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The interesting thing about this whole arc is that for some reason, Anne confuses his unwillingness to talk to her about whatever problem led him to cheat on her with an unwillingness to talk to other people. Her Liography is littered with examples of his looking at her and storming off to go get plastered at a sports bar because the pain upstairs that makes his eyeballs ache isn't just a lyric from Synchronicity II by The Police but is also a wife that inspires a reaction in him that he doesn't want to discuss with her. One notices that his will to silence comes into play when he looks at his crumbled adobe and stalled career and the wife left to deal with the mess he makes by not being good enough a provider. At home, he's a crappy handyman making not nearly enough and at work, he has to stand there and watch younger men get promoted ahead of him and he looks in the mirror and sees a piece of shit. When he's with his girlie, though, he's not forty, he's not balding and he's not a worthless failure.....which is probably why he super doesn't want to go to see a shrink. Bad enough to feel like garbage without someone with a degree telling him he's lowballing it.
The Steve-Fiona Axis Of Foobar.
May. 13th, 2017 03:52 pmAs we know, Jean and pretty much most of John’s staff were the victim-slash-accomplices of one of the most glaring Idiot Plots in the chronicles of the Patterson family when they misinterptered his ambiguous comments about getting free of a crazy woman in the least complimentary terms possible. While it had been established early on that Jean never really believed that when push came to shove, John would be faithful to Elly because she regards him as being proof of Larry Linville’s belief that Frank Burns was everywhere and latched onto the heaping helping of confirmation bias John witlessly supplied her like a starving octopus, she would have grateful for one thing had someone came along and told her that the crazy woman John was talking about and the crazy cousin suckling off his teats were one and the same: the existence of Steve Nichols.
This is because if the idiot Pattersons ever bothered telling her who Fiona was, she could have pointed to the mess Steve and Annie made of their marriage as an example of what she thought John was capable of if he really wanted to be a jerk to Elly. All she would have had to do was point to the fact that Steve seemed most inclined to stray under stressful conditions and she’d have a ready-made justification for her barely disguised contempt for her employer. Thus does John’s idiotic tendency to blather on endlessly about subjects not germane to what he’s actually doing do more than convince his patients that he’s a clod who behaves as if he’s gapping sparkplugs for a living: it gives people whose loathing of him is a secret only to him ammunition.
The perils of packratism.
Jul. 27th, 2016 08:00 amWhile we're currently witnessing the need a lot of the male characters have to outsmart themselves by taking ruinous shortcuts they should have avoided, we also have to mark time on their tendency to think that accumulating junk they never use is also somehow beating the system and proving how smart they are. Steve is the best example the strip has of this irritating and destructive will to clutter so I'll use him as my statistical sample.
What seems to be going on is that he fixates on some shiny new thing as being the answer to some question no one asked. We see this next year when he gloms on to John's old counter-top as potentially coming in handy some day. Womenfolk may mock and nag now but when the new piece of shiny trash the humanoid magpie Anne married is pressed into service, they'll thank him.
The problem is that, well, the shiny new thing turns into a boring old ordinary thing that makes him feel cold the second after he gets it. It gets socked away with all of the other junk that can't fill the yawning psychic void within him and those around him are expected to navigate around the crap he drags in because if they love him, they'll love his hoard of garbage.
What seals the deal is that while Large Marvin runs around trying to fill the emptiness inside of him with material possessions, he's not really good at respecting the property of those around him. He can glom onto all manner of nonsense but everyone else has to simplify their lives because there's only room for shit he likes in his place.
What seems to be going on is that he fixates on some shiny new thing as being the answer to some question no one asked. We see this next year when he gloms on to John's old counter-top as potentially coming in handy some day. Womenfolk may mock and nag now but when the new piece of shiny trash the humanoid magpie Anne married is pressed into service, they'll thank him.
The problem is that, well, the shiny new thing turns into a boring old ordinary thing that makes him feel cold the second after he gets it. It gets socked away with all of the other junk that can't fill the yawning psychic void within him and those around him are expected to navigate around the crap he drags in because if they love him, they'll love his hoard of garbage.
What seals the deal is that while Large Marvin runs around trying to fill the emptiness inside of him with material possessions, he's not really good at respecting the property of those around him. He can glom onto all manner of nonsense but everyone else has to simplify their lives because there's only room for shit he likes in his place.
Why Steve doesn't need his own Liography.
