Frumps versus sports cars.

The interesting thing about the "Elly gets T-boned by some dick playing chicken with a school bus" arc is that Michael finds it difficult in the extreme to picture his mom in a sports car. The reason that this is a 'mean spirited joke' at 'Elly's expense' is that he's not supposed to be dead the Hell on. It is really hard to imagine a blowsy fright like Elly in anything that isn't a station wagon because it does look as if she had the ability to enjoy life surgically removed once she got married.

The problem is that Elly doesn't like admitting that she's turned herself a dowdy old bat with a narrow mind and a tendency towards panic because she thinks that no one will take her seriously if she doesn't act as if every little thing were a fucking tragedy and a dire crisis. Her fear that The Quality Women will hang a sign saying "Bad" around her neck if she doesn't try to suck the fun out of everything clashes with her fanciful belief that she was ever close to being cool. She might claim that they keep changing the channel every time they tell her to get with the program but she threw the radio away years ago because she believed she had to.