If the characters conducted themselves with perfect foresight and free of hangups, it would be a much duller strip.
Ok, good point. To build on it, the comic would also be far less realistic, as people in real life do screw up.
And probably a lot less interesting. A story in which nothing ever happens isn't going to be very interesting.
I'm just one of those people that when i see someone making the same mistakes over, and over, or making new mistakes for the same root reason; i want to slap them across the back of the head, and yell "The hell's wrong with you?!?". I want to do the exact same thing when i see Faye imploding yet another of her relationships; but sense i can't do that to a character form a webcomic, i've come to the forum to rant, and toss out my .02$ instead.
Fair enough. I feel the same way. But if Dora is guilty of not trying to help Faye here, then so are Hanners, Marten and probably a few others too, yet the hate seems mostly reserved for Dora. But they all saw her train start to come off the tracks.
Maybe they
all just had things going on in their lives too, whether good or bad, that distracted them for that crucial bit of time. That doesn't make
any of them bad people, just flawed people. Or, y'know, as we're all flawed, simply people.
I have no problem at all of ignoring the agency, and free will of a drunk friend if i feel it's needed. If they're drunk, and say "i'm ok to drive.", it bothers me not at all to take their keys, and tell them to sleep on the couch, call a ride, or walk home; likewise if they've been getting tanked every day for a week, dropping them off at a clinic so they can dry out is something i'd do without batting an eye.
I think there's a difference between cutting a potential drink driver off and essentially kidnapping someone, which is what it would be to take someone away somewhere against their will.
I bet if Dora had "forced Faye into the car, not told her where they were going, and driven her to rehab" all of the Dora haters would be going "Dora is such a control freak! How dare she exert that control outside of the employer/employee context! Blah blee bloo" NOTHING DORA DOES WILL EVER SATISFY YOU.
Actually, if she'd done that it would have gone a long way to changing my view of the character.
And upset plenty of others as trva123 points out. Poor girl can't catch a break here.
She knew Faye drank to drown her issues, she saw that Faye had been holding a bottle like an old friend. It shouldn't take a Ph. D in psychology to figure out that she was in trouble, and that telling her "you're fired, get help", and then just walking away would be about as effective as trying to put out a fire with a can of paint thinner.
I'm pretty sure it was Faye who just walked away. Dora has her business to run so her options to abandon that and go racing down the street to force someone to listen to her who had said they were not going to listen while doing all the
just walking away themselves would be somewhat limited.