Jul. 1st, 2015 01:06 amThe seemingly odd thing about Steve Nichols is that they never sat down and wrote an official look at his past. They have one for Dawn and Candace and even Janice Madigan but not him. This might seem like he's been overlooked but what actually seems to have happened is that like Therese, his bio is contained within Annie's.
We get our first look at who he is when we have Anne fret about the fact that while her fixer-upper needs a lot of fixing, Steve doesn't seem to do much work that she's noticed. He started off promising her the Earth but failed to deliver because he let himself get sidetracked by trivialities. When she asked gently when he was actually going to work up the ambition to actually deliver on his promise, his ultra-manly response was to storm out of the house, head down to the local bar, get wasted and imply that it was her fault that he threw his alco-tantrum. He doubled down on being an idiot when she wound up having to put a patch over something because, well, she was clearly trying to castrate him or some such irritating bullshit. The end result is a woman growing old before her time owing to having to stifle the worry born of having to prop up what Lynn would call a man of mercurial temperament and what I would call a shiftless spoiled brat who turns into a ridiculous dick if people question him.
This sort of crap went on for years and years and would have kept right on happening had he not reached the scary rite of passage called 'turning forty.' Since he's a typical mush-headed citizen of the Foobiverse, he confused becoming forty with having one and a half feet in the grave, he felt as if all of his tomorrows were behind him and, well, he'd had meaningless sex with a waitress because Annie hadn't given him what he needed because she didn't understood how afraid he was of getting old. His pathetic whining about how tomorrow, everything would be better only tomorrow was going away unmasked him at long last. He'd revealed himself to be a shiftless no-account with a lot of pride and a lot of lofty dreams but completely free of the drive to actually do anything to make the good things happen. Watching Annie pretty much become father and mother to their children was to his conscious mind a mean-spirited refusal to show faith in him. To his subconscious mind, it was a painful repetition of everything uncomplimentary that teachers, parents and other people who lack faith in the miracle said about him: "He can do the work but he's a daydreaming clod who believes in magic and unicorn farts."
We get our first look at who he is when we have Anne fret about the fact that while her fixer-upper needs a lot of fixing, Steve doesn't seem to do much work that she's noticed. He started off promising her the Earth but failed to deliver because he let himself get sidetracked by trivialities. When she asked gently when he was actually going to work up the ambition to actually deliver on his promise, his ultra-manly response was to storm out of the house, head down to the local bar, get wasted and imply that it was her fault that he threw his alco-tantrum. He doubled down on being an idiot when she wound up having to put a patch over something because, well, she was clearly trying to castrate him or some such irritating bullshit. The end result is a woman growing old before her time owing to having to stifle the worry born of having to prop up what Lynn would call a man of mercurial temperament and what I would call a shiftless spoiled brat who turns into a ridiculous dick if people question him.
This sort of crap went on for years and years and would have kept right on happening had he not reached the scary rite of passage called 'turning forty.' Since he's a typical mush-headed citizen of the Foobiverse, he confused becoming forty with having one and a half feet in the grave, he felt as if all of his tomorrows were behind him and, well, he'd had meaningless sex with a waitress because Annie hadn't given him what he needed because she didn't understood how afraid he was of getting old. His pathetic whining about how tomorrow, everything would be better only tomorrow was going away unmasked him at long last. He'd revealed himself to be a shiftless no-account with a lot of pride and a lot of lofty dreams but completely free of the drive to actually do anything to make the good things happen. Watching Annie pretty much become father and mother to their children was to his conscious mind a mean-spirited refusal to show faith in him. To his subconscious mind, it was a painful repetition of everything uncomplimentary that teachers, parents and other people who lack faith in the miracle said about him: "He can do the work but he's a daydreaming clod who believes in magic and unicorn farts."
As we're about to see this week, Steve Nichols is far more agitated by Anne's going into labor than she is. The reason, of course, is that he seemed to know very little about female biology and thus tends towards a panicky over-reaction to something that doesn't bother Anne nearly as much since she went through it. We end the arc with her being glad that he was there for her emotionally and him thought-bubbling about how up until that point, he'd thought he was useless. It seems that he learned something about himself because the next time around, he was Annie's rock when she was freaking out about Leah's extra fingers. Sure, he might have wanted to avoid his idiot mother-in-law and whatever nonsense that she brought to the table and he might have an elastic interpretation of the sanctity of his vows but he is always there for Anne when it comes to dealing with his children.
