What’s Going On In Mary Worth? What are Tommy and Brandy’s last names? August – November 2020

Tommy’s last name is Beedie. This has been a long time coming to know. I noticed in writing these up that I haven’t mentioned his, or his mother Iris’s name, before. But there, the 28th of September, Mary Worth mentions Iris’s last name. And then Toby spoke of him as Tommy Beedie the next day, eliminating the loophole that a mother and son don’t have to have the same last name.

Brandy’s last name I don’t know. I can’t find a good compendium of Mary Worth characters that gets to details like Tommy’s existence or his last name, never mind Brandy’s. So if someone knows a good source for Mary Worth character names and such? Please drop a link.

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So this should catch you up Karen Moy and June Brigman’s Mary Worth for mid-to-late November 2020. If you’re reading this after about February 2021, or if there’s any news about the strip, I may have something more current here. And on my mathematics blog, I continue working through the alphabet, explaining terms as I go. I’m enjoying it.

Mary Worth.

31 August – 21 November 2020.

We were in the mopping-up phase of summer’s story when I last checked in. Saul Wynter’s vague relative Madi had learned the happiness of Dog, and Mary Worth, and went home.

And yet the story … somehow … did not end. Saul Wynter keeps talking to his dog Greta about how things with Madi started rough but turned out great. While walking Greta, Wynter notices a woman walking a golden retriever. She comes over and introduces herself; Eve and her dog Max are new Charterstone residents. She’s a widow, looking to start her life anew and this sure looks like we’re gliding into the new story.

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So the 21st of September we lurch into the new story, which has nothing to do with Saul and Eve and Greta and Max. It’s about Tommy and Brandy, coworkers at the supermarket, whom we last checked in on in 2018. Their relationship has a built-in crisis. After a workplace injury years ago, Tommy got addicted to alcohol and painkillers. Brandy’s father was an alcoholic and a drug abuser, and she wants none of that in her life ever again. Tommy’s told her about his past, and been clean.

Karen Moy and June Brigman’s Mary Worth for the 10th of October, 2020. So, uh, do you think he ate the onion ring? Or she did? Maybe this is just a kid-from-a-big-family thing but I really don’t like the thought the onion ring went to waste.

And their relationship’s been going so well that Mary Worth and Toby spend their time talking about how great it is. So Tommy figures this is the time to propose, at the diner, slipping an onion ring onto her finger. Brandy is not ready for this, and doubts she’ll ever be ready for marriage, and says so.

This activates Tommy’s self-destruct sequence. He spends days interpreting Brandy’s fatigue as being she’s tired of him. Or asking “well, why don’t we get married then?” every 85 seconds. When Brandy asks for some time alone with her headache, Tommy goes for a walk in Santa Royale’s Bad Neighborhood. There he meets up with Vin, a friend from the old days, who offers him a drug. It’s hard, but Tommy declines.

Karen Moy and June Brigman’s Mary Worth for the 25th of October, 2020. So that close-up on Tommy’s face that last panel. Is that an homage to that famous EC Comics panel, the woman with the eyes bugged out as she faces down a hypodermic needle, that Fredric Wertham got all worked up about?

A bit too late, though. Brandy, going to the drugstore of dramatic irony, sees Vin offering his metal lollipop to Tommy, and concludes the worst. The next day she says she saw him with the crack pipe. She won’t listen to his protests, and breaks up with him.

They each have lousy nights. The next day Tommy tries what he thinks is a charm offensive. This by leaving a rose and a note at her cash register and reminding her every 75 seconds that he loves her and doesn’t use drugs. This of course doesn’t work, and Tommy confesses his woes to Mary Worth, who’s still making banana bread even though that was last story’s foodstuff.

She points out that Tommy’s not a failure or a loser, and that relationships aren’t linear. And, you know, love yourself, live well, and everything else will work out. She even deploys a nearly-unthinkable meddle: “there’s so much more to life than relationships”.

Tommy decides to do more talks with schoolkids about his addiction experience. Also I guess he was doing talks with schoolkids about his addiction experience. Well, kind of him to do that. Less kind: he reminds Brandy every 65 seconds that he’s doing this for troubled(?) kids and he loves her and he’s been clean and everything.

Karen Moy and June Brigman’s Mary Worth for the 16th of November, 2020. She means well, and is even right to say this. But what Tommy’s heard is “I’m such a loser MARY WORTH thinks I can’t be in a relationship”, which would be a heck of a thing to hear about yourself.

And that’s where the story reached by this past weekend. It does feel near the resolution. And it does feel likely that it resolves with Brandy accepting Tommy’s declarations. It’s an ugly scene, though. Brandy’s understandable but wrong judgement is harsh. Judged-guilty-despite-being-good is a plot that makes me squirm. I blame that Donald Duck cartoon where he makes his nephews smoke the box of cigars that, oops, they bought as a gift for him. (For my money, a far more traumatizing childhood experience than watching Watership Down could ever be.) But so much of Tommy’s behavior has been nagging his way back into Brandy’s good graces and that’s so many kinds of bad. He should do like the rest of us, and subtweet her with such relentlessness that their mutual friends all end up taking her side. Also a lot of his effort has been hollering “I’m not on the drugs anymore” from four aisles over at the supermarket. Never force the assistant manager to have to notice your relationship.

But, we’ll see. Catch you in the Mary Worth universe, most likely, around late February or early March 2021, I hope.

Dubiously Sourced Mary Worth Sunday Panel Quotes!

The car care place still has, on its message board, the thanks to the local economic council for support in making it through the epidemic. So I have to look at the actual quotes that appeared in the Sunday panels instead.

• “We could never learn to be brave and patient, if there were only joy in the world.” — Helen Keller, 30 August 2020.
• “Although the world is full of suffering, it is also ful lof the overcoming of it.” — Helen Keller, 6 September 2020, for a rare double-header.
• “All the windows of my heart I open to the day.” — John Greenleaf Whittier, 13 September 2020.
• “The only way to have a friend is to be one.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson, 20 September 2020.
• “Ultimately, love is everything.” — M Scott Peck, 27 September 2020.
• “Who, being loved, is poor?” — Oscar Wilde, 4 October 2020.
• “Sometimes I feel my whole life has been one big rejection.” — Marilyn Monroe, 11 October 2020.
• “I had sadness for breakfast.” — Andy Milonakis, 18 October 2020.
• “I generally avoid temptation unless I can’t resist it.” — Mae West, 25 October 2020.
• “Tears come from the heart and not from the brain.” — Leonardo da Vinci, 1 November 2020.
• “I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions.” — Augusten Burroughs, 8 November 2020.
• “When I lost you, honey, sometimes I think I lost my guts too.” — Bruce Springsteen, 15 November 2020.
• “You gain nothing from giving up.” — Robert Kubica, 22 November 2020.

Next Week!

The Phantom joins The Detective to foil The Villains! It’s
Tony DePaul and Jeff Weigel’s The Phantom, Sunday continuity, if everything goes well.