Well, this is where it ceases any resemblance to realism and becomes a complete farce.
Stanley was so exhausted that he could neither plan nor execute new Bash Brannigans, so the strip began to be dictated by his daily reality rather than him enacting stories he'd already planned.
When she saw the sequence where he killed her in the strip, she realized the party had been a setup for that, and that he must in reality want her out of his life, even if not through an actual murder.
But -- she was well aware that Stanley based his comic strip on real events -- she'd even suggested the dinner with Harold and Edna where everything goes wrong.
This means she'd been reading the strip right along as he created it, and in fact we see her do that. So she must have seen the episodes where he bought the remote control device and the dummy and the black raincoat. She must have seen everything leading up to that morning's strips. How could she not know this was a story about a "murder plot" against her/Mrs. Brannigan? Sure, he could have stopped showing her his work, but she read the paper, she'd have seen it.
Plus the fact that if Bash really killed Mrs. Brannigan, Stanley wouldn't have shown him getting the mannequin and the other stuff, just the pills. Unless he was going to have some kind of insane plot twist, he wouldn't have shown Bash buying stuff that he, Stanley, needed only for the enactment he had planned.
(The real life explanation appears to be that the production people goofed -- the artist who drew the real strips apparently misunderstood and put in about the dummy, raincoat et al., and they didn't catch it, just put it in the movie like that.)
So the whole thing is a farce from this point on, even before we get to the courtroom scene, and has to be viewed as that.
You've got me?! Who's got you?!
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matt_shade
11 years ago
So she must have seen the episodes where he bought the remote control device and the dummy and the black raincoat. She must have seen everything leading up to that morning's strips. How could she not know this was a story about a "murder plot" against her/Mrs. Brannigan?
I think it's to be interpreted he kept the early strips from her and the middle ones weren't published until she'd seen the ending. But even if she knew Mrs. Brannigan was about to be "murdered" (assuming there would be some humorous twist afterwards, I assume), her husband had just
drugged her for a comic strip and everyone at the party would suspect it.
But that's just me. ...or the clinical depression talking.
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NewtonFigg
9 years ago
The operation of dropping the "body" in the cement form was photographed with a very expensive camera. Had the police blown up the negatives, they would have been able to see the blonde was a mannequin. But it never pays to be too literal with comedy plots.
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Val-El
9 years ago
You've got me?! Who's got you?!
One of the best lines of all time!!!
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