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Ted's major malfunction.
Oct. 4th, 2014 01:14 amThe interesting thing about the upcoming week is that we're going to be dealing with the Grade Z soap opera plot-line that always seems to take place whenever Ted makes the scene. What happened this time is that our boy reacted to his having to pay the price for being a jackass by driving to Thunder Bay to make a fool of himself begging Connie to take him and his weak bullshit back into his life. No matter how often she refuses to entertain the notion of having the simpleton mess with her emotions and no matter how clear John makes it that he's got no one but himself to blame for his heartache, our boy is probably only now realizing that his many weaknesses have made his love life a hideous chaos. To reveal why this is and why he, unlike someone else I can think of, is a bad person for being slow to admit that a woman is a person too, let's remind ourselves of what we do and don't know about him.
First off, let's deal with the fact that his name is inconsistently spelled. While in the real world, it's a reminder that Lynn doesn't keep notes, in the strip it can be explained away as a reminder that we're looking at the world through Elly's eyes. The same woman who got the details of his one and only marriage all wrong because she doesn't much care can't be asked to get the man's name right.
Second, we have to remind ourselves that he spent most of his life under the thumb of a domineering meat-axe of a mother who expected him to be her slave as a means of paying her back for having to endure the unnatural horrors of coitus, pregnancy and childbirth. His need to pay fealty to Evil Scottish Old Person meant taking her slut-shaming and need to find fault in any woman that might take her little boy away far more seriously than a man should.
Third, the Liography establishes as a fact that he was a born follower possessed of the need to impress an unworthy and ridiculous hero. While his classmates grew up and moved on with their lives after graduating high school, Ted saw it as a worthy goal to honour the memory of a reckless, antisocial clod who actually didn't die before his time despite being sixteen years old by not really growing out of the notion that a woman is a reward for having a penis.
Fourth and most important, there is the established fact that Ted cannot admit that he's been a jackass, cannot sympathize with the damage he causes and thus either claims to have been manipulated or dismisses the complaints of the women whose lives he plows through as being the humorless ravings of someone who takes life too seriously.
If you've been paying attention, you'll realize that he sounds a damn sight like the Delicate Genius. What seems to have happened with him is that unlike Mike, he never actually dated the woman Mommy thought was there to bring her pretty grandchildren and a daughter-in-law that wasn't a threat to her baleful domination of her son. My guess is that when she was on her death-bed, the last thought on her mind was the hope that said woman would somehow find her way into Ted's arms so that life would work out properly and forget the life she'd made for herself.
First off, let's deal with the fact that his name is inconsistently spelled. While in the real world, it's a reminder that Lynn doesn't keep notes, in the strip it can be explained away as a reminder that we're looking at the world through Elly's eyes. The same woman who got the details of his one and only marriage all wrong because she doesn't much care can't be asked to get the man's name right.
Second, we have to remind ourselves that he spent most of his life under the thumb of a domineering meat-axe of a mother who expected him to be her slave as a means of paying her back for having to endure the unnatural horrors of coitus, pregnancy and childbirth. His need to pay fealty to Evil Scottish Old Person meant taking her slut-shaming and need to find fault in any woman that might take her little boy away far more seriously than a man should.
Third, the Liography establishes as a fact that he was a born follower possessed of the need to impress an unworthy and ridiculous hero. While his classmates grew up and moved on with their lives after graduating high school, Ted saw it as a worthy goal to honour the memory of a reckless, antisocial clod who actually didn't die before his time despite being sixteen years old by not really growing out of the notion that a woman is a reward for having a penis.
Fourth and most important, there is the established fact that Ted cannot admit that he's been a jackass, cannot sympathize with the damage he causes and thus either claims to have been manipulated or dismisses the complaints of the women whose lives he plows through as being the humorless ravings of someone who takes life too seriously.
If you've been paying attention, you'll realize that he sounds a damn sight like the Delicate Genius. What seems to have happened with him is that unlike Mike, he never actually dated the woman Mommy thought was there to bring her pretty grandchildren and a daughter-in-law that wasn't a threat to her baleful domination of her son. My guess is that when she was on her death-bed, the last thought on her mind was the hope that said woman would somehow find her way into Ted's arms so that life would work out properly and forget the life she'd made for herself.
