GW, that was an excellent post. Let me see if I can provide some answers. I'll just leave aside the impressionistic time, since that's been well established by our esteemed author and her cohorts.
2-4. Agreed. Although please take note. Ol' Doc Zenon returned less than 24 hours after The Night of the Watch. If you really wanted to play around with the nefarious Adrian angle, you could argue that Adrian's exclamation about the Dr. being on vacation could be total B.S. The recording could simply have been "Thank you for calling the office of Dr. (I can't spell or pronounce his name). We are currently closed for the weekend. If this is a medical emergency, call 911. If this is a therepeutic emergency, please refer to the Doctor's home number listed in the campus directory. If the matter is not urgent, feel free to call back or stop by during normal business hours. They are Monday-Friday 8:30 to 5:30 or by special appointment." I don't personally buy this, but it's another element to add to your theory. Knowing Derek's game, Adrian could have manipulated the situation so that he could force a confrontation with Derek and steal his harem.
However, in spite of how entertaining this theory is, I have a question. Why would Adrian master-manipulator and notorious wolf pass up the opportunity to make his conquests easier by accepting Danielle's offer in #58?
Having her set up that sort of programming would seem to be the best of both worlds or a simpler way to pursue his goal.
5. Completely fair question. I'm not sure we'll ever get an answer to that, and he could have been manipulating the situation by getting Dani a certificate IF he had been observing Derek and taking notes. His behavior elsewhere doesn't seem to bear this out. Furthermore, this would diminish his character because he would be a slightly more caring, vastly less organized version of Q (who seems to be the rich man's Derek).
6 thru 8--Buying the condoms could signal that Adrian has decided to kick his plan into action, including a plan of attack on Danielle for whom he obviously feels an attraction. However, his actions don't seem to match such an intent. I think he went to Student Health for another reason and purchased the condoms as a hopeful gesture, similar to what Erin does before returning to SJI.
According to our author, all Derek's thralls had the same therapy trigger, but none of his approaches to any of the women he targts is the same. Neither he nor Adrian say anything to kick off the hypnotism tango. I think the first approach with Jacqui was just an example of Derek being an idiot and thinking any approach he tried should work because he was able to do just about anything with Zenon's patients.
9. This is another excellent line of inquiry. I tend to think that there was an MC element to Adrian's breakup, but that either
A. His girlfriend was being manipulated by MC from an outside force or
B. She was using it to control him. If he is originally from NYC, this gives us excellent opportunity to tie Zenon's boss to Adrian's past, but we don't even have any indirect hints of that yet. I certainly don't think that Adrian arrived in town with an MC targets list. I'm hoping that he is what he appears to be, a genuinely good guy with some outstanding attributes who fell into some deserved good luck.
10. and 11. Yes, the circles and diamonds differentiate the two groups and Polaroid chick is in the Circle group. Jacqui appears unassigned (like Raven and Sue) at that juncture. Since Adrian has never met the girl in the Polaroids, it is a puzzle whether Dani is part of Adrian's group or he's part of hers. So far, it seems like she's manipulating him into being the new master of her group. Or rather, she WAS manipulating him that way until Mal and Marli assumed control of the Watch and added another layer of programming to her. Also, I thought there was an early mention that part of Dani's wild history was in New York. Is it possible that she crossed paths with Zenon's boss back then?
12. This seems like Cait, Laura and Amy rationalizing post-hypnotic behavior under their new post-hypnotic suggestions, not an indication that they weren't being controlled by Derek, but just as they're programmed to think of Adrian as their boyfriend, they're programmed to think of the Derek experience as a "holiday fling" with a moron (Laura's description of the scenario to Vik in #83).
13. This is a reasonable question, but it's possible that Dani was still "going out" with Derek in the fall and they broke up before Christmas. Remember, they categorize Derek as her ex on the afternoon of The Night of the Watch (phone conversation between Erin and Adrian in #24)
14. The reference isn't totally clear, but I'd lean toward "a school where they spoke English as a first language" (probably New York to match the rest of the timeline) as opposed to an English-immersion schoool in Quebec, or a school in the U.K.
15-17. Sound reasoning. Perhaps Danielle got the watch from the gentleman for whom she served as an au pair and her leader-of-harem programming and the pictures stem from that experience. That might also be the source of the red book with that hypnotic swoosh on the cover that she was storing with the watch when this whole thing started. I suppose it's also possible that the older gentleman was a teacher or school official.
18. There, I honestly don't know, but I think the watch, Zenon's female boss, and the "master" from New York who could be associated with Danielle's earlier schooling all intersect somewhere. It's possible that she was still in the New York harem during her first semester at Wilmot or that she had decided to go to Wilmot while still under the watch's influence (though why, we don't know yet).
19. I totally missed Van Winkles, and I think you're right--that's where Danielle quit working. As to whether Sawyer owns it or owns a competing establishment--I don't know. We haven't met Sawyer yet, I have no way to judge his/her sense of style, humor, or business acumen. My personal feeling would be that Sawyer owns a different place, since whoever owns Van Winkles would not be tempted by getting Danielle back, but would gripe about her being difficult to work with.
20. Yeah, Jacqui's ex is a New York entertainment lawyer. Her ex-fiance, I don't know. He might be significant, but we might have thought that Erin's ex could have been significant and he's vanished into the ether. I'd expect to see Pearl's father before the disgraced anonymous hound.
21-22. You might like to think that, and it certainly would tie threads together, but that's a different hair color and hair style than Dani has ever sported. Plus, you'd think something like that would have come up before now. Why would Jacqui be on friendly terms with the woman who slept with her fiance before the intervention of The Watch?
23. A connection is possible. However, Q's personal style, demeanor and tastes don't lead me to believe that he'd have such a business.
24. I think the blondes are supposed to have moved their own van. You notice they aren't sitting at that booth anymore. However, it does seem like a slight continuity error that they go from pulling out of their parking space to parked in that parking space between panels 4 and 5.*shrug*
