The UnSettlepocalypse.

[dreadedcandiru2]

Every so often, it occurs to me (as I will explain in depth later) that Michael's decision to quit Portrait is so foolish, it didn't actually take place. What might actually have happened is that he realized that it would be simpler to join a growing trend to decentralize things and make his pile from the comfort of his home. The reason this would appeal to him is that he knows damned well that his idiot mother can't wrap her pea brain around the concept of telecommuting.

Now, to be fair, it is potentially likely that Elly might accidentally discover that while Mike spends most of his time at home where he 'belongs', he's using the scary, confusing and wrong Interweb to somehow still run that scary, confusing and wrong magazine that implies that the scary, confusing and wrong feeling of release that accompanies scary, confusing and wrong sex is none of those things. This would make no sense to her and be discounted because her brain is not able to process this. I'm reminded of a "Mama's Family" sketch from the Carol Burnett show in which a Harper portrayed by Alan Alda engaged in the act of futility called trying to explain the life of a commercial artist to his flyover-country relations. Try as they might, Thelma and Eunice just couldn't wrap their heads around the way he made his living. The same thing would happen were one to explain to Elly that work need not take place in a cubicle farm.

The reason that I mention this is that Elly also cannot understand starter marriages or amicable partings of the way. As by way of explaining the first great big blind spot, let me tell you about Tony and Terri. Y'see, around about ten or so years ago, the two of them rushed headlong into what looked like a marriage but turned out to be the sort of varsity game of House that a lot of crazy kids their age played. Once they were no longer under the spell of whatever heat they were in at the time, they parted like adults and decided that he'd be a better fit as primary caregiver of their child. Eventually, he got remarried to some girl named Betty that he used to know.

The thing about this girl is that she was under the impression that she and Tony were still, as they say, 'on break'. Unlike her goofy idiot older brother who made a whiny little bitch of himself when his girlfriend tried explaining that concept to him, she was willing to bide her time to see if the spark were still there. Upon discovery that it was, the two of them quietly eloped and decided to copy her older brother by having a sham wedding to mollify her idiot mother Elly.

Okay. You got me. The story of Tony and Terri is my way of speculating that the Settlepocalypse is actually Elly's feeble attempt to make sense of Lizthony on her terms. It makes sense that this might be the case because only Elly would take the rather bland story of Xers in love and transform it into the appalling mess she ludicrously describes as being a happy ending.

Comments

[josephusrex.livejournal.com]

I do know of a couple real-life examples of the Tony/Terri/Betty story. It's really not far-fetched. It's too bad Terri was so ill-treated, though -- and worse that none of the players notice that.

[dreadedcandiru2.livejournal.com]

Worse still, it's not in them to do so. They really don't see what's wrong with the way they act any more than Mama Harper sees that her constant refusal to listen to Eunice's complaints about her pet rabbit being the other other white meat are why the woman acts the way she does.