12/25/2010
Well friends, it’s another Christmas in Milford and the kids are still AWOL, like Chuck Cunningham from Happy Days, Mike Douglas from My Three Sons and Chad Zits from Zits, those kids just vanished into the mists of narrative irrelevance. Some speculate that they are earning their keep at Camp Touchstone and the real reason Gil took the football team to the camp was that he had to make a court ordered visit with his spawn. We may never know. Only Neal Rubin has the answers.
Oh yeah, and the new character talked Gil into organizing basketball team caroling. So Cortez has some strong beliefs? I think he should have gone full out and requested they do a live nativity scene. That would’ve been wild. What we get is this cheesy tableau with Gil alone extending holiday wishes. Mimi’s at home drinking hot toddies and crying at Lifetime movies.
As my Christmas gift to you, I’ve dug into the archives to offer the previous 9 years worth of Thorp family Christmas wishes so that we can watch the family shrink, so you can enjoy some blasts from the past, so you can gather clues about what might have happened to the kids, etc.
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
Not only did Gil get rid of the kids, he got rid of the dog as well…did he meet the same fate as the Brady Bunch dog Tiger? Does Gil have a dogless dog house outside?
Jason, you forgot to mention the daughter in Family Matters. She went upstairs to clean her room and never came back down. Do you think they’re all in the Winslow house being held captive by a crazed Steve Uerkel?
Anyway Jason, Merry Christmas and thanks for the retrospect. I’m off to Gil and Mimi’s for some hot toddies!
Comment by Regina — December 25, 2010 @ 10:39 am
Happy Holidays everyone! And to the Thorp kids too, where ever you are!
Comment by milfordian — December 25, 2010 @ 10:41 am
I had completely forgotten about the crazy kid tricycling in the rain captured on film moments before he was devoured by Falkor the Luck Dragon. Good times.
But knowing what we know now, does that kid look a little familiar? Check out the Thorp Christmas card next to him. Two mysteries solved: what parent was dumb and neglectful enough to let his kid tricycle during a thunderstorm late at night, and what happened to the male Thorpspawn.
Comment by Drew Funk — December 25, 2010 @ 11:03 am
Here’s an theory. Mimi looks less like Mimi than Gil looks like Gil. Old Mimi dumped Gil, took the kids and moved to another town where she went into rehab and the kids into prolonged therapy. Gil married Mimi the Waitress at PUB, a younger, hotter, and blonder Mimi. Since none of the Thorps do any coaching anyway, the girls teams don’t notice that New Mimi doesn’t know anything about any sport. No big change there.
Merry Christmas anyway, Gil.
Comment by Joe Sharkey — December 25, 2010 @ 11:04 am
Another theory: The kids witnessed a mob hit, testified and are currently in the witness protection program.
Comment by Regina — December 25, 2010 @ 11:39 am
Recycled art in 2004 and 2006. Mclaughlin was such a lazy _ _ _ _ _ _!
Comment by Regina — December 25, 2010 @ 11:49 am
They really should’ve done a live nativity. Jamarr is small enough to be swaddled and stuffed in the manger, right?
Ease up, and have a Merry Thorpmas, everyone! xoxo
Comment by jules — December 25, 2010 @ 11:55 am
Gil’s out caroling while Mimi has a hot Toddy; as soon as Toddy leaves Clambake stops by and bakes her clam. Then she sacrifices herself to Wally Lamb. Marty Moon visits but he gets sent packing because he stinks like Peppermint Schnapps, stale cigarettes and pee. Steve Luhm visits and he cleans up. Gill returns mumbling something about the strategy for the next game having consumed the flasks he’d filled his pockets with. He barf’s into the fireplace before he passes out on the couch. And to all, a Good Night!
Equally, have a boffo Thorp-ivus, y’all.
Comment by semperfi4evr — December 25, 2010 @ 1:16 pm
Here’s another theory, based on Benjamin Button. On the 2008 card, Kerry Thorp looks like a little girl. But it you look back at 2001, she appears to be at least thirty. Thus she– and presumably the brother whose name I can never recall– have by now reverse-aged right out of existence.
