Review: Corner Gas Animated “Sound and Fury”

 

 

Overview:

Hank and Brent are giving Emma a hard time when she announces that she will be on a gardening podcast. But they quickly change their tune when they discover who the host of the show is, ex-professional wrestler Lance Storm. The boys attempt to get their hero to find passion in wrestling again while Oscar worries about the muscly podcaster getting to close to with his wife.

Meanwhile, Lacey has won a new smart speaker in a raffle. However, she is afraid that it will begin recording her private conversations. But when Wanda shows her what the machine is capable Lacey falls in love, literally.

Our Take:

Corner Gas Animated continues its tradition of including cameos by Canadian celebrities this week with a few former professional wrestlers. The franchise has featured appearances by Prime Ministers, movie stars, and musicians, but bringing in sports entertainers plays heavily on the childish nature of Brent and Hank.

Lance Storm plays special guest star as he hosts a gardening podcast which Emma appears on. While the legendary Bret ‘The Hitman’ Hart makes an appearance as Lance’s rival, Bad Mechanic. And a subtle voice appearance from the ex-WWE diva, Trish Stratus, helps to fill out the episode.

The unique additions to the cast made this the best episode for Brent thus far in the season. The star’s dry humour always works best when paired with the immaturity of Hank. When the two can reminisce about comic books or professional wrestling, you are guaranteed to get some humorous moments.

Additionally, Lacey gets a stand-out plot in this episode that takes her out from being the voice-of-reason into being a comedic centrepiece. Her affliction for her new smart speaker was a fun use of her character especially when mixed with a rivalry with Wanda.

There was a C-plot in the episode involving Davis and Karen purchasing a massage wand to make up for a surplus in the DRPD annual budget.  

Though the simple side story did intertwine with the main plot by the end of the show, it did not add much to the episode overall. This does happen when there are so many characters dividing screen time on a sitcom. 

Unfortunately, sometimes these added plots become a boring distraction from everything else going on. Giving each character a part to play has value but it is one of the major flaws of the animated sitcom. The series would be better for it if this screen time were dispersed through a season rather than an episode.

On the other hand, the show does always ensure that the 21-minute runtime is jam-packed with content. With three plots occurring simultaneously there is always something interesting going on in Dog River.

This was one of those episodes where there were so many plot points that the pace of the show moved quickly. 

For a series about boring life in rural Saskatchewan, there are hardly ever any slow scenes. And this episode included everything including wrestling matches, jazz dancing, and a rare flower blooming. It goes to show, you never know what will happen in Dog River next.