True. Elly is not asking herself “why does my baby boy have to suffer?” Rhetta was the unfaithful one and Michael told her to hit the highway. As for the tooth, John and Elly did offer to help out with that. The infection was nobody’s fault, it just happened.
There have been some cases with married couples where if one spouse dies, the other goes to pieces, feeling that their life has been taken away from them.
Probably not. Last week’s strip had Michael talking to himself that he was going to “pick up the prescription”. That probably meant he had to get it at an apothecary.
When Arthur C. Clarke, who wrote 2001: A Space Odyessy was asked about HAL, he answered “It was not my decision to name the computer HAL, that was Stanley’s! My idea was to call the computer Athena, and it would have a feminine voice and personality. I don’t know why Mr. Kubrick made it HAL, but I have been apologizing to all men I ever met named Harold since then.”
Lynn Johnston was notorious for lacking backstory detail or character development. Examples include one-shot characters or people seen in a couple strips such as Janice, Dallas, Rhetta’s brother Lorne and Wesley D. Bates. One example was this strip about a friend of Michael’s who was only depicted in this strip (hardly a lasting friendship):
Michael: Mom, can I borrow the car.
Elly: Absolutely not, Michael. You do not have a license!
Michael: I have a learner’s permit. The law says that I can drive so long as a licensed driver is a passenger.
Michael introduced a slovenly teenager with piercings
Michael: And my friend Arnie here has the night off.
True. Elly is not asking herself “why does my baby boy have to suffer?” Rhetta was the unfaithful one and Michael told her to hit the highway. As for the tooth, John and Elly did offer to help out with that. The infection was nobody’s fault, it just happened.