Modern Major Genwunner

It's funny how public opinion changes over the years. When Buster Keaton released The General, critics panned it; today, it's celebrated as his greatest work. Rolling Stone magazine named Weezer's Pinkerton the 3rd-worst album of 1996, then called it the 16th-greatest album of all time a mere six years later. Herman Melville's Moby Dick was torn apart by contemporary readers, and hailed as one of the greatest American novels within a century.

The first generation of Pokémon games (released in 1996 in Japan, 1998 in America) have had an interesting variation. The games have always been divisive among gamers, today as in the 90s. The only difference is that these critics and supporters have switched positions.

Modern fans of the first generation of Pokémon games (Pokémon Red, Pokémon Blue, and Pokémon Yellow), often known as Genwunners, are infamously snobby. For these people, no Pokémon game after the first gen is worth playing. There are only 151 (or 152) Pokémon. "New Pokémon are based off of ice cream cones instead of whack-a-mole machines. Q.E.D.," You'd have better luck convincing the Catholic Church to canonize The Life of Brian than getting a Genwunner to acknowledge that Lucario or Blaziken are legitimate.

For modern gamers, Genwunners are a popular stock-villain, like mustachioed men who tie women to railroad tracks, except more fun to hiss at. This is because, like many retro-gamers, Genwunners are often self-righteous fanatics.

Needless to say, being a self-righteous fanatic--or even being remotely unpleasant--doesn't seem to be an official part of the definition anymore. Hating all the Pokémon games is perfectly acceptable, as is liking all of them, or even only liking the newer ones. Anything else is frowned upon.

In other words, Genwunners have ruined it for the Gen 1ers.

When you see a Genwunner coming at you in a dark alley, frothing at the mouth and brandishing a picture of a Charizard, the best way to freeze 'em in their tracks is to turn the tables and insult the first generation. I understand that, for most Pokémon fans, this is hard--it's the sort of thing the Jigsaw Killer always made people do. Earliest instalments of any franchise generally get some reverence, however better the later ones may be. But with time it gets easier. A lot easier, in fact; for some people, Pokémon Red and Blue have become almost as loathed as the Genwunners themselves. Fans of the newer games have been known to denounce the earliest instalments with ferocity to match even the angriest Genwunner. As far as these people are concerned, there's no reason for anyone to play the first generation at all since it was remade with the third gen's engine in 2004.

Fighting monsters and gazing into voids and all that, I guess.

I'm not going to say that Pokémon Red and Blue were beyond criticism. There were lots of very noticeable problems with design in general and balance in particular, as well as a fairly impressive troupe of glitches. The legendary Missingno. is the least embarrassing of them. The best way to sum up everything wrong with the first generation is to simply look at how psychic-types were handled. In theory, psychic-type Pokémon had two weaknesses: bug- and ghost-types. In practice, they didn't have any; all the bug-type attacks were too weak to actually help, and a glitch in the game's programming made psychic-types immune to ghost-type attacks. And a lot of newer Pokémon fans love to point these problems out. As much fun as I had playing these games, I don't think that it compares to the fun the more militant Ruby/Sapphire fans have tearing them apart and watching the Genwunners' smiles melt.

All long-running video game franchises have their nostalgic cynics. Many Legend of Zelda fans insist that A Link to the Past is the best game in the series, and that the newer Zelda games are unfailingly unremarkable. Final Fantasy VI sits on a similar pedestal compared to VII onward. Yet Genwunners are widely considered the worst of the lot. This sort of elitism may be perfectly acceptable for fans of literature, film, or music, but gamers are not willing to tolerate it and Pokémon fans less willing than most. Red and Blue, being popular and influential games with more problems than Jay-Z, reflect everything modern gamers hate about retro-gaming. (What future gamers will think of today's "modern" games is an interesting question, but off-topic.)

I think the Genwunners' biggest mistake is that they picked the wrong Rapidash to back. Retro-gaming elitism typically starts at the second or third entry in a series, because the first usually has the most rough edges. If Donkey Kong fans went around trashing every new Mario game since Super Mario Brothers, declaring that the Mushroom Kingdom is not canon, and complaining that all the new characters are just turtles or mushrooms, we'd all be be complaining about "Deekayers" now.

