Wednesday, February 9

The Plot That Wasn't There

(Source)

When Miranda's time came to be introduced to the Seattle storyline, I was shocked. Look at this strip! Just look at it! I finally thought to myself, "Hey asshole, look at that! PvP just amazed you with its writing. The New Year's promise of better writing was real."

Here I sat, thinking that Miranda would only make her random appearances so that boob jokes could be made and her general stupidity could be reinforced, and I'm slammed with a deeply effective portrayal of a sister feeling betrayed, forgotten, alone and sad -- without any words! This is an A+ comic strip: The first panel showcases an excellent update on the hotel room we saw last year (Or this year, when I blogged about it while recapping last year), slumbering Cole looks great, there's a joke RIGHT off the bat that uses subtlety to drive the humor home (There isn't an onomatopoeic jumble of letters ruining Cole's snoring by trying to make it more evident while failing to encapsulate what snoring actually sounds like). The dialog smoothly moves from the joke to the dramatic final panel, and the artwork's points of view are classic and shifted to great effect. Wow! How could you not look forward to what was coming next, after that?

(Source)

But what came next were boob jokes and reinforcements of Miranda's general stupidity. I must have imagined all of the dramatic tension earlier, because not once over the next three strips that continue this story thread does Miranda mention anything but petty jealousy as a motive for being upset. Wow. How could I have expected something else?

Miranda's status over at PVP Magazine was a little unclear, though. I believe she had worked both for them and then for Max's company (Powerplay) at different points in the past, culminating in being fired. Then Powerplay and PVP "merged" (Without absorbing PVP Magazine, meaning Max just bought them out or something), then separated. Miranda kept hanging around the offices (That's unclear, actually. It's nigh impossible to tell the difference between when PvP characters are at home and when they're at work) infrequently, for boob jokes and enjoying being kind of dumb. So this little character arc did one thing: It told us how Miranda became employed again (By Robbie, who probably owns PVP Magazine now. Does that mean she works for PVP Magazine? I can't say. It doesn't seem like it, but expect to see her around their office anyway), and justified moving her out to Seattle with the rest of the usual suspects. It was interesting that Cole pointed out that Miranda is useless as an employee, because that was goddamn stone-cold of him (And it was also true. Her worth as an employee is exactly the same as her worth as a character).

Exposition! What would we do without it?



I think that maybe the setting of PvP is changing to Seattle, guys. What do you think? We won't know for sure unless they keep unnecessarily mentioning Seattle by name and using location-specific in-jokes, though. The Fremont bit was especially confusing -- I'm familiar with Fremont, California, but I guess it's a place in Washington as well. Is it a place IN Seattle? And we were supposed to understand the "Mayor of Fremont is a hobo" thing? Anyway, the worst of all of that exposition seems to be over. If I had to compare it to something, it would be the way the Star Wars prequels shoehorn hours of ridiculous and dry political exposition into movies that everyone thought would be fun adventures for all ages.

Oh, and somewhere in that there was a theoretically-racy joke from Brent about "not nouning her verbly enough". Is this the most awkward punchline I've ever seen? It could be. Even swapping "noun" and "verb" doesn't help. How does a noun fit into that anywhere? Nouning is a self-contained oxymoron. Brent, you're supposed to be the clever one!

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