Leah Nichols: the Phantom Neighbor....

[dreadedcandiru2]

One of the sadder things about watching the birth of Richard Nichols is knowing that we really don't get to see all that much of his story; granted, we do get to see the first six or seven years of his life and form some opinion about what and who he is and might become but shortly after April is born, he and his whole family disappear from view because of Lynn's refusal to explore her divorce in any real depth.

I've already told you about how I think that Anthony is simply a stand-in for Christopher but what I haven't quite explained is what I think is the real injustice: the fact that the youngest of the three Nichols children has no real on-screen personality at all. About all we do know about her is that Anne's post-partum depression seems to have taken the form of converting a genetic anomaly into a sign that she herself was morally deficient, Richard was mildly jealous of her and that Leah herself was a bit noisy. Other than that, we cannot look to the strip to see what might have become of her.

For any clue as to her destiny, we have to resort to consulting Lynn and Beth's attempts at waxing literary to find out that she's a business major who helped her father get over the post-retirement blues by getting him into volunteering. When you consider that that's a far more compelling story than watching zits and vacuuming, Lynn's wonky focus is really grating.