I fully understand that characters in comic strips are just pen-and-ink representations of things going on in an artist’s mind. That they’re not real.
Nevertheless, in seeing the launch of the current “Doonesbury” storyline in which B.D. becomes a man down in Iraq, my first thought was, “Oh God, poor Boopsie, she couldn’t take it, please don’t let him die.” Which shows just how effective Trudeau’s become in investing us in his cast’s fates.
Spoiler to follow regarding B.D…
It’s been reported that B.D. will survive, but will lose a leg. Since he’s been a football star since his inception, this of course will be beyond devastating. Granted, if we can recover the ability to laugh after 9/11, certainly there can be humor again in “Doonesbury” after such a horrific happenstance. But the bottom line is that you have to credit Trudeau’s guts for acknowledging that war is not a laughing matter.
PAD
• 
You mean Doonesbury was funny once? Must have been back in the 70’s, maybe during Nixon’s administration.
It’s worth noting that GET FUZZY is also dealing with a character losing a leg in Iraq, and that the sequence started simultaneously with the DOONESBURY sequence. The GET FUZZY character isn’t as central to that strip as B.D. is to DOONESBURY, but it’s being handled incredibly well, with some very subtle, poigniant commentary on the Iraq situation. The sequence started on 4/19, and can be picked up from the begiingin at http://www.comics.com/comics/getfuzzy/archive/getfuzzy-20040419.html.
“begiingin” = what happens when you type “beginning” too quickly. Sorry ’bout that.
Doonsebury is one of the most amazing comic strips. Its hard to read it and not laugh out loud. Its true about the emotional connection you develop with these characters. He doesn’t leave anyone safe either…. I mean, who would have thought that Mike and Joannie would have gotten a divorce. I crack up every year when he doesn’t get invited to the Whitehouse for that dinner for political cartoonists. I mean, he is so dead on with the truth, that it hurts to much for the Prez to have him there. oh… and LONG LIVE DUKE!!!
I read about the Doonesbury storyline, then read Get Fuzzy and started worrying about what might happen to Marmaduke.
Doonesbury always worked best for me when it was less topical, which is not most of the time unfortunately. the recent focus on Boopsie and BD for stories on college footbal rapists and the Iraq war just hasn’t done much for me. But then again, the comics page is getting to be a faster and faster read every year.
Yes, I remember Doonesbury being funny, and incisive. It still is. And the reason this week’s story is so tough is…Trudeau has the balls to go through with it.
Not a big doonesbury guy but have read the Get fuzzy storyline.Dont mind the commentary as we
do need to discuss these things in any forum possible.Check out Boondocks also highly funny and topical.
Is this the same Doonesbury that two weeks ago had George W. Bush calling Condoleeza Rice “Brown Sugar?” (checking) Yup, back on April 7th.
I guess it takes a special kind of person to get away with what would be called “racism” if anyone but a good, established liberal with such healthy mainstream media connections like Gary Trudeau said it.
I’m opening a betting pool. Will Colin Powell be called “Sambo,” “Spearchucker,” or “Jungle Bunny” in a future Doonesbury strip?
J.
And before anyone thinks I’m making up the above, here’s the direct link:
http://www.doonesbury.com/strip/dailydose/index.html?uc_full_date=20040407
J.
Trudeau is both tough and fair.
And PAD is right about the emotional connections
long time readers have with the strip.
When I saw the Monday strip my first reaction was
“Ohh…sh*t!” (Can I say “sh*t” here?) It took me
half a minute to decipher the entire implication
of the strip: the strip was shown from BD’s POV;
the first and last all black panels were him
drifting into consciousness (or at least closing
his eyes.) That’s when I realized my first
reaction “Oh no, you kiled BD – you b*st*rd!” was
wrong. And it’s right there, clearly expressed in
the way the strips constructed. A good job well
done from a technical standpoint; and still an
emotional blockbuster.
Jesus, liberal or conservative is irrelevant – the doonesbury site manages to be astonishingly annoying just with its navigation method and incessant -p0ink- noises. Not to mention the amazingly loud opening page…
Jay Tea?
Check the placement of the ”word balloons” – it is Condi who calls “W” ‘Brown Sugar’ not the other way around.
