What’s Going On In Mary Worth? Has Karen Moy ever met a vegetarian? October 2023 – January 2024

The current, but concluding, story in Karen Moy and June Brigman’s Mary Worth includes some hilarious behavior presented as just the way vegetarians — particularly, vegans — talk. It’s a bit over the top, people clinking their fake-meat burgers together and toasting about how they’re saving the planet. I understand if you roll your eyes at this and don’t stop. However. One of the people, Sonia, involved as a 20-ish year old, an age where you might get into vegetarianism/veganism and, for that matter, wanting to have a world that isn’t set on fire so a company with a fire-monitoring subscription service can increase its revenue stream. It’s an age where you get a lot of new convert energy and it’s a bit much but usually passes. More, this new convert energy is being exploited by Brad, who’s encouraging it as a way to get in good with Sonia’s mother. So besides normal soap-opera-strip preposterousness we have someone doing that thing where some people just have to make life worse. Anyway, that’s why I’m giggling but not faulting Karen Moy for writing this.

This all should get you caught up to mid-January 2024 in Mary Worth’s storylines. If you’re reading this after about April 2024, you can probably find a more up-to-date plot recap here, among the essays. If you don’t, well, we live in complicated times. Now on to the ways of heterosexual pair bonding!

Mary Worth.

29 October 2023 – 21 January 2024.

Laconic ex-enforcer of the military state Keith Hillend was reeling from the discovery he had a daughter with onetime partner Kitty Faber. His reuniting date with Kitty goes so badly he accepts Mary Worth’s muffins. And more, her advice, which is don’t give up just because neither Faber woman wants to speak to him.

So he does, reminding Kitty how back in the day they both really liked that one Deep Blue Something song. And, with some time to think about it, Kitty’s open for another date. This time it goes better. They start sharing some cinematic experiences like horseback riding and driving home singing Stevie Wonder.

At home, interrupting their kiss, is a guy named Brad, a man with a hat I bet is inadequately laundered and whose age I could never figure out. Brad has some great “Fight the System (TM)(C)(Do not steal)” t-shirts to run by Sonia. Kitty explains that Brad is “just a friend” but Keith can’t believe that, since who would want to be a friend to that? The point is fair, but Kitty insists she just puts up with Brad because Sonia likes him. And c’mon, when you get to know him you agree he could be worse, I guess.

Karen Moy and June Brigman’s Mary Worth for the 17th of December, 2023. Oh, settle down with the ‘Save the Planet’ stuff, child, Bluff Burgers are owned by a company that’s owned by a company that’s owned by another company that’s owned by the Unilever/Nestle Consortium for Advanced Evil, and they’re manufactured from a brand of soybeans that Monsanto implanted genes in that transfer into every plant in a 45-kilometer radius so they can sue farmers for copyright infringement.

Sonia cooks a double-date dinner, serving meatless ‘Bluff’ Burgers that Keith identifies as ‘probably some sort of matter’. Sonia and Brad meanwhile toast the burgers at each other chanting ‘Meat is murder! Save the planet!’ like the hew-mons probably do somewhere. After this spectacle, Keith declares he’s going to bow out so Kitty and Sonia can spend more time with whatever Brad’s deal is.

The next day a heartbroken Keith stops in at Big Beef’s All-Burger Cow Slaughter Emporium for their Anti-Vegan Burger with extra dead animal and cheese. And who’s there but Brad, chomping down on a bacon-ham-and-corned-beef deluxe and fries covered in five kinds of beef tallow. And, luckily, talking to his friend about how he doesn’t care about the environment or anything, he just figures plant-based-buttering Sonia up will get him in good with Kitty. Keith sits down, takes Brad’s chicken-fried bacon X-treme, and informs Brad that he can break up with Kitty and Sonia on his own or have his non-caring ways revealed to them.

Karen Moy and June Brigman’s Mary Worth for the 5th of January, 2024. The Sunday strip makes clear that Kitty is in the room with them, so this attempt to be friendly by playing guitar at someone is not so obnoxious as you fear.

So, Brad tells Sonia he’s volunteered with the Green Peats teaching the people of Bangladesh how to eat rice and he has a rescue jerboa he has to pick up in Madagascar and he can’t see them anymore bye. Kitty decides to pretend she believes this, and Sonia growls and stares at her phone when Keith visits. Ah, but then, he picks up Sonia’s guitar and plays a couple tunes by this obscure songster named Stevie Wonder. Sonia’s enchanted and starts to consider that maybe her biological father has a respectable side too.

So there’s not much more to do besides start thanking Mary Worth for Mary Worthing it, and that’s where we seem to be this week. Come back in a couple months and we’ll see if we’re still there.

Dubiously Sourced Mary Worth Sunday Panel Quotes!

What does BrainyQuotes mistakenly credit people with saying, and when did the Sunday panels quote them? Here’s my record of the Sunday sayings:

• “The other night I ate at a real nice family restaurant. Every table had an argument going.” — George Carlin, 29 October 2023.
• “Better to fight for something than to live for nothing.” — George S Patton, 5 November 2023.
• “There is nothing impossible to him who will try.” — Alexander the Great, 12 November 2023.
• “If you forgive me all this … if I forgive you all that … we forgive and forget, and it’s all coming back to me now.” — Celine Dion, 19 November 2023.
• “All is fair in love … love’s a crazy game.” — Stevie Wonder, 26 November 2023.
• “If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life.” — Oscar Wilde, 3 December 2023.
• “But I’m not sad, I’m just disappointed … and I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed.” — Glen Hansard, 10 December 2023.
• “Rather be dead than cool.” — Kurt Cobain, 17 December 2023.
• “It is part of a good man to do great and noble deeds, though he risk everything.” — Plutarch, 24 December 2023.
• “Ring out the old, ring in the new, ring, happy bells, across the snow; the year is going, let him go; ring out the false, ring in the true.” — Alfred Tennyson, 31 December 2023.
• “Music is love in search of a word.” — Sidney Lanier, 7 January 2024.
• “All my life, my heart has yearned for a thing I cannot name.” — Andre Breton, 14 January 2024.
• “Happiness depends upon ourselves.” — Aristotle, 21 January 2024.

Next Week!

The Ghost Who Walks, in his guise as the Unknown Commander of the Jungle Patrol, is testing Colonel Worubu’s patience with the unthinkable! Changing the secret chamber holding the vault with which he communicates with his multinational armed force! Is this the harbinger of an open-office plan? Or worse, if such a thing is possible? Tony DePaul and Jeff Weigel’s The Phantom (Sundays) gets some attention next week, all going to the Unknown Commander’s renovations plan.