As far as the still anonymous couple is concerned, this strip brings no net change.
Their survival was very much in question after the last strip, but the first panel of today’s one solved that question in their favor – but the final panel raised exactly the same question anew. >_>
At least this time it’s their own fault, or more precisely the fault of the male partner – who, unfortunately for his female partner, turns out to be of the ‘nerd’ character class, and thus susceptible to falling for the insidious lure of scientific discovery, regardless of the dangers involved. Edward Jenner, in case you’re not aware of him, is the patron saint of questionable decisions (nerd/scientist branch). If you hear his name brought up in a B-movie, you can be sure that some nerd or scientist character is about to get themselves into serious trouble of some description – no scriptwriter would have the guy mentioned in any other context.
Of course the female part of the couple wouldn’t have increased her chances of survival by choosing a less nerdy partner. Under the rules governing supporting characters in B-movies, her only other choice would have been an outright jock character. And a jock would have ended up dragging her down to the same doom via the same poor decision – just that he would have done in not out of a desire for scientific discovery, but out of a need to prove his courage/manliness. The end result would have been the same. And as far as the date is concerned (before it was so rudely interrupted), it was probably a lot less tedious and aggravating with the nerd than it would have been with the jock, so from that perspective she made the right choice among her very limited options. And she caps off her participation in the plot commendably professionally by delivering a first-rate scream in the last panel…which makes up most of her job description, anyway. Life’s though for that sort of character in a B-movie. Fortunately (from that viewpoint), it’s also short. >_>
More on Thursday.
B-Movie support characters are an interesting phenomena: The entirety of their existence is to fill a void to create the illusion of the real world. But B-Movies having budgets, their time is (extremely) limited based on that budget. What this means is that the better-paid actors will likely have something horrible happen or be ushered out of the movie quickly while the worse-paid actors will probably stick around a while.
You can make a game out of guessing the order of cast members being killed off based on their acting ability (and sometimes looks).
Of course that whole matter get complicated by the important, yet by now largely perceptual, difference between a minor supporting role and a cameo. Actors whose star power has faded somewhat are particularly likely to insist on that vital difference…and they’re also particularly likely to appear in B-movies, so…
You could even argue that moving to a ‘lower’ level of movie automatically lifts their parts from minor supporting part to cameo, by virtue of a difference between goose and gander, or so. XD