Contrast him with John; while seemingly supportive when she announced that she was expecting April, his rigidity of mind soon came into play and made him something of an obstruction. As we all know, he balked at the idea of home birth, he acted as if giving the child a trendy, modern name was out of the question because traditional names were best, he reacted to Lamaze class by being coated in flopsweat caused by the shrieking horror of dealing with women's business and, above all, he sat on his fat ass and pouted like a little boy confronted with liver and onions when asked to help with April.
You'd look back at this and think that Lynn would acknowledge that Steve Nichols is the better father; you'd be as wrong as we all were when we assumed that the Fauxposal would be an example of the sort of hackneyed D-movie romantic banter that Majors Burns and Houlihan traded in the first four seasons of MASH. Just as Lynn thinks that two mopey idiots sitting on a couch staring into the ether as they guess that they're engaged is the Best Proposal EVER, she thinks that since John's uninvolved ass is physically contiguous to the brood he ignores while Steve is physically absent from the loved ones he wishes he were near, he's a better father because we can see him. As I keep reminding myself, Lynn doesn't quite have enough imagination to see that absence makes the heart grow fonder; her trust issues mandate that she makes it into 'go wander'.
Contrast him with John; while seemingly supportive when she announced that she was expecting April, his rigidity of mind soon came into play and made him something of an obstruction. As we all know, he balked at the idea of home birth, he acted as if giving the child a trendy, modern name was out of the question because traditional names were best, he reacted to Lamaze class by being coated in flopsweat caused by the shrieking horror of dealing with women's business and, above all, he sat on his fat ass and pouted like a little boy confronted with liver and onions when asked to help with April.
You'd look back at this and think that Lynn would acknowledge that Steve Nichols is the better father; you'd be as wrong as we all were when we assumed that the Fauxposal would be an example of the sort of hackneyed D-movie romantic banter that Majors Burns and Houlihan traded in the first four seasons of MASH. Just as Lynn thinks that two mopey idiots sitting on a couch staring into the ether as they guess that they're engaged is the Best Proposal EVER, she thinks that since John's uninvolved ass is physically contiguous to the brood he ignores while Steve is physically absent from the loved ones he wishes he were near, he's a better father because we can see him. As I keep reminding myself, Lynn doesn't quite have enough imagination to see that absence makes the heart grow fonder; her trust issues mandate that she makes it into 'go wander'.
The view from the Nichols house.......
Jul. 19th, 2011 08:44 amNow that it's been roughly three years since the Settlepocalypse, I'd like to remind you all of something we all already know; simply put, the perspective of other people in the Patterverse when looking back at the Patterpast is bound to be very different from John and Elly's.
I'll use Anne Nichols as my example; given that she was a minor character who used to be a lot more central to the action, she'd have something to say about what went on next door to her. Given that someone she thought was a friend shunned her for years based on a willful misreading of events, she might interpret the events of the Declining Years in a way that Elly would not sympathize with because she herself doesn't much see the point of some of Elly's concerns.
Take, for instance, how little she herself cares that her own children are living their own lives and don't need her to hold her hand. Listening to Elly cluck her tongue in unnecessary sympathy because people she'd raised to be independent were, it probably bothers Anne that her ex-friend needs to do something she wouldn't ask of her children: stay dependent on her because she needs to be needed. In her mind, she's more a grandmother than a parent so Elly's need to surround herself with selfish, lazy and ungrateful adult children would no doubt bother her.
She'd also probably not much care for the Settlepocalypse because it would seem to her what would have happened if Steve had married his little sweetie and left her holding the bag. She'll do the catering because she doesn't want Elly to feed people a cake that's dripping with grease but that's about all. I mean, it's not like Elly would deign to really speak to her what with Connie hanging around.
As for Everyone's Favorite Desperate Love Freak, the same Anne who rejects traditions that don't work doesn't actually care if Connie is a single mother; what probably really bothers her is that the woman is a self-serving lunatic with entitlement issues who's made a patsy out of a muttonhead with a bottomless appetite for flattery. It would seem to her that the idea that she forgave Steve comes from the same place as the ten extra pounds that Elly thinks she has: Connie's fat yap.
I'll use Anne Nichols as my example; given that she was a minor character who used to be a lot more central to the action, she'd have something to say about what went on next door to her. Given that someone she thought was a friend shunned her for years based on a willful misreading of events, she might interpret the events of the Declining Years in a way that Elly would not sympathize with because she herself doesn't much see the point of some of Elly's concerns.