* http://images.ucomics.com/comics/db/2004/db040407.gif
BD can lose a leg just as onetime straights can turn out to be Gay. It’s a cartoon. He’ll need to re-examine his career choices …
Alan? I went back and looked again. The word balloons reverse in the second panel. Condi’s on the left.
* * * * *
Panel 1:
Condi, what if I nickname Clarke “Stretcher,” you know because he’s stretching the truth?
Not strong enough, Mr. President…
Panel 2:
I mean, this guy is the KING of lies! Sir! Do you know what he wrote about our first meeting?
Of course not – it’s in a book.
Panel 3:
He wrote I gave him the impression I’d never even HEARD of Al Qaeda!
Had you?
Panel 4:
Oh, like YOU had!
Careful, “Brown Sugar.”
* * * * *
Rice is speaking in the right balloon in the first panel, but continues into the first panel of the second panel. From then on, she’s the balloon on the left of each panel.
J.
“You have to credit Trudeau’s guts for acknowledging that war is not a laughing matter.”
Really? I HAVE to? I guess you’re right. I mean, Leno, Letterman, Kilborn, Kimmel and the rest regularly are cracking jokes about the casualties in Iraq, in addition to the constant jokes about our Commander-In-Chief’s goals and intelligence (the latter is of course true),
Heck, now that I think about it Rather, Brokaw, Jennings, Blitzer and the rest can hardly contain their laughter when reporting on the war. (Actually, even though I feel they all want Bush to lose, I would never be that cynical to suggest the loss of life doesn’t affect them).
I guess Trudeau is following in the “brave” footsteps of movie/TV creators like Oliver Stone. If you show U.S. troops as murderrs, psychopaths, rapists and drug users that is called “having the guts to show what war is REALLY like” (see Platoon, Born on the Fourth Of July, Casualties of War, Three Kings, etc.). If you show the war effort – and the men fighting it – as noble, you are – according to the Left/Hollywood engaging in “propaganda”.
Indeed, how many films period, and about Vietnam or more recent conflicts in particular, have been made in the past two decades that actually show the military in a positive light?
Yeah, Trudeau really has guts. The same guts it takes to make a film or TV episode that has a pro-abortion slant (when was the last time you saw an anti-abortion activist in a Hollywood story portrayed as anything other than a woman-hater/ violent abortion doc killer), the same guts it takes for a star to admit drug addiction in Hollywood or to “come out” in the most permissive/”tolerant” culture we have.
In other words, it doesn’t take much guts at all, despite liberals constantly wanting to pat themselves on the back about how “brave” they are.
You want brave today? Try getting Chuck Dixon’s “American Power” published or – better yet – made into a movie or TV series. Heroes actually treating terrorists like the scum they are? Now THAT would take some guts in this politically correct/ “thou shalt not offend” time.
(when was the last time you saw an anti-abortion activist in a Hollywood story portrayed as anything other than a woman-hater/ violent abortion doc killer)
A fair amount. For example, in several LAW and ORDER episodes, there were principled anti-abortion characters. Granted, they were not the main characters, but they were treated as principled.
Considering there was a famous Broadway show called “Bubbling Brown Sugar” about the golden era of Harlem, I’d hardly say that the nickname Trudeau has Bush giving Rice crosses the line of appropriateness.
And Jerome, frankly, I don’t know what crawled up your butt and died, but get it flushed out, would you please? I mean, this is just getting ridiculous. Anyone with a shred of reason understands that I was referring to Trudeau’s earlier strips about Iraq and the far more jokey, earlier strips with B.D. and Ray, and how now he’s mining that same situation for drama instead of laughs. Combine that with the fact that most people consider the comics page the province purely of gags and snickers–meaning Trudeau will likely catch flack for it from both upset long-time readers and cranky short timers who think such storylines inappropriate–and yeah, I think the comment about the decision being gutsy is pretty self-evident.
But you come out with guns and sarcasm blazing over the simplest comment. You’re obviously very unhappy with just about everything I have to say, so maybe you want to consider setting up shop elsewhere.
PAD
PAD, I have tremendous respect for your writing. In fact, I’m re-reading “No Limits” at the moment, and can NOT wait for the next New Frontier. I also buy Fallen Angel and Captain Marvel every month.
Your politics, however, drive me nuts. Oh, well…
The first thing I think of when I hear the phrase “Brown Sugar” when applied to a black woman is the Rolling Stones song, and it is EXTREMELY offensive to refer to Condoleeza Rice in such terms. It is rude, it is crude, and I cannot imagine any prominent black woman being called “Brown Sugar” by another figure without that second figure being publicly pilloried. But Trudeau gets a pass.
