What’s Going On In Rex Morgan, M.D.? Rene Belluso didn’t really reform, did he? August – November 2023

Along the way to this week’s plot recap Rene Belluso, the old reliable miscreant of Terry Beatty’s Rex Morgan, M.D., had a big emotional outburst, inspired by his own “Mirakle Method” of self-improvement and actualization and such. Is this the event that’s caused him to re-evaluate his life and become a respectable and less interesting member of story comics society?

Too soon to say. I appreciate that Terry Beatty likes to write a gentle strip where mostly good things happen. But it seems very consistent for Belluso to be putting on a pose to take advantage of people, in this case, because he’s stumbled across a great money-making opportunity. However, the first step of this involves turning himself in for various past scams. So he’s taking the pain first and leaving the reward for later. Belluso is the human world’s equivalent to Slick Smitty, yes, but it’s not like he gets his scams exactly backward.

Still, everyone in the strip who knows him is skeptical. I am too. We’ll see, though. If around February 2024 it turns out I was wholly right, or wholly wrong, you’ll likely see a mention of it here. And if any news about the comic strip breaks I’ll try to post it there, too. Meanwhile, let’s recap the last three months of Glenwood life.

Rex Morgan, M.D..

20 August – 12 November 2023.

Fergus “Mud” Murphy, reformed by Rene Belluso’s Mirakle Method self-help seminars, took his apology tour to Glenwood. The results were mixed. Truck Tyler told him to get out of his face, although Truck’s girlfriend Wanda suggested, you know, give the guy a chance.

Murphy accepted with grace one of life’s hard lessons, that you can’t force someone to accept your apology, but you gotta apologize anyway. His evening in the motel’s interrupted by Rene Belluso, “Professor Augustus Mirakle” himself. Fergus listed Professor Mirakle, Belluso’s most recent scam, as co-writer for “Swingset on the Moon”, the cornerstone of Murphy’s new career as children’s singer. And now he wants his money.

Murphy says that his agent, Buzzy Cameron — more on that later — has been holding Belluso’s share. He can write Belluso a check anytime he wants. And how is Belluso supposed to cash a check when he’s a wanted man? Well, the Mirakle Method might just help Belluso straighten out his life and get in good with the authorities.

Terry Beatty’s Rex Morgan, M.D. for the 8th of September, 2023. Cameron mentions how he’s not sure how long he was in the trunk, which is an amusing way of acknowledging the loose relationship between reader and in-strip times. It then feeds into talking a lot about how bad Cameron’s shirt smells, which doesn’t get as many laughs from me as I think Beatty was hoping for.

Belluso sneers at this, because he knows: the Mirakle Method is just a heap of gibberish he put together to target self-help marks. Murphy’s insistence that the thing works doesn’t move him. What does move him is the prospect of money. What he hopes will move Murphy is doing something really stupid, like kidnapping agent Buzzy Cameron.

Cameron and Murphy agree to Belluso’s demand they withdraw, in cash, enough from Murphy’s accounts to cover his royalties. While waiting for the bank to open, the two nag Belluso into trying out his own Mirakle Method and see if he can’t get his head on straight. It takes a whole minute for Belluso to break down, sobbing, having discovered his Daddy Issues and mourning that he hit on a real, legitimate therapy but wasted it treating it like a scam.

So Cameron and Murphy offer a deal with, they somehow believe, the reformed Rene Belluso. If he’ll give permission to use the Mirakle Method they’ll sell it, and he can collect royalties, ready for him once he’s out of prison for whatever the heck it was he was wanted for exactly. Oh, trying to shove Hank Harwood Jr off a CRUISE SHIP. Right.

Terry Beatty’s Rex Morgan, M.D. for the 21st of September, 2023. He seems sincere.

Well, they make the deal, bonding over how they’ve all done prison time. Murphy for general rowdiness. Cameron for tax evasion, and I’m sorry, I can’t hear you over the Approaching Plot Point klaxon. There, got it cleared. Belluso goes to jail in an event worthy of extended coverage on the local news. The Harwoods and the Morgans both react with wonder and doubt that this could ever be legit.

Still, the long night ended, Murphy and Cameron head out again and run into Rex Morgan, M.D., who’s startled by the apology he gets. And Truck Tyler, enjoying his 18th hour on that same cup of coffee, says Wanda’s talked him into doing something with Murphy’s cartoon thingy. Ah, but the cartoon thingy is on hold. Murphy and Cameron — who’d like to represent Tyler, if he’s willing, which he’s not — have an infomercial to make.

