For Better Or For Worse

For Better Or For Worse is a comic strip that I really liked to read when I was younger. I noticed that there is a lot of negativity going around about the strip. Now, I don't deny that the strip started to rub people the wrong way. I really don't. I would, however, like to argue that some of the points given about why the strip sucks are simply wrong.

For instance, there are claims that the Pattersons blamed April for the death of Farley. I never saw any instance of that happening. In fact, April actually said It's All My Fault, and John comforted her, saying that it wasn't her fault.

What? Are you going to tell me that I am remembering things all wrong?

Never quite understood the negativity towards this strip myself, either. It was always one of MY favorites. It seems like a lot of people didn't like a number of the turns that the characters took, and chose to get REALLY aggravated about them, and elected to drag events from the cartoonist's personal life into the mix as well in a kind of armchair-psychological attempt to explain things. F Bo W is a great strip, one of the best of the late 20th century; I will admit that it didn't end on the strongest note, but really, very few strips DO end anywhere near a strong as they are in their prime.

One major source of the negativity was Anthony himself. A number of people consider him The Wesley and say that just about every episode contained blatant Shilling the Wesley.

I would like to point out that it wasn't like every episode had the Pattersons singing praises about Anthony. Maybe because they were busy with other things.

I agree that the storyline where Elizabeth almost got raped by that Complete Monster could have been handled better. Anthony had a Big Damn Heroes moment of fending off the rapist, and the act should have gotten him a Crowning Moment Of Awesome. He would have gotten it if he took Elizabeth to the police station. Instead, he ruined the moment by taking Elizabeth to the park to tell her that his marriage to Therese is falling apart. Clearly, Willing Suspension of Disbelief was shattered to a million pieces and people found themselves looking at Unfortunate Implications.

While people have a point about Anthony handling his marriage to Therese all wrong, it should be pointed out that Therese was not blameless herself. Francoise is a rather cute kid, and I have to say that I did find it strange that Francoise was not even mentioned in the epilogue.

I guess I'm just trying to point out that Anthony could have been a better character had it not been for Bad Writing.

I have seen how on some parts of TV Tropes, they say that Michael Patterson is a Purity Sue. I have to say this...surely you jest! I have read episodes of the character back when he was a teenager, and I can tell you that he was so not pure! He bopped his sister on the head at one point, and antagonized his parents. His family certainly did not ignore this. In fact, Elly tried to talk to him about the way he was acting, and he responded by looking at his watch and said "If this is a lecture, how long will it be?" She did not take that well.

That thing with Michael acting like Paparazzi was unacceptable, no question. It could have been worse. He could just acted all "Meh" about finding out that it was his childhood sweetheart Deanna. Instead, he felt bad about it, like he should have. I think he did learn his lesson there and he did visit Deanna at the hospital. Here's a little something you should think about: that storyline with Michael, Deanna and the car accident was based on a Real Life event involving Lynn Johnston's son. Her son acted like Paparazzi and took pictures of a car crash victim. The car crash victim died and the son found out that she was somebody he knew years ago! He had to learn a terrible lesson from that one.

Michael shunting all the responsibilities of raising kids to Deanna? No way! He did spend time playing with the kids, and he showed them the trick with Super-Teddy! Also, I'd like to point out that Lynn Johnston grew up in the 1950s, and that Values Dissonance would be par for the course as a result of this. Personally, I think that one parent doing the child-rearing and the other parent doing the money-earning work could be considered a Divide and Conquer strategy.

That thing with Michael racing back to his apartment to get the story he was writing, even when the apartment was on fire, could have been handled better. I, myself, have admitted to my family that if a tornado struck our house, I would be upset at the loss of the Video Games I own. I know that sounds terrible, but I'm just trying to point out that I can understand Michael trying to save his story, even if it is considered upsetting to readers. Lynn Johnston did admit that she forgot about memory keys (flash drives), and other things with computers that would have allowed Michael to save his work somewhere where he wouldn't have to save it from a fire. Seems to be that the writer simply made a mistake.

I'm reading through the series right now and just finished the book where Michael and Deanna get married. I still really like it but I already don't like Anthony. I'm nervous for the stuff that's coming up.