I’ve been letting this brew in the back of my head ever since I first heard of it a week or so ago. Then when my favorite writer, one of only three authors whose work I’ve bought in hardcover at full price, praises Trudeau, I couldn’t sit quietly.
If I went over the top, I apologize. I don’t apologize for my opinion, though, and I still think Trudeau deserves some pillorying for putting those words in George W. Bush’s mouth, if he won’t apologize for it.
J.
(“Bubbling Brown Sugar?” Never heard of it, but what I know about musicals you could fit on the head of a pin with enough room for a whole host of angels to perform said show. A quick Googling shows it, though, 1976-1977. That’s one musical I now have heard of, 12.7 bazillion more to go…)
(And no, PAD, I wasn’t “fact-checking” you. Your citation intrigued me, so I thought I’d take a looksee. It’s playing this summer in Atlanta, and Diahann Carroll is playing the lead. July 16-24, more info at http://www.theaterofthestars.com/showBrownSugar.htm for the curious.)
And NOW I notice that most of PAD’s comments were directed to Jerome, not me. I’ll just shut up and go to bed now…
J.
There’s some speculation that Doonesbury and Get Fuzzy are having a “Squadron Supreme/Assemblers” style crossover, that Rob’s cousin Will is B.D.
This is a debate that’s been going on since Huck Finn.
Trudeau did not call Condi Rice “Brown Sugar” any more than Twain, personally, called Jim the Slave a Nìggër. Trudeau, for whom the use of such a nickname is well out of character, depicted a character in a fiction he wrote calling Condi Rice “Brown Sugar.” He did this as a joke which had more to do with the character delivering the line than with the character being addressed. The name was supposed to be outrageous and unexpected and inappropriate.
And, as with Twain and Huck Finn, using the phrase out of context to belittle the man’s entire body of work is unfair and clueless and wrong.
“It’s worth noting that GET FUZZY is also dealing with a character losing a leg in Iraq, and that the sequence started simultaneously with the DOONESBURY sequence.”
Not a comic strip, but JAG had the same thing to one of its main characters when “Bud” lost a led to a land mine in Afghanistan at the end of a season a couple of years ago. Took him quite a while to recover physically and even more so psychologically. No magic tv-land instant recovery.
“Its true about the emotional connection you develop with these characters.”
Depends on when you started for some, I guess. Ladyfriend, back in the mid-80s, had grown up and gone to university with the DOONESBURY crowd and loved it and had deplored Trudeau’s retirement. When he took it all up again, she had been much looking forward to it but then found she simply couldn’t connect with the characters as she had ‘grown up’ differently than they and simply couldn’t relate to them any more. She gave up reading it after a while and never went back to the new ones, although she still enjoyed the ‘classic’ ones.
I read about the nature of BD’s injury today, having already seen Monday’s strip and GET FUZZY as well. Hey, this is the third war he’s been in, I guess it was too much to assume he’d come home without a scratch yet again.
He hasn’t been a football player since the hiatus, having suffered a career-ending injury in his first pro game. He was a motorcycle cop for a few years there, though, before becoming the coach at Walden College. He could coach again, but he’s going to have to get through recovery first. It’ll be interesting to watch.
Paul
I haven’t really followed “Doonesbury” for a while. But I’m not surprised at all that Trudeau did this. His strip has mostly been centerd on how people react to real life – the good and the bad parts of it.
What really turns me off about the strip is Uncle Duke. He started out as a simple joke on Hunter Thompson, but he quickly turned into the ideal wingnut role model – the bášŧárd who makes profit from war and international discord, and gets away with it with no consequences. (Kind of the person Bush wants to be.)
The first thing I thought of, when I read Mr. David’s “big reveal” on the strip, was Al Capp. He, too, lost a leg – except as a young boy. As a kind of vengeance, he always drew his “Li’l Abner” characters walking weird, with legs stretched in almost goose-step positions. And Capp once illustrated, or maybe also wrote, a book for amputees that was distributed by the military, that explained that they could still have good lives.
“The first thing I think of when I hear the phrase “Brown Sugar” when applied to a black woman is the Rolling Stones song, and it is EXTREMELY offensive to refer to Condoleeza Rice in such terms.”
