Farley, the Overrated.

Part of Lynn's strategy for keeping people interested in her doomed attempt to rehash the past is the premature reappearance of Farley the dog. This seems like a good idea given how many letters from her more gushy fans indicate a strong love of the heroic dog whose life was tragically cut short months before he would have lived five years longer than most members of his breed. The problem is that his needlessly melodramatic death obscures the truth: in life, he was a shaggy, shambling, slobbering nitwit of a dog. Since the depressing reality of his flat-footed cluelessness isn't going to match the image of a wonder dog the have in their heads, his return is going to go down like a lead balloon. I'd like to think that would remind them all you can't get a do-over but they're like their fallen god in that respect; they'll never reconcile themselves to the fact that you cannot have your cake and eat it too.