Foobonia and Points West.

It seems odd that Jim's failing health might be what causes Liz to finally set a date fo the Settlepocalypse because she and he were never that close. As qnjones reminds us, he used to have a one-way bond with Mike and a full-fledged one with April but seems to have somehow ignored Liz. My memory of that time is somewhat hazy but, given Lizzie's timid nature, it seems to me that he couldn't get her to open up or, for that matter, stop clinging to Elly's leg in blind panic. The little child who couldn't overcome her fear of the unfamiliar grew into the awkward teenager who took not dealing with him too much as a given and, since she's more or less still in high school, still doesn't have much use for him. This is why she's angrily baffled by April's outrage that she bequeathed his beloved harmonica to a thief who wanted a souvenir from someone who broke her word to him. Since Jim means little to her, arguing about his posessions seems sort of pointless.

As we launch into Jim's last great plotline in earnest, it looks as if Lynn might be pulling out all the stops. We were, after all, given a strip that wasn't the typical substandard sort of idiocy we've come to expect from the Declining Years. Instead, it hearkened back to the glory days of the mid 1990s. If she can maintain the quality she started with, she'll have earned back a lot of the good will she squandered trying to convince the world that the sordid behavior the Pattersons wasted their lives on was somehow good and noble.

On that note, there is a lot of unpleasantness she tried to transmute into heroism. So far, we've seen:

- John uprooting his family without taking their hopes or dreams into consideration at Mike's behest so he can have a large lot in which to build the eyesore model train layout of his dreams. Even though he did eventually realize that his daughter wasn't being moody for moodiness's sake, it didn't modify his behavior.

- Mike himself ignoring his family's needs for the sake of churning out derivative trash destined to be dissected in English classes for decades to come.

- April destroying every friendship she ever had because of her silly belief that that's how things are done.

These are unpleasant things but they pale in comparison to the ultimate example of wasting heroic means on mean ends: the Settlepocalypse. We know that what Liz and Anthony had in high school was a mild infatuation that would have petered out if left alone. It was not, though. Elly was so entranced by how cute these two people who had little in common besides being at the periphery of high school society to know or care that puppy love couldn't be built into anything lasting. Worse, nobody in the immediate vicinity seems to care what happened to the people whose lives were affected by the need the turn them into a pale copy of John and Elly's crappy marriage. If only the Pattersons could somehow be made to pull their heads out of the sand, they might realize that the pleasant wastes of time they've embarked upon really aren't all that important.

I think that saying goodbye to Jim might offer these people some well-needed perspective. Liz and Anthony might indeed get married but they'd do so with the knowledge that their alleged romance was not the central thing they thought it was, that there are other needs and concerns to be dealt with. Who knows. It might even get a Kool-Aid Drinker or two to wonder why everyone was racing around worrying about it in Jim's hour of need.

There's one thing that's been on my mind ever since Jim had his second stroke: so far as I know, his condition has not been adequately explained to his great-grandchildren. Now that it looks like he can die a happy man knowing that his grandson has achieved worldly success, there's one question I have to ask myself: How are they gonna screw up telling JonBenet and EatDirt about death? Are they gonna make the same mistake that the guy on Funky Winkerbean did and send out mixed signals that hopelessly confuse and anger the child? Are they gonna tell them anything at all? Are they gonna lie outright? Or, as I fear, are they gonna warp them by having everyone's favorite pseudo-hippie freak Elly explain things. It seems obvious that Elly believes in an afterlife of some sort so they can take comfort in the fact that he'l continue somehow. The problem is that it's not the same Next World their future classmates, who probably attend church more regularly, believe in. If I had to sum up Elly's belief system in one word, it would be this: Jedi. Her vision of the post-living is rather indeterminate, I should think. She doesn't really believe in the same afterlife as promised by the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) or the cycles of rebirth that Hinduism and Buddhism hold as truth. Her belief is in some sort of abstract energy field that cherry-picks the most self-serving, ego-gratiftying elements of all religious traditions. The youngest Passivesons' futures seem obvious: it'll Meredith asking when Jesus will meet the Easter Bunny forever.

It looks, on the surface, that Jim's final days are accompanied by his family's indifference. They do act like they don't really care but, as howtheduck just reminded me, there's an actor in this appalling little melodrama that we haven't paid attention to: Iris. Everything we know about her indicates that she has a proprietary interest in Jim's care, that she won't let anyone else take care of him, not his daughter, not doctors and nurses, no one. The fact that she can't do it, that deep down she knows it, wants help is strictly irrelevant. She won't actively seek real assistance out of fear of looking weak and incompetent and, what's more, drops subtle hints about the evils of busybodies, their unsolicited advice and unwelcome presence. The Pattersons might well have started out hovering over him (more, of course, out of social pressure than actual concern) but soon realized that they did so without her blessing. Even with the best will in the world, they'd stop reaching out a hand to the woman if she kept slapping it away out of foolish pride. This explains their absence, if not really excusing it. After all, she might have denied them any visitation rights whatsoever if they really pressed the issue. It seems obvious to me that she loves Jim so much, so deeply, she'd rather see him die than be taken away from her or, for that matter, have to share him with someone else.

Now that it looks like Jim is about to pass on, let's discuss his cheif reget: the fact that his daughter never finished university before she got married. As far as I know, he's about to go to his reward with a degreeless daughter and the fact depressed him. As we've seen, she seems to hold that little fact against April, that if she hadn't had a child at roughly forty she could have got the degree she wanted and made everyone happy. The problem, as cookie_77 pointed out, is that her whining is insincere. We saw try for her degree again and decide that it was not for her. Simple as paper, she never really wanted a degree to begin with. What she wanted was pretty much what she has: a part-time job at a bookstore. The degree is just an excuse so she can make April feel bad for preventing her mother from living a dream she didn't actually have.

It seems to be a sad fact of life that, in times of crisis, people start sometimes to complain about side-issues. We see this today as April brings up the subject of Jim's beloved harmonica. She learns to her horror that Liz simply gave it away as a souvenir to a former student. Her outrage is coming from a good place because she probably thinks, trusting in faith like a good Patterson, that hearing it played will snap Jim out of this and bring back the Granddad she loved. She couldn't have said it at a worse time, though. Or for that matter, to a worse person. I know from sad experience Liz will spin this to make it look like April is trying to split the family when they need unity. That's because she will not feel remorse, she's that vain. One thing I've noticed is when cornered, a Patterson will always try to wriggle of the hook, evade blame, turn am accusation back on the other person. That being said, the others will gleefully turn on the sincerely bereaved in order to look like they aren't selfish trash, to plop yet another brick on the safety valve of their consciences.

Now that it seems that Jim will die soon, let's remind ourselves that his family are almost all of them self-absorbed jerks who never had time for him. I, myself, expect that Iris will somehow be blamed for all of this mess, for Jim dying without family hovering around when we know that it's on them. I also expect her to agree. The reason that disgusts me is that she's a victim of her raising, her belief system. I have the awful suspicion that she was raised to suppress herself, to defer to an authority figure, to not speak out unless spoken to and it's made her life a mess. Sadly, no one, not even she herself, will accept that fact as the exculpation it is. Not the Pattersons, not a court of law, not her family, no one. She just can't call for help on her own, she needs to have someone around to tell her what to do which is why she should not have been made primary caregiver. Not that Jim's 'loving' family would know that. They can't be bothered with him because they wrote him off. Not that they'll admit that. They'll whine about how much they cared, how the time was never right. What makes this the worst thing possible is that people will cut them slack because they're 'coping with loss'. No one who isn't me wants to think that other people are simply insincerely milking sympathy for all it's worth and cut the Foobs a break.