Of course, to really understand who Michael is and why he does all of the stupid things he does, we have to focus on a Very Special Story that’s going to appear in the next five years: the Very Special Story in which it’s revealed that Gordon’s father gets drunk and hits him because working class people are deplorable vermin who can’t help themselves, they’re just drunk, mean and racist. While Brian told Mike to tread carefully and to not pry into something he couldn’t fix because life isn’t a very special episode of everything, Mike was confused, angered and disappointed because Gord kept his mouth shut about something painful and humiliating like a real person instead of blubbering for the camera like Mike expected him to because, as he said, on television, Gord would’ve talked.
When he pushed that absurd and ignorant comment past his lips, I finally knew who Michael was and why he behaves the way he does. I knew this:
Axiom 4f:
Through a process of default, Elly and John delegated to network television their responsibility of teaching moral lessons to their son Michael; the end result is that he shares his father’s delusion that people are the part they play on TV instead of who they really are.
This is why he thinks that Lizzie is plotting against him….he thinks that instead of the dim, timid child she is, she’s a sitcom baby. It’s why he hates the idea of Elly having interests that aren’t him….sitcom mothers love their children uncritcally. It’s why he doesn’t understand girls: men who write for television don’t either. It’s why he hates his mother-in-law: television tells him to. It’s why he fails at everything….television isn’t real.
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