Dora thinks that moping about how SAD guns make her will cure things; since Elly is stupider than a sack of hair, she sort of deserves to be her kids' fake murder victim.
Panel 7: Next, she's traumatized FOREVER by the fact that they've defiantly, cruelly and maliciously turned her couch into an EVIL fort that she has to put back together lest the government shoot her for not keeping her house in order.
Panel 8: Finally, they do something that always astonishes and confuses and terrifies her every time she sees it when they fight over who gets to play with a toy.
Panel 9: This causes her to propose a great idea.
Panel 10: Said idea is having the two of them watch TV.
Summary: While the notes are a subpar recapitulation of Andy Fox's guiding philosophy (children must be protected from everything that they might like for their own good), what they don't do a very good job of disguising is why the box became a parent. As we see, there's a lot that they can do that isn't sitting in front of a cathode-ray tube. As we also see, most of it involves reminding Elly that she has children in the house and is therefore evil and scary and wrong and can never, ever be anticipated by anyone ever lest Elly be thought of as being a high-functioning drunkard with a goldfish's memory.