Take, for instance, how little she herself cares that her own children are living their own lives and don't need her to hold her hand. Listening to Elly cluck her tongue in unnecessary sympathy because people she'd raised to be independent were, it probably bothers Anne that her ex-friend needs to do something she wouldn't ask of her children: stay dependent on her because she needs to be needed. In her mind, she's more a grandmother than a parent so Elly's need to surround herself with selfish, lazy and ungrateful adult children would no doubt bother her.
She'd also probably not much care for the Settlepocalypse because it would seem to her what would have happened if Steve had married his little sweetie and left her holding the bag. She'll do the catering because she doesn't want Elly to feed people a cake that's dripping with grease but that's about all. I mean, it's not like Elly would deign to really speak to her what with Connie hanging around.
As for Everyone's Favorite Desperate Love Freak, the same Anne who rejects traditions that don't work doesn't actually care if Connie is a single mother; what probably really bothers her is that the woman is a self-serving lunatic with entitlement issues who's made a patsy out of a muttonhead with a bottomless appetite for flattery. It would seem to her that the idea that she forgave Steve comes from the same place as the ten extra pounds that Elly thinks she has: Connie's fat yap.
Connie and Annie: Stereotypes in Stereo
Nov. 30th, 2010 12:52 amAs a means of bracing myself for the inevitable, soul-ravaging reminder of how it’s good that Liz crawled back into the womb, I’d like to take this opportunity to remind us about why Annie and Connie are also the sort of screaming idiots that litter the chick-lit cosmos. The means by which I intend to do so involves my essay about something I referred to as the Foob Infidelity Cycle: as you will recall, it’s a means by which a woman can reduce a man to peonage while still claiming the title of victim despite being the aggressor. You will also recall that Annie dismisses Steve’s likes and dislikes within earshot as if he actually were part of the furniture and has the unlovely habit of not being able to handle the weird, unfair male concept called ‘cause and effect’. If her child has six fingers, it isn’t simply a harmless fluke, it’s because she’s a failure as a mother and if her life hasn’t turned out to be the Disney fantasy she’d hoped, it’s not because Hollywood lied to her, it’s because of a plot against her. In the real world, Steve’s infidelity would be a glowing opportunity to re-examine her life and see that reality is preferable to the chick lit cosmos; what happened, of course, is that she shifted from being one stereotype (the delusional little wifey ready to believe any lie) to another: Wife-as-prison-warden. In both instances, she defined who and what she was in relation to a man instead of being a person in her own right. This explains why she doesn’t respect Connie: Connie’s men have a habit of escaping her clutches so her fellow cliché is seen as being weak. Also, since Annie is fairly stupid, she doesn’t quite realize that the feminist posings that confuse, frighten and irritate her are the result of protesting too much; a person whose brains hadn’t atrophied from lack of use would immediately spot Connie as only spouting about how she didn’t need a man because she didn’t have one. Annie, on the other hand, would ask how it was even possible to protest too much. Annie’s tendency to look down on Connie for having a child out of wedlock are equally suspect; she simply isn’t smart enough to realize that Lawrence is meant to be bait for men who want an instant family. Connie, by the same coin, has no real reason to regard Annie as the brainwashed victim of a scoundrel; she herself defines herself by who she’s married to and has made it quite clear that nothing, not Greg’s daughters and not even the son she used to attract him are more important than being Mrs Greg; to shake her heading in despair at someone more tenacious and equally ready to sacrifice herself in order to avoid the horror of defining herself as a person rather than an adjunct to someone with a penis seems, well, a trifle silly.
"High Infidelity" starring Steve Nichols
Apr. 2nd, 2010 02:33 amNow you and I might think that Steve's wanting to be an active presence in his children's lives would be a good thing that Annie should honor and respect; we, of course, would be wrong to do so. In Lynn's world, the role of a good father is to go to work, leave all the parenting to his wife and flee his children. Steve's heresy of wanting to be a loving, involved father instead of a remote, hostile tyrant like John or Michael is the intolerable act that leads inevitably to marital infidelity. The cycle always goes like this:
Stage One: The person who ends up cheating does something to irritate the other person; what's more, this act is blown all out of proportion. We see this when Steve wants to act like a regular guy instead of conforming to the unrealistic standards Annie has, we see it when Eric reminds Liz that she moved in with him and shouldn't make too many demands of him, we see it when Therese wants not to be made a fool of and we see it when Liz piously jerks Warren and Paul around. These things would blow over if the second party were to discuss things openly and honestly but that's too much like work so we have to deal with the Pattersonian way.
