You must be thinking of a different movie. “Breaking Away” opens with the four main characters walking up to the quarry and chatting about not much in particular.
Generally, Richard Thompson’s rendering of the Otterloop parents is wonderful, and Mrs. Otterloop is otherwise depicted as a great mom - centered, understanding, and gently playful. Mr. Thompson, who was a certified genius and whose humor was almost always spot-on, needed Mrs. Otterloop to say what she did in the first panel in order to get to the punchline in the third panel-and the payoff, as it turned out, wasn’t worth it. Even geniuses sometimes miss the mark!
I love the girl on the left in the first panel breaking the huddle with Wallace’s team even though she’s on the other side of the ball. Just one example of those tiny subtleties that makes Mr. Henry’s strip so brilliant.
Well, when it comes to movies from the 70’s, “don’t watch it with your kids or your mom” is almost always very sound advice!