In the Season 7 Last Man Standing Episode "Arrest Her Development" Mandy (new Mandy) tackles adjectives and adverbs on several occasions."[The apartment search] is going bad. Badly? Terrible. Terribly?"What is even more hilarious to me is that she solves each difficulty, including the one above, by doing what I did as a student: coming up with a completely new phrase:
"It ain't good."And more:
"I'm not a little girl anymore. I'm 6-feet tall...You think of us as these helpless, pathetic beautiful children. [So] stop treating us like one. Like two? Like both? We ain't children!"And:
"More than okay. Better than okay? We cool."In case anyone is wondering, the answers are:
The apartment search is ADJECTIVE: "The apartment search is terrible." (The problem is the VERB "go" requires an ADVERB but Mandy intends the VERB to be a LINKING VERB which requires an ADJECTIVE.)
"Stop treating us like children" is the meaning, and the PRONOUN for "children" is "them"--I agree with Mandy: that just sounds weird, especially since she really intends a new CLAUSE, "Stop treating us like WE are children."
The problem with the third is that "okay" does not turn into "okay-er" (or even "okay-est"), even with "more" (or "best"). "Okay" by definition does not have a COMPARATIVE or SUPERLATIVE form--things are just okay.
"Better than" is the better choice. But, again, Mandy is right to switch it out.
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