APOCALYPTIC BUTTERFLIES
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Hank and Muriel are the perfect mismatched, true-to-life couple; she’s too smart for him, he’s too immature for her. He can’t deal with the responsibilities of fatherhood, she can’t stand his coffee grounds in the sink. Forget that they can’t decide on a name for their seven-week-old daughter, these two can’t even agree on the sex of the Road Runner! Faced with Christmas anxieties and pushed over the edge by Hank’s birthday present from his father, four thousand dollars’ worth of lawn totem poles, they respond as any couple would; he has an affair and she goes off to Howard Johnson’s to sample every flavor of ice cream.
While we don’t see Muriel’s ice cream binge, we do get a glimpse of Hank’s affair with Trudi, a busty, sweet, but not so bright beauty given to philosophical leanings and “reality attacks.” They spend most of their time in bed talking about Muriel, which should tell Hank something but doesn’t. It takes his mother, Francine, to put a stop to his wandering.
