(Original Publication Date, 30 September 1990)
Panel 1: We start things off with Mike eating his dinner in the smacky, messy, gobbly, nasty way someone calls "Pattersnarfing."
Panel 2: This somehow astonishes Elly because, as we have said before, she expects her children to magically behave better than she is willing to.
Panel 3: Mike makes that "UH?" noise Pattersons make when they're confused when Elly delivers Canned Lecture Number Seven about his terrible table manners. (This is probably because she fears that people will blame her for them. Some days, she admits that they're right to.)
Panel 4: Once again, he's told to sit up straight, use his knife properly and chew with his mouth closed.
Panel 5: As he prepares to roam around unsupervised with That Girl, he rolls his eyes in irritation when she delivers the same speech about how she doesn't know why he's so sloppy because his hair is too long and his clothing is wrinkled that he's had to endure since he could understand the English language.
Panel 6: She's just infuriated
Panel 7: Since it sometimes actually occurs to her that he got being an inattentive idiot from her, she asks him if he'd listened to all that static. He makes a vague grunt of confirmation.
Panel 8: This pleases her because she didn't want it going through one ear and out the other and hopes that he learned something.
Panel 9: We are invited to clutch an incompetent dimwit and noxious scold to our collective bosoms and weep bitter, angry tears for her because no one listens to her or appreciates her when Mike's take is that he should avoid marrying a girl like his mother.
Summary: As we know, Mike does not realize that he is foredoomed to marry someone exactly like his mother. Exactly like her beloved Elly, Deanna has no idea what hairstyle flatters her face, dresses super-frumpy on general principle, is a limp dishrag who doesn't like being around kids or doing actual work, delights in listing the faults of others while going nuts when her own are pointed out and screws herself royally by trusting the wrong people and spitting all over people trying to help her.