2012-06-25
Explanation
The comic starts with a dramatic, emotionally devastating setup: a mother tearfully tells her children that "Daddy won't be with us for much longer." She explains that he was genotyped about a year ago and was found to have a "70% chance of leaving his family between the ages of 35 and 40." Today, he saw a 23-year-old woman in a low-cut shirt driving a vintage car that reminded him of his youth, and they rushed him to a "behavioral geneticist" who said he may have "as long as a year or as short as one week." The father emotionally promises to stay as long as he can -- then suddenly feels "an odd lightness" in his stomach and shouts in distress. The next panel shows him driving off with the young woman, shouting "WOOH!" The final panel has a child asking "You know that's not how genetics works, right?" and the other child responding, "Yes, but Daddy doesn't."
The humor operates through a sustained misdirection. The entire comic is structured to sound like a terminal illness narrative -- genotyping, consulting specialists, having limited time left -- but it's actually describing a midlife crisis and a man leaving his family for a younger woman. The joke satirizes the tendency to treat bad behavior as genetically predetermined rather than a personal choice, while also poking fun at pop-science misunderstandings of behavioral genetics. The punchline, where the children are more scientifically literate than the father, adds an extra layer of irony.