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February 03, 2007
Somebody Pull The Plug
Arrested Development - G.O.B. Coffin Trick
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It's over. Scott Stantis might not have accepted it, but everyone else has: Prickly City is dead. It just doesn't know it yet.
Like a horror film villain that's been shot full of holes but still lurches at our hero, the audience knows that while it's still crawling it's only a matter of time before it's finally blown to pieces and the end credits role.
This past week of Two Carmens will stand as the worst series in the history of Prickly City by leaps and bounds. Worse than the shark in the desert. Worse than the desert hamsters. Worse than Winslow with a banana up his nose.
It started with a decent idea. Carmen, the symbol of the Republican party, finds herself split in two and debating herself on the issues. Here's a perfect vehicle to explore how the Republican party has divided between the Rational Righties and the Religious Righties. Between those who want to be ruled by the Constitution and those who want the Bible to lead the way. Republicans who are anti-Bush, and the zombies who stopped thinking for themselves years ago (right around 9/11/2001).
But the storyline was over before it started.
It began with Carmen asking "Who am I?" By the end of the series we learn she should have asked "Whom am I?"
Hump Day was a stupid reference to cloning and how it's okay to wear fur. When exactly is this "debate" supposed to start, Stantis?
I'm still baffled by Thursday's strip about the Republicans loving "The State." Is Stantis asking when Republicans started to believe in an all-powerful Executive Branch where the President is the Almighty Leader? He never explains.
Yesterday was about the Republicans buying the election and how that was Plan B - WTF was Plan A? We'll never know. Stantis didn't have a punchline and that's what he came up with.
Today is the ultimate example of how Stantis comes up with a decent idea and can't execute it. He wants one Carmen to incorrectly use grammar so the other one can correct her, and then make a lame pitch that we need school vouchers. So what's the grammatical error? The use of "who" and "whom." The problem? The first Carmen who says, "Who are we?" is right. The second Carmen "corrects" her, immediately confusing the situation. Then Stantis goes into a lame "Who's on First?" (or as Carmen #2 would say, "Whom's on First?") bit. Carmen #1 says that this ridiculous exchange shows the need for dialogue, while Carmen #2 says it means we need school vouchers. Yeah, that's just what we need: since No Child Left Behind was such a brilliant Republican failure we should now entrust them with vouchers? What today's Prickly City confirms is that Stantis isn't just unfunny and a bad writer, he's also a failure in general English skills. You'd think those things would be the main requirements when earning a living as a comic strip writer, but apparently not when W is in office. That's what we get for electing a guy who's just as bad as Stantis in all of those areas too AND is a failed oil man.
The podcast is worth listening to, if only for Tim in Studio City's letter slamming Stantis for last week's non-sensical stem/coyote cell strip. Not only is the letter powerful and to the point, Stantis's lame Republican response shows exactly how far gone PC and the Republican party are.
I mean Jesus Christ, Stantis actually claims he did RESEARCH to come up with Winslow in a blender.
Farewell, Prickly City. You are in death as you were in life: a waste of time.
Note: We learn during the podcast that Prickly City has been picked up by another newspaper and some strange online service in Canada. I feel sorry for the Canadians. They're good people. They don't deserve to be exposed to the dead and rotting carcas of a strip that was never good to begin with. But hopefully, much like those of us who watched as the demise started ages ago, they won't have to put up with it much longer.
