The End is the Beginning is the End.....

[dreadedcandiru2]

As we lurch uneasily into the time freeze, we do so in the sure knowledge that we're about to see how things reached their current pitch of Pattersonian horror. By that, I, of course, mean we're about to see exactly how Elly got stuck with John. She's managed to convince herself that she came out ahead but my gut tells me otherwise. Thirty years of bullshitting herself aside, she was in the position of a woman facing a banquet turning around in her chair and sustaining herself by catching and eating flies. To do something wholly unwarranted and be fair to the train-obsessed douchebag, no one thinks of himself as the villain in his or her life story. If you were to ask him, he'd tell you that he 'rescued' her from things that were bad for her such as childlessness and a career. The fact that he's the main beneficiary of his philanthropy while she wanders around feeling like her gut is right when it says she wasted her life is just the way the cookie crumbled. People who point out that he's rationalizing away being a selfish dick just don't get it, as far as he can see. We're about to repeat that sad little pattern when we see the unholy union of two of the most passive-aggressive narcissistic dimwits ever to mar the comics page: Liz and Anthony. I'm sure that in Lynn's mind, this is a life-affirming celebration of continuity. I can't help but feel we're about to bear witness to the repetition of something that should never have occured in the first place. Why do something again when it wasn't worth doing the first time?

Comments

[howtheduck.livejournal.com]

Why do something again when it wasn't worth doing the first time?
Lynn Johnston loves repetition and bringing up Elly and John to compare to Liz and Anthony is a master stroke for her. You will get to see parallels the likes of which you have never seen before in For Better or For Worse history. The only real question is how far will Lynn Johnston take it?:

a. Subtle parallels.
b. Obvious parallels.
c. Beat you over the head with parallels.
d. Knock you senseless and then cave in your cranium with an anvil parallels.
e. Parallels so stupifying and stupendously awful that even the Yahoo group and the Coffee Talk people will wretch from them.

Personally, I think (d). I am not sure (e) is possible, but if anyone can do it, Lynn Johnston can.

[dreadedcandiru2.livejournal.com]

Oh, (d) all the way, sir. The anvilliest of all possible anvilly parallels is how the story is told: in both instances, Michael is telling a female relative with the mental age of five a third-hand distillation of the self-justifying bullshit of a passive-aggressive bully.