Perhaps Jules Rivera thinks this extended discussion will help educate readers about catfishing; but all it does is create opportunities for more unfunny gag strips (i.e. Cherry continues to play the ditz). Aside from the unnecessary redundant dialog, we slog through Cherry’s naive question in panel 2. Why naive? Because Internet scammers are anonymous, as are most users.

Now I don’t understand Mark’s choice of words (“they”) in panel 3, unless he is trying to be gender neutral, because immediately after, he switches to using the female gender. There certainly are times when using “they” makes sense, but this example just sounds forced. Anyway, three days of this conversation is more than enough time for Mark to explain why he has to go to Florida. It’s time to get on a plane or in a car and get moving!

Art Dept. Today we see another example (between panels 1 and 2) of ink lines extending beyond the panels where they clearly do not look like stylistic refinements. They look more like individual whiskers or stubble. (Say, maybe they are remnants of the face stubble Mark used to sport before Rivera cut it off and replaced it with tone fills. <LOL!>) In any event, they look sloppy. I’m surprised that King Features didn’t bother to erase them. And don’t ask me about the French-kissing raccoons, either!

So the Formal Point of today’s strip is to have Mark explain to Cherry what his emergency is all about. However, the Underlying Purpose of today’s strip is for Jules Rivera to pretend this is a gag strip and set up the punchline in panel 4. She did that by having Mark mansplain his emergency using carefully framed grammar to cause Cherry to question Mark’s jargon and offer her own cute humorous response; a comment that would fit nicely in Family Circus. But Cherry (or Rivera) should leave comedy to the professionals.

I suppose Jules Rivera felt it necessary to extend the phone conversation to fill out the week, rather than getting on with the story. Now poor Groucho Mark has to upend his day to save his dad from bankruptcy. Is there no justice anymore!?

Okay, here and now is where I want to see a Bill Ellis phone call take place, rather than in between stories, as it normally occurs. Not that Mark would have any trouble making the right decision here, but it would be interesting to see him deal with it and see Bill’s reaction.