A Plot: Brent's cousin Carl comes into town and Brent can't stand him. Most people believe Brent is just jealous of Carl's success, and Emma schemes to make the two get along.
B Plot: The Dog River talent show is coming up. Davis wants Karen to help him with a ventriloquist act, but Karen refuses. Wanda asks Lacey to be the judge.
C Plot: Oscar finds a case of empty beer bottles in the garage and tries to return them to Wes' store for a deposit, but that brand of beer is no longer made, so Wes won't take them. Oscar being Oscar, he complains non-stop about this perceived injustice to everyone he meets. He eventually realizes that people will give him money "from Wes" just to make him shut up, and exploits this as much as possible.
Tropes Referenced:
- All Psychology Is Freudian: An Inverted Trope as both Emma and Cousin Carl refer specifically to the nemesis of Jungian theory.
- Berserk Button: Hank winning the talent show causes Carl to fly into a rage and berate everyone in the audience for being brainless hicks while saying he should have won instead, proving himself to be the jerk that Brent always said he was.
- Brick Joke:
- Early in the episode, when asked to give an example of a guy in a suit, Lacey suggests the Man from Glad. Later, when a representation of Carl takes over Brent's Happy Place, the two women who are normally there serving Brent food are swooning over Carl and telling him that his suit "makes [him] look as sexy as the Man from Glad". At the end of the episode, the Man himself makes a cameo in Brent's happy place as the women serve both of them food.
- Oscar tries brewing his own beer, which tastes terrible, so he pours it out right on top of Emma's tomato plants, which were suffering from a lack of food and in bad shape. The next time Emma checks on them, she finds that they've grown tall and healthy.
- Calling Me a Logarithm: Early on, Carl suggests that Brent feels "emasculated" by his success. Brent denies it, but then he admits he doesn't know what the word means. Of course, even when Carl defines the word ("like you're not a man"), Brent continues to deny it.
- The Cameo: By the Man from Glad, the mascot for Glad garbage bags.
- Comically Missing the Point: Fitzy's talent-show act is making balloon animals … meaning that he takes a normal, round balloon and draws the animal's face on it with a marker.
- Description Cut/Instantly Proven Wrong: Fitzy's grandma tells Brent that Oscar always showed respect to people when he ran Corner Gas. At that moment, Oscar comes in to say, "Hey, jackass, stop talking to this old wing nut and pump my gas!"
- Donut Mess with a Cop: In her act, Karen mocks Davis by having her dummy say, "I'm Sergeant Davis! I like to eat dooooooughnuuuuuts."
- Dumb Blonde: Davis' act depends on jokes of this kind; naturally, Karen is less than impressed.
- Happy Place: Brent has one that he goes to, with attractive women cooking him food.
- I Know You Know I Know: Oscar knows that the money people are giving him isn't really from Wes. Everyone else knows that Oscar knows. Oscar knows that everyone else knows that he knows. It doesn't seem to matter to anyone.Wanda: Well, that's it for tonight's show, everybody. But before we go, if anyone has $1.20 for Oscar to shut up about the bottle thing, he's in the corner.Oscar: [Raises arms] I'M A SENIOR!
- Our Slogan Is Terrible: Wanda berates the sponsor of the talent show:Wanda: Hello and welcome, everyone, to the 17th annual Dog River talent show, brought to you by Chuck Dragner's Pre-Owned Farm Equipment. Stand up, Chuck. "If you can't trust the Chuck you're talking to, you're talking to the wrong guy named Chuck." Geez, Chuck, you've got to come up with a better slogan.
- Self-Serving Memory: The way Brent tends to hear Carl's words are quite different from how the latter says them.Carl: [Enters the Ruby] Hello, Dog River. I'm back.Lacey: Who's that?[The scene of Carl entering rewinds and plays again]Carl: [Enters the Ruby again] Hi, everybody! I'm a big, loudmouthed jerk!Brent: That's my cousin Carl.
- Sharp-Dressed Man:
- Other than when he's dressed as Dr. Jekyll for his and Brent's talent show act, Carl always wears a fancy suit befitting a rich, high-class Jerkass.
- Also, the Man from Glad and his trademark white suit.Brent: That suit makes you look really good, by the way.Man from Glad: The suit doesn't make me look good. I make the suit look good.
- Shout-Out: Karen's ventriloquist dummy of Davis (particularly how he says "doughnuts") is reminiscent of Homer Simpson.
- Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: Carl is one to Brent, as well as The Rival.
- So Bad, It's Good: In-universe, it's an Implied Trope with Lacey picking Hank's Epic Fail of an act to win the talent show. (He didn't even prepare his act because he got the date wrong.) She says, "Hank was legitimately the most entertaining act here."
- Start My Own: After the empty bottle fiasco at the liquor/insurance store, Oscar tries brewing his own beer. It doesn't go well.
- Stealth Insult:Oscar: What do you need plant food for?Emma: Because my tomatoes are pathetic and wrinkling. And when things are pathetic and wrinkling, they need food. Eat your sandwich.
- A Tankard of Moose Urine: Brent compares Oscar's homemade beer to "beating a skunk to death with a salmon" and asks if it was mixed "in a Skidoo boot or a crow's nest".
- Technologically Blind Elders: Wes suggests that Oscar sell his discontinued beer bottles on eBay. Oscar thinks he is talking about The Bay
department store and says there's no way they will accept them there. - Title Drop
- Unsatisfiable Customer: Fitzy's grandma in both The Teaser and The Tag.Fitzy's Grandma: What is this? The Last Action Hero? How can you rent this when you don't even carry The First Action Hero?!
- Xanatos Gambit: Emma persuades Brent and Carl to revive "Sheckle and Jekyll" for the talent show on the grounds that it would keep them away from each other's throats. She notes that, either way, it would've been entertaining.
