Whither the hybrid: The mother of all lost opportunities.

As has been pointed out, the quality of this strip has suffered not only due to the loss of inspiration on Lunn's part but also the arbitrary deadline she's set for herself. The "Eric the Cheater" and "Deanna's 'oops' pregnancy" were a one-two punch to the credibilty of the concept, if not an out-and-out declaration of creative bankruptcy. She might somehow have restored the strip to something approaching her past glories if she'd allowed herself more time. Sadly, for reasons we cannot fathom, she decided to finish everything up at a certain point and is currently wrapping up everyone's story arcs accordingly. This, of course, makes little sense when you consider what it's meant to represent: An unseen figure (let's call her Lynn for the sake of argument) telling distant relatives about a family in her neighborhood. The end of the strip represents in the real world the viewpoint character moving away. The thing is that people don't stop living just because she isn't there to see it. What Lynn should be doing is quitting the strip cold turkey in the autumn and preparing a semi-regular series of novels that give us an update on life at Sharon Lane. That way, she could wrap up the plotlines she wants and still leave us wanting more.