Stage Two: This, of course, entails the second person self-righteously inflicting an act of appalling and mindless cruelty on the first. This is why we have to contend with Steve being told to his face that he doesn't measure up, why we see Eric being hectored by a shrill pain in the ass called Liz, why Therese had to stand there frowning while Anthony dismissed and trivialized her feelings of betrayal and also why Liz dangled Warren in front of Paul. Since most people are not Pattersons and do not want to maximize their agony, they seek escape; this leads us to the next part of the cycle.
Stage Three: The second person has an affair so they can be reminded that not all people are as hateful, imbecilic, vindictive, immature and irrational as the Pattersons and their fellow travelers. This state of affairs persists until they are eventually found out which leads us to the final phase.
Stage Four: The first party has a huge, blame-evading tantrum wherein they avoid seeing how their wanton, idiot malice helped drive a wedge between her and her partner followed by breaking things off in an undignified and revolting manner; unfortunately for Steve, he wound up with someone who didn't believe in divorce. This led to an extra phase in his life.
Stage Five: The man is now pretty much a prisoner of the blustering, sanctimonious drip who bleats about practicality when he sees that romance is called for. The only thing that keeps him from going insane and smashing things is the reassuring inevitably of sweet, sweet Death.
Now I know that both parties share fifty percent of the blame for what went wrong; I also know that Lynn cannot see it that way. What Lynn does see is that that act of ridiculously overblown revenge I mentioned is justified by the minor annoyances; in short, Annie had to act like a pissy old bitch because Steve gives his kids cookies because that's how things are supposed to work. That's because she's insane and stupid.
Stage One: The person who ends up cheating does something to irritate the other person; what's more, this act is blown all out of proportion. We see this when Steve wants to act like a regular guy instead of conforming to the unrealistic standards Annie has, we see it when Eric reminds Liz that she moved in with him and shouldn't make too many demands of him, we see it when Therese wants not to be made a fool of and we see it when Liz piously jerks Warren and Paul around. These things would blow over if the second party were to discuss things openly and honestly but that's too much like work so we have to deal with the Pattersonian way.
Stage Two: This, of course, entails the second person self-righteously inflicting an act of appalling and mindless cruelty on the first. This is why we have to contend with Steve being told to his face that he doesn't measure up, why we see Eric being hectored by a shrill pain in the ass called Liz, why Therese had to stand there frowning while Anthony dismissed and trivialized her feelings of betrayal and also why Liz dangled Warren in front of Paul. Since most people are not Pattersons and do not want to maximize their agony, they seek escape; this leads us to the next part of the cycle.
Stage Three: The second person has an affair so they can be reminded that not all people are as hateful, imbecilic, vindictive, immature and irrational as the Pattersons and their fellow travelers. This state of affairs persists until they are eventually found out which leads us to the final phase.
Stage Four: The first party has a huge, blame-evading tantrum wherein they avoid seeing how their wanton, idiot malice helped drive a wedge between her and her partner followed by breaking things off in an undignified and revolting manner; unfortunately for Steve, he wound up with someone who didn't believe in divorce. This led to an extra phase in his life.
Stage Five: The man is now pretty much a prisoner of the blustering, sanctimonious drip who bleats about practicality when he sees that romance is called for. The only thing that keeps him from going insane and smashing things is the reassuring inevitably of sweet, sweet Death.
Now I know that both parties share fifty percent of the blame for what went wrong; I also know that Lynn cannot see it that way. What Lynn does see is that that act of ridiculously overblown revenge I mentioned is justified by the minor annoyances; in short, Annie had to act like a pissy old bitch because Steve gives his kids cookies because that's how things are supposed to work. That's because she's insane and stupid.
Elly: the Confused Observer.
Jan. 24th, 2010 12:52 amSince Connie sucks at being a friend, it seems odd that Elly describes the woman in such glowing terms when it seems obvious to anyone else that Annie had a much better claim on the title of "Best Friend Ever". Sadly, Annie is a victim of Elly's inability to perceive the world clearly. If you'll indulge me, I'd like to list what I think are the reasons for this:
- Rigidity of thinking: Elly has made no secret of the fact that she thinks that there is only one right way of doing things. Since, as an example, she was sat on as a child by Marian (owing to Marian being justifiably concerned that she needed more raising than Phil ever did), she thinks that Annie's more laissez-faire approach is wrong and the direct cause of their wild behavior during their teenaged years; since she's got a poor imagination, she doesn't realize that Richard and Christopher were acting out because of the tension at home. Also, since Connie more or less tyrannized any child she came into contact with, Elly thinks that an insane, narcissistic bully is a great parent.
