C'est la Vie by Jennifer Babcock for January 03, 2012

Sheesh! Mona’s gone all squishy for Lucas. Come sleep with your bunny.

Buy him a TV then. Put it in your bedroom and invite Lucas over to watch it with you.

These two have been dancing around each other forever yet they never seem to be on the same page. Considering some of the things that have happened in the past where one or the other ends up in the hospital (ER or the Mental Ward) that might not be such a bad thing.

I was expecting a lot bigger fallout from Michael’s party. At least some emotional scarring, or shared tales of flight.

Make sure it’s HIGH definitely.

Here comes the Mona x Lucas relationship Fritz has been waiting for. Which means we are nearing the end of this strip unless Lucas does something stupid (he will) that gets Mona angry (default emotion) and goes home to grouse to Smokey (life partner for life) again.

We haven’t seen much of Smokey or Fake Smokey. Just as I predicted. The more confidence Mona gets, the less she depends on Smokey to rationalize her many neuroses until he stops possessing the stuffed bunny and fades away.

And nothing of value was lost.

Strike!

rhhooooooooo

OMG! Say it ain’t so, Mona-of-panel-2! It is not possible for our Mona to suddenly manifest a raging crush for Lucas! It is not, it is not, it is not! Fortunately, Lucas-of-panel-3 throws cold water on her moment of weakness and brings her back to her cold-hearted, sarcastic reality.

Mona does seem to carry the once bitten, twice shy a tad far.She really should get over high school.

Once again, Jennifer hits a home run with the eyes; in fact, three home runs in three panels.

Mona, do not let Lucas get that big screen TV; he will have even less attention for you than he does now.

Mona need not become a “happy camper” for her and Lucas to have a “happy ending.” I doubt Mona will ever love EVERYBODY, but she’s capable of loving SOMEBODY (and of course I believe that “somebody” will be Lucas). Prickly people can find love without necessarily losing their prickles (and remember, even BEFORE the Raoul trauma, Mona was the type to chop her dolls’ heads off with a guillotine).

I’m not convinced that we’re on the threshold of a Mona/Lucas hook-up, nor that we are nearing an ultimate resolution to the strip (although I grant that the two might occur simultaneously). But it’s nice to see the matter revisited.

It pays to read the archives. It also pays to not assume just because she’s a woman, she must be a victim.

It’s also good to remember Mona’s Hawaiian vacation. She is capable of unreserved happiness, maybe just not in the cesspool LA scene she normally inhabits.

Much has been made here of the Hawaiian vacation. I question just how real that transformation was. It seems (to me anyway) that Mona shifts to adapt to the circumstances she finds herself in. It is possible that we have never had more than a glimpse of who she really is. The high school break up was traumatic incident. Yet no one here seems to have noticed that right on the heels of that she was uprooted from her life and moved to a different country and culture.

Hell hath no fury like Mona scorned.

A proposition:’If you DISLIKE Mona the way she is, you will want to see that she must change in order to find happiness; i.e. she must become what she is not, such as Hawaii Mona.Corollary:If she does not change, you do not wish her to find happiness.But:If you LIKE Mona the way she is (i.e. the way she has been portrayed for 9 years, disregarding flashbacks), you will want to see her attain happiness on her own uncompromising terms. Small changes, but not such that she is no longer cynical, existential, chain-smoking, transplanted-Parisienne Mona Montrois,

Again, I do not expect it to be soon, because when Mona attains happiness it may be the end of the strip. But why do we need Mona to be like Donna? We have Donna to be like Donna.