I haven't wanted to post because the jokes I've been making have been showing up in the next day's strip as really bad jokes and bruising my ego (i.e., my secret message about Freud; Mary practicing therapy on a therapist).
I know everyone has been making wild predictions about Mike's problem, but I will eat a record from the Charterstone jukebox if Mike's parents didn't divorce and now he doesn't trust his ability to commit.
Today's Full Strip
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I think we can all be thankful that Mike is a therapist and not a surgeon of some sort. I offer you a “what if” scenario.
We’d see Mary, wrist deep in someone's chest cavity as they flat-line. Those in the operating room stare in disbelief at what they just allowed. Mary's psyche fights at all costs to accept not only failure, but also her status as a charlatan. Her crazy eye bulges and shifts erratically about her face. Dr. Mike, once a rising star at the hospital, slumps into the nearest corner. As police haul the blood stained Mary Worth away, most feel a terrible weight lifted – if only for a while. Mary had spun a web too wide and for too long to go down alone.
Um, that's nice too.
But I think the underlying reason behind Dr. Mike's fear of commitment is going to be more mundane, annoyingly so, verging on the pathetic; his parents' divorce gets the nod for his neuroses from me too.
Love how the tone shifted in Saturday's strip. Dr. Mike, not interested in debating Freud vs. Jung with Mary, quickly caves in, and readies us for the week-long journey into his childhood.
Mary's advanced understanding of Jungian theory surely allows her to jump over those silly regulations and laws that other people have to adhere to, and allows her to start seeing patients. While Dr. Mike closes his eyes and lets all out of his childhood trauma, Mary will be saying, "Hm, yes, go on," while she removing Dr. Mike's door tag and replacing it with a little sign she carries in her purse, just in case the opportunity ever arose.
Today's strip with Mary performing psychotherapy with a license or - seemingly - knowledge, is perhaps the stupidest so far in this stupid storyline. I mean, most of Moy's output strains credulity at best, but today's strip kicks it completely to the curb.
Mary is Jungian? Who knew? I wonder how Mary would come out on the Myers-Briggs,
OOps, my comment before should say Mary is practicing psychotherapy with OUT a license.
As a newbie (and big fan!) I'm wondering: why no image of the comic today? And why no Friday comic images?
Punky, I think Wanders might be trying to avoid another flash-forward event. He doesn't always post an image daily, but you can use the link he provides to find today's strip. We just keep on commenting regardless.
Welcome!
@phoebes -- I agree with you! Today's strip is SO stupid that it has that "jumped the shark" feeling, and wow, that's saying a LOT for a Mary Worth strip! I hope tomorrow's is back to just regular stupid.
@Robert-- and along with that little door sign in her purse, you just KNOW she's had business cards printed up, too, and carries them in a very professional-looking case with her initials engraved in fancy script.
vicki, my husband just said that Mary 'jumps the shark' everyday!
@djangosmom -- LOL! Well, today she's jumped an extra shark or two! I just shook my head when I read it this a.m.
I wish ol' Bonnie? would start shopping & hoarding again. Or walk in on Mary and Dr. Roberts and have rays come out of her head. Anything!!
me too, vicki, I just read today's MW and I just thought here we go again. Another week long sob story. I think it sounds like Mike's mother had an 'unsettling restlessness' or something.
i just wanna know how the tablelamp and the bookcase in sundays strip snuck in the room
Question - does EVERY secondary character in Mary Worth suffer from "unexpressable wandering" or some other existential nonsense? A few more days of this garbage and I'm going to feel like I'm reading Franz Kafka instead of Karen Moy.
I believe Moy is about to take us on a "Shutter Island" adventure...when Mary comes to and realizes that Dr.Call me Mike is actually doing a little role reversal to get her to come to grip with her insatiable desire to meddle and gossip her way into everyone she meets life. She will come around see the truth, mend her ways then go right back to the gossip and meddling in the very next frame drawn.
Oh wait thats just way to out there. Mike's father left his mother. He saw her cry. Mike will never believe in love again. Boo Hoo. Yeah that's probably more like it. Thank the Lord Mary is there to administer her great corrective judgement pronouncements.
i'm afraid you are all too right about the lame storyline being that mike's insecurities all stem from his parents' divorce. the moral of the story being that parents should NEVER divorce but should, instead, stay together for the sake of the children. i have added another reason to my list of reasons that i could not be dr. mike's patient. i would not relish having passerbys gawking at meduring my sessions through the glass in his office door.
yes, all of a sudden we have a glass door with "Dr. Roberts MD" name stickered on it! I do hope it's frosted glass so that people out in the hallway can't peek through it! But of course, this is Mountview hospital.
Does Dr. Roberts even realize that Mary is also Dr. Jeff Corey, M.D.'s girlfriend and that everything he tells Mary in private will be discussed with Jeff over dinner tonight?