I agree that some of the stuff on the page here doesn't seem to be true. I thought the same thing about April supposedly being blamed for Farley's death. Does April really become the unfavorite? I haven't noticed it yet and I remember periodically reading the strip in it's later years and didn't notice it then either. I do agree with that page about April being great though. She's one of my favorite characters.

That page also says the Patterson sit around and wait for miracles instead of working for what they get. I'll admit that they probably get more lucky breaks than most people but they are often seen working hard.

edited 11th Feb '14 6:52:05 PM by Waterlily

Most of my memories of this strip come either from my local paper, where it was only featured in the larger Sunday spread, or the Comics Curmudgeon, where it was a frequent target until the reboot.

If you ask me, Willing Suspension of Disbelief was broken when the writer tried to get us to believe that any woman could be attracted to that mustache. And the "roadside" slang never fails to make me laugh at how stupid it sounds. Maybe it's a cross-border thing I'm not picking up on.

Honestly, to me it feels like all the entries about For Better or Worse not on its actual trope page were all written by the same person. That person being someone whose only experience with the strip comes from the Comics Curmudgeon. Which isn't a review site. It's a riffing blog. The Curmudgeon purposefully picks the narmiest strips of the day to make fun of. He shouldn't be taken as an authority on quality.

It's kinda like Rifftrax. I love Rifftrax, they're hilarious, but even with movies they like they have to pretend to hate them when riffing them up. So one shouldn't trust all they say.

On the topic of the reboot, I kinda wish the cartoonist hadn't intentionally started drawing worse so that her new art matched her old strips' style. I liked seeing the heightened detail and contrast between the two, to show how far the strip had come.

edited 12th Feb '14 12:45:43 AM by Tuckerscreator

To me, the strip was always just there. Unlike Dilbert, I never considered it boring enough to skip entirely; unlike Get Fuzzy, I never read it to see how unenjoyable it would be today; unlike the soap opera-type strips such as Apartment 3-G, I never skipped it because I didn't yet get that they weren't supposed to be funny. FBOFW was just there.

For some reason, I find Stone Soup more entertaining even though it does a lot of the same things.

I have just discovered how hated Anthony is by the fanbase, and I want to understand why. Yeah, not keeping his promise to Therese about sharing the responsibilities with the baby doesn't sound that good. But what else did he do, that was terrible enough to make him The Scrappy? After all, he did save Elizabeth from a rapist!

And we also have April, who people say is The Unfavorite to the point where everything she likes is treated like it's "lame". Not to mention that she supposedly was blamed for a dog's death, despite the fact that she only was four years old at the time, and that her grandfather supposedly is the only one in her family who likes her. I hope that it's not true...

Anthony was the victim of the writer taking a different plot path than the vocal minority of fans wanted her to. Elizabeth had gotten out on her own, developed her own supporting cast and was generally pretty decent. Meanwhile, Anthony had been Put on a Bus by marrying him off to Therese, even though he hadn't left town and Elizabeth had.

Then things started to go sour with a rather heavy-handed attempt by the author to make Therese look like a Clingy Jealous Girl who needlessly compared herself to Anthony's first love, the wholesome Elizabeth. This became more of a problem as time went on and it became obvious that Anthony had, in fact, impulsively married Therese as a rebound relationship without getting over Elizabeth first.

Then there was the subplot of Therese, who was very reluctant to have children because she wanted to concentrate on her career, being pressured into having a baby with Anthony—and the strip depicting this as a good thing. Anthony's promise to be the primary caregiver may or may not have been sincere, but most certainly was broken, yet we were asked to sympathize with him rather than Therese when she called him on that.

And the moment when Anthony takes the occasion of saving Elizabeth from a Near-Rape Experience to try to advance his relationship with her while she would be emotionally vulnerable. He in effect makes the moment all about him.

And Elizabeth gave up her independent life and life-affirming job to move back to her home town, dumped the interesting romantic interests she'd had, and married her elementary school boyfriend.

Plus the "happy ending" for Anthony and Elizabeth conspicuously '''not''' showing his child with Therese; you remember, the one he wanted so very much?