Fortunately, and despite the Genwunners' best efforts, Pokémon (even Red and Blue) is now recognized as a classic gaming franchise, alongside Doom, King's Quest, and Sonic. This is why it can be so hard to remember that, in the 90s, Pokémon was basically the Justin Bieber of nerd culture.

The problem then was essentially the same as it is now: old versus new. Pokémon became extremely popular extremely quickly, especially with younger people, so fans of older video game franchises dismissed it as a fad that would die out in a few years. Sure, people had all sorts of complaints against the franchise--some legitimate and some stupid--but the word "fad" was always on the lips. The stuff that mature gamers of 13 and 14 grew up with--like Super Mario or Metroid--would always be classics, but Pokémon, it was predicted, would be gone soon. Fans of Pokémon Red and Blue were mocked for being silly fad-chasers, and assured that if they even remembered those games ten years later, it would be with embarrassment.

In other words, the people who were attacked back then for playing a faddish new game instead of the classics are now being attacked for playing that now-classic game instead of newer titles.

Why Waste a Perfectly Good Notebook?

I have a confession.

I am addicted to buying stuff on Amazon.

Okay, not "addicted to" so much as "fond of," and not "." so much as "every few weeks or so." Nonetheless, there is an eternal struggle between my id and my pocketbook. I compromise by buying the cheapest copy possible. I'm not the sort who insists that all my books and DVDs are in mint condition, so this usually works out pretty well, as even the cheapest items are functional, however vandalized and ugly they may be on the surface.

To prepare for the release of Harper Lee's Go Set a Watchman, I recently bought a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird for one cent. I'm sure there's a perfect explanation for how anyone can profit off a one-cent book, presumably relating to a combination of shipping fees and bulk sales, but I haven't taken economics since High School, so I couldn't tell you what it is. Needless to say, anything that can go for one cent is likely to be in less-than-mint shape. I believe that the item was listed as "acceptable" condition, which here translates as "all the pages, and a bunch of extra words in the margins."

This is clearly the work of a literature student, or perhaps an aspiring writer, or at the very least an extraordinarily bored airline passenger. Truth be told, I found it more charming than troubling. I could still read the book perfectly (and it was still a masterpiece, if you're curious). The notes in the margins are really just the sprinkles--though to be really accurate, this metaphor does call for the sprinkles to be on, say, a vacuum cleaner.

I would never scribble in the margins of a novel myself, but I was impressed by how thorough the pro-scribbling previous owner was here. Words like "foreshadowing" or "symbolism" appear on nearly every page. About 68% of the text is underlined. Every time an adult tells Scout off, the notes point out that this person is an authority figure. It seems that, if there is even the slightest chance of something coming up on a test, there's an annotation for that.

Once I got over my initial amusement, I realized that this might well be why I was averaging a "B" in University. Sure, I believe that one set of text is enough for any work of classic literature, and still maintain an anti-annotating policy when it comes to my treatment of my personal library. But trying to climb a ladder without stepping on some rungs is as ludicrous as an egg-free omelette. Perhaps if I had been a bit more ruthless with my own books--allowing my handwritten observations to coexist with the retyped words of Milton, Faulkner, and Swift--my  grades would have gone up. And from, there, who knows? Better career prospects? A better life? Enough money to buy full-priced books on Amazon?

I do not know who my mysterious annotator was, and so I cannot say for sure that he or she has ever won a Pulitzer, but I have witnessed a work-ethic that puts my own University-self to shame, or at least mild insecurity. One should always strive to do one's best, of course, and I always thought that I was. But it's a humbling experience to realize just how much better the other guy's best was.

Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger -- A Review

I mentioned about a month ago that I was having an attack of Power Ranger nostalgia. I ordered Shout! Factory’s new, subtitled release of the original series, Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger, from Amazon, and over the course of a few weeks, watched it in its entirety. It was an interesting, surreal experience to see something that is both familiar but different. I imagine that Marty McFly felt the same way back in the 1950s.

