For triteness and for worse.

I know I have been sorely remiss in updating this blog, which you may all now feel free to hate me for. Wish death upon me, if you're really feeling overzealous, but the facts are these: the summer is a media black hole, and while I have a list of topics to talk about, none of them are as interesting to me as the slow and terrible death knell of a comic strip that has become an institution: For Better or For Worse.

I can't remember when I started reading FBoFW because I must have been a child. The comics were always my favorite part of the newspaper, and I remember events (such as April's birth) that took place in the very early 90s, so I must have been reading the comic since I was seven or eight years old. It's the story of a middle-class Canadian couple, Elly and John, who are blessed with three children: Michael, the oldest, an aspiring writer with a creative (if sometimes also illogical) mind; Elizabeth, the middle child, who goes off to the northern parts of Ontario to become a teacher in a small native community; and April, the accidental youngest who is born when Elizabeth is in late elementary school and is a budding musician with an interest in veterinary medicine.

Elizabeth's official birthdate makes her two or three years older than I, so I think I've always considered her the character I'm most like in the strip, my Canadian kindred spirit. She was finishing her education as a teacher as I was starting it, and when she left home to teach "up North", it was a beautiful day for FBoFW. For once in the history of the strip, it broke the middle class norms of going to high school, college, getting married, and popping out children with in a half-hour drive of your family. Michael was already married, a budding writer and mildly successful freelance journalist, and while he wasn't exactly making the big bucks, he and his wife were happy. April was starting a band and in her first relationship, the sort of happy-go-lucky kid we've come to expect as the youngest in a family (like Lily in long-gone sitcom Step by Step, or any other late-added baby to a series).

But a few years ago, as Lynn Patterson started planning her retirement, the plots suddenly shifted.

Elly retired.

Michael's apartment burned down and he and his family moved in with his parents.

Elizabeth quit her job up North after being assaulted at her summer job and decided to come home.

Grandpa Jim had another stroke.

April befriended a student with a disability.

A neighbor put a house up for sale that John and Elly wanted to buy.

Michael got a book deal out of the absolute blue.

Elizabeth hooked back up with an old boyfriend.

April decided that her dreams of being in a band as a professional were unrealistic.

Michael and his wife bought the homestead from his parents to live in with their two kids.

I am tempted to just say "et cetera" here, because trust me, all the other plots are just as bad.

On Monday, the strip goes into a time freeze in which Patterson's assistant artists (she, herself, has a disease and cannot really draw any longer) will integrate new material in her old, very rudimentary style into old storylines, giving more history of characters she never before fleshed out (and committing the creative sin of a retroactive continuity--that is, changing the history of a character whose life story is already established--for others). Over the last two weeks, Elizabeth has married her high-school boyfriend and gone to see her grandfather, suffering after a heart attack, in the hospital immediately after the ceremony. No, this is not something I imagined during a fever dream. This is the actual storyline I had to suffer through over the last few weeks.

This strip has been a mainstay of the comic pages for something like thirty years now, but as it wraps up and goes on to the great comic page in the sky, I have to ask: why is this strip so beloved? It's a white family with primarily white friends. It's a middle-class family with no lower-class struggles, unless you count Mike and Deanna's early financial troubles (which always had a certain lack of urgency about them, like we were just waiting for his parents to sweep in and set them right). Mike and Elizabeth both are reunited with and marry their high school sweethearts. April is back together with her creep boyfriend as far as any of us know, and who knows what will happen to them as their lives continue on. There is no real diversity, no real adversity, no real meat to so many of the plots. It's all circumstantial: if it's time for a heart-warming moment, well, someone has a crisis; if it's time for a controversial plot, well, someone knows a gay or a rapist or a girl who's been accused of sleeping around.

As a child, it was easy to point at the page and go, "I love these characters." Why? Because they were as deep as a nine or ten or fifteen year old expects them to be, sort of like wading into a warm kiddie pool. As an adult, I sympathized with and encouraged Elizabeth because it felt like swimming slowly into the deep end for the first time; she was far away from home and her feet weren't brushing the bottom of the pool any longer. There was a real chance of drowning.

But in the end of the series, it's less a deep end and more just losing our balance. Whoops, we slipped, and our head almost went under, but now our feet are planted again and we're able to rub the water out of our eyes. It's like so many other series finales, warm and fuzzy but completely without real substance. Nothing is resolved, and in resolving nothing, we realize with crystal-clear accuracy that there was never anything to resolve. All the hard moments, all the struggles, they were all incidental and just beyond the core.

I like the idea of life and history coming full circle. The concept has always interested me. But I guess in these final moments of For Better or For Worse, what I'd really like to see is April standing in the rain in a graveyard, umbrella as black as her dress, watching one or both of her parents be buried while Mike and Elizabeth stand with her. Elizabeth is still part of her community in the North, and Mike still a struggling writer who perhaps is in his third edit with a publisher, and as the rain pours down, there's no final pun or stupid sentimentality, just the siblings saying goodbye and walking away. Elizabeth can go to her constable Paul Wright, the one male character worth his salt (and actually getting points for acting like a real-life man); Michael can go to his wife and their children before heading back to the apartment; and maybe April is single, working her way through a music career even though it means a lot of singing in bars. But it's something more than what we've gotten.

And apparently, more than we're allowed to want for, too.

And so it begins.

My friend Carrie and I were embroiled in a text-message psuedo-argument of epic proportions today not over anything of importance but over the character of Amber Volakis from the television show House when I came to a shocking realization: I like talking about media. I don't just like taking it in with popcorn and a Diet Dr Pepper, I don't just like letting it wash over me, I like the discussion and the discourse. Media, especially in the 21st century, is a unique beast; it is one-half reality in easily compartmentalized bits, but it is also one-half fantasy, the way the world could, should, or perhaps even someday will be. I often like to theorize that television, books, movies, and even video games offer a vision of a world that is somehow better, where the cops always arrest the badguys, the leaders of the free world make mistakes but are still good people, men and women fight for what they believe in even against all odds, and yes, the hapless character wins over his or her romantic interest.

Of course, by saying this, I run the risk of over-simplifying the entire world of media studies, but it's my blog (and I'll over-simplify if I want to; you would over-simplify too if it belonged to you). But the fact is that, for me, media is a reminder of both the good and evil things in our world, and, moreover, what brilliant minds can do when they sit down and consider it.

So, this is my blog. I will post episode reviews for my favorite programs (including, but never limited to, House, CSI, CSI:NY, Criminal Minds, American Idol, Hell's Kitchen, Top Chef, Dr Who, Torchwood, Psych, Law & Order, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, and probably others I am now forgetting to mention); thoughts on movies, books, magazines, and even the odd song; theories on sexuality, crime and punishment, law enforcement, romance, and relationships in the media; my thoughts on the painfully bad For Better or For Worse (you knew that was coming); and just general ramblings of a media persuasion. If you're well-behaved, I may mention video games, anime, and fanfiction. (Beware, Torchwood fan-writers, I'm coming for you.) All in one easily-accessed public dominion for everyone to see and enjoy.

Tomorrow, you'll recieve my "Tretise on Amber Volakis". I also have pending a series of entries on topics such as Ianto Jones' bisexuality (as presented in The Twilight Streets by Gary Russell; not, of course, that I bought and read a Torchwood novelization and loved it), the Goren/Eames partnership from Law & Order: Criminal Intent, all the reasons that American Idol has done the reality-TV equivalent of jumping the shark, and probably something else. Will it be CSI related, M*A*S*H related, or a look at the domination of male protagonists in Atari games? Only time will tell.

In the meantime, enjoy.