Stan video chats with Mabel every week — she’s rewatching Ducktective with him and, judging by the raised voices over the last plot twist, they’re both getting into it. He’s also collaborating with Dipper on a comic book. The kid’s got a wild imagination for writing and Stan’s got, well, a wild amount of confidence in his drawing abilities. Their second installment came out last month.
Ford tries to remind himself that it’s easier. They only had a summer, just three months of memories tying them together, so they’re able to more or less pick up where they left off. Meanwhile, Stan and Ford have been drifting apart for forty years, once parallel lines made divergent. Sometimes, Ford wonders if the only thing left binding them together were memories from a distant yesterday.
Remove that faint foundation of brotherhood and Ford must face what he has long been to Stan: nothing but a stranger who shares his face.