Another day, another strip worthy of the MopMan treatment.
And now for the actual strip.
Once again we have a coach glued to the side of a player, following them around the course. Pretty sure that’s not how this works. We also have the ex-spouses getting the Goofus and Gallant treatment: “Goofus Emily praises her players when they do well and scowls at them when they make mistakes. Gallant Gil gives constructive advice to all his players… well, at least to one of them.”
This golf match has dragged on for two weeks now, with no plot advancement beyond showing what a horrible human being Mimi has become. Barajas might’ve chosen to work ICE into the strip this spring, but tbh the results look more like the work of another governmental agency. Bringing in a younger writer and artist to destroy what works in the name of modernization, all while drawing a paycheck? Barajas and Merrill are to Gil Thorp what DOGE is to the federal government.
Today’s post title is a shout-out to any of you Pennsylvanian TWIMers.
At this stage complaining about the art is like beating a dead horse, especially since neither the art nor the horse get better.
It has occurred to me more than once that, by making Emily increasingly fatter, squatter and generally repulsive with each successive drawing, Merrill is trying to create some visual shorthand for Barajas’ writing Emily as increasingly bitter, spiteful and generally unsympathetic. That doesn’t explain why Merrill can’t draw the character – or damn near any character – consistently. It also doesn’t explain Merrill’s latest fascination with drawing everyone with little tiny shrew eyes. I mean, I get it, Emily’s a shrew, but is everyone else?
Today we continue down that path as, under the guise of sportsmanship, Gil asks Emily if she’s coming to his and Beth’s wedding. Em’s response lacks emphasis but implies that she’s coming solo. Gil asking why Ericka can’t come seems innocent enough, as he probably has no idea there’s any trouble in Lesbian Golfer Paradise. Not to Emily, who immediately decides she needs to twist the knife and insult Gil’s golf, or golf coaching, or golf-adjacent something-or-other. Good thing she doesn’t have eyes in the back of her head to catch Gil’s little limp-wristed backatcha pose.
Taken as a whole, this little encounter just serves to reinforce the ongoing narrative that Gil has moved on and is happier with his post-divorce life than the one who initiated the divorce. Now if the strip could just move on and not make Emily and her obsession with her ex-husband one of the main plot devices. Leaving her in the Arizona desert, with occasional glimpses into her career and relationships, would’ve been more believable than bringing her back to the Valley, having her take over in the same role as her ex at her ex’s most bitter rival, and becoming obsessed with defeating him at every turn. Before you say “well, she just wanted to stay close to her kids,” remind yourself how she doesn’t do jack with them and basically blames Gil for anything that goes wrong in their lives.
Between walkouts and their aftermath, Lucas, The One-Man Milford Co-Ed Golf Team, continues to hit the ball. He hits it very well. He hits it so well that it lands on the green. He hits it so well that it lands on the green about 15 feet from the hole. He will have about 15 feet to hit the ball into the hole. He will have a birdie if he hits the ball about 15 feet into the hole with his next shot.
The tension on the golf course is so thick you could cut it with a knife. But not with a butter knife. That would get you expelled from Milford High School. If you don’t think so, just ask Gil Thorp, Milford High School Athletic Director, Head Coach of Everything and Official Mouthpiece of Milford High School. Just ask him. You won’t get a straight answer, but you can ask him anyway.
Ron Jeremy Marty Moon doesn’t like it when faceless lady reporters, lady reporters with frizzy blonde hair and glasses, and the red-headed stepchild of Zippy the Pinhead ask Gil Thorp, Milford High School Athletic Director, Head Coach of Everything and Official Mouthpiece of Milford High School questions. He thinks he should be the only person in Milford that asks Gil Thorp questions. That they get the same non-answers from Gil Thorp that Marty Moon would get from Gil Thorp is of no consolation to Marty Moon.
See Gil Thorp avoid eye contact as he gives his non-answers to the reporters. See Gil Thorp fail to acknowledge that one of the reporters knows the detained student’s name. See Gil Thorp look over the reporters’ heads as he recites the “About” information from the Milford High School webpage. See Dr. Pearl’s hand up Gil Thorp’s ass as she makes Gil Thorp’s lips move. See Dr. Pearl call Gil Thorp into her office on Monday to excoriate him over what he said and did not say to the reporters. See Gil Thorp come away from the exchange unscathed, without any consequences. See whether Gil Thorp’s elder child comes away from her stunt equally unscathed… or not.
Boy it looks like news of the Milford walk-out has spread all the way to Valley Tech, where Mimi and Paul seem to be walking on eggs for their safety from ICE. Or at least his and his childrens’. Love the big award on the wall; who knows how old it is, but I’m sure if Mimi won it it will be broadly displayed for all to see. Do they even know about Isis situation at all? Why would they? Dont they have their own school program etc. to worry about? Mimi is Gils ex. Why does she care that much about some student at another school? They never connect the dots around here, they just jump around assuming everyone in creativity is on the smarts. Does Gonads have any thoughts about it?
Of course Mimi must have heard from Gil how her daughter made an ass out of herself (again) and Im sure that paints a fine picture of the job she did raising this fine young lady. Im sure they also went over who is more responsible for Peanut turning out the way she did, although she has many years of life and maturity to turn it around, even if some of it may be spent at Milford Modified or some other correctional institution.
If Alex Trebek was still around Im sure he would love to pose this answer to his contestants – “This comic strip has been around for 68 years and has gotten progressively worse over the last 5”. Well, Ken Jennings can do the honors. Maybe it’ll even be a Daily Double.
