I recently watched the "Death of Farley" podcast again and it brought back a nagging question that bothers me from time to time; did the Pattersons ever take April to a doctor to see if maybe she hadn't gotten water in her lungs or something. In real life, she'd have spent the next day or so under observation to see if what happened wasn't going to kill her so not having it happen in the strip makes the Pattersons look kind of dumb. Also, why did Elly never bother getting a lock for that gate that April couldn't pry open and prevent the whole mess in the first place?
about why we were left with the impression that the Pattersons never even bothered taking April to the hospital for observation. Lynn's answer:
There are all kinds of "should haves and what ifs" in this and other FBorFW stories. Because I only had 4 panels a day in which to tell a tale, (that's less than 30 seconds of reading time!) I had to choose what to include and what was best left to the readers' imagination. This was an intelligent family with close ties to medical friends, so you can well suppose they did everything they could to make sure their daughter was healthy and the gate secured. If I had covered all the details folks ask for, we'd still be reading about what happened that day! All the best and, thanks for writing. LJ
failed to really to answer my problem because, well, most people assume that an author wouldn't leave out something important so that mush about hugging stars can be spewed. Also, it isn't even true; all she'd have to do was change a strip around and solve at least one problem.
