The dawn of the superfamily.

[dreadedcandiru2]

Of course, the really ludicrous thing about Elly giving Molly the benefit of her inexperience is that Molly sought Elly out in the first place. As aprilp_katje pointed out, Molly does not especially like or trust Connie overly much. From what little we know of their family dynamics, it took until Molly was a grown woman for her to understand and to warm to her. Lynn might squawk about Molly going into a dark place and not coming back until years later but it's damned obvious that it's as I said: Molly blamed her parents' divorce part way on herself and viewed reconciling herself to Connie and Milborough not only as accepting the fact that she couldn't have the life she wanted but also that her opinion doesn't actually count.

It therefore makes no sense that she'd confide in the reason why she had to be taken away from her friends and that year's Forever Love. What she sees when she looks at Elly is what everyone sees: someone whose job it is to barge on in and berate her about how foolish and heartless and cruel she is for missing her friends and not accepting someone who treats her like something of an annoying joke. Only in some sort of kiddie cartoon would that happen because here in the real world, people don't seek out advice from hostile strangers who disrespect them merely because that reproving ignoramus is one of the main characters.

Sadly, we're starting to live in the world of the Declining Years wherein the healing touch of the Sainted Patterson Family lifts the Wretched Of The Earth out of the muck if they have the humility to accept their benevolence. What was supposed to happen was that Molly was supposed to agree that boys who frighten Greg and Connie are jerks and mutate into a craven gumdrop from one of those God-awful fifties social programming films about how keen it is to conform to a tight-assed, male-oriented norm. It is thus fortunate that she got written out; otherwise, we'd have established a precedent for someone being murdered by rough trade because she doesn't agree with the Will Of Elly.

Comments

[aprilp-katje.livejournal.com]

Though I wish Molly and Gayle were legit written out, instead of quietly disappeared, "Chuck Cunningham" style. My impression is that Lynn initially thought introducing two teenage girls into the strip, and into Connie and Lawrence's family, would create all kinds of great material. And she did mine them for (not-great) story arcs for a while. However, she quickly lost steam/interest and then just seemingly pretended they never existed. I think she would have done that with April if she'd felt she could get away with it.

Out of Foobistan, Into Cancerview.

[dreadedcandiru2.livejournal.com]

I should think that her lovely and well-thought out way of ridding herself of a vector for complaints about negligent, thoughtless and insensitive parenting would have been something a lot like "Let's send April to boarding school in England and have Elly whine because she preferred the company of Aunt Phyllis's family to her 'loving' parents and siblings."

As for Molly and Gayle, quietly disappearing them seems to have given Tom Batiuk ideas for how to deal with a younger generation of characters he can't relate to. Les's daughter and her classmates might as well have never been born in the first place because the order of the day is his ranting about fake comic books and fake fodder for MST3K, why Hollywood is loaded with venal monsters and how mothers who don't realize that their sole purpose in life is to gaze in awe as they gleefully wait hand and foot on a spoiled little shit stuffing his gob with milk and cookies as he dulls his brain reading DC Comics are evil abusive psychotic monsters.

Re: Out of Foobistan, Into Cancerview.

[aprilp-katje.livejournal.com]

Hm, come to think of it, boarding school in England might have been a kindness for April.

And I can't help feeling relieved I stopped following the Funkyverse.

Re: Out of Foobistan, Into Cancerview.

[dreadedcandiru2.livejournal.com]

You're not missing much. He's still too stupid to actually tell a story. All we get are reactions to things he's too dimwitted to depict.

Re: Out of Foobistan, Into Cancerview.

[aprilp-katje.livejournal.com]

Ick. And yet he continues to be syndicated.

Re: Out of Foobistan, Into Cancerview.

[dreadedcandiru2.livejournal.com]

Possibly because no one at the Syndicate actually cares what he does as long as he doesn't do anything stupid like McEldowney did and engage in fairy torture porn.