I should mention again that my last viewing of Power Rangers is old enough to drive, so I can’t compare the two shows in much detail. I did notice that Zyuranger is darker than Power Rangers at times, and just as wacky at times, and that a lot of the footage makes a lot more sense in its original context--for example, the Tyrannosaurus' fight against Giant, in which Tyrannosaurus never turned into Megazord. (In Zyuranger, this was the first giant-fight, and the Zyurangers didn't have any other mecha yet.)

As a stand-alone work, Zyuranger is (allegedly) seen as a mid-tier Super Sentai series: not terrible, but not great. I haven’t seen any other Sentai series to compare, but if I were to compare it to everything else I've ever seen since the beginning of time, that's about how I'd classify it. This isn't a masterpiece, but I did enjoy it.

Super Sentai is a tokusatsu series. In Japanese, tokusatsu means “special filming,” and refers to a special-effects-heavy live-action TV series or movie, but English-speakers use the term to refer to a Japanese-produced special-effects-heavy live-action TV series or movie that uses rubber suits instead of CGI. Ultraman, Kamen Rider, and Godzilla belong to this genre. If you've seen Power Rangers, you know what to expect with Zyuranger: spandex-clad martial artists, cheap special effects, and clunky robots fighting sluggish monsters.

Those Mighty Morphin' Zyurangers, before morphin'.

Mighty Morphin’ borrowed a lot of footage from its eastern cousin, but most of the suitless scenes were re-shot, and the series as a whole was rewritten, sometimes beyond recognition. In America, Zordon forms the Power Rangers from a group of five teenagers with 90’s-brand Diet Attitude. In Japan, there's no Zordon. There's just Barza, played by actor Jun Tatara, who you may recognize from Kurosawa’s landmark film, The Seven Samurai, where he played “Coolie A." While Barza is not a Zordon-style giant head in a tube, and has only enough magic left to grow his ear comically large, he did have the foresight to bring his own warriors with him instead of relying on a pack of high school athletes. They're the Zyurangers: TyrannoRanger Geki (Yuuta Mochizuki), MammothRanger Goushi (Aohisa Takayasu), TriceraRanger Dan (Hideki Fujiwara), TigerRanger Boi (Takumi Hashimoto) and PteraRanger Mei (Reiko Chiba). If the actors’ ages are any indication, only about two fifths of the Zyurangers are teens; the rest are in their twenties.

The villain is a Witch named Bandora, played by Machiko Soga. In Power Rangers, she's named Rita Repulsa, but the footage is taken from Soga’s work in Zyuranger, which, if I am not mistaken, makes her one of the only actors or actress (along with Ami Kawai, who played Lamie in Zyuranger and, by extension, Scorpina in Power Rangers) with a visible face to appear regularly in both versions of the show. Bandora will feel familiar to Power Rangers fans. Like Rita, Bandora’s campy, immature, and dangerous. She’s also a petty bully who hates children. Trapping them in trees, feeding their souls to a goblin, sending a pig in a roman centurion helmet to steal their food--anything for a laugh. Rita at least has the decency to pick on teenagers, but Bandora learned villainy from Roald Dahl.

This could have ruined the character, but Machiko Soga is a wonderful actress, and her hammy portrayal makes Bandora one of the best parts of the show. (She even sings a few times, which is itself worth the price of the DVD!) Yet when she does get to do dramatic work, she nails it. I’m not going to spoil anything else, but if Machiko hasn't made you weep like George Harrison's guitar by the end of the series, then you should see a ca

rdiologist, because you clearly have a heart of stone.

