For the uninitiated, it's a comic strip by a Canadian woman, Lynn Johnston, about matriarch Elly, husband John, and their three kids Michael, Liz and April. (Loosely based on Lynn, her husband Rod, and their two kids, with a third she probably wished she could have).
Christ Almighty.
GLURGE.
I mean, the strip jumped the shark years ago, but they went into ultraglurge mode a while back, and we ended up seeing the surreality of Lynn wanting everything ultrasaccharine while taking digs at her real-life ex-husband Rod, who had enough of her and took off with a younger woman.
What made the strip so wonderfully entertaining, apart from the antics of Flapandhonk and JTSF (as they're called by a large group of people whose entire lives revolve around criticising the strip and tearing Lynn Johnston a new asshole every day) is the stuff that shows an insight into their real lives.
Michael, the couple's son, ignores his own children to work. They literally crawl all over him in a desperate bid for attention, and he continues to type with his eyes closed.
The bland as fuck boy next door the daughter marries (who has a child by a previous marriage) actually builds a three by three holding pen in the basement so that he can work uninterrupted by his child. Sticking a child in a de facto cage in the basement? CPS on line one.
Google "Foobiverse" and check out the community that lives to criticise the strip. I laughed for days.
And yeah, I picked up on her disturbing 1950s subtext that "nice girls don't" and if they do, they're a "gig"! or "road-side", and "once you go there, YOU NEVER COME BACK."
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