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The Big Storm of 1988.
Feb. 24th, 2014 01:32 amThe interesting thing about this brutal and seemingly endless winter is that it calls to mind one of the more interesting arcs in the strip's history: the big storm that dominated the first few weeks of 1988. What I find interesting is that instead of being about the weather, it ended up being about the people enduring it.
First off, it seemed to be about how John is a patronizing dick who doesn't take Elly as seriously as he should. When you start the sequence with his declaration that since his ego-gratifying, super-impractical sports car wasn't up to the challenge of a Canadian winter, he should take Elly's ride while she waited out the storm because his job actually paid the bills and end the arc with a joke about women drivers, you're left with the assumption that having to be sensible about the weather means submitting to the patriarchy.
Second, we had to contend with the fact that the people at Mike and Lizzie's school seemed to be caught blindsided by the weather. This, I should think, would confuse the living Hell out of any children who might read this arc in three years time because the children of Meredith's generation are used to school districts erring on the side of caution when the weather turns sour on them. This is because they don't realize that people have learned from screw-ups like this. After all, the next storm, the one in April, proves that the Pattersons didn't learn how changeable the weather in Canada can get.
First off, it seemed to be about how John is a patronizing dick who doesn't take Elly as seriously as he should. When you start the sequence with his declaration that since his ego-gratifying, super-impractical sports car wasn't up to the challenge of a Canadian winter, he should take Elly's ride while she waited out the storm because his job actually paid the bills and end the arc with a joke about women drivers, you're left with the assumption that having to be sensible about the weather means submitting to the patriarchy.
Second, we had to contend with the fact that the people at Mike and Lizzie's school seemed to be caught blindsided by the weather. This, I should think, would confuse the living Hell out of any children who might read this arc in three years time because the children of Meredith's generation are used to school districts erring on the side of caution when the weather turns sour on them. This is because they don't realize that people have learned from screw-ups like this. After all, the next storm, the one in April, proves that the Pattersons didn't learn how changeable the weather in Canada can get.
