I’ve never done a lot of mother-in-law jokes for fear of wandering into a vast minefield of cartooning cliches. Perhaps I left a lot of good material on the table out of an abundance of caution, and laziness. Of the women I’ve known well enough to enable an opinion on the subject, I’ve never known one who didn’t have a complex relationship with her mother. The relationship of a father and a son can be good, bad or somewhere in between, but I don’t think it normally approaches the near-mystical bond between mother and daughter. That’s not to say it is serene; it never is. Anyway, that’s my opinion. I don’t have anything to back it up really. I may be wrong.