Luann by Greg Evans and Karen Evans for December 09, 2015

One of these characters needs a shrink. And it isn’t the one talking about yin and yang…

Sure looks like it…

I love how Dez gently brings Bernice back from the brink of megalomania.

What the heck happened to Gunther and Tiffany? If you liked Slip and Slide, you’ll love the latest Luann arcs.

Anyone want to guess whether this arc will end with Bernice sitting in front of Lucy’s shrink booth and paying a nickel for instant analysis?

Traditionally Wednesday is the most dramatic and intriguing day in a Luann story arc. The Evanses set up some sort of drama or tension (like the funny brownies), which gets dissipated by Saturday. Maybe Bee will report her own incident, and that’s the last we’ll hear of it.

Bernice is exhausting and boring.

My 3 cents: She is very conflicted. I bet she could find the phenomena in her psych book. She is repressed too. She clearly has normal desires and feelings, brought out by a bit of a challenge to her sense of order with Piro. She is attracted to him, although she does want to admit it. Of course Gunther is attracted to her, and Tiffany?? Will she steal Piro? What is Gunther going to do? Would she even be interested in him that way. Her dream indicates that she feels Gunther and Tiffany are right for each other, while she is right for Piro. And folks I want to remind everyone that Rosa is still out there. I doubt if she is going to stay in Peru forever. I have no idea where this will lead, but its classic Greg Evans, brought up to college level.

Covering up the truth/guilt is like a bucket of water. You get tired of carrying it around, and when you try to “keep it on the level”, it always finds a way of spilling out…

“Dorm Of Cards”“Cold As Vice” (♫)“It’s Verbum, Sap!”“Matlocked In A Mason Jar”“Out In The Wash”“The Moony Inquisition”

“Truth Htis Everybody” (♫)“A Canary With Autotune”“It’s In The Pudding”“Colonel Mustard’s Blues”“Confess, Parker!”“Georgia Washington Comes Clean”or""Miami Vice Versa"

What happened to Gunther? He was supposed to ask Bern to coffee.

Timer?

Let it all out, Bernice! You need to come to terms with your own humanity, and that of other people—I mean Tiffany, Gunther, and Piro—as well. Dez is doing a great job of amateur counseling, ironically, since that is what you want to do, Bernie….

Oh, Good Grief.

THIS Strip has become INFESTED with “Drama Queens.”

Poor repressed Bernice.

Some people say if you engage in yin-yang Pertubation you’ll go blind…

Bernice is turning into the human version of the Nomad Probe: “FAULTY! FAULTY! MUST STERILIZE!!!”

Just what the world needs, someone I can flag.

Wake up, little Bernie, wake up!

when a control freak loses control that’s what happens

Dez will probably bring out her deck of cards & that will convince Bernice to give up her RA badge seeing she does not follow the rules but expects others to. Judge not least ye be judged!

Dez is so sane here while Bernice is a hot piping mess.

Dez found Piro’s scarf tucked into the couch, and Bernice had a sudden mental anxiety attack because she was caught with her little secret.

I’m noticing more and more that Bernice and Gunther have something else in common. Both have very much relied on sets of ‘rules’ to get through their lives, and when the ‘rules’ tend to either fail, or they themselves can’t meet the rules, both of them start to fall apart.

Gunther had assumed he had his life all planned out. He would get an Engineering degree, get a high paying job, get married, move into a house with a picket fence and have a ‘granny flat’ for his mother to live in. When he first of all ran off to Peru instead of starting college, and then found that his mother was (horrors) seeing someone, it seemed like his ordered life was falling apart.

Similarly, Bernice has always seemed to rely on rules to live by, although she really didn’t follow them herself. She and Delta took that trip together for Bernice to interview for a counseling job, and started the trip by laughing at how disorganized and ‘drama-queenish’ Luann would have been on that trip. Of course, the whole time, Bernice herself was disorganized and not following rules. She didn’t bother to check to see if she had enough gas for the trip, for example (who does that?! That’s a ‘first rule’ of traveling, IMO). And when they stopped for gas, Bernice and Delta ended up locked out of the car. So much for only Luann being a drama queen.

