Is the racoon praying for this adventure to end? While Connor doesn’t get the fact that being a good woodsman doesn’t equate to being a good husband, he is at least trying to improve himself. Mark is so focused on the first point (panel 2) that he misses the second one.

Mark also missed the point of Cliff’s invitation in panel 3: Panel 4 shows Cliff has turned the focus from Connor to Mark. That is to say, it appears that Rivera has been nudging the story along to really be about Mark’s reluctance to express his feelings.

If I had to make a guess about Cliff’s motivations, I’d say he has Mark and the Game Warden here in this goofy class to distract them while his de-bait team colleagues are out on the water, illegally poaching fish. I could be wrong, of course.