Somehow, we limit ourselves to only five strips this episode. Seems impossible, but we actually did it. Brooke (Dillman) found a short run on one topic that, while only five-strips in length, carried all the fury-inducing content of a dozen or more ordinary strips. The journey begins with Ginger (Xiulan's friend whom we met at Xiulan's wedding to Hugh) and Gerald (the guy from the wedding she's now apparently involved with), who is apparently her boss. She seduces him on his own desk and Xiulan walks in on them, informing them that all of the people in the building next door are watching them with binoculars. Neither of them has so much as unbuttoned one button, so they're as covered up as can be, but somehow this behavior is enough to encourage dozens of people to get their binoculars out of their desks (naturally, I suppose?) so they can watch them. Everything gets kicked up a notch when Edda and Amos try to introduce Fleurrie and Sven to Xiulan and Hugh. The simple introduction of couples results immediately in Fleurrie and Xiulan simultaneously sticking their tongues out at each other. Fleurrie adds, while she does so, "Mine's bigger," referring obviously to the size of her husband. Sven then asks Fleurrie about what he thought he heard her say, which was "mine's's bigger," which of course makes no sense and no one would ever say. Fleurrie assures him it was only a typo and the editor caught it. Sven is stunned to discover they have an editor (as are we), so stunned in fact that his eyes point in two different directions. Xiulan then sends a question to Uncle Ethel (Thorax), asking for clarification the apostrophe's in the word "mine's's" which she claims to have heard used recently. But of course no one said "mine's's" around her at all. She types her question to Uncle Ethel on her computer and he responds immediately from his manual typewriter, sending back a single character, which is either a comma or an apostrophe. Neither would work as a punchline, of course, and neither really makes any sense. But that's par for the course in a run of strips where two people talk about a contraction that literally no one said. I mean, what the fuck?
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