In-universe, Barza, Bandora, and the Zyurangers were around 170 million years ago, during the Jurassic period--an era of great fascination among paleontologists because it's the only know time period in which dinosaurs co-existed with mammoths, humans, and mecha. Through a combination of suspended animation and immortality, the cast reappear in the 90s. At first blush, this doesn't seem like a big deal--and by that, I mean that it should be a huge deal that influences the Zyurangers’ interaction with the world around them--but the fish-out-of-water angle is never explored or even acknowledged. This makes it a little harder to see the Zyurangers as real people at first, but it sort of makes sense; they awoke to save the world, not live in it. There is drama, of course, but it usually relates to combat and death, not the Saved by the Bell-style antics of Power Rangers.

But if you do want lighter drama, don't worry--that's what the dozens of kids the Zyurangers are always hanging out with are for. In a lot of episodes, these children get more screen time than the Zyurangers. The heartache of puppy love, the anxiety of harsh parenting, and the terror of being hypnotized into thinking that your father is a vampire, are all legitimate plots for these youngsters to wrestle through, with a little help from the Zyurangers. Whether or not this is a problem is a matter of personal taste. I didn't mind the children per say, but I did think that the best and most emotionally satisfying parts involved the Zyurangers themselves, which makes the children's plots suffer by comparison.

A lot of people think that the highlight of the series is Burai, the DragonRanger (played by Shiro Izumi, who, according to all the sources I've seen, was around thirty at the time). Burai is a badass loner and a fan-favourite, but unlike so many other badass loners who inexplicably become fan-favourites, he's actually interesting. Power Ranger fans will remember Green Ranger Tommy, who starts off evil then becomes good then loses his powers. In Zyuranger, Burai has a similar story, but darker and (with maybe one exception) better. (To avoid spoiling too much, I am going to fall back on the old web practice of making the font and background the same colour. Highlight to read, at your own risk.)

Geki and Burai are brothers, but Geki was adopted by a royal family and raised as a prince. Their biological father led a rebellion, but died in the process, and Burai swore vengeance on the King's family. When the Zyurangers were put into suspended animation, Burai followed them. Unfortunately, at some point in those 170 million years, there was an earthquake. Burai died, but the gods, knowing that he would be needed to defeat Bandora, decided to give him some extra time on Earth.

Once he wakes up, Burai joins Bandora and helps beat up the Zyurangers for a while, but eventually Geki's power of brotherly love wins him over to the side of good.

Now that Burai is a hero, and the Zyurangers (and presumably the audience) have decided to forgive him for all the people he attacked and tried to kill, the writers decide it's the right time for him to find out that he's living on borrowed time, and in fact is down to only 30 hours of it. For the time being, the best solution is for a spirit named Clotho (played by child actress Mayumi Sakai) to show up and take him to a magical chamber where time doesn't pass.

No, I don't know how that works, either. But the result is that Burai spends most of his remaining life sitting alone in an empty chamber, emerging only when the Zyurangers need him to save their butts or when the boredom and loneliness get too strong. 

At first, the other Zyurangers don't know any of this--they probably assume that he's just too cool for school or something. They do find out eventually, and, through hard work and hours of research, find out out about a magic elixir that could save his life. And surely they get it, right? I mean, the good guys can't die, can they?

Of course they get the elixir. But just a second too late--Burai dies, and the Zyurangers end up using the elixir to save some kid who probably hasn't destroyed as many buildings as Burai, but is a considerably less interesting character nonetheless. I doubt that long-time Power Rangers fans, still remembering what happened to the Mighty Morphin’ Green Ranger, will be too surprised when all that DragonRanger footage dries up, but for a first-time viewer, it must have been a shock.

My only real problem with Burai's character arc is that he's forgiven too easily. Tommy was brainwashed; Burai was just a jerk. But then none of the other Zyurangers ever had believable characterization, so why should I expect that to change now? Overall, Burai is probably the best part of the series. And I'm saying that as someone who usually hates the "anti-social bad boy who is so strong and so cool OMG!" cliche. But with Burai, it works. 

The other Zyurangers aren't exactly living it up, but Burai has it worse. The Zyurangers have each other in their moments of peace. Burai would like to have company like that. He'd like to be with his brother. He doesn't want to be that guy that stands in the corner, arms crossed, scowling and acting all Vegeta-like. The life he's living in that chamber is no life at all, and he knows it. But he wants to do the right thing, and fight alongside the Zyurangers, and that means that what's left of his life will consist of long stretches of loneliness interrupted mostly by giant mecha fights. He could leave that chamber, and try to live his last day out in peace and something resembling happiness. If nothing else, it would shorten his suffering.

