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Mary Worth, 9/27/04

There are so many things to talk about in the current drug-fueled Mary Worth storyline that I’ve neglected one of the funniest: Mr. “My very own meth lab”‘s hairstyle. Subdivided We Stand has noted Tommy’s hair’s waxing and waning, but the little ponytail brings everything to a whole new level of hilarity.

Incidentally, it’s nice to know that Tommy actually speaks his internal monologue aloud while he’s alone. All that thought-ballooning must get tiring.

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Mary Worth, 9/14/04

Oh, man, just when I think the current Mary Worth storyline can’t get any better, it does! I knew that when Mary sniffed the fumes from Tommy’s tokin’ this weekend that fireworks couldn’t be far behind, but I never imagined that she’d be so bitchy about it. The nice old lady that we perhaps all imagined Mary to be would have just sat Iris down and said, “I’m concerned about your son’s drug use.” Instead, she serves tea, makes an oblique reference to the smoke detector, and then, with that “whatever,” slips the knife right in between the ribs. Zing! Hopefully now that Iris the social climber has been humiliated by Charterstone’s main arbiter of status, she and her ex-con son will slink back to the trailer park where they belong.

The other day I was in the locker room at our pool and overheard a conversation between two 7-to-10-year-olds, one of whom claimed to have spied some other people smoking pot. “It smelled like tomato soup!” he asserted confidently. Apparently Mary has a little more drug experience to draw on.

(By the way, I stole the title of this strip from a recurring feature in Tom the Dancing Bug, which is one of my favorite non-daily comics.)

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Mary Worth, 9/3/04

You people don’t understand how hard it’s been this week to maintain my strict adherence to the mission of this blog and not turn it into “I read this current bizarre, drug-themed storyline of Mary Worth so you don’t have to,” because Lord knows, it’s tempting. I thought the strip had reached an absolute pinnacle when evil androgynous meth fiend Tommy fantasized about his very own meth lab, but that was just a warm-up for a temper tantrum in which the young junkie rages at his dead father’s inability to love his mind-altering substances, which he refers to, inexplicably, as “stuff.”

Earlier this week, faithful reader Rebecca O. noted: “Since this Mary Worth meth lab seems to have some staying power, I must opine that the she-man can’t be the object of Wilbur’s attraction’s son. To me, their interaction points to the she-man being a friend of the lady’s son or a son of the lady’s friend. No son would ever think of his mom as ‘you always were soft.’ Children don’t make nostalgic judgments of their parents, just judgments. Plus, the interaction just reeks that pseudo-familial kinkiness, even without the leotard and pectoral breasts.” Rebecca, your logic holds water as far as it goes, but you’re working on a flawed assumption here: that Mary Worth characters interact in a way that resembles the way actual humans interact. Today’s strip ought to make it clear that Mary Worth can no more convey the actual dynamics of a family torn apart by drug addiction than it can present well-drawn facial expressions. Even with that in mind, though, I can’t argue with this comment by the author of Subdivided We Stand: “Please, please, oh Mary Worth creators, let dear sweet Mare get her first taste of crystal meth. That’s exactly what this strip needs.”