Well, Ho! Ho! Ho! Mark continued to court Rusty’s favor by sucking up to him, while at the same time deriding Rusty’s ongoing fascination with cryptids. But Rusty really wants to hunt down the Bassigator and Mark finally agreed to the hunt.

Is Jules Rivera trying to build more nuance in Mark, or just pile on more contradictions that reveal him to be a typically clueless dad trying to stay relevant in his son’s life? As every parent knows, a child’s belief in imaginary beings can seem cute, but it is hard to strip away that belief without looking like a hypocrite or liar to your child.

Anyway, let’s hope that Mark gets through this adventure without making Rusty even more jaded. Next thing you know, Mark will tell Rusty that Santa is just a marketing gimmick to sell toys.

Rivera brings up a timely issue that has a lot of bark on it. I thought that Christmas Tree farms were a good alternative to cutting down trees in the wild. But are pesticides truly as rampant as she suggests? They almost certainly are used in virtually all commercial tree farms, but there seems to be an ongoing trend to minimize their usage, relying more on a process called integrated pest management (IPM). And tree farms are essentially managed forests. These are some points that Rivera could have brought up to provide more balanced reporting. Here are some links that explore these issues:

https://christmastrees.ces.ncsu.edu/environmental-impacts/

https://www.popsci.com/story/environment/christmas-tree-environmental-impact/

https://www.epa.gov/safepestcontrol/integrated-pest-management-ipm-principles