[Images] [Site Updates] [How I Became a Fan] [Contact] [Sign Guestbook] [View Guestbook]
OVERALL IMPRESSIONS: After watching the disappointing Hurry Hard, I was anxious for a killer episode - and here it is. I remember watching the first season and thinking how funny it would be if an American showed up in Dog River; apparently Brent Butt read my mind and turned the idea into a classic episode. The only disappointment for me is that the American (played by Mark McKinney, a Canadian whose impressive list of credits include Kids in the Hall and Saturday Night Live) was an oblivious, encyclopedic milquetoast type who looks and acts like he'd win a couple million dollars on Jeopardy but get his ass solidly kicked in a sex trivia game. However, the script actually calls for the American to be just that sort of bookworm in this episode (most Americans wouldn't have been that tolerant of Hank's mockery, which was hilarious in every instance) and wouldn't have worked nearly as well if he wasn't. This is just one of many reasons why in the entertainment world, Brent Butt is a professional comic and I'm an armchair quarterback.
MEMORABLE MOMENT: Watching the American school Hank on Canadian politics.
MEMORABLE LINE: "I stand by my work. History will vindicate me." This classic from Brent, which I have borrowed from time to time since first hearing it, is in response to Wanda and Lacey dissecting his attempts at humor.
KUDOS TO GABRIELLE: She did a spectacular job having Lacey try to sell the tourism value of the woodpile to the American.
FUNNIEST LINE IN THIS EPISODE: For some reason I missed this the first time I watched this episode, but it split my sides when I finally caught Davis making this remark about the ATM in Wes' liquor / insurance store: "I don't know about the morality of putting an ATM in a store that sells insurance and booze. It might lead people to impulsively buy insurance."
FUNNIEST SCENES IN THIS EPISODE:
There are so many that I could just post a transcript of the episode here if I wanted to be thorough, but in the interests of keeping the list to a reasonable length I limit the list to things that literally made me laugh out loud.
1.) Emma and Lacey's attempt to convince the American visitor of the tourist appeal of the local woodpile.
2.) Hank's constant attempts to mock the American visitor. Every single one of these is incredibly funny.
3.) The American's reaction to the woodpile.
4.) Dog River's "See Our ATM" sign. The thought of an ATM being a true landmark just cracks me up. In 1998 I spent two months living in an apartment in a small town in a former Soviet republic which had precisely one ATM; the town was so small that my phone number was 326. That was eight years ago, so seeing this sort of thing in a developed country made me laugh my head off.
5.) The American's answer to Brent asking him if he might ever visit Dog River again.
BLOOPERS:
1.) At 7:27, when Fitzy sits at the booth to talk to Bill and Hank, the camera faces Hank and Fitzy, and Bill's wallet is on the table with a corner slightly hanging over the table's edge. The camera turns to face Bill, but now the wallet is parallel to the table's edge. The camera turns back to Fitzy and Hank, and now the wallet is at its original position. Bill's sunglasses shift similarly throughout the scene.
2.) At 8:47, Emma is lowering her coffee cup as Oscar asks her what she thinks of "the whole egg-chicken thing." The camera turns to show Emma, and now the cup is up to the level of her chin. After she answers "I'm at peace with it," the camera turns to Oscar, and the cup is lower again. Now watch the cup as Emma says "I'm not surprised or interested" - the cup moves back and forth in a flash. The cup continues its seesaw journey as Emma quizzes Oscar about their anniversary and Oscar announces that he's going back to the ATM.
3.) At 10:16, when Bill asks Lacey what her last name is, from the time the camera faces Lacey to the time it turns to face Bill, Lacey's right (viewer's left) hand is on the handle of a coffee pot. As Brent excuses himself and the camera turns to Lacey, her hand is now on her hip (you can't see that low in the scene at that point, but the angle of her arm at that point is clearly different than it was when she was holding the pot, and she does move her arm to her hip later in the scene).
4.) At 11:14, as Brent's car whips around a corner and parks next to Davis' car, the front wheels are turned to the right at the last split second before you see Brent park it, at which point the wheels are perfectly straight. You'll probably need to pause the beginning of the scene and play it in slow motion to see this. Presumably, this was to allow Brent Butt to pull in after a stunt driver had made the turn around the corner.
5.) Hank gets stranded by Davis at 8:34 and again at 11:50. Both times, as Davis drives away, his car is already facing the main road, and if you look at the tire tracks you see they originate directly in front of Hank - which apparently means that Davis backed in, stopped, stranded Hank, and then matched his path on the way out. The 11:50 shot is the more obvious of the two, and the more curious as well since Davis stranded Hank at the same place earlier in the day (Hank and Karen get stranded at Hank's at 18:26 as well; two sets of tire tracks are visible, but again the tracks start exactly where they're stranded).
6.) At 12:51, Lacey walks up to Oscar and asks what he's pouting about. His arms are crossed throughout most of this scene, but at about 13:02 he drops his arms and says "They're a fickle bunch", and as the camera angle changes to include Lacey his arms are crossed again.
7.) At 13:15, Lacey walks into Wes' liquor / insurance store to try to get the "ATM People" to do their socializing at The Ruby. She taps the arm of a guy who looks like a biker, and he takes a step aside to let her through. At this point, the biker is to her left and slightly in front of her, but when the camera angle switches from Lacey to the "ATM People," the biker has vanished. He reappears a second later when the angle switches back to Lacey, but vanishes again as Wes points out that insurance is an important investment.
8.) At 18:25, Brent, Oscar, Lacey and Fitzy are at The Ruby discussing the "ATM People" crisis. The opening frames are shot from Fitzy's back, and his arms appear to be resting on the table in front of him with his left elbow hanging off the table corner. The next scene shot from his back (when Oscar asks about masks) shows his left arm nowhere near the table corner, and you can see his coffee cup in front of him with his hands nowhere near it. From the same angle a few seconds later, Brent has just made fun of Oscar's "masks" suggestion, and Fitzy is in the exact same position. Now the camera turns to face Lacey and Fitzy, and Fitzy's hands are now in front of the cup.
9.) At 18:59, we learn that Brent, Lacey, Fitzy, Oscar and Bill have been stranded at Hank's (in front of Hank's truck, as always), a job that would presumably taken two cars (or at least one large vehicle) - but now no tire tracks are visible (or at least nothing as clear as the ones Davis' patrol left).
NITPICK: Dog River sure has a lot of people with ATM cards for a town that just got its first machine.
TRIVIA: Tara Spencer-Nairn, whose character of Karen is trying to learn French in this episode, was born in Montreal, so it's not unreasonable to guess she probably knows the language pretty well.
[Images] [Site Updates] [How I Became a Fan] [Contact] [Sign Guestbook] [View Guestbook]