9chickweedlane | Sharing a bed? Shocking! (Reply)

9 Chickweed Lane 1-9-2023

Juliette started dating a few years after her divorce but it was almost entirely casual and as far as we know her sexual activity was limited to kissing on the front porch while Gran watched and glared.

Elliot, with whom she worked, was her first serious relationship. They dated for quite a while and eventually he started asking her to marry him. She freaked out each time, but he persisted. Their relationship was a bit rocky at times... she wanted him to be more spontaneous and he just isn't that kind of guy. Her therapist pointed out that her last spontaneous guy was her ex-husband and did she really want THAT? It was a nice bit of story telling.

Eventually Juliette agrees to marry him, although it's unclear whether they are legally married or not. Thorax performs a service where he mangles all the words and they just kind of go along with it. Afterward she and Elliot share her bed. Regardless of the LEGALITY of their marriage they consider themselves married.

And there's reasons for Juliette not to want to legally tie herself to someone again. Although as they're both getting older it would be easier legally for them to make medical decisions for each other if need be.

The thing is, they didn't get married until after Edda (and Amos) had left for their new lives in New York, at the ballet corps and Julliard respectively, at the age of 17 or 18.

So Juliette and Elliot wouldn't be in bed together like a cute old married couple, their tiny hands and spindly fingers delicately gripping their large hardcover books as they read themselves to sleep.

The problem with this set up for the joke is that Elliot is pretty much the only person she can share it with. At this point in her life she doesn't have any friends other than her daughter and her judgemental mother. She has an old friend named Rose who she sometimes talks to on the phone, but that's usually so she can brag about her life and feel better about things. We've never seen Rose, she only exists unseen and unheard at the other end of a phone line. Juliette also has her therapist, who we haven't seen in a long time. And this punchline doesn't really work with a therapist.

I guess this could have been set at the college she teaches at, with her talking to a TA or another professor or doctor or something. It wouldn't take much more set up. "My kid's best friend stopped by to ask blah blah blah."

Like nearly all his characters, though, Juliette exists in a void populated only by immediate family and people she's fucking. Elliot is easy option as someone for her to talk to because he's it. He's an established character who talks to her. And they're in bed instead of sitting on the couch or eating lunch together or something... for reasons?

It's really lazy writing.

Her hair looks cute, though.

I wish we could see more of her face in the last panel, and that it had more of an "are you fucking kidding me" flat look. That would really sell the punchline. Her face needs to be flat or it needs to be laughing.