DirtyDezy

This is about The Electric Palace. Now, I have some thoughts on some things I’ve been thinking about… and a large part of it has to do with consistency. Sometimes, the Electric Palace is written as the worst most scummy business imaginable, selling batteries that don’t work, faulty transformers, keyboards with missing letters, and fans with misleading features. On the other hand, The Electric Palace is also written as a perfectly normal establishment, selling Christmas lights, lightbulbs, blenders, and even weapons and toys, all of which work wonderfully. Why is this? Is it really just Bart’s bad business practices that drag it down? Probably. But, at the same time, Bart has also been revealed to be quite an excellent manager. Even Edwin comments as such, and in the Elsewhere in Odyssey strips, we learn Bart is the number one seller of Binsai products in entire country, and has one of the most successful Electric Palace locations. So…. Surely it can’t be THAT bad, right?

Oh, and another thing…. This brings me to the topic of discussing how much money the Rathbones have. They are shown to live incredibly cheap, refusing to buy things on many occasions, and are shown dumpster diving for goods more than once in the middle of the night. They are portrayed as “trashy”, poor, with Bart implying things such as them having a very small budget for Christmas gifts.

But…. (Yes, again), is this really the case? In Tornado, a citizen remarks that the Rathbones should not be allowed to stay in the disaster shelter because they have enough money to live in a hotel while their house is being repaired. It is also shown more than once in an episode, Bart mentioning that he has thousands of dollars lying around to use for the plot. He’s always asked where he GOT this money, to which he doesn’t usually answer. I get the impression that Bart is a Scrooge type, being very rich but refusing to spend anything more than necessary. He sacrifices his quality of life (and the quality of life for his family) in order to hold onto those riches.

My personal theory is something along the lines that they were actually poor before they became owners of the electric palace. Because there was that time period before the palace with them in odyssey. But after they acquired it they suddenly had money and wanted to keep it for themselves.

It’s also funny that you brought up Scrooge because while I was reading this I thought of him too 😂

And for the ripped clothes Rodney did say they were “strategically placed rips” so maybe he’s secretly buying those Balenciaga poor aesthetic clothes [like the “poor” or “dirty” collections in rich brands for some reason]