John versus understanding Liz's friendlessness.

As we know, we're about to launch into the first of any number of arcs that remind us that Elizabeth spent the longest time on the outside looking in when it came to the social scene. This need of Lynn's to depict her own friendless-by-choice middle- and high-school life by having Liz's fatal flaw of not being especially self-aware get in the way of things is a rather distressing thing to see. We see that Liz drives people away by looking as if she's about to prove herself her mother's daughter by storming through life with a scowl on her face that suggests that if they blink funny, the people she meets will get mauled half to death before she can be pulled off of them. Liz doesn't know what expression she has on her face and is totally acluistic as to why people are so damned gunshy.

While this might look like a prelude to yet another long-form rant about how Liz hasn't the damnedest idea that the hostile body language and tetchy tone of voice she doesn't understand she used is why Therese didn't warm to her, what I would actually like to talk about is how John's inability to understand the people around him gets in the way of his being helpful again. As I said before, John doesn't see people when he looks at his family but instead sees media imagery made flesh. This means that Liz must be making noise about being friendless and unhappy because that's just what kids do, they mope pointlessly about non-existent problems to bug their folks. After all, THEY wouldn't allow lies or distortion on the airwaves because it's not 'rational' to assume that people are having their prejudices pandered to by hucksters with something to sell. This exaggerated, unrealistic and idiotic faith in the alleged and unsupportable-by-the-facts goodness of the human race means that the simpleton with the glasses thinks he knows what's going on when he doesn't. Result: he makes noise about her going away if all she's going to do is talk about how she doesn't have friends.