Now, all of this was perfectly valid creative decisions by Lynn Johnston. But a very vocal minority of fans felt disappointed by the direction taken. And since they'd grown up reading the daily adventures of these characters, metaphorically growing up with "Lizard-breath" as one of their warm acquaintances, they felt a kind of bond was being violated.

I see... Well, as I didn't know all the details, I'm so glad that you could fill me in. It was too bad that Anthony had to become a Creator's Pet, but it seems like there are some genuinely good reasons to not like him.

I was surprised to see how hated Elly is on the character page. To me, she definitely has flaws but in ways that make her a well-rounded and realistic character. That page talks about her like she's a sociopath.

I believe most of the edits on the pages for this come from a Live Journal community about the strip. They've had a strong distaste for the strip since around the time Anthony became Der Wunderkind and the resulting u-turn Liz's character arc made, among other things. After the strip started re-running, they've been looking at the old strips and are seeing how the Pattersons' parenting screwed up Mike and Liz.

I should mention they're also the home of most of the fanfic on the Recs page, including the one where Elly dies and the next few weeks drives the cast apart.

Don't mean to necro this, but I just wanted to mention that whoever did the YMMV page makes Johnston sound like freaking Phyllis Schaffly. I mean yeah, save April, the other "good" women in the strip have "girly" jobs, but hey, they do work, and Deanna becomes a business owner regardless of what the business is.

I get that Johnston had/has...views about career women and "rabid" feminists, and Therese was given the short end of the stick in some regards, and Anthony became the Creator's Pet, but it wasn't as bad as the page is saying, was it? I mean supposedly Johnston said childless career women are "wastes of space" and housewives are the only women worth anything, but I haven't been able to find any evidence she's said anything like that.

edited 16th Aug '16 7:00:49 AM by Sisi

No, the strip was never anywhere near that bad. All that stuff always sounded to me like people who got way too invested in the strip freaking out that storylines didn't go the way they wanted.

As to the rest, remember that Johnston herself was a career woman.

Since I have yet to read through the later years of this strip, I don't really know what to think about April being The Unfavorite and Anthony being a Creator's Pet. Is it really true or not?

So far, I have not yet seen much of April except for when she's a baby. So I can't say more about this now. However, why would her parents disapprove of her finishing her homework or caring for her grandfather? That makes no sense at all!

And as for Anthony, this is maybe me being very peculiar. But I wouldn't mind marrying a "dull" accountant, so I guess that I'm with Johnston on that one. And it also seems like several of Elizabeth's "more exciting" exes cheated on her, or did other questionable things. Anthony seems to have been what she needed.

But if it is true that Anthony had pressured Therese into having a baby, refused to keep his promise about staying at home when Francoise was born, and used a near-rape incident to ask Elizabeth to wait for him, while he still was married to Therese, he is more morally dubious than Johnston must have intended.

But I can't help finding it funny that the Anthony haters call him "boring" and "bland", at the same time as they think that he's the scum of the Earth. Can a character really be both those things at the same time?

Or is the problem here that they thought that he was a sexist jerk, but not a hot enough sexist jerk to make them enter the All Girls Want Bad Boys mode?

That I have seen people say that they would have preferred it if Elizabeth stayed with a guy, whose name I can't recall, but he would cheat on her and treat her like dirt, makes me wonder if I'm not onto something. Some people can be all feministy if some nerdy gawky-looking man wants his wife to Stay in the Kitchen, but they will just drool all over sexy macho men with the same (or worse) attitudes.

So my verdict on Anthony is that he had his flaws, and it was not only Therese's fault that their marriage was a failure. But in the end, he was in love with Elizabeth and was the right man for her.

Edited by Kickisan on Jun 30th 2020 at 1:16:43 PM

I remember reading an analysis of Anthony that listed him not being sexy enough as a mark against him. So yeah, his looks seemed to have played a factor into why people hated him.

And I'm not surprised at all. People are full of double standards.

It is worth noting though that some people feel, that this comic strip went from radical to reactionary over the decades. Others might say that it wasn't as bad as that.

However, many people have become less liberal and more conservative as they got older. And I guess that it indeed is possible that Johnston is one of them.

Edited by Kickisan on Jul 2nd 2020 at 2:56:40 PM