Profiling for fun and profit: Gordon's sea change....

As I've said before, Gordon Mayes is pretty much the personification of the snobbery and need to look down on the lower ranks that Lynn falsely claims not to have. He started out as a bad and weird kid leading Michael astray and telling him to disobey Elly because she's a killjoy who wouldn't recognize happiness and fun if it bit her in the arse because he came from a lower social strata than the Pattersons. Lynn tried to dress it up pretty but she can't rid herself of the belief that the more money a parent brings in, the better a parent he or she is (unless, focurse said parent is a pushy ethnic).

The reason that I mention this is that the reason Gordon becomes a sympathetic figure is that Lynn appeals to another crass stereotype that needlessly and cruelly defames millions of honest people: she turned his dad into a drunk (because you know how THOSE people are) and his mother into a doormat (because you know how downtrodden THOSE women are) so that his odd behaviour is the result of being abused (because THOSE PEOPLE just hit kids, it's not MY fault!!) in order to make him the Pattersons' pet project. He's why there's nothing to fear but a very special anything.

A, My Name is Allyson.

To continue merrily on with our look at Gordon's one-sided infatuation with a girl who he only considers worth dating because she's the stuff wet dreams are made of,I think it behooves us to remember that she's the first in a long line of female characters who were created for the specific purpose of showing us what Lynn thinks a girl shouldn't be. The reason that I think this is the case is that her last name (Creemore) is a mildly vulgar joke that hints broadly that all she has to offer the Gordos of the world is dangerous body language and not Tracey's friendship and also wide, child-bearing hips.

This need of Lynn's to get her own back against the popular girls by casting them all as flighty and cruel and not willing to give the Gordons of the world the chance they 'magically' deserve because they're somehow entitled to have whoever strikes their fancy takes the form of the pretty girl committing the atrocity of pursuing a handsome, popular and respected athlete instead of being good and nice and totally insane and falling hard for a shlumpy, homely non-entity who majors in being a pea-brained hick. Since Allyson acts like a real person instead of a fantasy figure meant to delude the real Gordons into thinking that reality is optional, she's the Becky of her decade. Since Lynn is a peevish jerk, it's clear that the Allyson of today lives a wind-blown and unhappy life as a society matron being made a well-payed fool of by her philandering rat husband when she could have been Rosie Cotton to Gordon's Samwise Gamgee.