But he doesn't. He stays in that chamber, and for days on end he suffers in solitude. He does it willingly, but he does it for other people--not himself. And as far as I'm concerned, it's this level of superhuman self-sacrifice that makes him a hero, and probably the most compelling character in the series. Like many anti-social fan-favourite heroes, Burai has done some awful things, but how many others have given nearly as much as him to redeem themselves? We may question how easily the others forgive him, but you can't deny that Burai is doing his best to deserve it.

Surprisingly, there was one thing in this series that made more sense in the American version than in the original: the nature of the giant robots themselves. In Mighty Morphin’, they were called Zords. They were non-sentient machines, like an AT-AT or any other traditional mecha. But in Japan, they’re called Guardian Beasts, and are sentient, and are gods, while Daizyuzin (Zyuranger’s version of Megazord) is the head god. But the designs and much of the footage are the exact same, which means that people in the Jurassic era apparently worshipped Autobot-like mechanical dinosaurs, complete with cockpits, who merged into their version of God. 

The Zyurangers and Mega... I mean Daizyuzin.

Sort of like the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit being separate aspects of the Christian God, I guess.

Would I recommend Zyuranger? Yes, but hesitantly, and only to fans of Power Rangers, or at least fans of camp. The show is imaginative, the costumes are cool, there are some interesting stories, the cheesy special effects have a certain charm to them, and overall none of the episodes feel really bland. It’s fun, and that’s what a show like this should be. But it never really reaches a plateau of greatness; the absolute best episodes of Zyuranger would only rate as “pretty good” on a more subjective scale. Even Burai's character arc, wonderful as it is, is only watchable if you ignore the big, glowing, pulsating problem of how quickly and easily he's forgiven. I was willing to overlook that fumble, but some will probably feel like they're expected to eat a slice of gourmet cake because it only has a live tarantula in the first bite.

Nonetheless, if Shout! Factory decides to release some of the other (supposedly better) Super Sentai series in the west, I’m all for it.

Winners Don't Use Fruit: Thoughts on Christina Rossetti's "Goblin Market"

I've always been much more interested in prose than poetry. I’m trying to branch out, and I think that my tastes have expanded considerably in the last decade, but when all is done and said, I still prefer stories. Maybe this means that I'm the seven-billionth person on this planet who should be naming his favourite poem, but for the record, my favourite poem is the 19th-century classic “Goblin Market,” by Christina Rossetti.

The poem tells the story of two sisters, Laura and Lizzie, and what happens when they meet a sinister mob of fruit-pushing, animal-faced goblins. Lizzie won't touch the stuff ("We must not look at goblin men, / We must not buy their fruits / Who knows upon what soil they fed / Their hungry thirsty roots?") but Laura lacks her sister’s willpower. Using "a precious golden lock" in place of a coin, she buys herself something of a buffet from those goblin men. The stuff is delicious. Needless to say, she returns the next day. It is needful to say, however, that when she does return, she can’t see or hear the goblins or their market. But that's just Laura: Lizzie still can. I guess that's the sort of marketing we should expect from anyone who accepts hair as legal tender.

Lizzie tries to get some fruit for her sister, but it isn't easy; when she admits that she's shopping for another, the goblins decide to force-feed their wares to her. Fortunately, although the poor girl is drenched in juice, she doesn't swallow any. She returns home, and lets her sister drink the juice right off her body:

     She cried 'Laura,' up the garden,
     'Did you miss me?
     Come and kiss me.
     Never mind my bruises,
     Hug me, kiss me, suck my juices
     Squeezed from goblin fruits for you,
     Goblin pulp and goblin dew.
     Eat me, drink me, love me;
     Laura, make much of me:
     For your sake I have braved the glen
     And had to do with goblin merchant men.'

