Recap / Corner Gas S 3 E 13 Merry Gasmas

"♪Jooooooooy to the world!♪"

A Plot: It's a Dog River Christmas, but Brent is upset that his parents are ruining his "traditional" holiday by bringing in real elements, like a real tree instead of the fake one he's used to and homemade cranberry sauce instead of canned.

B Plot: Lacey is trying to make it to Toronto for Christmas, but bad weather is canceling flights everywhere. After making her way on several planes, and dealing with quirky airport workers and passengers alike, she finally decides to just head back to Dog River to regale her friends with her misfortunes.

C Plot: Having a fit of compassion, Hank decides to recruit Davis and Karen's help in collecting for a needy family, the Buckles. As it turns out, however, they are just cheap and want to buy everything once it goes on sale after Christmas.

D Plot: Wanda has picked up the hottest toy of the season, a robot goat, for her son. She can't resist the urge to play with it, and ends up breaking its head off. This causes Wanda to go on a desperate search for a replacement.

Tropes Referenced:

• Ambulance Cut:
  • Three times in a series of flashbacks to previous Christmases.
    • Emma tells Oscar to be careful with the carving knives. Ambulance cut.
    • Emma notices that her eggnog tastes off and Oscar tells her it's probably fine. Ambulance cut.
    • Emma tells Oscar once again to be careful with the carving knives, reminding him of the previous incident, so Oscar hands the knives to a very young Brent. Ambulance cut.
  • A fourth one is shown at the end of the episode, when Brent climbs a shaky ladder to take down some mistletoe. Ambulance cut.
    Emma: Same damn thing every year...
• Bland-Name Product:
  • The Chew-Bot toy is part of the Transfarmers franchise about transforming robots who disguise themselves as farm animals.
  • Lacey flies all over Western Canada on the fictional airline Airward, and signage at the Calgary airport indicates there’s also a Transwest Air; they seem to be stand-ins for Canada’s two main airlines in real life, Air Canada and WestJet. (Transwest’s flying goose logo is probably also based on that of the the defunct Canadian Airlines).
• California Doubling: Regina International Airport plays not only itself, but also Calgary and Edmonton’s airports.
• Call-Back: When Wanda wants to show Brent the toy she got Tanner for Christmas, he asks her if it's something hard he can throw at his head.
• The Cameo:
  • Dan Redican of The Frantics and Puppets Who Kill as the clerk at Regina International Airport.
  • Gavin Crawford of This Hour Has 22 Minutes as the clerk at Calgary International Airport.
  • Roman Danylo of Comedy Inc. as the cat-obsessed veterinarian.
• Captain Oblivious: This conversation:
  Lacey: [to Josh] So you have my cell phone number if there's an emergency. I should be back in three, four days.
  [She turns around and Brent is in her face.]
  Brent: So when are you gonna decide about going to Toronto?
  Lacey: Didn't you hear what I just said?
  Brent: I was raised to not eavesdrop.
• Cats Are Superior: The veterinarian Lacey meets sure thinks so.
• Christmas Episode
• Cool Toy: The basis for Wanda's plot
• Description Cut: Wanda explaining how she got a Chew-Bot toy:
  Wanda: They're the hottest thing out there. The stores sold out months ago.
  Brent: How'd you get one?
  Wanda: Oh, it was just a matter of analyzing the market data, spotting a trend.
  [Flashback to Wanda at the store angrily wrestling the toy from others]
  Wanda: No! No! Back off, or you'll be suckin' your Christmas turkey through a tube!
• Dreaming of a White Christmas: No surprise, being Saskatchewan in December. Ironically, though, much of the snow seen in outdoor scenes was artificial, as there didn’t happen to be a great deal of real snow around in Rouleau during filming,
• Extreme Omni-Goat: The robot goat toy is named Chew-Bot, implying this.
• Holiday Volunteering: Parodied with Hank's plot.
• Hypocritical Humor:
  • In the opening scene, Wanda makes fun of Brent and Hank for playing a silly game with the Sears Christmas Wishbook (blindly pointing to pages in the catalog to "predict" what Santa is going to bring them) and tells them to grow up. Then when Brent and Hank leave, she grabs the catalog and starts playing a very similar game with Lacey (blindly pointing to pages in the catalog to "predict" who each of them is going to marry).
  • Lacey complains to Wanda on the phone about the guy next to her who won't stop talking. Of course, as soon as the phone call is over, Lacey is the one who won't shut up.
• Instant Turn-Off: When the handsome man sitting next to Lacey on a plane introduces himself as a doctor, she looks excited. But after he further explains that he's a veterinarian who only does cats because "dogs are mean", Lacey seems weirded out and looks for excuses not to talk to him for the remainder of the flight.
• Sustained Misunderstanding: Hank overhears the father of the Buckle family telling his son that "it's just too much money" and concludes that they're needy. He pulls in Karen and Davis, and later the rest of the town, to donate gifts to them. It turns out that they're just cheap and want to buy everything on Boxing Day.
• Under the Mistletoe: Subverted. Brent and Lacey end up under mistletoe, and there is a pause, but Brent just decides to get on the step ladder and bring it down, leading to the fourth Ambulance Cut of the episode.