Tuesday, August 21, 2007

For Better or Worse: Worse, Worse, Worse

I don't normally go into the comic strip world all that often, although I did go after Johnny Hart after his death for his religious bent, but the trend in Lynn Johnston's For Better or Worse has been so disturbing that I don't think that I can ignore it for that much longer.

Funny then, that I find the whole BlogospHere going off about the Lizanthony couple as well. Chaos Theory has a great compilation of quotes, many of them seriously pissed off aobut the pairing of the weak willed shmoe that is Anthony to the commitment-o-phobe that is Elizabeth.

Perhaps, and this is a big perhaps, Lynn is going there on purpose: she clearly has made Elizabeth a certain type of character, although she wasn't as evil as she should have been to the character when she deliberately made her boyfriend Paul move to her town and then up and left a month or so later. Quite honestly, she deserved everything she got, and she should have gotten a lot more. I had a sudden urge to channel Ross and yell, "You were on a break!" at the morning paper in response. Perhaps it would have been better if she'd discovered them in be together.

If Lynn wants the drama of getting Elizabeth into an unstable/rebound relationship then she's going to get it, but I'm not sure that she has the energy for the inevitable disintegration that accompanies that type of break up, especially one that will involve a child. I wonder if anyone has asked Lynn point blank whether she's aware how unaware of her fecklessness Elizabeth really is.

It is interesting that so many people are so angry about this. Not upset that they don't like the direction, or critiquing the change in the character, but really, really angry. Perhaps because we all know Anthonys in real life, and rarely do they work out well in relationshipland. We all want a little better for Lizard Breath now, don't we?

4 comments:

ShellyS said...

It's not so much that I don't like Anthony -- well, I don't, but that's not what has me upset, though I haven't really blogged about it -- it's Liz and it's Lynn's attitude about first loves being the true loves.

Michael married Deena who he reconnected with after her car accident. She was his first girlfriend. He didn't date many others, just had one other girlfriend as I recall.

Now, Liz, who was oh so adventurous, moving so far from home, making a life teaching underprivileged kids, suddenly, after throwing away two great guys, Paul and Warren (and that poor guy at the wedding who looked promising but then had to be a lush so she could get back with Anthony), Liz discovers she's really a homebody after all, abandons those kids and that town and hightails it back to hearth and home. She became boring and predictable and she deserves Anthony and I have no idea how he and Terese got together since they clearly had nothing in common.

Whew. Thanks for letting me vent. ;)

Ami Angelwings said...

I agree with Shelly. :\ It's the idea that change is bad, growth is bad, and when you leave the happy confines of your home, you only get hurt and miss home more. :(

Michael now LIVES in the house he grew up in! :\ Change is BAD.

inkdestroyedmybrush said...

God knows that we wouldn't want elizabeth to do anything normal like actually date a number of guys for an extended period of time before settling into what lynn clearly thinks of as domestic "bliss". I really wish that I could give the lynn of the 1970's, who wrote a fairly angry elly it must be said, the chance to actually write the strip now. I suspect taht the 1970's version would have loved the adventurous elizabeth and had her stay up north with Paul.

I was more angry about how paul got treated to be honest. Lynn should have taken the time really go into why Elizabeth treated him so poorly, and what part of her didn't recognize the she was sabotaging the relationship.

elizabeth has really been twisted into a very different character over the last two years, perhaps to work with Lynn's impending retirement as a strip artist. I just wish that we could have seen seomthing a little less, well, ordinary for her.

In some ways I wish that she could have been holly hunter int he piano, staying up north, with paul, working with the kids, being the one that finally forged her own path.

Feh. At least Jon is dating over in Garfield.

Ami - I would never want to live in any of my parents old houses. too many ghosts.

change is EVIL.

ShellyS said...

Lynn used to take so many chances with the strip. Now it's become old and tired in a lot of ways, going for the easy laugh/pun/punchline.

I really liked Paul. It was fun how Elly met him and told him about her daughter. It felt so much like fate.

And I hate how he was treated. They seemed so good together, then Liz moves back home, which forces him to put in for a transfer, and she basically acted like she didn't really care anymore, but it's Paul who's caught cheating so he becomes the bad guy and oh, poor Liz, when it was Liz who threw him away. That's when I started to get uneasy about the strip's direction.