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Apartment 3-G, 5/22/05

That may look like just another Wildly Inappropriate Margo Reaction Shot™ in the last panel, which is why Lu Ann is ignoring it and continuing her clumsy dumb-girl flirting. But Margo’s eyes are a little too wide and glassy — I’m beginning to worry that “custodian” is her secret sleeper agent code-word, and that by uttering it Scott has accidentally transformed her into a merciless zombie assassin. Quick, guys, run for higher ground!

Assuming that zombie-Margo doesn’t crack their heads open and feast on their succulent brains, it looks like Lu Ann and Scott are off to a good start: he doesn’t seem to have minded her horrible classist assumptions about him, and the crippling learning disability that leaves her unable to remember the punchlines of simple jokes will also keep her from noticing how often he compares her to his mother. Sadly, however, I fear that one of Scott’s own stereotype-based assumptions — that Lu Ann is blonde and stupid, and therefore easy — is going to come back to bite him in the ass.

Meanwhile, in one of the most egregious instances of soap opera strip laziness ever, Monday’s Apartment 3-G doesn’t just recap Sunday’s action — it actually just copies the dialogue, word for word. Don’t think we don’t notice this stuff, you bums!

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Apartment 3-G, 5/13/05

As a long-time New York Mets fan and registered Democrat, I love lost causes. Thus, every time Apartment 3-G wraps up another exciting adventure, I keep rooting for the next one to feature Tommie. There’s all sorts of wacky plotlines just waiting in her mysterious, off-cameral life, I just know it! Maybe they could revolve around medical issues she encounters on her job — like the millions of Americans who lack health insurance! There’s something that nobody has the guts to tackle in the funny pages.

Instead, though, it looks like we’re going to have to sit through eight and a half boring weeks of a boring boring storyline about Lu Ann’s boring boring boring love life, which, as you may have guessed, I don’t find very interesting. My hopes were briefly raised this week that we’d at least get to see that saintly art teacher fired and reduced to eating cat food and turning tricks down at Port Authority in order to keep making her rent, but alas, there’s only sweet, chaste, Apartment 3-G-style romance in the cards for her. As an example of why Lu Ann’s romance storylines are so dull, we need only take a good look at the “gorgeous” object of her lustful rumination: he’s just some guy who looks like every other dark-haired, suit-wearing, 1950s-white-collar-job-holding male character who’s wandered in and out of this strip (and they are legion).

I do admit that I’m intrigued by the no-color view through the window of Dr. Fielding’s office, though. Is that pane of glass really a one-way mirror that the lusty headmistress uses to spy on choice morsels who come into the outer office and do nonspecific but plausible-looking things with pieces of paper? Too bad Lu Ann is such a goody-goody with a terror of authority figures; the two of them could bond by engaging in construction-worker-like catcalls together. “I’d like to service his project — and not for our school, either!”

A word of Lu Ann-management advice for her future paramour: if you really want to get her all hot and bothered, just don’t fire her! As we saw yesterday, it’s apparently the equivalent of giving her an enormous amount of Ecstasy.

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 5/4/05

You people are all so clever and quick about this sort of thing that I can’t believe nobody’s mentioned this.

Buck’s real name is Charles.

Charles can be shortened to Chuck.

Who can unkempt pseudointellectual humanities students impress with their unkept pseudointellectuality more than high school girls? And what better way to avoid one’s paternal responsibilities than to sleep in the back yard of kindly local medicos, suturing up one’s own hand and muttering about lost Indian tribes?

As for the savage beating — I think Fence Post Frank is an innocent man. As if we needed any more proof, the evidence is now clear: don’t piss off Margo.