- Immaturity: As we'll see in the fullness of time, the rest of the Richards family are sort of disgusted that Elly never really grew up and stopped thinking the world rotated around her. Unlike Connie, Annie was less inclined to feed into her victimism. The last thing Elly wanted was another authority figure trying to get her to admit she was wrong.
- Raging Paranoia: Another reason that Connie is better than Annie is that, as I've said, Connie indulges Elly's fantasies of persecution. You'll never, for instance, see Annie try to tell her that her children are trying to steal her brain and reduce her into a mindless husk who can only grin and scrub toilets nor will she say that Elly is right to punish John for something that happened in a dream. What you will see is someone who tries to hold her accountable for her actions and lay a bummer personal responsibility trip on a plastic flower child.
- Moral Cowardice: When Annie finally admitted that Steve had been cheating on her for years, she initially wondered if she herself was somehow to blame; this admission of possible guilt alienated and revolted Elly and resulted in her avoiding her friend at all costs. What's more, Elly totally misunderstood why Anne put her marriage back together; it came as a shock that Anne, despite what Elly believed, neither forgave or forgot Steve. She instead insisted that he live up to his wedding vows and made her demand stick, a thing that is beyond Elly's meager intellect and will. Meanwhile, Connie bounced from one artificial crisis to the next and, since she blamed everyone but herself for the results of her own stupidity and selfishness, Elly was there to help clean up the mess.
- Faulty Memory: I'm going to go into this subject in depth soon enough but, as a teaser, will posit the idea that Elly remembers things not as they happened but how she believes they should have. As an example, she honestly remembers herself as being loving, firm, fair and tough when, as we've seen, she's exactly none of those things. Since she doesn't remember the past as it really happened, she thinks that Connie is a better friend than she actually is.
This inability to see the world as it is isn't just limited to her not being able to recognize who her friends are; it also means that she's a failure as a wife and mother who lives in a state of denial.
Connie versus Annie reconsidered
Jan. 13th, 2010 12:12 amI know I mentioned this in an earlier post but it seems to me that we're not getting the whole story when it comes to why it is that Anne doesn't much care for the way Connie does things. The reasons we're given in the Liography are something of a smokescreen. After all, if Annie can sincerely make an off-the-cuff remark about how her mother did everything wrong, she can't be said to be "content to live by the traditional values in which she was raised" or especially astonished when Connie, who she only knows as someone Elly likes to gossip about, rebels against them. Since she's a grown woman, she probably expects that Elly amplifies and distorts things anyway. She also realizes that Connie's big talk about how she doesn't need a man to complete her is hogwash and sort of resents the insincerity as well as being lectured about how she's been brainswashed into wanting the 'horrible' things the idiot hectoring her clearly lusts after. She married Steve because she loved him and wanted to spend her life with him, not because The Man held a gun to her head; the idea that falling in love and trying to build a family is a conspiracy meant to keep her down was something that really annoyed her. The Liography also notices that what really gets under her skin is how Connie treats Lawrence; where it departs from sanity and common sense is that it has her blather about how awful it is that Connie's a single mom who had a child out of wedlock. This makes Annie look like a judgmental simpleton straight out of parochial school ranting about the sad plight of the pagan babies. What I think happened is that Elly shared a remark of Anne's about how awful it was that she treated Lawrence as an afterthought at best and an annoying complication at worst with Connie; what we see in the Liography is what Annie "really" meant when she said that. The arch and spiteful comment about how glad she was to see Connie's lifestyle implode is also open to a bit of reinterpretation; what Annie really said is that Connie was under the thrall of some silly rescue fantasy and needed rescuing from herself. She was sort of glad when Connie left so she could try to deprogram Elly and make her see that the problems in her life were not the fault of a huge conspiracy consisting of every male life form on the planet; too bad that about the same time she caught Steve in a lie, Connie moved back crowing about how she'd found Mister Right. Having to listen to the shrill idiot who used to bleat about how the patriarchy was keeping women down turn into a smug advocate of the romantic fantasies that imploded into dull reality probably hurt; worse, since Elly avoided her like a leper because Lynn never got over being cheated on, she had to rely on the people down at the hotel as a sounding board.