Never heard of the song (which, let’s face it, is fair since you never heard of the musical) so I looked up the lyrics. Yeah, I can see how that would read as offensive. Presumably, Trudeau’s defense would be that Bush would be so slow that he’d think it an affectionate nickname, and that’s the joke. Still, at least now I understand the aspect of the reference that you find so annoying.
PAD
We don’t get Doonesbury in the paper here. Being roughly evenhanded to both right and left meant that he was completely biased against the right for most of the readers here. It was replaced by Mallard Filmore, which is probably the most biased strip I’ve ever seen. I went and had a look at the recent strips on the Doonesbury site and PAD is right, this weeks story is wrenching.
I also looked at the “Brown Sugar” strip. The only thing I can think of is to ask what is meant by the quotes around Brown Sugar? Is Shrub calling her that or is it a reference to what the media or someone else call her? Meant to be an ironic nickname given by Bush to Rice?
There have been other ‘physically challegened’ (trying to be socialable and politically correct here folks) characters in comics.
The title dog Buckles has a dog friend whose rear legs are instead some kind of cart assembly, and is still happily chasing cars.
And I think the first(?), yet most prominent had to be the gentleman in Bloom County (dang! blanking out on his name at the moment) who was confined to a wheelchair, yet had a steady job, a girlfriend who loved him, and when all his other friends got together to play, they pretended he was Captain Kirk of the starship Enterprise (the wheelchair itself).
Although in both cases, the characters were introduced after their physical therapy and emotional adjustment to their new lives was ‘complete’.
But a Doonesbury/Get Fuzzy crossover would be interesting, especially if Rob’s companions are portrayed ‘realistically’ by Trudeau. Then will that mean that Rob is just projecting a fantasy life onto his pets like all of Snoopy’s extraciricular activities? Or are they playing possum?
Only time will tell.
“The first thing I think of when I hear the phrase “Brown Sugar” when applied to a black woman is the Rolling Stones song, and it is EXTREMELY offensive to refer to Condoleeza Rice in such terms.”
PAD “Never heard of the song (which, let’s face it, is fair since you never heard of the musical) so I looked up the lyrics.”
I’m speechless! Never heard of this song? Where were you in the 60’s and 70’s? Oh my goodness. I think we need to start a fund for the cultural update of PAD. All donations to be used for that express purpose. Except for the 90% that goes to our executive officer. 😉
Jae?
It’s funnier if Condi calls him ‘Brown Sugar’ than the reverse, and that’s the way I read that strip. What’s funny about the usurper Boy king abusing female underlings when that’s so “real life.”
Man, I miss “Thor” and Phred.
What’s jarring is BD’s head is shown I think for the first time. And he won’t be able to do the CHIPs gig with a prosthesis. Harsh in a comic strip.
Peter? Rolling Stone’ Sticky Fingers album. Mick and the lads perform a good tune.
http://www.inkblotmagazine.com/rev-archive/Rolling_Stones_Sticky.htm
That help place it?
OK, time to redeem myself slightly on culture: my primary source for “Brown Sugar” wasn’t the Rolling Stones, but Weird Al Yankovic’s “Hot Rocks Polka” from his album UHF.
Why, oh why, if there turns out to be ONE topic I know more of than PAD, does it have to be Rolling Stones lyrics, of all things? Why not high finance, or gambling secrets, or quantum physics, or lottery numbers, or… well, anything BUT Rolling Stones lyrics.
J.
RE: “Brown Sugar” — you’re all missing the point. Rice and Bush are talking about ways to neuter the impact of the testimony and they decide to make up an embarrassing nickname for Clark and then leak it to the press, implying that he wasn’t a respected or influential part of the White House. Bush then says “Careful, ‘Brown Sugar’,” warning that he could use the same tactic against her if she ever failed to fall in line.
I’m willing to bet that if PAD heard just a few seconds of “Brown Sugar” he’d slap his forehead and recognize it. It has to be in the top 5 Stones songs that still get played.
I don’t think the song was all that controversial when it came out–indeed, it might have been viewed as almost progressive (A white rock and roll star finds Black women attractive! Wow! How edgy!) (the 60s. May they never return.) The song that really got the Stones in hot water with some Blacks was “Some Girls”, which contained a lewd reference to Black women. I think that’s when people started seeing “Brown Sugar” in a harsher light.
