The
comic strip appearing in today’s (August 17, 2013) The Hindu took me back many years, to a particular episode of
M*A*S*H (Mobile Army Surgical Hospital), a sitcom I have spent hundreds of
hours watching (new, repeat, re-repeat etc.). This is one of my favorites,
mainly for its undiluted frivolity and utter lack of seriousness, in the few
moments of sanity snatched in the middle of a war (oops, it was, as the US
government insists never a war, only a conflict). You can read the recap at http://www.tv.com/shows/mash/the-joker-is-wild-43442/recap/
I
will let you enjoy the comic strip below, and let yourself see the parallels.
It
is about what paranoia leads one to. Susie is paranoid about Calvin trying a
stunt on her, but is also proud that she is smart enough to come out on top, as
she has every time. This is what Calvin tries to cash in on in this strip,
though merely as a voice-over. The strip implies that when Susie does go to
Calvin’s backyard, as she is wont to, though the “coded” letter alerts her to danger
(this is where Susie’s pride in her smarts shows up), the latter has something in
store for her.
It
is Susie’s paranoia that impels her to be pro-active. And, that could very well
be the trap. What if Calvin, for once
and though uncharacteristic of him in the extreme, plays no practical joke on
her. Then, Susie ends up playing a practical joke on herself, hurrying to the
back of Calvin’s house.
But,
the reader also knows that the strip’s strength is in making fun of Calvin – it
is Calvin against everyone else, be it Hobbes, Susie, his teachers, his
parents, indeed anyone and everyone. Therefore in the sequel to this strip, the
reader is primed to seeing Calvin’s downfall. Calvin, after all, is not as smart as to think even that deep, I am betting.
In
MASH, Hawkeye reigns supreme (the character is, after all, played by Alan Alda,
a moralizing, supercilious prima donna, though an admirable one at that in the setting
of the show). BJ is his Johnny-come-lately foil. Anyone can win the battle of
wits against Hawkeye (as Charles Emerson Winchester III does quite often), but none
the war.
The
episode cannot end with BJ coming out on top and it does not.
Therefore,
in the sequel to this strip of C & H, watch out how Calvin messes up. That
must be fun.
Raghuram
Ekambaram
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