[Home]  [Bio]  [Credits]  [Reviews]  [Corner Gas]  [The Milk Carton]  [Six Degrees of Gabrielle Miller] [FAQ]
[
Images] [Site Updates]  [How I Became a Fan]  [Contact]  [Sign Guestbook]  [View Guestbook]
TELESCOPE TROUBLE
EPISODE 48 - TELESCOPE TROUBLE: "Brent enters into a long-term relationship with a door repair man and Wanda gets paranoid about her new telescope."

OVERALL IMPRESSIONS: An almost flawless episode which contains very few killer jokes but consistently runs at a high level of typical Corner Gas humor. A superb side plot not mentioned in the episode's description has Oscar and Emma going on a road trip in an RV. The last joke in this plot is completely predictable, but up to that point every joke in the plot works well.

The only real downside to this episode is that it makes too much use of the "hearing it wrong / recalling it wrong " joke approach that has been seen fairly often in the past. An example of the former is in "
Mosquito Time" when Oscar hears "lemon dish soap" as "licky disco," and an example of the latter is in "Hook, Line and Sinker" when Brent renders "Quasimodo" as "Quamidoso." Personally, this sort of joke usually does nothing for me. In this episode, similar takeoffs on "Copernicus," along with significant distortions regarding his contribution to astronomy, are seen throughout the episode- and not one of them strikes me as funny. From Hank it was entirely expected and therefore no big deal, whereas from Brent and Lacey (both of whom have in past episodes shown plenty of signs of having brains and being educated) it was too much of a stretch to believe that either could be that clueless about a historical figure who is included in every lesson plan of every elementary school on the continent.

MEMORABLE MOMENT: Davis "entertaining" Oscar, Emma and Hank with his rousing acoustical rendition of "Kumbaya." I have an elderly relative who has been torturing the entire family during the holidays with his equally ghastly musical stylings - on an accordion, no less (I'm really not kidding here) - since before the day I was born, and for some reason everyone in the family wonders why I so rarely make it to New York for Christmas these days. As you watch Davis utterly butcher a song which royally sucks to begin with, see if you can imagine my years and years of Yuletide misery. Once you think you have a grip on this level of agony, just try to imagine the scope of it when Davis proudly announces that he's going to play the same song again (as my erstwhile ancestor often does after one of his numerous smash hits).

As an added bonus, after slightly over 50 years in America, this man's English still bites (actually, it doesn't just bite - it chomps) - so we get to hear these chart-toppers of his in his own raspy brand of melodic German (try to imagine Burl Ives with laryngitis singing a pre-flight mission brief of "Operation Tannenbaum" to Rudolf Hess in the key of E minor). To put it simply, if there's such a thing as Purgatory, I have plenty of reason to expect full credit for time already served.

MEMORABLE LINE: Lacey, having just been assaulted by her own door, calls Terry a "cheap son of a�" and acts as the epitome of pleasantness with him on the phone. With this one line Lacey managed to produce a perfect imitation of every female relative I have.

KUDOS TO GABRIELLE: As usual she does a great job throughout the episode, but especially when she's extolling the supposedly numerous virtues of her door guy. The aforementioned memorable moment was a classic, too.

FUNNIEST LINE IN THIS EPISODE: When Lacey, talking about her "door guy," says "He comes, he fixes the door, he's got a motto: 'I fix doors'," and Brent responds with "I'm confused - what's he do?"

FUNNIEST SCENES IN THIS EPISODE: "Try to fix my own door, and I get emasculated" from Brent. You'd have to have seen the episode "Cousin Carl" to know why this line is so memorable.

1.) When Brent asks Hank how things are at NASA and Lacey cracks up.

2.) Oscar playing hardball when negotiating with the RV owner.

3.) When Wanda asks Karen if she remembers an incident involving a birdbath, a TV and a car window, and a flashback illustrates the incident in three painful steps.

4.) When Brent insists that he hasn't subordinated himself to the door guy, and then responds in a military manner when the door guy calls him.

5.) When the door guy tells Brent what the problem is, and Brent responds with a pained facial expression.

6.) Hank's assessment of the door guy's skills immediately after the aforementioned facial expression from Brent.

7.) Brent telling Wanda that her telescope would be "shielded by the power of my intense disinterest."

8.) Hank's fascination with a folding table in an RV. I don't know why this one cracked me up so much, but it did.

9.) Hank picking a bone with Lacey regarding the door guy and his (Hank's) "respect crumbs."

10.) Brent calling the cops on his parents.

11.) Hank claiming that he wants to see the meteor shower because since it only happens every 12,000 years, he might not get another chance.

12.) Oscar and Emma parking the RV in front of the Ruby and the reception they receive.

13.) Oscar and Emma ostensibly moving down the road, and the revelation revealed by the trucks going by the RV.

14.) Brent's response when Lacey asks him if he fiddled with his hinge.
Hosted by www.Geocities.ws

1