Thanks, Ned, for scaring up these relics and posting them. So many treasures! The smiling dog, the sofa with its back to the fireplace, in the recent strips, Mimi’s parted lips and dilated pupils, and in the older ones, Gil’s wax-museum flat-top…
Comment by vaganova — December 25, 2010 @ 1:48 pm
OMG, so sorry Ned!!!! Merry Christmas and thanks for the memories…I forgot you’re the guest poster on Saturdays…too many hot toddies with Mimi!
Comment by Regina — December 25, 2010 @ 3:47 pm
im glad they stoped showing the kid photos the son looked too comfortable in gils lap in his last apperance .i thought rubin was going for a malcom x theme judging by cortez hats from the day before .
Comment by mr120zcan — December 25, 2010 @ 7:38 pm
Thanks for those ghosts of Christmas past. Seeing them all together with the recycled art and people in differnt positions reminds me of those old pictures of Stalin where people had been erased. “Dog, what dog? We never had a dog. Kids? You must be thinking of Family Circus.”
Comment by DieClambakeDie — December 25, 2010 @ 9:33 pm
I just hope the Thorp house doesn’t have a crawlspace…
Comment by Kelly — December 26, 2010 @ 11:45 am
Something I’ve been curious about. Should have asked when we were all over at the Thorp’s yesterday but forgot. I for one was flat on my ass from drinking Mimi’s toddies anyway.
When they married (late 1980s?) the local paper where I lived at the time ran an announcement under “Clover-Thorp.” I recall that Mimi’s picture was clipped directly from the strip, but the only phrasing I can recall verbatim said that “Despite coaching at Miflord HS since 1958, Mr Thorp is still only thirty-five.
What I’m wondering if this is something Jack Berrill got the Gannett papers to run nationally, or whether someone at the local paper was just a fan. So in short, does anybody else remember anything similar?
Comment by vaganova — December 26, 2010 @ 2:27 pm
No.
Comment by Rob — December 26, 2010 @ 4:13 pm
#13 Kelly…………….LMAO
Comment by knoxy — December 26, 2010 @ 5:01 pm
You know, I can see the kids cluttering the narrative a bit… but the dog? It’s a dog. Add it to the odd scene set in the Thorp house and you’re done. It doesn’t need character development.
And rate, the more attention I pay to those Christmas strips, the lazier they seem. Lots of reused bits. 2004 and 2006 are actually identical.
Comment by brashieel — December 27, 2010 @ 12:32 am
If I recall correctly, the Thorp kids were both born in the late 1980′s early 1990′s so by now both of them to be college age. Not that this ought to exclude them from the annual Christmas picture, if anything it would be a good way to write them out of appearing during any other time of the year.
Which is what I find most odd about it, outside of the Christmas picture, Keery and Jaime never really appeared in the strip while supposedly in high school. Did Gil and Mimi send them to St. Fabian’s/St. Joseph/whatever the local Catholic school is called this year?
My theory is that Gil and Mimi coaching their kids might have led to some actually interesting situations, and the strip’s various writers would have none of that.
Comment by billytheskink — December 27, 2010 @ 2:32 pm
Great point, Billy. It’s always hard to know how to “age” characters. Most comic strip characters are frozen at a permanent age. GT is unusual in that the students pass through year by year but the adults– and presumably their families– are largely unchanged. Gil started at Milford in 1958, and thus in real time should now be about seventy-five, but is more like forty. If the kids had aged the way the students have, they’d be catching up to their parents. If they didn’t, we’d be making jokes about munchkins. So since there was no natural way to handle the kids ages, the writers made a kind of tacit decision to write them out of the strip.
Comment by vaganova — December 27, 2010 @ 8:34 pm
Well sure, but it’s more fun to think of the kids chained up in a crawlspace, eating the remains of the dog.
Comment by Ned Ryerson — December 28, 2010 @ 10:21 am
[...] Spirits of Camphor, what’s more jarring? Referee Kenny Rogers or the further erosion of the annual Christmas greeting into a tossed off aside! (Did Kenny just bash Gil across the back of the head with a folding [...]
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