But dámņ, man, I’m with Karen on this one…I can see not getting a reference to something by The Pixies (Greatest. Band. Ever.) but Brown freaking Sugar??? This is like making a Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds joke to Joss Whedon and getting a blank stare.
I hope we’ve made you feel very very unhip, young man.
PAD does know a lot of tunes from the 60s and the 70s. He is a bit more hazy about the 80s but that’s where I come in since I was a “skinny tie” music fan. Still like a lot of techno, trance, and other dance music. Never got into Rap. It was sort of like Country music for me, a few songs and artists I liked, but over all I can leave the genre alone. I love classical music. Peter is a wiz at Showtunes and Movie Soundtracks. We both like Cirque du Soleil music. The problem is calling up a tune that you haven’t listen to on purpose rathen than passing is much harder.
Indeed, how many films period, and about Vietnam or more recent conflicts in particular, have been made in the past two decades that actually show the military in a positive light?
What, you didn’t see that gov’t-backed Jessica Lynch movie some time ago, where she was gung-ho with guns blazing?
Or do we dare presume to say that movie is a good example when, even though it shows the military in a supposedly positive light, it’s utter bûllšhìŧ?
I enjoy Doonesbury, despite my “conservativeness”. I don’t think Truduow walks the razor’s edge anymore, as he used to. Cutting edge without being overtly mean, that is. He can be quite mean spirited these days, but still, I loved the strip when I was a kid and it first came out and I love the fact that the characters grew up and moved on. There’s none I would want as a role model, but hey, I wouldn’t want the Hulk or Rick as a role model, either. The only other strip I follow is For Better or Worse for the same reason: characters that age give fresh stories.
People are getting wounded and killed in Iraq. That’s the cost of freedom. If BD stays in character, he will (eventually) understand that. If he doesn’t, then he isn’t BD. And we saw BD’s hair. He has some. Go figure.
You don’t know “Brown Sugar”? I remember my mother quickly switching off the radio when that came on. If I recall, there is a verse they cut out for regular broadcast… or is that Walk on the Wildside? (You know that one, right?)
Being an ancient, gnarled five years older than PAD, I remember when “Brown Sugar” hit the airwaves (1971). It wasn’t considered particularly controversial. A few comments emerged, but nothing compared to the frenzy some earlier Stones songs generated. The idea that it’s a horribly racist remark is tripe. Frankly, I see the complaints about its use in “Doonesbury” as the latest RNC “so’s your mother” drivel. No matter what a Republican does, there’s always some Democrat who did it first, or worse–even if they have to stretch the truth like Plastic Man on methadrine to come up with an example.
The current “Doonesbury” strip would have been a shocker if the dámņ media hadn’t ruined it for me. I wish I had seen the strips before the media gave away the game. And, astonishingly, the same media doesn’t seem to notice what’s happening in “Gasoline Alley” right now. Go figure.
The “Brown Sugar” thing was in the context of Dubya supposedly giving others nicknames that give him some measure of control. In that context, the nickname “Brown Sugar” for Ms. Rice is, at the least, amusing (IMHO, anyway).
I’ll readily admit that I can’t always make out what Mick’s singing, but the song “Brown Sugar” always struck me as being more about the contradiction in simultaneously treating a group of people as nonhuman, and lusting after one of them as a human woman. Am I reading too much into the song?
On the “Brown Sugar” thing:
I’m wondering how different it is from Mel Brooks having pretty much the entire cast of “Blazing Saddles” call Sherrif Bart “ņìggër” at some point in the movie. Far from being called racist, it’s hailed as one of the best comedies of all time. Brooks mostly uses the epithet to call attention to the fact that the people who use it are ignorant, somewhat mean-spirited, and should be held up for ridicule. When I read the strip in question, I pretty much immediately made the parallel.
And, as far as I know, there’s been no outcry from the section of the black community whose function is apparently to take offense any time something can even obliquely be called racist (I’m thinking most recently of the guy who said Notre Dame needs to attract more black athletes). Instead, it seems to be coming from the section of the conservative community whose function is apparently to take offense any time something can even obliquely be called critical of Bush.
Fuuny old world, as Capt. Sparrow said.
forget the whole brown sugar debate, and B.D losing the leg, the big news should be that in today’s strip you finally see BD without his helmet!
