Review: Crash Canyon – Pilot

I’m a gamer and I am not afraid to admit it. My personal favorite game series is the God of War franchise. Nothing beats running through a gamut of enemies, tearing bodies apart, and performing killer finishes. After God of War II however, game developers started  seeing dollar signs and suddenly new franchises like Dante’s Inferno, and Conan started showing up. Games that were both good in their own right but were more or less God of War clones. Similarly, Crash Canyon puts out a decent effort with its first episode, but it’s easy to spot quite a few similarities to other animated shows like Family Guy, American Dad, and The Cleveland Show.

SPOILERS BELOW

Joel Cohen’s (The Simpsons) Crash Canyon  is the story of of the Wendells, a cute Canadian family from Alberta, consisting of goofy family members each with their own unique personalities. For starters we have Norm, an engineer who invents usually malfunctioning products, his angry wife Sheila, their son Jake, their typical mall-bitch teenager of a daughter Roxie, and Norm’s third cousin Vern, a morbidly obese man who gets around via a Hoveround chair.

The story unfolds when while going on vacation the Wendells crash into a guard rail, off the side of a canyon, and crash land in a canyon(get it? Crash Canyon!) Whilst there they get to meet the various cast of about 25 characters all of whom also crashed their one way or another.  Up first we get an astronaut and his monkey pal, a family of rich snobs who live in the summer house that they were transporting. A washed-up British Punk rocker(think Billy Idol), a ventriloquist and his abusive dummy(is Jeff Dunham reading this?), a woman with a bear for a husband/servant, along with a host of others.

The concept of the show is cool, but some of the characters seem to be similar to its Animation Domination counterparts. For example, Roxy Wendell reminds me at times of Roberta Cleveland, however I can let this one slide because both act like just about every teenage girl I’ve seen at the mall so maybe its just a reflection of society. Vernon ,as mentioned, spends his time constantly eating and driving around his hoveround not unlike Kendra Krinklesac(The Cleveland Show), another lard ass, but I actually like Vern better because he seems to have funnier jokes. Then we meet the Manderbilts, who have a baby son named Vaughn that sort of looks and acts like Rallo, and Pristine, their teenage daughter of whom the family shits on alas they make her live in the closet because the family is disgusted with her(Meg anyone?). The astronaut Colton Steel is an arrogant douche who worked for the government(Stan from American Dad) and lastly we have a woman who lives with a bear servant who is able to understand and adhere to perfect English(ala the Bears from The Cleveland Show).  Also, Crash Canyon borrows a couple pages from Family Guy and throws in a few cut-away gags(I counted about four) during the course of the episode.

Having said all this I kind of like the Wendells as a family and the show has such a good concept, and am very curious as to how the writers come up with new episodes in a scenario that could get tedious. With that in mind I’ll give this first episode a “meh”  hoping they can pick it up next week because although I don’t think this show is complete garbage, I think this episode still leaves a lot to be desired.