Elly Patterson: the spirit of dark and lonely water.

As you recall, the "Pattersons go to the farm" arc had a strip that made me think of a British scare-em-straight educational film called "Apaches." The odd thing is that with the recent Sunday strip, the second Christmas special in which for a second or two, they think Liz drowned AND the Farleygate fiasco, it seems that there's a theme of children being allowed to play around bodies of water by oblivious twit parents. This makes me think of another really old public information film called "Lonely Water" in which a sort of personification of the sort of stream April nearly drowned in boasted about his ability to lure the sort of nitwits who died in boxcar lots in Apaches to their deaths. It seems to me that just as it was with Apaches, the real problem lies less with the children and more with the imbecile parents who just can't be bothered watching over their offsprings. First off, we have to remember that in the recent strip, Elly just sat on the dock feeling sorry for herself. In the Christmas special, Elly was sitting on her ass in the kitchen growling about how selfish LIZ was for not realizing that as an older child, her duty to look out for April was absolute and unquestionable. Finally, we have to remember that Elly ignored both April AND radio reports that told her to keep children away from streams. Simply put, Elly IS the spirit of dark and lonely water....or at least the spirit of total puddingbrain negligence.