Foobonia and Points West.

The interesting thing about the Harry of the Third Phase is that the youngest of his three children is more or less a female version of the odd human being he was in high school. Sure, she inherited her looks and red hair from her mother but she inherited her need to spout non-sequiturs and wear a hat at all times from her dad. More interesting still is that, unlike most of the second generation, Maddie's life isn't filled with too much drama; she isn't like Summer or Keisha who are probably destined to watch as Suicide Girl does what she did back when Les and Lisa were floundering romantically: playing the "I want my beloved to be happy" card. She also isn't wandering around like Jinx Bushka wondering why her adoptive father frets about how athletic she isn't. What she's got is a father who might finally have to deal with a touch of the same stresses that his peers do; that's because, as we know, the postal service is falling on hard times. Since the iron rice bowl has rusted through, we're probably in for Harry coming in and cleaning up the mess Funky made of Montoni's.

Now that I've gotten my hatred of how Batiuk has made his characters look haggard and aged off my chest, I'd like to talk about the other member of the Core Four who isn't a mess: 'Crazy' Harry Klinghorn. He bears a distinct similarity to Bull in that he was able to transcend who he was in high school and carve out a decent life for himself. His beginnings were not all that auspicious; what greeted our eyes back then was a shy, somewhat eccentric young man wearing a cap who really didn't seem to fit into the blackboard jungle. Just as Les's machine gun turned out to be a prop, his living out of his locker seemed to draw not on his being the fun-personified character we saw but on, well, his having a rather unhappy home life. Where he really excelled was at the local arcade; the problem, of course, was that even there he faced an uphill battle. That's because he always had to face another gamer: a mysterious figure wearing a motorcycle helmet called the Eliminator. 'He' was tough competition. 'He' was relentless. 'He' was a young woman named Donna. More about the two of them in the next installment.