Review: Corner Gas Animated “Bait and Click”

Wanda and Lacey discover the magic of click-bait.  The results will make your head explode!

Overview:

Wanda is feeling disgruntled that nobody needs her to answer random trivia since everyone has Google in their pockets.  She begins sending click-bait messages to all the residents of Dog River sending them to her for the answers to all of their curiosities.  Lacey sees the potential of Wanda’s plan and utilizes it to bring up business at the café- which leads to a poll over whose dish is better, hers or Emma’s.

Meanwhile, Hank is helping out the local police with a training exercise.  But, when he taps his inner action movie star, he takes things a little too far. It is up to the towns new journalist, Wanda to get to the bottom of the story.

Also, Oscar opens up a bait shop when he discovers that Brent doesn’t carry live fish food.  The business is doomed to fail from opening day, but he may bring Brent and Corner Gas down with him.

Our Take:

Is there something wrong with writing articles for the internet?

Clearly, Wanda’s succession from click-bait writer to an investigative reporter is inspiring for an internet content writer like myself. So far, I felt the animated Corner Gas was underutilizing Wanda as a character.  It may have to do with having too many cooks in the kitchen- or in this case, too many cast members for the cartoon.  However, this was definitely Wanda’s breakout animated performance, and our first nostalgic look at a character we loved for years.

This was also an excellent episode for Hank, who literally goes full-out action hero.  Who would have guessed that Hank would have those kinds of skills?  Karen and Davis were even able to perform some actual police work, which any Corner Gas fan will tell you is a rarity.

Unfortunately, aside from the two characters, the rest of the cast was once again lost in the fold.  As great as all these characters are, there is just too much going on in each episode to get a well-developed story.  Last week, I had mentioned that all the side-plots tend to blend together in the end which makes for awesome storytelling.  However, this week’s episode was a hot mess of clashing storylines. I hope that the showrunners can find a formula that works, but at the least, they should contemplate focusing on individual characters by episode, and not be afraid to leave someone out.