The last panel doesn’t make much sense following her declaration in the third panel, under the straightforward reading I would normally give it: “Nineteen weeks ago was the last time I felt directionless and at a loss. Since then it’s been pretty good.”
But to try to save it, is there a reasonable way to construe “since” and “had no” to give an overall meaning of “Nineteen weeks ago I had the wake-up call about my directionless life. And since then, no real progress. I am still at a loss.” That might gather applause for courage / honesty / forthright confession, but still aupport her thought that the applause is paradoxical. But is it really a passable reading of the words?
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Comics I Don't Understand 
Seems clear to me, honestly. Margot is in an AA-style self-help group, where you get applause for admitting your failures. It turns her flaws into achievements.
Also, why “Scope”?
CarlFink, yes the apparent format of the meeting is quite clear. Margot’s “confession” is far from it! Because what she actually says is not how badly she has been doing, but how well. We only rush to interpret it that way because of the expectations of the format, and reading back from the later panel.
To carry on with the analogy, what she says in panel 3 is the equivalent of “I have been nineteen weeks sober”. It has been that long since she has fallen prey to directionless frustration, to having no clue. In the meantime, she has been doing okay.
But then why reject the applause?
Yeah, I understand Mitch’s point. We would get the contrary reading (which might or might not be Carl’s) if she had said “It’s been 19 weeks since I’ve had any clue what to do with my life.”
The strip only makes sense when one remembers that these characters do not react like normal, ordinary people. Luca Debus has scripted them as post-grad 20-somethings, but their emotional state tends to be closer to junior high school. In this case, Margot is still focussing on her past failures, and sees the applause from the audience as artificial window dressing. That is precisely the incongruity that the author intended, and it’s the only gag anyone is going to get from this strip.
Kilby is being too tough on Margot. One doesn’t have to be nearly deranged to follow a “I’ve been 19 weeks sober” declaration with some sadness and regrets over the bad times, triggered by the applause, which can feel unearned. Not just to junior-high-school personalities.
@ Danny – She’s certainly not “deranged”, just very unsure of herself. My JHS evaluation was not a judgement on this particular strip, but of the cumulative behavior since Wannabe started.
P.S. Full disclosure: I got tired of the antics (particularly McKenzie) and quit following Wannabe several weeks ago. Today’s final panel is a good example of why.
P.P.S. A quick review showed that Margot didn’t just attend that group; she was the one who founded it:
If she had said a different formulation – “It’s been 19 weeks since I’ve had a clue what to do with my life” – that could also be mildly confusing: it could mean either she had her last clue what to do 19 weeks ago, but was wrong, or the situation has changed, and she has been clueless since; or that she had her big revelatory clue 19 weeks ago and since then she’s known exactly what to do.
In the strip, to me it sounded, at first, as though what she is actually trying to say was just a short form (for space reasons) of “I last had a clue what to do with my life 19 weeks ago and since then I’ve had no idea” or more economically “It’s been 19 weeks that I’ve had no clue what to do with my life”..
“Depuis” in French means “since” in English, but if French-speaking people* use “since” in some phrases while speaking English it sounds odd: “I have been sober since five years”, for instance (“for five years” or “since five years ago” being more correct). A bit of a stretch, but if the writer has some French influence in their background, maybe a form of “Since 19 weeks I’ve had no clue what to do with my life”, meaning “I’ve had no clue what to do with my life for the last 19 weeks”, is what they were going for in the speech bubble.
*This includes an English friend (though she has just also got herself Belgian nationality for Brexit reasons) who has lived in and worked in Brussels for decades (and retired there). She often sticks a “wrong” use of since in her sentences.
See https://www.linguee.fr/francais-anglais/traduction/depuis+quelques+jours.html
Overall, the speech bubble could have been better formulated!
Looks like she found a direction for her life by founding a support group for directionless people.
Her statement in the second panel parallels the “X weeks sober” statement of an alcoholic, as does the applause.
So it’s not the second panel that’s confusing, but the fifth. She’s being lauded for overcoming her flaws, not for the flaws themselves.
Powers, thanks for stating it clearly. Indeed it was the direction of her remark in the fifth panel that originally puzzled me and led me to label as a CIDU.
Oh, and “scope” in the title was about the second panel. Besides the “X weeks sober” understanding (which I think is correct, and Powers endorses) there is another possible reading as “X weeks of struggle or trouble” (Which Narmitaj explores in today’s comment) – and though I think that alternate reading is incorrect, it is tempting from the structure. The difference is like the problems with the Quant/Neg Scope examples.