Still trying to live life by rules, Bernice wasn’t able to follow rules when the unknown Dez’s friends dropped a ferret and mysterious packages off in Bernice’s dorm room. And after Bernice accepted a position as RA and started this business of making rounds, she still wasn’t able to force herself to rigidly live by the rules because she let Piro stay on her couch all night instead of enforcing her rule about timing his temporary stay.

Just as Gunther went to pieces when his imagined ordered life seemed to be falling apart, Bernice seems to be unraveling because she isn’t living by the rigid rules she seems to think are completely necessary.

If rigid adherence to rules is the main thing that Gunther and Bernice have in common, then they really need to avoid becoming a couple. When life doesn’t ‘follow the rules’, both of them become unhinged. They each need a much more relaxed person in their lives, someone who won’t go to pieces if life doesn’t live up to their ‘rules’…

Is this Lucy and Ethel? Ronnie Milsap – “Lost in the 50’s”.

and @Barry1941: Bernice is having a case of “Do as I say not as I do” syndrome because she broke her own rule.

So a real-life project to convert an old building into an arts space like The Fuse has in fact cost $10M? Yeah, as soon as Frank got TJ’s initial $70K investment, he was basically there!!!

OK Bernice, prepare to write up an infraction report on yourself, get dismissed from your R.A. job, lose your full-ride scholarship to Moony, drop out of school, move to Peru, and spend the rest of your life gathering sticks and raking rocks.-Next character!

Of course not, but she is coming to terms with what people have been calling her “hypocrisy.”

The solution to Bernie’s melt-down? More of those special brownies.

Hmmmm. Is Bernice Jewish, Catholic or Protestant. Guilt abounds.

Omg Bernice, grow up

She’s a control freak and can’t handle that which puts a pinhole in her bubble….

Ignored her timer? That’s an interesting way to say that time went by fast

Bernice wants to be a counselor? And help people with their problems?? What a joke that would be. Maybe Dez can talk some sense into this nutcase.

Ignoring her timer is about the most horrible sin Bernice can imagine.

2Hmm. IMO today is a bit of a let down. Usually, (as alluded to above) Wednesday has frequently the pinnacle, tension-building, suspenseful part of the week’s arc. Not so much today…. I sincerely hope this is not the best the week offers. I do really like both Bernice and Dez as characters, though. I just wish there were a bit more interesting going on other than Bernice freaking out.

She’s playing Bernice’s Guilt Strings like a Fiddle..Or maybe a Harp. Bernice has a Lot of Guilt Strings.

Bernice seems slightly more controlling of other people than Gunther. However, Gunther did try to control his mother’s dating of Mr. Gray by pouting.

Yeah, Gunther came home from Peru to “protect” his mother from Mr. Gray, so he still harbors hope that the FBI will show up with a warrant for Mr. Gray’s arrest on account of his Mob connections in Vegas, leaving Mom Berger alone and ready to move into Gunther’s granny flat. Dream on, G-Man!

I do think there is comic potential in the Bernice/Gunther pairing. We’ll see if the Evans are up to it.

Where’s Luann when you need her? She knows how to feed into the drama. Could you imagine the two drama queens in this scene?

I love the depth here, i.e. the potential unraveling of Bernice’s neurotic behaviors. As a psychology major it is so long in coming that someone, and I am truly glad that it is Dez, is now shining the spotlight on her and doing it with finesse. I look forward to some self discovery on Bernice’s part. Given her answer regarding the ‘timer’, she has a long way to go.

Gunther and Bernice would be like those battery operated candles…..they flicker but don’t generate any heat. Now Gunther and Tiffany might be more like lighting a fire cracker.

Have Pru and Q been on the phone for over a week now?

Has Dez lost weight?

It occurs to me now: Gunther and Tiffany would be a bit like Leonard and Penny on “Big Bang Theory.” At this point, however, Gunther is either oblivious to Tiff’s infatuation, or he’s so wrapped up in his Bernice crush that he’s…oblivious to Tiff.Even if they don’t end up together, the two of them could learn a lot from each other.

SPOILER ALERT

Dez counsels the counselor, and a breakdown appears to be averted…

Get over yourself, Bur-niece