Review: Corner Gas Animated “Retro Grade”

It’s a 70’s themed party and everyone is invited from Gordie Howe to the Monopoly Guy.

Overview:

The bar of Dog River Hotel, the local watering hole of everyone in town is in need of some serious upgrades. The gang decides the best way to raise some funds would be to hold a party. But, with Lacey disgruntled about having to organize all of the local events it is up to everyone else to pull it all together. Not without getting a few tips from the restaurant owner without her knowing.

While the plans for the party come together everyone is choosing their 70’s retro costume. Karen is fed-up with always doing duo costumes with her partner Davis. Oscar decides to steer away from his old go-to, Mr. Hockey, Gordie Howe, unfortunately his new choice causes mixed feelings from Emma.

During all of this, Hank is frustrated with always being treated like the dummy. Wanda comes up with a brilliant plan of pitting Brent against Hank in some high school exams. The results are not to Brent’s liking but Hank has a hay day. That is until they find out that Wanda may not have been honest about the whole thing.

Our Take:

I want to start out by talking about something that excited me the moment I saw it. A few episodes ago, I was quite disappointed to see that the money exchanged on Corner Gas Animated was all green, US green. As a Canadian watching a Canadian program, trust me these things stand out and have a tendency to be upsetting. However, at the start of this particular episode there was some five dollar bills being thrown around, and much to my Canadian pride they were a beautiful vibrant blue! Whatever, you guys don’t really care about that, but those from the great white north know exactly what I am talking about and they will be happy to hear about the blue bills.

I was pleased from the get-go that this would clearly be an episode that involved the entire cast on one adventure. There is too often a mess of different stories happening on this program. Having a party involving the whole town is the best way to make sure each character is in the same room at the same time. Unfortunately, despite having one encompassing plot, there was a serious lack of substance to the episode. They all planned a party, they all had there own mission getting ready for the party, and the party just kind of happened and that was it. Usually there are some morals or lessons behind the happenings of Dog River. This episode was more about fitting in some random references and trying to make something happen.

That said, the story between Brent and Hank kind of drove everything even though it had the least to do with the rest of the show. I am very happy though that Hank got his chance to shine, he has always been a punching bag whether it was the original sitcom, the movie, or the animated series. He deserves to feel smart for once, and we always root for the underdog.

The whole Oscar and Emma plot was a bit disturbing for me. I mean, they are pretty old and wrinkly, we do not really have to get into their sex life. No offense to older citizens, it just lacks the appeal when the couple in question are out of range of sympathy. I do agree that Gordie Howe would make a much better choice as a turn-on than Burt Reynolds. Not that the Burt is not awesome, but seriously he does not own six Art Ross trophies. I’ll just leave that there.

The party scene was a lot of fun, mostly to see all the background characters and the references that were involved. I am an 80’s child and many of these characters were a bit before my time. Which makes me worry if this episode was out of touch with their target audience. The original Corner Gas had an older audience, but how many of them are watching animated shows. I feel like they should be appealing more to the 20 to 39-year-olds as that is a generation that grew up on cartoons. It wasn’t a bad episode overall it just missed a lot of the marks. Probably could have used one more rewrite, but extra points for the blue money and Gordie Howe love.