Mike and The Occam and Hanlon Razor Company.

[dreadedcandiru2]

To continue on from my last post, it seems to me that it would make more sense to ascribe Mike's belief that any behaviour Martha might exhibit that makes him feel uncomfortable or slighted to her being a manipulative monster playing games with him to his combining an excessive exposure to television and movies with his being too stupid and stubborn to question the real-world applicability of what he sees because television has spent more time raising him than his parents have. Unlike the envious petty tyrants who brought him into the world, television tells him that he's smart and right and belongs places so he cannot and will not question it despite the fact that every other time someone has flattered him like that, they were only using him.

This tendency served as an active and unknown menace to Martha's peace of mind and mental equilibrium owing to her never quite realizing that Mike wasn't able to see her as a person. What he saw was a character in a bad soap opera who probably spent her free time making the stupid monologue about how she was going to chew him up and spit him out because that's the only way the poor clod can process what happened to him. The only substantive difference between him and a mother who also confuses how an action makes her feel with the intention behind it is the source material of the crippling delusions that hamper them. He's "Dynasty", she's "Peyton Place."