Ted and Connie and Phil and Lynn and learning from screw-ups.

[dreadedcandiru2]

In one of her recent notes, Lynn referred to the annoying romantic triangle she'd imposed upon us as her first experiment on writing a story arc wherein the family took a back seat to the supporting characters. The problem with this is that, well, she'd ended up pleasing no one here because her need to use the Pattersons as a sort of Greek chorus to tell us how screwed-up Ted was (as evidenced by John's disproportionate and quite frankly pointless rage) or how big a victim Connie was made them look like jerks. The end result is that she stopped pretending the love lives of incidental characters were mission critical and had the Pattersons react in a mildly amusing manner to the comings and goings of the people around them. The first example of this more sane trend was either Connie's off-camera romance with Greg or the business with Mrs Baird. In both cases, Elly and John made tepid jokes about something that they knew wasn't their business; the downside is that Lynn's love of having the Pattersons play cupid wound up causing atrocities like Mike and Liz's visits to Exile Farm, Mike's super-impressive kiss-off e-mail, the Big Fat Fake Wedding and the Settlepocalypse.