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Mary Worth, 7/14/24

Dawn has said a couple times that she and her mother don’t agree on politics but hasn’t offered any specifics, and this reminds me that at one point I tried to come up with a list of the political ideologies of the whole Mary Worth cast and immediately decided that neither Wilbur nor Dawn had ever voted in their lives. I’m imagining that her mother is a fairly middle-of-the road suburban type, maybe a former Romney Republican who became an MSNBC lib during the Trump era; she mostly just wants Dawn to at least register to vote, and thinks her daughter refuses to do so because she’s one of those protesting anti-electoralist leftists like her friends’ kids who go to Ivy League and Seven Sisters colleges, when in fact Dawn just finds everything about the American system of governance “confusing” and thinks about it as little as possible.

Anyway, I know Wilbur’s emotionally fragile right now, but I regret to tell him that “Let’s do something fun this week!” doesn’t sound like a plan at all! It actually sounds like what you’d say if you don’t want to hang out with someone but also don’t want to explicitly say that, and you hope that not nailing down any specifics will allow you to get out of a social obligation unnoticed.

Judge Parker, 7/14/24

So it turns out Sophie had a little problem with a rip current and was rescued not by Lucas, the increasingly whiny drip who has a crush on her, but by his hunkier, significantly chiller older brother Glen, and I thought that was setting up a tired love triangle type story? Except no, what it’s actually setting up an exciting underwater zombie type story and I am immediately 100% on board for it. Sorry hunks! It’s zombie time now.

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Happy 4th of July, everybody! It’s the day when everyone, Americans and non-Americans alike, comes together to celebrate America. How are you spending the holiday?

Mary Worth, 7/4/24

Are you doing it the “right way” — by contemplating the legal and administrative aspects of the termination of the American-British colonial relationship, while silently watching fireworks?

Gearhead Gertie, 7/4/24

Or are you doing it the “wrong” way — by contemplating the forcible displacement of your ideological and cultural enemies to a faraway place? Remember: one of the potential drawbacks of a mass ethnic cleansing campaign is that you may one day decide you also want to possess the area where you exiled your opponents to. Think of how spectacular bank turns and car crashes would be in Mars’s lower gravity! Can we afford to leave this beautiful, exciting planet in the hands of anti-NASCAR scum?

Judge Parker, 7/4/24

You might remember a throwaway line from a few weeks ago when Sophie claimed that she had “no romantic drama in [her] life.” In fact, there’s a Lucas, a guy who has feelings for her that she doesn’t reciprocate (or maybe does, but she feels like she can’t be in a romantic relationship because her last one ended in that whole car accident/kidnapping situation), but she told him she still wants to be friends and they’re still hanging out, and I realize that Sophie is just in college and not wise in the ways of love yet, but I regret to inform her that the situation I just described does in fact constitute a certain kind of romantic drama, and a not a fun kind. Anyway, this boy is also super rich, and has invited Sophie and her friend to his family’s compound on Long Island and let them go to their private beach unattended, neglecting to mention to them that the adjacent waters are shark-infested. This will be just like the movie Jaws, which took place over 4th of July weekend!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/4/24

Sorry, I don’t have a 4th of July tie-in for this one, but I do want to point out that the Rex Morgan bully has a dumb dad who looks almost exactly like him, but older. How do I know he’s dumb? Because he clearly doesn’t know who’s calling him in panel one and doesn’t want to talk to them but answers the phone anyway. It’s 2024, buddy! You can just send it straight to voicemail, except you never set up your voicemail, so the person calling you can’t even leave a voicemail!

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Judge Parker, 6/14/24

Hey, remember “Declan,” Neddy’s fiance, who in previous appearances on this blog gave the general vibe of “amiable enough” and “amiable enough, possibly a little mid-afternoon wine drunk“? Probably what you’ve been thinking about him is “Well, I don’t really have a sense of Declan, but he seems amiable enough. Certainly his attitude isn’t going to take a sudden, sour turn as he rants about his decade-old family estrangement over multiple days and we don’t even get to see any of the story in a flashback or anything but it’s OK because it’s all business stuff so probably it would mostly be people standing around talking and frowning aggressively, just like this.” Unfortunately for all of us, it turns out that you are incorrect on that score.

Hi and Lois, 6/14/24

I don’t know why it bothers me so much that these two have the exactly same configuration of freckles, but it really does! It makes them look too much alike as they stare into each other’s eyes in panel one. The fact that this annoys me so much more than a pair of teens cheerfully setting the ticking timer on their relationship probably says a lot about me, and none of it good.

Mary Worth, 6/14/24

“Wait, he’s going to talk to it the whole time? No. Absolutely not. I’m out.” –Dr. Jeff, right before he chucks the keys to his boat into the water and stalks up the pier to his car