Red and Rover by Brian Basset for September 05, 2022

Sleep well, Rover!

… and then maybe you can repeat a year in school so that you can miss Rover a whole extra year.

On Saturday, someone mentioned The Time Tunnel and I replied that I had watched some of the later episodes of that series on the UK’s Sci-fi/Horror Channel and had been disappointed at not seeing an episode set on the Titanic as the series had been cancelled. I received a reply which stated that the Titanic episode had been one of the early episodes and possibly the first. I have looked the series up on Wikipaedia and I see that that is correct. The first episode, “Rendezvous With Yesterday” was set aboard the Titanic. The last episode of The Time Tunnel must have used footage from the first episode for their “Next time on The Time Tunnel” end sequence.

Also on Saturday, I mentioned that I had been watching a series of Tom and Jerry cartoons from as recently as 2019 the year that most of these Red and Rover reprints are from. Someone then mentioned that one cartoon had ended with Tom and Jerry attempting suicide after losing their girlfriends and still found that ending chilling. The Tom and Jerry ending which I found the most chilling was the ending of The Two Mouseketeers – the Oscar-winning cartoon of 1951. At the end, we saw a guillotine blade descending and Jerry and Tuffy gulped and then Tuffy said, “Pauvre, pauvre pooseycat!” I still liked the Tom and Jerry series but that ending upset me so much that the next time The Two Mouseketeers was shown on TV, I ran out of the room and played with toys in the next room.

The one with the double suicide attempt ending was Blue Cat Blues from 1956. Both The Two Mouseketeers and Blue Cat Blues feature in TV Tropes and both include the Downer Ending trope.

Today’s Red and Rover strip is another one which shows the similarities between Red and Calvin. “Who needs school, right?” is a comment both Red and Calvin are likely to make.

However, Red is much more affectionate to Rover than Calvin is towards Hobbes. Calvin can be very affectionate towards Hobbes at times but he generally shows a much more sarcastic side to Hobbes than Red ever shows to Rover.

That’s probably not the best approach to home schooling, Red!

I could never understand this hatred of school, our holiday’s started a week before Christmas but by New Years day boredom had totally set in. I’m being punished for this outlook though, I haven’t been able to work since 1990 and have lost all track of time. Back and neck injuries.

Red, you’d better take school more seriously if you want to be an astronaut! Lol!

I loved school until I got to the high school. Too many snips and clicks from the other school. I almost quit but didn’t….

I think the teachers back then were more dedicated than any today, most kids don’t even know facts about our history or even know geography, or who’s president…..

Other than recess as a kid and gym in high school I liked school, hated the bus rides.

Welcome my friends to the show that never ends, come inside, come inside. Total economic dependence, zero work ethic, and zero respect, and the band still played.

I loved school. If you meet and exceed expectations, you receive accolades.

No matter how model a daughter I was, I was bad.

Yep… Red is smarter than the average Dog.

Rover won’t be able to stay awake all night. Red probably won’t notice since he will likely fall asleep quickly too.

My school library story – books were rated by class grade, and you couldn’t go above your grade. (Unless you were a “smart” kid, as I found out later.) So I had a friend check out the books I wanted & I did the same for him. Stupid system!