Looks like it to me. Combined with that shifty-eyed glance out the fourth wall, it suggests they’re up to something.
I don’t find this “stop and smell the flowers” explanation at all convincing.
Especially since they’re not, you know, doing that. If they had some flowers in their hand, showing themselves actually enjoying them, or were down on the ground smelling them, or something, then this joke would work.
That said, you do have to allow for the idea that everyone is right about the intended joke, and that it’s just badly executed (by our standards, at least). I mean, if it isn’t that joke, and no one actually understand it, then whatever the joke was intended to be was definitely badly executed.
I allow for it, I just don’t find it at all convincing.
I’m also surprised that, while there are discussions elsewhere on the internet about other Arlo and Janis strips, there isn’t one about this one (even allowing that it might be a re-run of a 2017 strip). Nothing comes up under a search.
I couldn’t see this on our copy of the strip, or on the online version, but a search finds that it ran on February 26, 2017. That seems weird. This ought to be a spring strip. On February 26 most places are likely to still have snow on the ground
I found this one line of discussion for the earlier run:
Not shifty-eyed, just happy eyed. Not “smell the flowers”, just enjoy the flowers.
ETA I don’t think it’s a great comic, even if I’m right. But I also don’t think it’s a whole lot deeper than that explanation.
With apologies to W. Shakespeare:
What’s in a name? That which we call a narcissus would be welcomed as a sign of winter’s end regardless of binomial nomenclature…
Are the authors/artists of these comics (Jimmy Johnson in this case) that hard to contact? Don’t they have facebook, twitter, or a website where you can just ask them what they were trying to convey?
Perhaps it isn’t really about flowers, but is more of a metaphor for people who overanalyze things instead of just enjoying them at a simple level. It’s misses the mark with us because no one at the Dope would ever overanalyze anything.
The Arlo and Janis website has nothing about this particular strip, and the GoComics comments don’t seem to .mention any risque motives, except that Janis is purty like a flower.
Sometimes a daffodil is only a daffodil, perhaps.
That would be a decent alternative interpretation–of the intent at least. If the idea is that Janis and her beauty is more important than seeing those flowers and figuring out their type.
How is objectifying women anymore funny than “enjoy a nice calm moment”?
No one? Is this your first day posting at The Straight Dope?
I suppose people who don’t get casual language might get worried about that stuff.
I’m just transmitting an opinion. I go with the stop and smell the daffodils meaning myself.
However, a theme of A&J had been Janis worrying about the effect of age (they are both retired) and Arlo not seeing or caring about any such effects. Is that objectification in your book?