And Then There's The Dinette Set

See it here.

I've always been fond of the tagline for the movie The Abyss: "There's everything you've ever known about adventure, and then there's The Abyss." I like it because the same sentence can be read with two polar opposite meanings, something the copy writer obviously did not consider. Depending on your inflection, you can use that sentence to suggest that The Abyss exceeds all expectations about adventure or that it falls drastically short of those expectations.

All of which brings me to today's installment of The Dinette Set.

Let start with what Ms. Larson no doubt intended, which was for the reader to follow along with a bit of logical algebra that says: Restaurant + Crowded = High Quality

If we accept this supposition, then we can roll our eyes at Burl's punchline. Verla and Jerry, Philistines to the core, miss out on the pleasure of an obviously great restaurant simply because too many other people are enjoying it at the same time.

What could be more ridiculous, I ask you, than not wanting to eat at an over-crowded restaurant?

Apparently Ms. Larson didn't take the time or effort to consider whether that underlying assumption would be obvious to everyone. It never occurred to her that a restaurant being over-crowded was, in and of itself, a viable reason for not enjoying it. It never occurred to her that a restaurant could be crowded and also suffer from low quality.

To make matters even worse, Ms. Larson included a prominent reference to McDonald's, the prototypical low-quality establishment that is, nonetheless, always crowded. In fact, almost all of the significant marginalia deals with putting up with crowds when the payoff is not worth the wait, such as purchasing stamps, visiting a themed/celebrity restaurant, or frequenting the local septuagenarian buffet.

Having critically failed to examine the underlying assumption and yet managing to undermine it at the same time, unsurprisingly she never considered that the same panel can be read in two different ways. Otherwise she certainly would have faced the same horrifying realization as her readers: that you have just peered in on the single most boring and pointless conversation ever published in comic form.

Crowding the margins:

• What's up with the spikey Gothic torture-chamber chairs? Do you figure Burl and Joy mistakenly left them out after the previous night's S&M party?
• I can't figure out what message I'm supposed to piece together from the coffee cups: No News, Bad News, Gossip. Please help me out.
  
• 911 = Gas. That's a flatulence joke, I assume. Which means that there is some small corner of the adult world that titters at the thought of gasseous emissions from fellow humans.
  
• McDonald's is missing the apostrophe. McGoon's probably should have one, but since it is a made up name, I guess we have to allow for poetic license. And, to complete the trifecta of maddening inconsistency, Boo Radley's Comedy Club correctly uses an apostrophe.
• I wish I lived in a neighborhood where the opening of a single new restaurant was such big news that you don't need to mention the name of the restaurant for everyone to know what you are talking about.