REVIEW: CRASH CANYON “For Norm the Sell Tolls”

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Sheila Wendell launches her own Canyon cosmetics company but no one is buying – at least not from her. Norm, however, is making a killing as Sheila’s sales prodige which drives her insane. Jake, Roxy and the other canyon kids discover a treasure trove of hidden candy and think their sweet tooth’s are set for life – until the candy starts to go missing and friends turn on one another trying to find the thief.

Spoilers Below

This season kicks off as if the first season never ended. It’s more like production just took a hiatus for the summer, returning to the community in the canyon where quirky escapades seem to find the Wendell’s (or vice versa) each week.

Sheila is afraid to unpack her suitcase, stating that she fears it would be a sign that the Wendell’s are stuck in the canyon for good. But when she finally gets around to it, she comes across her real estate blazer and reflects on her glory days as a realtor.

She then decides to execute a real estate business in the canyon, by developing

Vista on the Glen – prime real estate overlooking a waterfall in the canyon. After trying several methods to sell, she is fruitless.

Stumbling upon a plant that produces a fluid that moisturizes her skin, she aborts the real estate business to manufacture cosmetic products, concocting solutions from berries and flowers. Like any other object in the show, Vernon wonders if the cosmetics are edible.

Sheila tries recruiting the children as salespeople, but Roxy and Jake both decline, so she unwillingly enrolls Norm, like the last kid picked for a baseball game, for the door-to-door operation.

Elsewhere, Roxy, Jake, Mace, Sly and Butch find a truckload of candy at the bottom of the lake. They’re cautious not to share their found treasure with the rest of the canyon’s inhabitants, and they soon become paranoid after some goes missing. They’re quick to play the blame game, only to find out it’s being stolen by a mole, which one of the uneducated Butane kids mistakes for a giraffe.

So ensues an attempt to capture the suspected mole through a montage with messy outcomes, generally violent results, backfiring on the two Butane boys.

Meanwhile, Sheila is jealous of Norm’s success and his constant need for overspending his earnings. Norm eventually sees her grief and attempts to resolve the issue.

The entire show had an underlying theme of greed and materialism between both storylines.

I’ve always found Canadian humour to be rather dry and not too daring. Crash Canyon is no exception. But the series seems to have a knack for some extremely dark quips, although they tend to be blanketed in gentler overtones by the writers. This episode had jokes regarding sex, masturbation, incest, death, violence, and verbal and physical spousal abuse.

Viewers are inclined bellyache about Crash Canyon on message boards, saying the cutaway gags are a rip-off of Family Guy. I see it more as an influence. Besides, The Simpsons used cutaway gags for ten years (although, not as frequent) before Family Guy aired on television, so it is probably something Crash Canyon developer AND Simpsons scribe, Joel Cohen, may have picked up over the years.

So the humour is not the sharpest, but the jokes are deeper than they get credit for. This episode was cleverly written, with each small consequence setting something up for the next scenario

 

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