2013-10-15
Explanation
In this comic, a therapist is speaking to a patient during a session. The therapist delivers a brutally honest assessment, telling the patient that they should go back to their wife and apologize, noting that the patient has been mistaking their lack of empathy for honesty, their emotional immaturity for realism, and their poor social skills for confidence. The therapist then asks if the patient would like to spend the next six months working through the realization that "all that glittered was pyrite" (fool's gold). The patient responds, "Let's shoot for three months."
In the final panel, the scene shifts: the patient is now at a social gathering, cheerfully announcing "Hey! Guess who has a girlfriend!" This implies that rather than doing the hard therapeutic work of self-improvement, the patient simply moved on and found a new relationship, completely ignoring the therapist's advice. The joke plays on the common pattern of people seeking therapy but not actually wanting to change, instead repeating the same unhealthy patterns.
The votey panel shows the comic's author (a stand-in for Zach Weinersmith) smugly thinking "Damn I write good dialog," adding a layer of self-congratulatory meta-humor. The phrase "all that glittered was pyrite" is a clever twist on the proverb "all that glitters is not gold," using the scientific name for fool's gold to make it sound more intellectual -- fitting for the therapist character.