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Mary Worth, 10/7/05

Remember The Abyss, James Cameron’s 1989 sci-fi vehicle? Remember how goddamn annoying it was because it had, like, five endings? Oh, I know, I’m gonna hear “genius” this and “director’s cut” that and “Orson Scott Card novelization” what have you, but my chief memory of it was that it just wouldn’t end. Every time you thought it was over, there would be another ending that we really didn’t need.

I’m beginning to feel that way about the Rita storyline in Mary Worth. First we see that she’s saved by grief counseling. Then we find out that she’s really saved when her cousin comes to take her back to Bumpkintown. Now we find out that she’s really, really saved by the love of an adorable little macrocephalic with a bad haircut. Next week: Rita gets really, really, really saved when she gets her first paycheck from Vic’s store.

Faithful reader Brian Tencza (who is apparently part of a “Mary Worth discussion group”) points out that in Sunday’s installment, a suddenly Jackie O-esque Rita is playing ball with Shanna, who has mysteriously morphed from unattractive blonde to homely brunette:

Brian suggests that Rita has dyed the little Vicling’s hair to enhance the resemblance to her dead, brown-haired daughter. While I’m reasonably sure that this anomaly can be chalked up to the usual coloring sweatshop incompetence, I too would like to think that Rita’s relationship with her second cousin will soon veer into Vertigo-style obsession (“Shanna is such an ugly name! Wouldn’t you rather I called you … Fay?“). Just imagine that Mary’s little wrap-up narrative voiceover has some eerie strings playing behind it for the full effect.

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Dilbert, 10/3/05

This punchline is undeniably funny. However, it just emphasizes a sad and all-too-obvious fact, which is that Scott Adams cannot be bothered to do the kind of detailed drawing work that would really drive home the hirsuteness of the pointy-haired boss’s knuckles. For that kind of loving craftsmanship, we need to turn to Charterstone’s plush leather beanbags:

Even in this low-quality graphic, you can see the layer of lustrous, manly fur that coats Jeff’s forearms. Even his bizarre, gut-and-pelvis extruding posture can’t distract from the fact that Dr. Cory is a charter member of the league of hairy-armed Mary Worth characters. Mary’s libido must be trapped under an ice cap the size of Greenland if she can keep turning away this virile, hairy he-hunk.

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Mary Worth, 9/30-10/2/05

This is how Mary Worth’s alcohol-driven storyline ends: not with a booze-fueled, police-intervention-requiring bang, but with a sober (or, perhaps, dry drunk), platitude-drenched whimper. As Rita and Vic motor off in his Mood Car (like his suit, it shifts from melancholy blue during the goodbyes to hopeful brown as they head towards Rita’s new small-town hideaway), I can’t help but wish that we had seen a little more cussing and public humiliation of Mary and Jeff, and a lot less forgiveness and overcoming of adversity.

Nevertheless, things do seem to have wrapped up awfully neatly. Rita even now has a substitute Fay to smother with affection and make freaky puppets with; this will save her from liquoring up Vic and forcing him to sire some mutated incest-child on her in order to fill the emptiness that Fay’s death has left in her codependent soul. We’re probably not meant to contemplate the many, many loose ends (Will Rita relapse? Won’t the suffocating atmosphere of small-town life leave her with nothing to do but drown her sorrows in the bottle? Does the interlude at the Women’s Shelter prove that Mary hates and fears poor people above all others? Is Dr. Jeff finally going to get laid?) so instead I’ll just pose this question to you all, on the subject of “inappropriate” quotation marks: why do aphorisms one (“Your future depends on many things, but mostly on you!”) and three “To live in hearts we leave behind is not die!”) get quotes around them, but not number two (“Only time will tell!”)? Perhaps Mary’s mind is so cliche-o-riffic that she can’t even tell the difference between platitudes and her actual thought process anymore.

I would be remiss without showcasing this comment on Friday’s strip from Dennis Jimenez: “I like the soul shake there in panel two. The sistas at the women’s shelter must have taught ’em that. Right on!”