Review: The Great North “Wanted: Delmer Alive Adventure”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

After Delmer suffers a concussion while eating soup, the Tobins tell their favorite stories about him to keep him awake and alive.

Our Take:

Now here’s something you don’t usually see every day. One minute, you’re doing nothing but eat soup. The next, you hit your head and got a concussion. Yep, this is just another ordinary day for the Tobin family.

The episode has Beef retrieving Delmer from the hospital after Delmer got a concussion while eating soup. The Tobin family will have to keep Delmer awake for the next four hours, or his condition will get worse. The only way to keep him awake is to tell their favorite stories about Beef’s time with Delmer. Although, their tales tend to be more far-fetched than others.

Ham’s story follows Beef and Delmer saving the town from an alien race. Next, Wolf tells his story about Beef and Delmer confronting a mutant squirrel during their time at summer camp. Finally, Beef’s story has him and Delmer hunting down a vast, crab-like sea monster.

It’s a compilation episode that allowed the characters’ imaginative stories to run wild. The result is a delightful and comical series of tall tales that honor Delmer’s role in Beef’s life. I enjoyed that the fictional stories they tell to Delmer were inspired by Beef’s time with Delmer when his parents weren’t around. I was surprised to see that those stories actually meant something for these characters, but at the same time, I wasn’t since The Great North is known for its heartfelt family moments. Still, the ending was generous enough to strike a chord on my heartstring.

The mini-stories were also pretty fun to watch as they offer plenty of imagination and humor to keep the show’s fans awake. Out of the three tall tales I viewed in this episode, I have to go with Wolf’s summer camp story as my top favorite. The other two stories involving aliens and sea monsters couldn’t hold a candle to what the summer camp horrors delivered regarding the humor. It succeeded in providing some amusing self-awareness in the horror genre cliches, which appropriately fits Wolf’s desire of filmmaking.

Overall, “Wanted: Delmer Alive Adventure” is another solid episode that’s funny enough to keep me awake. It is also a surprisingly thoughtful tribute to Delmer’s importance in Beef’s early years. It would be nice to hear the other stories from the rest of the Tobin family. However, that would require an additional 30 minutes in its runtime, which would result in it overstaying its welcome. Maybe we’ll get to hear more of their stories in the future after Delmer gets a concussion again?