Corner Gas and Other Disconnects

So, there's this show that's been popping up on WGN of late. It's called Corner Gas. I'd never heard of it, so I thought I'd give it a run. It's amazing the gems one will find by tuning into random crap on television. I thought I might get lucky.

Instead, I got Canadian. That's right, Corner Gas is a Candian single-camera sitcom in which the joke appears to be that there are no jokes. And not "no jokes" in that BBC Office kind of way. Nope, there are just no jokes, not that I noticed. It was all sit, no com. In fact, there were many situations: two people sit at a counter discussing something. Let's say it's another person. That third person enters the room. The two people at the counter cease to discuss the third person.

Hilarity ensues, right? Not as far as I can tell. The topic just changes.

A little research indicates that Corner Gas is like, an award-winning Canadian show and all. Maybe I've seen the wrong episodes. But let me confess something to you: I've seen a lot of episodes of Corner Gas. Five or six, maybe. I find its total lack of . . . anything . . . kind of entrancing. I can watch it in the same way that I used to stand in my living room and watch that channel that gives nonstop traffic updates in a mechanized voice while flashing a series of images from the mountain passes. The ODOT channel. Corner Gas is like the ODOT channel: quiet, repetitive, hypontic.

Far be it from me to judge from place of ignorance. I willfully admit that our neighbors to the north may find this show legitimately hilarious; it wouldn't be the first time that something notionally funny from a foreign land struck me as completely baffling (including but not limited to Falwty Towers, the majority of Monty Python, and that Australian romcom I can't remember the name of). So what am I missing?

I think there are a few disconnects here. First: maybe I'm just not nice enough. One of the defining features of Corner Gas, much like Canada as a whole, is that everybody seems to be a completely swell guy. The show is, above all things else, gentle. Perhaps I've been weaned on American edginess, and I just can't handle anything that doesn't have a political bent or some good killin'. Maybe I want my comedy to be mean. Is that all right? Is it possible to be too nice? I think so. I mean, when was the last time that the Canadians won a war single-handed, like the United States of Freedom has done every time we ever fought one ever including when we fought one against ourselves? Second: Perhaps I am spoiled by a superfluity of choice. Last time I was in Canada . . . actually, I was in Toronto, and it was totally awesome. But the mental image I have had of Canada since I first became aware that there were whole other countries on this planet (at the age of twenty-three or so) was of a place where people were stuck inside all the time without a lot to do. Toronto regardless, I choose to cling to that notion now as an explanation for why Corner Gas is such a huge hit up there in the Great White North: when all you have is a pair of snow shoes and a couple of old Guess Who records, Corner Gas must seem like the sweet, sweet humor of the gods.

There's also the possibility that I really have just seen the wrong episodes of the show. But you know why I doubt that? I'll tell you why: The Red Green Show. Go ahead. Watch a few clips of The Red Green Show. I'll give you a minute.

[Sings a few bars of Arcade Fire's "Wake Up".]

See what I'm talking about? I mean, if there's a culture that finds that funny, Corner Gas must be a true titan of laffs. Barrel o' monkeys and that whole bit. 

Anyway, I kid. I cannot truly recommend Corner Gas, however, because it is mind-numbingly, soul-crushingly unfunny and boring (though it does star a dude named Brent Butt). And it does make me wonder if a couple of synapses might not be firing right in the collective brain of them up there in Canada. (Then again, given that Two and a Half Men is the #1 comedy here in the United States of Justice, I probably shouldn't be talking.)

I give Corner Gas two bottles of maple syrup out of a possible gallon.

USA! USA! USA!