If you have to ask...

See it here.

This is the third time this week that The Dinette Set gropes towards a joke involving Burl and Joy's thriftiness. Three swings. Three misses. Yer' out.

Admittedly, this particular effort is at least straightforward. Burl is looking to buy a boat but feels that $100 is too steep a price to pay. Not funny, mind you. But at least I'm not flailing around trying to figure out where the joke is supposed to be.

This time, however, I wonder: why a boat?

There's literally dozens of big-ticket items you could have chosen that would have worked just as well as a boat. Items whose price points readers will be more familiar with. A car, a TV, a computer, jewelry...

I suspect I am not alone in never having priced boats. So, I don't know if the $100 asking price for whatever dinghy they are (presumably) sitting aboard is too high, too low, or just right. Is the joke, once again, that the $100 would be low to you and me but is high to Burl? Or is the joke that Burl's miserly expectations are out of whack with reality? You have to assume the former since over-repetition of gags is stock-in-trade for The Dinette Set.

The point being, however, that instead of chuckling about Burl's thriftiness, this carelessly chosen detail sets the reader's mind drifting onto unrelated matters.

The only mildly satisfactory explanation for choosing a boat over another item is that the artist wanted to try her hand at drawing a Marina. The fact that a disproportionate percentage of the overall panel is devoted to a panoramic vista of the Marina, lake, and far shore tends to suggest this interpretation is correct. After all, the same joke could have been executed just as successfully (so to speak) with a picture of Joy and Burl crammed into a tiny dighy.

Given Ms. Larson's inability to render perspective, the attempt to draw the Marina was miguided. Though I will give partial credit for showing the smallest amount of Joy and Burl in any panel I have examined to date.

In fact, extra marks because if you ignore all the existing text, focus on Burl and Joy, and imagine them in a dinghy that is slowly sinking, you can invent a joke by yourself that is far funnier than what's actually here.

Maritime marginalia:

• I'm guessing the large boat is named "RAM" or "RA" or that "RAM/RA" is the last letters of the full name. The leftmost boat in the background appears to be called "SCAB" while the rightmost is called "DUNCE." I have no explanation for any of those names, just eyestrain from squinting at them.
• Thank goodness the name of the engine on the boat to Burl's right is included, however illegibly. Imagine how incomplete the panel would be without that critical detail.
• I know what the inner tube is supposed to say, but couldn't Ms. Larson have erased the letter "n" in "Rent-to-Own" and re-written it so it didn't look like the letter "h" before sending this panel to her publisher? How lazy is she, exactly?
• That said, further partial credit for the inner tube with the motor. I wish I didn't find it mildy funny, but I do.
• The use of "Skipper" by the Marina employee could be a reference to Gilligan's Island to make a joke about Burl's weight. Or it could be Ms. Larson's approximation of nautical jargon. I like the last one better, personally.