Some indefinite time later, after Mud Murphy’s run for mayor of Cavelton, the Morgans come across Murphy’s infomercial. It runs complete with Belluso confessing that he created the system as a scam but discovered it actually helped people. Despite it being an extremely long commercial, and having had enough of Rene Belluso, they watch the entirety. June, like everyone else, can’t believe this. Rex concedes that it’s probably not illegal, since they don’t seem to be selling anything besides feel-good speeches, and maybe it can do someone some good. He wouldn’t pay for a session, though it seems a lot of other people would.

And that’s where we stand in mid-November 2023.

Next Week!

My greatest narrative recap challenge: Henry Barajas and Rod Whigham’s Gil Thorp gets its innings, so I get to figure out how to explain three months’ worth of that. Watch me as I accidentally say I have to take an extra three days to write this all out!

In Your Houses Late At Night Sit Down Cozy, Kill That Light

What’s on TV when I’m feeling a little lonely and drifting between channels as they in turn disappoint me.

Oh No, The Contractors Sent The Wrong Kitchen Cabinets. As seen in the lounge at the Toyota dealership waiting for the mysterious tire-pressure problem to be diagnosed as “mysterious” and “something to do with the beads”. Charmingly white couple buy a house and then demolish all its interior surfaces. Then they wait for the contractors to do something wrong, usually with the kitchen cabinets. Sometimes it’s simple: they send cabinets too big for the house, ones that overflow the kitchen, the dining area, the living room, and reach out into the street, proving a hazard to taller traffic. Sometimes it’s also simple: they send cabinets too small. These wrong cabinets could fit one of those old-style coffee mugs grandma had, the ones that are smaller than the teaspoons you’d stir sugar into them in. Most often they’re the wrong shade of white, shades of white that the TV show host says he wouldn’t wish on his worst enemy. He seems in earnest. They’re going to have to make severe cuts in their $625,000 renovation budget, which means they use a cheaper tile for the splash area behind the kitchen counter.

That’s A Lot Of Informercial About Some Collapsible Ladder Thing. And it’s on like half the channels? What even is this?

Rebooted Season Of A Cartoon I Liked In The 90s. Oh, it’s Flash-animated now. And they redesigned the characters so they all look like they were caught in an airport baggage carousel and squashed flat by one of those weird huge cardboard boxes taped shut that someone has on every flight somehow. Also they changed two of the voice actors. And they can say “poop” now, or maybe have to. And everybody’s a lot meaner than they were before. Raises questions about whether the original was quite this obviously gender-essentialist too. Or was it just obliviously sexist? Were we that awful in the 90s? A quick check. YouTube has an episode of the original, only the proportions are weird and there’s some unearthly station logo in two corners. Yeah, the original kinda was. Should not have checked.

Two Guys Laughing At How They Totally Said A Thing. They’ve got a great show tonight and their first guest will be Seth Rogan, they say, evincing a confidence in the inevitability of events that doesn’t seem less obnoxious to me just because it was true, since they taped the episode this evening and now know how things turned out.

Old Timey Movie With Actors I Kind Of Recognize From Bugs Bunny Cartoons. Black and white. Something about a man and a woman who live in San Francisco and have a wonderful time even though they go to bed wearing more clothes than we use today to venture to Antarctica. Features numerous montages during which they walk though multiple-exposure scenes and don’t make eye contact with anything, especially not each other. Also even the driver gets into the car from the passenger’s side. I think maybe one of them is trying to kill the other, possibly because the other thinks the first is trying to kill them and it seems like a violation of trust not to reciprocate. Worth watching for how well everybody articulates in the middle of a heated life-or-death fight.

Simpsons Episode All About A Character I Never Saw Before. I guess he got to be important after I kind of forgot to watch regularly again? Also did Homer always get battered like this in the old days? And deserve even more injury?

History Explored By Wide-Eyed Astonished Guys. Might be about the fabled “Money Pit” of Oak Island. Might be about that World War II plan to make icebergs into aircraft carriers. Might be about the shooting of President Garfield. Doesn’t matter. A couple of guys have eager interviews to do with experts who’ve heard there’s an artifact related to it somewhere in the area. And when they ask another expert they hear about how it’s totally the case that artifacts are things that exist after historical events. Someone at the historical society confirms that historical events happened and some of them even involved other places than the historical society building. The hunt for the artifact drives them to hold up grainy old photographs in front of new buildings and then go inside. The building is being renovated. The floors are all torn up. None of the people working on it know anything about the historical event but they say they didn’t see anything suspicious, just some water-damaged old floorboards. There’s a subbasement they can crawl into if they like, though, and the wide-eyed astonished guys think that’s even more awesome than their old tree fort. I bet the contractors are about to deliver the wrong cabinets. It would be just like them.

Another Blog, Meanwhile Index

Traders brought the Another Blog, Meanwhile index up nine points today when they settled on that old-timey movie as the thing to watch. There’s this surprisingly tense scene where a wind-up toy dog is walking off towards the woman hiding in the closet and they don’t make movies like that anymore.

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