It may not be a divorce scenario only because Dr. Mike says "what happened to my father" and not "what happened to my parents." (Not that the outcome will end up being any more interesting.) What I'm more interested in is the magical phenomenon wherein Mary turns blue in the middle of the strip and causes objects to appear - like the table lamp, and Dr. Mike's glass of water. Mary's powers know no bounds!
Alas, I can completely empathize with Dr. Mike. My father, also, sometimes turned into a squid and sprayed black ink all over us. It wasn't his fault, and the poor man couldn't control it, but some of us kids inherited the syndrome. Needless to say, this made intimacy with people we fell in love with almost impossible. There was the problem of black ink spraying unexpectedly onto our sleeves, or other people's clothing, leaving stains that were very difficult to remove. Sadly, many would-be suitors/love interests did not respond well. I sure do hope Mary can help! And who needs a license or a degree for this, anyway?
In todays strip 07/26/10, is Mary stiffling a laugh?!
It does look like Mary is trying to hold back laughter! I tried to hold it back too, but couldn't. It's too absurd.
It must be disconcerting for Mike that Mary moved from his right side to his left (Sunday), quickly replacing her chair with a table, glass of water, etc. Now the table is gone and she's back on his right side. "Mary, I'm dredging up long-forgotten memories. Would you sit still?!"
"When I was 12 my father deserted me and my mother..." Shouldn't it be "my mother and me"? Don't they teach basic grammar in med school?
Also, there certainly are a lot of estranged fathers and sons in Mary Worth, aren't there? I'd love to know a little about Moy's pathology.
Mary on Mike's left, Mary on Mikes right, Mike has a pillow, Mike does not have a pillow, lamp and table not there, lamp and table there, ugly green chair on left, ugly green chair not on left.
Geez - even I (a complete amateur) take meticulous efforts to ensure that the background is pretty similar to the last drawn panel of the same thing! Maybe Giella is low on fan mail since the shootout at the SantaRoyMart wrapped up, and even negative feedback makes him feel happy.
I can't fault Mary for forcing herself to hold back her laughter at Dr. Mike. At least it mirrors what the audience is thinking, too.
"He left us to fend for ourselves!!!11!!1!" OMG, it's not like he hiked you up the Andes mountains and then took off on a helicopter yelling, "See ya suckers!" I'm sure Mom was capable of getting a job and supporting the family, like women do all the time (with or without a husband). Jesus Moy--it ain't 1940 anymore.
"left us to fend for ourselves..." WOW, like THAT'S never happened to anyone before!! Makes perfect sense now why he would be so rude to Jenna and not call her back even though he "may be in love" with her. Um, yeah. sure.
I have suspected for some time that Moy & Gilella assume their Sunday and weekday audiences are different. Hence the lack of continuity control between weekdays and Sunday. But, Saturday is consistent with Monday.
I always love when Mary does that "up yours" hand gesture, as in (today's case) "I don't care if you want to talk about your childhood, we have a few more days to talk about why I prefer Jung."
Good "shark tank" call Vicki.
I haven't been sleepign well lately--I keep waking up with images of opening the comics to see Mary Worth lying on the couch next to Dr. Mike smoking a relaxing cigarette....
Speaking of "left us to fend for ourselves..."
Wanders! Get back here or someone's going to start psychoanalyzing you, too!
Poor Dr. Mike! Left to fend for yourselves. I guess he was forced to play with a USED Atari game, or watch RERUNS of Knightrider, or only eat at McDonalds on COUPON NIGHT. Poor Dr. Mike. Our hearts bleed for you!
His parents split up, when he was 12? That's IT? THAT is the big tragedy that caused his neurosis? Some shrink this guy is. I would love for one of his patients to come walking in, and find him sobbing on the couch to Mary Worth.
Over the top lecturing storyline. Waiting for her to force herself into a UN diplomatic position.
Imagine Mary at the UN podium, wagging her finger scoldingly at Israel...
I guess Mary's 10 minute (stretched over a week or two) session with Dr. Mike will create a breakthrough, proving that Mary's a better therapist than Dr. Mike can ever hope to be.
Well that was easy! Dr. Mike just needs to delve into the long process of abandonment recovery. That, or spend a week pretending to be Wilbur Weston's son. Either way.
Then, Mary can get Jenna onto the green couch, figure out why she's so obsessive, that should take another 15 minutes and SNAP romance becomes true love!
Maybe Dr Mikes mother KICKED the bum out. At 12, I don't think lil' Mike really knew what was going on. He must have been much too busy analyzing his GI Joe dolls.
Who's that black guy in the background?
Wait a minute...What if Mike's father is REALLY Wilbur Weston? (Cue dramatic soap opera music)
Mary will now get in touch with Mike's father, arrange for father and son to meet (yes, phoebes, way too many estranged fathers and sons in MW), and will soon have them both on Dr Mike's couch, clutching each other and sobbing at the giant misunderstanding that caused their horrible, terrible estrangement. You see, Dr. Mike's father had simply gone out for a pack of smokes, but when he got back, Mrs.-Mike's-father had changed the locks and pretended they had moved. So Dr. Mike's father relocated to Winnebago and started a whole new life.
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