PAD,
If it seems like I’ve been “getting in your cyberface”, I apologize. Such is not my intention. I can see how my last post on this topic could be interpreted as me being angry, but I wasn’t at all. That’s the thing with written/typed communication. If I was speaking to you, I feel you would have realized this.
I’m hardly ever intentionally rude,even to people – including some posters here – who are rude to me, so I definitely wouldn’t try to be to you, who are possibly my favorite writer and who I consider to be extremely talented and thought-provoking.
Indeed, I have enjoyed the discussione here more than I enjoy 95% of the conversations I have with politicians and other writers.
In fact, more than one poster here – and yourself – have allowed me to think of certain things in a different way. I may still hold the same opinion, but I now have a broader and richer point of reference.
Thanks to you and my fellow fans of your work.
Thanks (and sorry) again.
Jerome
Just a side note on Bud from JAG (who, as noted above, lost a leg in Iraq):
He’s a fan of (at least) media SF. His new son is named “James Kirk”, which he managed to slip past his wife before she caught it. And, yes, it was definitely from Trek.
He also watches “Quantum Leap”, but since that’s another Bellisario show, that shouldn’t be surprising. 🙂
The media didn’t give away the most shocking thing about today’s strip, though. I mean, sure, he was shown with a stump where his leg was blown off, but… but…
Well, all I know is, he’s *never* been depicted like that.
It’s a sign of how desperate the conservative pundits are for smear material that they’re trying to turn a minor “Brown Sugar” punchline into a new scandal du jour.
The reason this Doonesbury sequence works for some people and doesn’t work for others is that some people (like PAD and myself) have been reading Doonesbury for 20 years, and have grown attached to the BD character. It is our personal familiarity with the character that makes this sequence powerful, not the words and pictures themselves.
It reminds me of when they killed Gwen Stacy in Spidey 121. So many people were furious with Marvel, and I didn’t get what all the fuss was about. Why not? Because Spidey 121 was the second issue of Spider Man I ever bought.
However, Doonesbury is now a fringe media which only a small proportion of the US population follows. If the great US liberal media conspiracy had Joey Tribiani of Friends lose a leg in Iraq, the whole country would be crying.
Those of you who are blaming “the media” for spoiling the strip: the information was released by the syndicator, Universal Press Syndicate, presumably with Trudeau’s blessing. I agree, in principle, that it would have been more effective to be surprised; on the other hand, I don’t check it every day (online) so I’m one of the people who might have missed it.
Just in case you haven’t heard, the Republicans will probably be calling for a re-instatement of the Draft after the elections in November.
http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=38139
Just a little clarification: IIRC, Bud (from JAG) lost a leg in Afghanistan, not Irak. And it’s an example of a TV show where the military is treated in a positive light, which should come a sno surprise, given who the producer is.
I’m wondering when exactly the syndicator was supposed to release the information.
I heard about it after I’d already read Monday’s strip, which in and of itself was a serious “oh sh*t” moment that had me wondering where things were going. I was a little bit irked when someone (not here) spoiled the actual news for me shortly thereafter, but not the same way I would have been had I heard about it before this sequence even started.
And I’d completely agree with Athos — the impact is being felt most strongly for those of us who’ve followed B.D.’s “career” (as much as a fictional character has) for 20+ years. When some new strip just out of the starting gate runs a piece like this, it’s not nearly as meaningful.
(Given the great job Darby Conley did responding to 9/11 in “Get Fuzzy”, though, I’ll admit to a lot of curiosity about where he’s taking this wounded-in-Iraq sequence, too.)
TWL
Just in case you haven’t heard, the Republicans will probably be calling for a re-instatement of the Draft after the elections in November.
Yes, I saw an article about this on Yahoo’s front page yesterday. It was gone half an hour later.
On another forum I read for another author, the author commented that a Democrat made a similar comment a year ago. Yet nobody jumped on it.
So far, the media hasn’t jumped on this latest Republican comment about the draft either though.
Can’t say I like seeing this sort of turn of events in what is a humor comic. I fear it will turn into a late-series episode of MASH, with perhaps a little too much pathos and also a sense that Trudeau is doing it to shock more than he ought to. He’s not Joss Whedon, and I think that this could become poor soap opera too quickly.
I give him credit for wanting to try something new and that would shake up the audience, but this is not what I read Doonesbury for.