Mother vs Daughter.

[dreadedcandiru2]

One of the trends I've noticed in the strip is the not-very-well hidden emnity between mothers and daughters. Given Lynn's issues with her own mother, that's maybe not such a surprise. We start off, of course, with Liz and Elly. At first blush, you'd assume that they get along fairly well but you'd be mistaken. Time and again, Elly feels shut out of Liz's life because it takes something really awful to get her to open her mouth. The rest of the time, Potato Nose is on the outside, wishing the blinds weren't drawn. I remember a long screed about why Liz taled about things to her teacher and not her, as if she didn't know that her failure to stand up to Mike and insistence that she raise April for her was the problem. It's of a piece, though, with Elly's clucking her tongue that her mother wouldn't listen to her excellent advice. Any suggestion that she was a boorishly inept know-it-all was the ranting of a picky-face. In comparison to the passive-aggression we see from these two, Deanna's open contempt is refreshing in its honesty.