The world of cardboard cutouts: John's wiring problem.

As you know, I love to point out that I really think that Lynn made a mistake not skipping over 1979 all together and thus avoiding the new-runs and hybrid and all that other confusing stupidity that drove people away. If this had happened, we'd be on the other side of another annoying and stupid incident in which John's letting stereotypes do his thinking for him made his and everyone else's life worse. Said incident is his balking at remodeling the kitchen and getting rid of all of the clapped-out old appliances that burn food and make it unpalatable. John spent entirely too long moaning about the horrible expense of renovations he could easily afford because he's a moron programmed to think that while he, a doorknob who wastes money on toys, is practical and clear-headed because he's a dude, Elly just pisses money away despite the evidence of his senses because she's a woman. It's obvious that Trash Bag Johnny still has no clue what a cheapskate he married because his brain isn't wired to get to know people.

Since John isn't designed to really get to know the people around him and since his brain replaces the insight it isn't built to process or comprehend with cardboard cutouts, he not lives in a world where he, the practical man wanted to keep Elly from spending them all into the poorhouse because silly women Don't Know The Value Of A Dollar is surrounded by irritating people who want to tell him he's wrong all the time, he also lives in a world where other people come along and tell him that he isn't the long-suffering father of baffling and disrespectful children who need his firmness but instead an out of touch old coward who hides in his shed playing with toys rather than get to know who they are and what they really want because of his fear of actually being the bad guy. That would make him the one cardboard character he doesn't want peopling his world: the moron antagonist who blunders his way through life not knowing what he's talking about.