Incidentally, this seems to be where many undergraduate lit students hit on their essay topics.

The good news is that Laura not only makes a full recovery, but is now so repulsed by the goblin’s fruit that she simply can’t stand the thought of eating any more of the foul stuff. Happy ending!

I've always been really interested in fairy tales and folklore, and the “Goblin Market” is definitely built on that land. The dire consequences of eating fruit may not be the most original subject, but there’s something about the setting of this poem that I love. A group of furry, selectively-visible goblins, peddling evil fruit that doesn't kill the victim directly but makes her so dependant on the stuff that she could die without it… it’s an imaginative image, and Rossetti describes it well. And there are some obvious real-world parallels in Lizzie’s struggles; although history is not my forte, I believe that opium addiction was a big problem in London at the time, so if these connections weren't intentional, they were at least subconscious. (Okay, so I would never make my cocaine-addicted sister snort cocaine off my body to help her with her cocaine-withdrawal symptoms; I never said it was a perfect metaphor.)

Simply put, “Goblin Market” appeals to a lot of people on a lot of levels. Like beautiful, lyrical poetry? You've got it here. Looking for a good work of classic literature to write your graduate thesis on? Not a problem! If you want a simple fairy story about scary goblins and magic, there’s nothing better. Or maybe you're just a pervert who wants to read about something dirty involving two sisters and some goblin juice. Hey, whatever floats your boat. Like all the greatest works of literature and Literature, “Goblin Market” has something for everyone.

This poem is in the public domain, and can be read at Project Gutenberg.

Revenge of Nostalgia

Just when you think you have nostalgia figured out...

Okay, I'll admit that I used to watch Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. A lot. There are many passions from my childhood whose candle burns as brightly today as it did when I saw six, but the Power Rangers? Melted wax, I thought. I never hated the Power Rangers, mind you, but after I turned twelve or so I never really had any desire to re-watch it. I considered myself Ranger-free.

Then, a few days back, I found out that Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger--the Japanese series whose basic premise and footage were recycled to create the first season of Power Rangers--was getting an official, English-subtitled DVD release, courtesy of Shout! Factory. By the end of the day, I was on Amazon, pre-ordering a copy and paying far more than I'd like to admit in the process. I'm not a Sentai enthusiast, or even a Tokusatsu enthusiast, and under normal circumstances I probably would have picked something more important, like Ultraman or Kamen Rider, as my gateway Tokusatsu series.

But I grew up on Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, and even though I then grew out of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, that didn't stop me from spending the last few days thinking about how much I want to see the Pudgy Pig again.

Super Sentai is not Power Rangers. I know that. But I'm not going to lie--part of the reason I want to watch Sentai Zyuranger is the fun of seeing familiar characters or footage in a different story and universe, possibly in ways that will completely change how I remember the original. I mean, what was really going on?

Almost two decades after I stopped watching the Power Rangers, two decades of thinking about the Power Rangers only intermittently, two decades of trying to remember why I watched the Power Rangers in the first place, and now I'm anxiously awaiting a DVD for a TV series that I have never watched just because it's related to the Power Rangers.

Well played, nostalgia. Well played.

Corner Gas: The Movie: The Review

Canada is a funny place. Has been for some time. It's said that, in 1911, more people had heard of Stephen Leacock than of Canada itself. Over ninety years later, small-town Canadian comedy made a comeback when CTV premiered a little show called Corner Gas. Set in the fictional town of Dog River, Saskatchewan, Corner Gas revolves around Gas station owner Brent Leroy (Brent Butt) and his friends. It's a traditional ensemble comedy; each episode has several plots, no pathos, and a strict adherence to the status quo, all wrapped up in 22 minutes of deadpan hilarity. From 2004 to 2009, Corner Gas monopolized Canadian television like the Parker Brothers monopolizing board games.

