Re: Ida Loses a Leg
Wow, you really have looked deeply into the episode. Best of luck on your final thesis.
Responding is very difficult to do, because you have pretty much covered even the response bases.
I never really thought about keeping dreams and reality separate, but you have an interesting idea. When you dream something, no matter what happens, it can always be euphoric, but there will be complications in real life, complications that are out of our control, which was demonstrated very well to Lois in Traffic Jam. I think the times when we're most at peace with ourselves are the times when we don't even realize it. Our happiest dreams, for example, will be forgotten before we even wake up.
The symbolism you pick up on in these episodes is amazing. I worked long and hard on a timeline that the writers probably didn't even think about when they wrote the episodes, but that is water under the bridge (not quite the right cliche here, but that's ok...) when compared with what you have pointed out. I enjoyed reading about how Dewey's remote controlled car could essentially be a symbol of his life, and I too found it quite entertaining that Hal felt sympathy for Lois, not for Ida, in the days following the loss of her leg.
I'm going to be so bold as to say this is one of the best un-funny episodes of the series. I wasn't laughing the entire episode (it had it's funny parts, but certainly not like Dewey's Opera or Hal's Christmas Gift), but it was special in its own way. We've never had such a disaster as an amputation happen before; we've never dealed with issues quite this large before; and we've never delved quite this deeply into the Wilkersons before. By learning more about the Wilkersons, in some cases we can learn more about the stereotypical family, and learn more about ourselves, whether we fit that stereotype or not. To quote Malcolm from season 4's Kicked Out, "I like this new Malcolm."