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OVERALL IMPRESSIONS: The main plot here is that after a few decades without a sense of smell, Davis regains it after falling off a ladder. Like "Wedding Card," the side plots are funnier than the main ones, but in this case the side plots pretty much save the episode. When comparing humorous content, there is no contest between the lukewarm "sense of smell" plot and the unbelievably funny Scrabble bit in which case former Scrabble champ Lacey loses repeatedly to a total dullard, or Brent's failure to observe anything about the human condition in Dog River. Overall this episode is hilarious and right up there with the standard of the series, but the main plot had nothing to do with it.
MEMORABLE MOMENT: When Lacey decides that Hank, who has beaten her repeatedly at Scrabble, has a "beautiful mind" and needs a mentor to reach his full potential. Not only do we get a "Cheers" reference, but there's quite a few funny moments where Hank makes faulty movie and television references and Lacey fails to understand even the ones he gets right. Particularly funny was when Hanks says "Luther" and Lacey "corrects" him by saying "Lacey."
MEMORABLE LINE: "You're not gonna learn nuthin' in a stupid book." This line from Oscar reminds me of a number of people I've known in my life. The scary part is that I served with some of them in the U.S. military.
KUDOS TO GABRIELLE: This is another episode like "Grad 68" where Gabrielle is given lots of chances to shine in comedy and does so at every opportunity, but never better than her reaction during her Scrabble rematch with Hank in one scene. When Lacey proudly plays the word "ojime" for a triple-word score, Hank responds by adding an 's' to it. Watch Gabrielle portray Lacey's reaction after Hanks asks if that's worth one point or three, as she says "No, uh, that's actually 45 points." I actually laughed to the point where my sides hurt seeing this scene, largely because of how well Gabrielle delivered it. For another great example of how well Gabrielle does in this episode, see the first entry in the "funniest scene" category in this review.
FUNNIEST LINE IN THIS EPISODE: Oscar describes the fire department as a "bunch of do-gooders telling me what I can and can't set on fire."
FUNNIEST SCENES IN THIS EPISODE:
1.) When Wanda tells Lacey why she refuses to play Scrabble, and the scene shifts to the flashback of Lacey beating Wanda at thumb wrestling. This scene was particularly effective because Lacey is so likeable such over-the-top, obnoxious gloating is so uncharacteristic of her.
2.) When Hank asks if "dissimilar" is a word and Wanda says "Oh, you're gonna love Scrabble."
3.) When Lacey demands a rematch with Hank after his fluke victory and she loses again (see my earlier reference about Hanks' 45-point score).
4.) When Brent lets it slip how Wes's father died.
5.) The first word Hank uncorks in his Scrabble match against Emma.
6.) The way Lacey buried her head in her hands after seeing Hank try to use a word from a Superman comic against Emma. The scene itself is funny enough, but look at Lacey and you can just imagine her asking herself how she could have possibly lost so many times to such a flaming idiot.
7.) After Emma ekes out a narrow 437-28 win over Hank, Hank asks if it's the higher score that wins, causing Lacey to let out a stunned "laugh," say that it was time to regroup, and shove Hank out of the booth.
8.) When Lacey pays off on her challenge to the entire bar (free lunch to anyone who could beat Hank at Scrabble).
BLOOPERS:
1.) The very concept of this episode, with Davis having no sense of smell since the age of nine, was refuted in "Grad 68" in the first season, when Davis tells Brent how great the bathroom smells.
2.) Starting at 1:21, the amount of milk in Davis' glass changes slightly depending on the camera angle.
3.) Starting at 3:04, watch the potato Emma is peeling. When she says "So? I don't shoot you," which is the second of four shots showing her, the potato has been peeled more than at any other point in the scene.
4.) In that same scene, when Emma says "So? I don't shoot you," Oscar has just taken his hands off his rifle. When the angle switches to face Oscar, his right hand is now back on the rifle's stock.
5.) When Wanda and Lacey are thumb wrestling in the flashback (5:01), Lacey is already in the winning position before the countdown ends and no actual "wrestling" takes place.
6.) When Wanda asks Hank "Where do you live, Tibet?", look at her left (right to the viewer) hand's position on her coffee mug. When the scene shifts, her hand shifts slightly as well.
7.) In the same scene, here's one that's far more noticeable: Just after the aforementioned blooper, the camera angle switches to Lacey, who brings out a Scrabble set. Wanda's coffee cup is now on the counter, but jumps back to her hand when the camera points to Hank.
8.) When Davis is claiming a bogus victory over Karen in Rock-Scissors-Paper (which Davis calls "Rock-Paper-Scissors"), his left arm is resting on a gas pump next to him. When he tries his lame explanation about covering a rock with paper and throwing it through a window, his arm is off the pump (the pump isn't visible, but it's obvious), and after Brent's crack in response, Davis' arm is back on the pump. Theoretically there was enough time between the beginning of Brent's explanation and the next shot of Davis for Davis to put his arm back on the pump, but it doesn't look natural when you watch the whole scene.
9.) When Hank puts down the word "hat" in the lower right corner of the Scrabble board (7:24), the camera angle switches to a shot showing Lacey, Hank and the whole board. This shot of the board has nowhere as many tiles on the lower right corner as the first shot of the board showed.
10.) Starting around 7:36, when Lacey advises Hank to use longer words, her hair hops around a little on her right shoulder (viewer's left) as the camera angle switches - sometimes (when the camera shows her only) you see some hair resting on her shoulder, sometimes (when the camera shows both her and Hank) not, up to the point where Lacey starts adding up the score.
11.) When Davis places the a ladder against a tree to get the cat a of it, the base of the ladder is a couple feet away from the bottom of the tree - but as you see Davis climb from cat's viewpoint, the ladder isn't set up that way at all - it's right up against the tree from bottom to top (as if crewmen off-camera were holding it to keep it still).
12.) At about 12:09, Emma says to Brent "Like I say, you've always had your head up in the clouds," takes in a forkful of food and just starts to chew. When the camera zooms in on her to show her saying "...or up somewhere," her arm has moved down too quickly for the shot and she's already magically finished chewing and swallowing the last forkful of food as she prepares to take in another one.
NITPICK: Starting at 14:51, Brent lets it slip that Wes' father died in Korea saving his entire platoon. The first episode of Corner Gas, based on the date on the Dog River Howler issue shown in the episode, took place on July 12, 2003 - almost fifty years to the day of the July 27, 1953 cease-fire (the war has never officially ended). Four episodes after "Smell of Freedom," it's established that Lacey has been in dog River for ten months, leading to a logical assumption that "Smell of Freedom" takes place sometime in spring of 2004. In order for Wes to have been conceived by a man who died in the Korean War, even if Wes' mother had been impregnated on the last day of the shooting and had a full nine-month pregnancy, Wes would have been born in spring of 1954, making him the youngest-looking 50 year-old male on the continent.