Of course, whenever any TV show becomes so successful, people start thinking about the potential for "The Movie." For Corner Gas fans, the potential was realized this summer when the cast and crew organised a successful Kickstarter campaign. I was a Kickstarter backer myself, so maybe I'm too biased to write a fair review, but I loved the show and I wanted to be a part of the movie, even if I was only a single name in the credits, surrounded by hundreds of other names. I've had my name in the credits of a low-budget cable show once, but Corner Gas: The Movie (directed by David Storey) is the first movie that I've had my name in.

But, sentimentality aside, does the movie do the show justice? Yes.

For the most part, Dog River is still Dog River. We haven't seen the town or its inhabitants for five years, so a few off-screen changes were necessary to fill the time between birthdays. In the show, Wanda (Nancy Robertson) had a never-seen, rarely-mentioned a young son; now she has a never-seen, sometimes-mentioned teenager, preparing to leave the nest for college. Karen (Tara Spencer-Nairn), single in the show, is now married to a never-seen husband and (like Mrs. Spencer-Nairn was at the time of filming) a little pregnant. But even these life-altering changes actually change surprisingly little, at least as far as the audience can see. To quote Craig Northey's and Jesse Valenzuela's observations in the show's iconic theme song: "You think there's not a lot goin' on."

To which they would add: "But look closer, baby, you're so wrong." Dog River is filthy and unkempt, the water pump is on its last leg, and there are constant power outages. Turns out the town is bankrupt; Mayor Fitzy Fitzgerald (Cavan Cunningham) has lost most of their money in a bad investment, rendering the town unable to afford electricity or fix the water pump.

The residents of Dog River do have a habit of Seinfelding small problems into big issues. "I was hoping that this was just another one of those things," Brent admits, "but it's not." This isn't a story about men walking into the ladies' room because they don't know what a distaff is, or a retired couple getting bumped into a higher wine bracket by a "thoughtless" gift. Dog River is dying, and everyone in the town must adjust to the problem or fix it. But they can't ignore it.

Lacey (Gabrielle Miller) wants to enter Dog River in a Quaintest Town in Canada contest, and use the prize money to save the day. A lot of the promotional material focused on this Quaint-off, but it's really just one of several threads in this story. I'd say that the movie is actually about how everyone deals with the problem in their own way.

The movie, like the show, juggles several plots. Each of the eight main characters has at least one of their very own, and usually a second they share with someone else. Most of these tie directly into the "Dog River is dying," plot, even if only indirectly. Davis (Lorne Cardinal) is forced out of the police force because the town can't afford to keep him on, so he becomes a private investigator. Hank (Fred Ewanuick) tries to bring a doughnut franchise to Dog River to help the economy, but, being Hank, can't afford the franchise fee, and feels betrayed when Brent refuses to lend him the money. Oscar (Eric Peterson) refuses to leave Dog River, insists that he will live off the land instead, trades his car in for a horse so that he won't have to rely on fuel or money, then ends up fighting over said horse with officer Karen, who confiscates it from Oscar because apparently keeping a malnourished horse in your garage is illegal and she always wanted a horse anyway.

So, you know, all perfectly normal, true-to-life depictions of an economic crisis.

If you're worried that the writers or actors might have lost their touch in their five years away from Dog River, don't worry, they didn't. The movie uses the same dry sense of humour as the show, the same fondness for cutaway gags and bait-and-switch jokes, and it maintains the same approach to the PG rating, where dirty jokes are allowed but not required.

There is a bit more emotion, though. The tenderest moments are those between Brent and Lacey. The show toyed with the idea of them becoming a couple now and then, but mostly kept romance in the background. The movie is a different story. Early on, Lacey admits to Brent that, with Dog River's bankruptcy, she might have to move away to open a restaurant elsewhere. It's easily the most dramatic exchange these two characters have ever shared; his reactions makes it plain that he doesn't want her to go, and hers makes it plain that she knows. Their relationship even becomes a minor obsession for Emma (Janet Wright), who wants grandchildren and sees the resolution of that particular bit of UST as her best shot to get some. Interestingly, there's none of the bashful, romantic hide-and-seek that you usually see in these "will-they-or-won't-they" couples. The Brent and Lacey scenes are so open and natural and comfortable, it's just like they'd actually been dating for years.

