Not Dead Yet

[billroper]

Apparently, Lynn Johnston isn't quite ready to end For Better or For Worse this year after all.

On the other hand, after today's strip, I'd say that Paul is toast. Good. Toldja so. :)

Comments

[jrittenhouse.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but I just don't care for the way she got us there. Paul was supposed to be the good guy and all that, and the sudden 180 is way jarring.

[blueeyedtigress.livejournal.com]

I liked Paul!
I liked Warren!
I do not like Anthony. But I can read the author's narrative trending as well as the next disgruntled fan ......

[markbernstein.livejournal.com]

I think most people following this expected Paul to be toasted. The fact that some of us didn't want it to happen doesn't mean we didn't see it coming. I'm not thrilled with the mechanism, as it feels manipulative, like Johnston took the easy way to pushing Elizabeth back toward Anthony. (Liz may still choose Warren, but I'm not counting on it.)

I've been thinking about Anthony, and the reactions to him. After all, it can legitimately be said that he's a good guy. He loves Liz, loves his daughter and cares for her well, makes a decent living, and, most dramatically, stepped up and defended Liz from the would-be rapist.

The problem is, that last is the only action I can recall seeing him take, and even that could be said to be forced on him. (If he'd been in that situation and done nothing, he'd have immediately become despicable.

Anthony, you see, is a passive character. He pretty much lets life happen to him, taking the safe choices at every turn. Contrast that with Michael, who's trying to succeed as a writer, or Elizabeth, who took on the culture shock of moving to Mtigwaki, or even Ellie, who owned her own business.

And Anthony (and I admit this may be faulty memory on my part) seems to avoid expressing himself emotionally. Therese was portrayed as, frankly, evil, and Anthony has never exhibited any anger against her. More importantly, he's never come out and said that he loves Elizabeth, even though he's now free to do so. He's almost the cliche of the "nice guy", the guy who never puts himself forward, then wonders why no one notices him.

Anthony is, as I said, a good guy. But is he good enough for Liz? Or would marrying him, and taking on the accompanying parental responsibilities, leave her with a life that would ultimately leave her restless and unsatisfied?

(I must note that it's a tribute to Johnston's creative abilities that I cared enough to write this little essay.)

[sdorn.livejournal.com]

The manipulation of Elizabeth's life is getting too much for me, personally. Good grief, how far in advance did she telegraph everything?

Okay, so I'm a member of the 'I hate Anthony' club.

[kestrels-nest.livejournal.com]

I figured Paul was toast before we even knew his name, when Elizabeth was considering going up north to teach and her friend told her that the north breaks hearts, because people who come from entirely different worlds and can't quite adapt to the other fall in love. I admit I didn't expect her to find out this way, and that it feels terribly contrived. On the other hand, having found out in a similar fashion that my boyfriend of three years was gay (that was 1977)...life does that.

I'm very glad indeed she's not ending the strip in September, though!

[billroper]

But it really wasn't a sudden 180. Lynn set this all up as Liz was leaving Mtigwaki. Liz and Paul were discussing his transferring south and Paul's thought balloons were about how that wasn't going to happen. And we were introduced to Susan, who we were told was an old friend of Paul's. So the pieces have been in place for a very long time.

[billroper]

At one point during the disintegration of Anthony's marriage to Therese, he asked Liz to wait for him. So Liz can hardly be unaware of how Anthony felt, at least at that point. If Anthony hasn't said anything lately, it's quite possibly because he thinks Liz already knows how he feels and, if she isn't saying anything, it's because she's not interested now. Making a move would quite likely send her skittering away, which isn't what Anthony wants, even if the relationship he currently has with Liz isn't what he wants.

[billroper]

jrittenhouse, meet sdorn and vice versa. The former thinks this is a complete 180 on Paul's part; the latter thinks this was all telegraphed far in advance. :)

I tend to agree with sdorn, although I'd say that it was carefully set up long in advance, rather than telegraphed.

[sdorn.livejournal.com]

I think jrittenhouse was thinking more that Paul had been presented as an upstanding person, someone who did things on principle and kept to commitments. The fact that Johnston set up Paul and Susan as Liz was leaving Mtigwaki doesn't change how Paul was presented initially.

So Paul's a floor wax and a dessert polish!

[andpuff.livejournal.com]

I was reluctantly realizing it had to be Anthony (I was totally with you on Paul not working out the moment Elizabeth headed south) when who should reappear but Warren! As a part of the "anyone but Anthony" club (it's a wussier version of the 'I hate Anthony' club, I'm now throwing my vote to Warren.

Go Warren!

[faxpaladin.livejournal.com]

One odd note in one of those two interviews -- describing the strip as "anti-feminist." Wha-huh?

I don't see women meekly doing what Their Men tell them to. I do see at least one woman retiring after successfully running her own business. Is it anti-feminist because Elly was and Deanna is a stay-at-home mom? If that's the idea then that's just silly.

I see humans, making human decisions -- some good, some bad, most a little of both.

[scs-11.livejournal.com]

I'm another in the 'Anthony is boring' camp. The whole thing reeks of authorial manipulation rather than natural outgrowths of the characters.

Apparently

[capplor.livejournal.com]

I consider myself feminist, and never had any objections to the characters' choices on how to handle child care. In my experience, short of radical restructuring of the workplace to make children perfectly acceptable while you do your business, there are no great solutions, and only a few workable ones (of which, "one stay at home parent/ one outside income parent" is one.)

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

Deanna isn't a stay-at-home mom. She stayed home for a fairly brief while after each kid was born; then she went back to work as a pharmacist. Something in the recent newsletter on the fbofw website talks about her getting a lift to work from John, who works in the same building, while they're at John and Elly's house because their apartment burned down.

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

I don't actually mind Anthony, and won't mind seeing Liz back with him, but I do mind the specific way Liz and Paul fell apart. Yes, it was obvious they were going to, but as someone above said, Paul was shown as a nice guy, and it's a bit dischordant to see him suddenly cheating on Liz. I would rather have seen him tell her he was transferring to Spruce Narrows when that came through, and that he wouldn't be coming south, and let them have it out that way... then maybe admit that Susan's a part of the decision. But that's way different in tone from having him practically living with Susan for an unclear amount of time and explicitly kept it from Liz, even if he said he did intend to tell her when she came north.

That Paul decides to stay in the north and with Susan, and breaks up with Liz, makes character sense. That Liz ends up rebounding onto Anthony would also make character sense. That Paul does a reprise of Eric in order to get the aforementioned breakup to happen doesn't make sense with what we already know of Paul; I think it would have been more in character for him to come to the same decision but handle it better.