| CARVIEW |
Back in the days of rotary and touch-tone phones, one would reach a busy signal if the call recipient was already on a call. These days, when telephones are unable to receive incoming calls the call is usually forwarded to what is known as voice-mail. Unless Cayla is unable to afford voicemail with her apparent smart phone, it would appear that all of this extra drama could be avoided if Les left a message. So why the analog play on digital media? It’s called writing.
Nothing gets the warm fuzzies going like a sepia-toned memory of a suicide attempt. Let’s give our esteemed artist six pills out of a scale of ten for his recreation: (-2) pills for losing the googly-eye motif of the era and another (-2) pills for delicately recreating Susan’s ankles. +16 overall for adding ankle fetish to his existing ass fetish…but let’s move on to the bigger picture.
The message here is that Susan, guilty of attempting a most selfish act in suicide, didn’t really learn much from the experience. A mere twenty or thirty years later we find that with complete disregard to Les and Cayla’s sort of public relationship, Susan thinks of nothing more than herself in forcing this date upon Les. Some may call it love. But I beg to differ. As this exchange would suggest, Susan already repaid Les’ for saving her life…or was coming clean about selfishly trying to end Les’ relationship with Lisa amends for doing such? Either way, this doesn’t paint Susan in a favorable light. In fact, if you could assign a name to the black hole of despair consuming Westview I would have to say it doesn’t being with a ‘C’ or an ‘F’ begins with an ‘S’. A message to erstwhile helmet head: Run…run very far.
Professor Collarsweater and his colleague finish their celebratory champagne; but not a drop too soon. It would appear that Cayla’s unnoticed call seems an unfortunate coincidence but the cynic in us believes otherwise. We can be certain of the fact Susan trailed Cayla from school to the liquor store, the drug store, and to the adult variety store before heading Cayla off and arriving at the Moore household first. We don’t blame Cayla for the thousand mile stare in the last panel. Once Susan claims too tipsy to drive, all bets are off…and Cayla is left to ponder the remainder of Westview’s singles pool.
As the champagne flutes clink, a helpless Cayla is left to wonder the meaning of all this. Could Susan be there to actually congratulate a co-worker on getting closer to realizing his dream? Or is the awkward triangular courtship finally hitting the fan? One would hope that the latter is the case, but longtime fans of FW know better than to fall for a standard TB bait and switch. This won’t be a case of Les finally realizing that he does have feelings for Susan; rather, we’re more likely to see Cayla’s feelings getting hurt, Les feeling bad, three weeks of The CW doing something stupid, then Susan apologizing to both of them. It’ll be a lonely bottle of bubbly for Cayla…but have no worries. It’s in the bag. The only thing left for us to do is take bets on the exact date Susan tries to off herself (again).
As he sat back in his thinking chair, smirking with a smug sense of self-satisfaction, Ghost Lisa appeared to tell Les that with great success comes great responsibility. “Cute,” said Les, “Now, unless you want to give me ghost-head, stop by later…I’ve got to keep writing.” Les knows that the day his book hits the shelves at Half-priced Books, his window of opportunity to greatness will be closed. One must keep his eyes on prize in order to be considered a non-failure. Unfortunately for Les, his troubles are about to begin. Susan’s attempt to usurp the enviable position of “Les Moore’s lover” throws a big wrench in the plan…that is, unless he rides this new wave of self-motivation to the pulp romance shelves. Don’t worry, Cayla…there’s no sex in the champagne room – yet. Les’ pulsating forearms will let the game go a while longer….
…and just like that, Buckeye Press shows the world that you don’t have to be that great (or even average) to net a book deal. One merely needs to sit and wait for his or her turn. Les: the picture of entitlement? If our esteemed author wanted to present us an allegory of the healthcare discussion, he sure picked a strange angle. Apparently, there’s no such thing as a dream deferred in Westview.
Filed under Cayla, Nate Green, Susan
Mopey Pete is back on the scene. Looked up to by the elder statesmen of Westview, it would appear that the life of a successful writer consists of gold, gold, women, and more gold. Not so fast, Crazy Harry. Petey still sits alone in his room all day; but with one difference: he can leave the door open during breaks. Hey-ooh. I’ll be here all week.
Filed under Crazy Harry, funky, Pete
With the post-game rituals complete, Summer and Special-K head home with their respective parents. Taking Cayla’s words to heart, Les decides it’s probably time to loosen up and let Summer take the wheel. We don’t know if Summer ever met the requirements supervised driving, but we can be certain that the competitive juices will flow at the first intersection. The death race is so on.
That Les has to explain to Cayla the reason they’re still standing in the vacated bleachers speaks volumes about the level of attention paid by Cayla to Les. For christ sake, he was sitting next to her! One would think she would have noticed sad-sack Les knocking his own glasses off as it occurred. If a woman won’t pay mind to Les in those circumstances, then perhaps Susan Smith is a better option. She would kill to fix Les’ glasses…literally.
Shirts and skins in a high school gym? A girls basketball high school game with both teams scoring in the 50’s? Who’s fantasy world is this? I’ll tell you who…it’s TB’s world; and it’s sexist. Following conventional basketball strategy, he has the boys put the worst free throw shooter at the stripe with the game on the line. Yet this doesn’t translate to the girls side where when the game is on the line, the first or second best player is fouled. What, girls coaches can’t coach girls to commit smart fouls? Sheesh. Next thing you know he’ll say the girls are too fragile to drive cars…oh, wait.
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