Fortunately, although Corner Gas: The Movie is more serious, it still isn't serious. The emotional moments give the story weight and momentum, and help it feel like more than an episode of the show, but they never get out of line or try to steal the spotlight. And when the drama isn't needed anymore, back into the small dust box it goes, until Thalia decides to let it out again.

Whether or not you think this is a good thing is a matter of personal opinion. This is a movie for Corner Gas fan, and only Corner Gas fans. If you disliked the series, then you're gonna dislike the movie. But if you're a fan, then you're in for a treat, because Corner Gas: The Movie is a fitting send-off to some of Canada's most beloved characters, and a hilarious romp in its own right. It might feel like a 90-minute episode of the show, but when the show is that darn good, who's going to complain?

Could You Explain That Joke Again?

When people are discussing comedy, one of the most oft-repeated pieces of advice is: "Don't explain the joke." Most see it as one of the most pivotal rules. Mark Twain and E.B. White have both compared the explanation of a joke to the dissection of a frog, in terms of both educational value and the impact on the subject's mortality.

I am not a comedian or a writer, but I am a comedy watcher and a comedy reader, and I prefer a deadpan approach to comedy. I like having jokes explained to me less than anyone on this planet. In fact, I don't even like characters acknowledging jokes. There is a part of me that would like to see incredulous looks abolished from every straight man's repertoire.

But when I thought about it more, I realized that what constitutes explaining a joke is open to a surprising lot of interpretation. People will frequently find explanations in the jokes they dislike while ignoring those in the jokes that they enjoyed.

I'm going to give you two examples to demonstrate what I'm talking about. For the first, I'll draw on the works of those notorious auteurs, Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg. Few filmmakers in the history of Hollywood have earned more scorn. Since a part of their signature style is introducing characters from another movie, and then saying who those characters are, they've developed a reputation for dissecting a lot of frogs.

But honestly, I'd call this one a grey area. I'm not going to say that having Iron Man appear and announce that he's Iron Man is funny, even by the vaguest definitions of the word, but I wouldn't say that its unfunniness stems from excessive explanations, either. (As a side note, Iron Man appearing but avoiding verbal introductions wouldn't be much of a funny-bone-tickler, either.) If I may dissect a predeceased frog for educational purposes: the "joke" isn't that he's Iron Man, it's that he's a familiar character from a different movie. If he said, "I am Iron Man, I am from the movie Iron Man, and this is a different movie altogether," then yes, that would be explaining the joke. But just name-dropping the title or character isn't.

At least in my opinion, but you are welcome to disagree.

Now I'm going to pick on a more popular movie: Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy. Remember the scene in Anchorman where an argument between the rival news teams escalates into a violent gang war? And remember how Ron later points out that things "escalated quickly?" And remember how this second scene has gone on to become one of the most popular in the entire movie, and no one seems to care that it's basically just an extended explanation of the previous scene?

Seriously. The fight scene was funny because it escalated quickly. But, because so many fans loved the following scene, and were too busy laughing to analyse it, they never had time (or reason) to complain that the joke was being explained to them.

And I'm not complaining about this. That's how it should go. Comedians and humorists want their audiences to enjoy their jokes. And if a scene that "shouldn't" work still does, why complain?

So, what conclusion can we come to? Well, I think that this just proves that comedy is an art, and not a science. "Don't explain the joke" does still seem like a good, solid piece of advice to me. If a joke isn't funny on its own, it's not going to grow funnier when you explain it. And, as any writer will tell you, something that's tight and lean is generally better than something with a lot of unnecessary words and scenes. Explanations tend to add padding to a joke, but nothing else.

But padding isn't poison, and a good comic scene can survive and prosper, smuggling joke-explanations by in trench-coats and sunglasses as they introduce themselves as humble lampshade-hangers. For most people, "don't explain the joke" seems to be more a matter of comic theory than practice, useful only for dismissing unwanted comedians. It's like a firearm that you keep in a box under your bed and don't think about until you need it to scare off your daughter's boyfriend.