On Coffee Talkers and life in Blancmange Nation....

A blancmange (pronounced 'bluhMAHNJ' for those unfamiliar with it) is one of the blandest deserts British cuisine provides. It's regarded as an ideal food for the sick because its near perfect blandness is guaranteed not to upset anyone's digestion. When I see the adventures of the Pattersons, I'm reminded of a vast sea of the blasted things, and it's not because they mean to win Wimbledon. Instead, their lives are tailor made not to upset the stomachs of Lynn's target demographic, the sort of out-of-it sururbanites who think Lizthony are completely cute and April should appreciate wha she has. Lynn, you see, does not like getting yelled at be the people she sort of identifies with and she got a buttload of angry mail from her kind of people when she outed Lawrence. How best to win praise from those she finds impressive? Tell them what they wanna hear and don't give them any nasty shocks to stir them out of their ungodly complacency. She wilfully destroyed a group of potentially interesting characters so as not to unduly frighten the sick, benighted slobs who write bad poetry celebrating the hellish union of a stalker and a flibbertygibbet. Instead of a sympathetic look at a slighty flawed but essentially decent and likable suburban family, we get a strip of, by and for the human blancmanges of this world. Where are Mr and Mrs Brainsample from the planet Skyron in the Galaxy of Andromeda when WE need them?