Didn’t she even accept Warren’s offer of a helicopter ride, only to use it to meet up with Paul, or something like that? Was that when she found out Paul was cheating?
Rodgers01, I think that’s where a lot of us “former fans” in this thread are coming from. We used to enjoy the strip, and then more and more discordant items started coming into the storyline, and it turned from stories vaguely based on her life and experiences into some kind of weird wish fulfillment because her RL kids (not to mention husband) didn’t meet her dreams for them.
Warren, being the prince that he is, deliberately flew an oblivious Liz up early so that she would catch Paul and whatshername together, hoping that she would fall into his arms so he could comfort her and worm his way back into her heart.
Thank you! And heh, yes, I used to read that with great pleasure – I stopped after the reboot, which is when I lost my interest in even snarking on FBOFW. Now I confine my reading of “snarky blogs about comics I only ever read when the author snarks about 'em” to The Comics Curmudgeon, who now rarely talks about FBOFW.
I’d be very curious to know if Lynn’s original gameplan was to pair Anthony and Liz up, or if Paul and Liz were going to be “the ones” until her abrupt decision to end the strip. Paul was kind, brave, cute (considering the drawing style), and interesting. The Paul/Liz relationship was very sweet, enjoyable and romantic. (One of the Sunday strips I best remember was a lovely, nearly silent autumn walk the two shared together.) Everything was fine until one day, Liz decided she was mopey for home and the relationship fizzled out. She gave up her career, her boyfriend, the people she cared about, and ran home to become a kid again sheltered in her harriden mother’s iron embrace. (God, how I ended up hating Elly the shrew! I never forgave her for promoting the then-married Anthony to her daughter. Yuck. Bit of irony there for Ms. Johnston!)
And look how Liz acted when she returned home and got sucked back into the relationship with Anthony. She was so blah, it was like she was sleepwalking through the whole thing. As if the sheer inevitability of her future was so depressing, because she saw the puppetmaster holding the strings, that she just gave up and let everything happen the way everyone seemed to want it to.
Reminds me of Liz Lemon on 30 Rock describing her own negative black hole of a relationship with the Beeper King. " If you give into it, you just start to kinda feel numb and warm and then you just get sleepy." Which, as Jenna correctly responds, is just how you feel when you’re freezing to death.
If I may defend Johnston for once, the source for her alleged “irascibility” is one interview with Jan Wong, who is herself a horrible, amoral person and famous for her ambush interview techniques and truth-twisting. This is a person who went to China to help out the Maoists during the Cultural Revolution and ratted a close friend out to the secret police. She’s widely despised and mistrusted.
I wouldn’t trust Jan Wong any further than I could throw my car.