Show of hands: how many of you gentle readers knew Keri would make yet another public statement about the Pillar family’s experiences with ICE? If betting on comic strips ostensibly about sports was a thing, you’d be playing with house money.
One might think that by now Gil and/or Emily would’ve had a sit-down with Keri and told them something to the effect of “y’know, you don’t always have to be the one who starts every protest. Or, if you do, be a little more selective in how and where you do it.” In this case, a school walkout will likely end in nothing but suspensions and/or expulsions of the students who participate. A protest march in front of WDIG, or a sit-in at Janet’s Diner, would get the point across to a larger audience with a smaller impact on a student’s status inside the walls of Milford High.
But nooOOOooo! That would not be modus operandi for Keri Thorp, Attention Whore and Social Justice Warrior. Instead we’ll have Keri facing some sort of discipline from Dr. Pearl and Gil acquiescing while standing up for Keri’s right to blah blah blah and yakety schmakety. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Speaking of lather, rinse, repeat, when are we gonna address the acromegaly epidemic that’s hit Milford?
Sometimes I hate it when I’m right. This is one of those times. Here we are again in the “lather, rinse, repeat cycle of Milford v. Goshen v. Valley Tech in which all three schools have one person head coaching all the teams and the head coaches of the latter two live only to defeat the coach of the former.” Today Merrill takes the conceit even further, challenging herself to draw Gerads increasingly grotesquely as he sinks deeper into Gil loathing. Pity she couldn’t accept the challenge of drawing a convincing pair of binoculars.
Where I’m stuck here is with this incessant repetition of “Gil is bad at golf.” I’ve been following this strip for a number of years and tbh, I’m not finding where this has been shown to be true. Where we have seen Gil and golf intersect is at the Milford Country Club where, at least during the Rubin Era, he coached the junior program. Here are some highlights:
If one of you gentle readers could point me to specific strips in which Gil has been shown to be bad at golf, especially strips that have been published since the inception of TWIM, I will gladly revise the title of my post and revisit its premise. In the meantime I will treat this plot device as so much revisionist history, like the scrubbing of references to slavery from national historic sites.
Monday edit: Faithful TWIMers Downpuppy and (erstwhile TWIM SID) billytheskink as well as my fellow blogger Rob did the work to show us that the “Gil is bad at golf” trope originated in the summer of 2001. In the comments below, and in Rob’s well-researched post today, you’ll see that Gil somehow went 100-90-80-71 over the course of a tournament. It is implied that the tutelage of his then-wife is a factor. All that aside, why then is Gil allowed to coach the juniors every summer for nearly a quarter of a century after that? Did everyone else better than him, including said then-wife, have better things to do?
That’s really unfair of me to write, TBH. Emily officially stopped switch hitting off the course the day she signed those divorce papers, though in all likelihood she stopped long before then.
When this strip featured golf in the past, it was almost exclusively as a summer filler arc and predominantly involved someone hustling or otherwise cheating at the game. In the Barajas Era, it has been used as the vehicle to destroy the Thorps’ marriage, transforming Emily f/k/a Mimi from a generally pleasant, generally athletic wife and mother who could impart life lessons of her own into a miserable, misshapen lesbian who thinks only of herself.
That’s also really unfair of me to write, too. Emily doesn’t only think of herself; she also thinks about exacting revenge on her ex-husband. In so doing she follows in the footsteps of the pre-firing Luke Martinez and the God-only-knows-why Mitch Gerads. Pretty sure I’ve pointed this out previously but it is entirely possible for a coach of one of Milford’s conference rivals to have a relationship with another coach that isn’t based on seething hatred and spite. (See Andrews, Tod.)
Speaking of coaching relationships, anyone find it bizarre that Kim has this sort of fawning respect for Emily? After all, he was named VT’s AD after Luke’s firing; now she has his job yet he’s still on the staff. Don’t tell me Kim saw himself as a placeholder and now sees Emily as somehow being more worthy of the position?
I’m sure I’ll have more to say about this but it’s early Sunday morning as I write and I need to crash. teenchy out.
Well, this should come as a surprise to no one. Keri’s poor form in Saturday’s strip pretty much ensured Keri wasn’t making this shot. Wonder if that hyperextended upper arm had anything to do with it. That, or the lack of coaching from anyone, including Keri’s parents, beyond the usual “you got this” or some other pleasantries. Meanwhile, Emily gets dap from Dark Gil a/k/a Coach Kim.
Now can someone please explain the consequences of this outcome? Milford and Valley Tech were playing for a postseason berth. Were they not also playing for the conference championship? If so, then would it not follow that the loser of this game would end up the conference runner-up? How, then, can the winner of this game go on to play in the postseason Goshen, a team in their conference that is neither the conference champion nor the conference runner-up? Clearly Barajas needs to learn more than how to just sprinkle various phrases and terminology into the strip at appropriate moments. ‘Splain, Henry.
Anyhoo, back to Emily. Ms. Clover continues to be drawn ever more grotesquely, never looking the same way twice or from one panel to the next. Today she looks like the love child of Rocky Dennis and Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Color her green and she could easily pass for She-Hulk. It’d be easy to write this off as visual evidence of her becoming a increasingly miserable individual, one who is more concerned about herself and her career than about anyone else in her life, including her offspring. That would be giving the artist more credit than is deserved.
This Week in Milford 