A Grocery Clerk's Romance
A parody that's light on comedy, but turns a number of stock devices on their heads in just eight minutes. Unlike the numerous intemperance stories that purport to show “What Drink Did” to “Les Victimes De L'alcoolisme”, i.e. happy families torn into misery, this begins with the alcoholic slacker's family already unhappy, though still intact. In “L'Assommoir” the laundress is first abandoned when her husband runs off with another woman, then rescued by The Good Guy. Here it is The Good Guy, instead of a woman, that is splitting the laundress from her husband - and comically sabotaging a race-to-the-rescue along the way. While other intemperance tales end tragically, here the family's miserable life simply goes on as before - an ending less dramatic, more realistic.