History Headscratchers / Zits

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<<|ItJustBugsMe|>>

* In an early strip Connie is shown to be ap sychologist, so why is she so clueless about how to raise Jeremy?

* In an early strip Connie is shown to be apsychologist, so why is she so clueless about how to raise Jeremy?

* In an early strip COnnie is shown to be apsychologist, so why is she so clueless about how to raise Jeremy?

* This is probably just YourMileageMayVary biting me in the ass (since I can see roughly equal ButtMonkey time for the generations being a strong point from another perspective), but it drives me crazy how the two generations bounce the IdiotBall back and forth so the cartoonist can make "parents are overprotective, unbelievably dorky, and out of touch" jokes ''and'' "teenagers are lazy, messy, and absurdly self-centered" jokes. It's not consistent characterization at all. Whichever generation is the focus will be reasonably sensible and competent (by the standards of newspaper comics, anyways) and serve as the viewpoint character(s) for readers in the appropriate demographic, and then they'll get handed the IdiotBall when it's the other one's turn and it feels like a swift left turn into ThisLoserIsYou.
** Dorky embarrassing parents and lazy self-centered teenagers doesn't sound inconsistent, it sounds like reality.
** YMMV. This troper finds that to be the best part of the strip: there's no single protagonist and no obvious idiot. Walt and Connie are good parents, albeit embarrassing (and who's aren't, when you're a teenager), and do things like wash the car in the driveway in swim trunks. Jeremy is a good kid; smart with good grades, plenty of friends, a girlfriend, and a band, but has no tolerance for his folks and does really dumbass things some times. It's pretty true-to-life and switches the perspective enough to keep it interesting.
** I dunno....it actually seemed pretty realistic to me. People pick up the IdiotBall and throw it back and forth a lot. My parents were good people, and they knew not to embarrass me when I told them what does. Yet at the same time, among other things never learned that "Leave me alone" doesn't mean "Bother me until you make a bad mood even ''worse''", never learned to ''knock'' and assumed that whenever the door was locked that we were doing something bad and would always pick it. (Leading to ''countless'' situations where they walked in on us ''on the toilet'' or ''taking a bath/shower'') I merely did what they said and behaved well yet I somehow kept taking advantage of them and didn't realize that they ''wanted'' me to drive because they were sick of driving me everywhere even when they were sick. There were times when both of us were TooDumbToLive and other times were we were the reasonable party. That's ''life''.
** RealityIsUnrealistic. One of the treasuries had a partial list on the back of people who had written in and basically said, "You must have a camera in our house."

** I dunno....it actually seemed pretty realistic to me. People pick up the IdiotBall and throw it back and forth a lot. My parents were good people, and they knew not to embarrass me when I told them what does. Yet at the same time, among other things never learned that "Leave me alone" doesn't mean "Bother me until you make a bad mood even ''worse''", never learned to ''knock'' and assumed that whenever the door was locked that we were doing something bad and would always pick it. (Leading to ''countless'' situations where they walked in on us ''on the toilet'' or ''taking a bath/shower'') I merely did what they said and behaved well yet I somehow kept taking advantage of them and didn't realize that they <i>wanted</i> me to drive because they were sick of driving me everywhere even when they were sick. There were times when both of us were TooDumbToLive and other times hwere we were the reasonable party. That's ''life''.