Recap / Corner Gas Animated S 1 E 06 Shelter Skelter

"I feel bad leaving you behind!" ...Said one Beat before leaving Brent behind.

A Plot: After Hank watches Hippothermia, an apocalyptic movie, the citizens of Dog River decide they need an emergency plan in case the end of the world is near. Karen and Davis seek Wanda's help to prove which of them would be a better leader in an apocalypse, while Hank and Oscar build a disaster shelter.
B Plot: Sick of Brent and Lacey’s bickering, Emma traps them in her cellar to force them to hash things out.

Tropes referenced:

• Added Alliterative Appeal:
  Lacey: I can't believe I got conned into canning in this cold crypt!
  • Davis' first goal when the world descends to post-apocalyptic chaos? Start assigning everyone descriptive adjectives in the vein of Mad Max, like Disgruntled Davis and Krazy Karen.
    Davis: I know Crazy starts with a C, but in a post-apocalyptic world? No rules.

• Ambiguous Syntax:
  Oscar: People didn't believe that there were alligators in the sewers of New York and look what happened there.
  Emma: Nothing happened there.
  Oscar: Exactly! People stood around and did nothing!

• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Brent says he forgot to get the air conditioning fixed because he's got a lot on his mind, so Lacey wants to know what.
  Brent: Like making the work schedule, and remembering when I work on the schedule, and figuring out why Batman thought it was okay to have a twelve-year-old help him fight crime. Seems irresponsible.

• Attack of the Political Ad: Wanda creates a presentation for Karen to play at The Ruby in order to show that Davis would be a terrible leader in the event of an apocalypse. Reasons for this include: he's afraid of spiders, he drinks from the carton, he cries at romantic comedies, he believes in orcs, and he spends more time napping than reducing the murder rate in town. Even though Davis notes the murder rate is 0, the damage to his image is done.

• Cannot Tell Fiction from Reality: Hank believes that a cheesy disaster movie he saw called Hippothermia, in which people are killed during an ice storm full of man-eating hippos, is actually a documentary about the end result of climate change.
  Hank: Lacey said it's already happening!
  Lacey: I said a sequel is already happening.

• Chekhov's Gag: Almost all of Davis' flaws from Wanda's presentation are referenced again in some manner:
  • At the end of the episode, while everyone else is frightened by Hank and Oscar's death-trap of an emergency shelter, Davis is instead frightened by a spider.
  • Davis wins back some respect from the crowd by showing off that he's drinking cream from a glass.
  • Wanda tries to speak Orcish to convince Davis to let her help him get back at Karen. He points out that she said "Sing fish house''.
  • The shot of Davis napping in the video is recreated when Wanda comes to talk to him later on.

• Comically Missing the Point: Lacey hears Oscar in the basement on the other side of the cold cellar and tries calling for help.
  Lacey: [Behind the door] Oscar?
  Oscar: Lacey? What are you doing in the cold cellar?
  Brent: [Also behind the door] It's a long story.
  Oscar: And why do you sound like Brent?

• Control Freak: Emma never cared about getting Brent and Lacey to resolve their differences. She just locked them in the cold cellar so Lacey wouldn't be able to hijack the town's disaster plan meeting.
  Emma: Because every time you're at a meeting, you take over and pretty soon nobody can get a word in ed-
  Lacey: That's not true! Is it?

• Damned by Faint Praise: Karen and Davis ask Wanda who would be a better fit to lead the town in a crisis.
  Wanda: On the one hand, Davis is large, powerful, and a senior officer. On the other hand, [Wanda pauses. Karen smiles] Karen's teeth are incredibly white. Do you floss?

• Department of Redundancy Department:
  Davis: We have our leader, and he is me, and me is I!

• Dissonant Serenity: Wanda tells Karen to think back to a calming influence, so Karen flashes back to going through bomb defusal training at police academy. The instructor speaks in a calming voice more fitting for a yoga instructor, even when Karen clips the wrong wire on the fake bomb and the instructor serenely announces that she's killed them all.

• Gossip Evolution: While Brent is locked in the cold cellar, he tries to half-heartedly use a can lid to dig through a concrete wall and then he gets sick from eating some bad preserves. The townsfolk later tell the harrowing tale of how Brent was poisoned and chewed through a concrete wall to survive. This inspires everyone to elect Brent as their leader in the event of an emergency.

• I'm a Humanitarian: Davis seems a little too into the idea of eating Fitzy when the apocalypse comes. He even starts listing potential seasoning methods while glancing at Fitzy across The Ruby.

• Immediate Self-Contradiction: When Lacey can get out of the cold cellar through a window but Brent can't fit, she says she feels bad leaving him behind, then runs off without another word.

• Insane Troll Logic:
  • Hank thinks that Lanny's dilapidated barn will make the perfect emergency shelter because the poor construction will counteract any damage a natural disaster might cause (such as the walls being so full of holes that hurricane winds with just whistle through) and it'll be easy to tear down to make rafts if there's a flood.
  • Davis convinces some of the townsfolk that Karen would be a terrible apocalypse leader because she eats a lot of bananas, and since bananas would be scarce in an apocalypse, she might end up low on potassium.
    Rheena: What happens when you're low on potassium?
    Ravi: I heard you lose all sense of right and wrong!

• Late to the Realization: When Lacey hears Emma driving away after locking her and Brent in the cold cellar.
  Lacey: Well that doesn't sound very good.
  Brent: Yeah, there's a hole in their muffler. [Lacey glares at him] And it means we're stuck down here. So yeah, not good.

• Literal Metaphor: During an argument with Lacey about why he didn't fix the broken air conditioner, Brent says he's leaving so he can go cool off at the gas station. By which he means he's actually going to go sit in one of the gas station's refrigerators.

• Literal-Minded: Hank has renamed his pet turtles Mr. and Mrs. Franklin because he caught them having sex. This causes Brent to think that Hank actually married the turtles and wonders if the ceremony was performed by a minister or whether anyone else got invited.

• Locked in a Room: Emma locks Brent and Lacey in her cold cellar because they were arguing earlier about Brent being too laid back and Lacey being too fussy. Brent and Lacey subvert the trope by immediately realizing that their bickering solves nothing and agreeing to work on their respective flaws, but Emma leaves the house and drives away before she can hear this, leaving them trapped.

• Mayor Pain: Karen and Davis' debate over who will lead the town after the apocalypse stems from the fact that nobody believes Fitzy will last very long after the end.

• Metaphorgotten:
  Oscar: Impending doom is upon us, and those stuffed shirts sit around clucking like a bunch of ducks!
  Hank: Flock.
  Oscar: Watch your mouth!

• Missing Steps Plan: The town's old emergency plan is "May ye find God."
  Emma: That's a little light on detail.

• Once Done, Never Forgotten: Wanda says that Karen and Davis "snapped like Brent's waistband at a pie eating contest." Brent defensively points out that that only happened once.

• Playing Both Sides: Wanda initially helps Karen to discredit Davis with a video highlighting Davis' flaws. Then Wanda helps Davis get back at Karen by coaching him on what to say in front of a crowd to make Karen look bad. Then Wanda convinces Karen to act more serene so she comes across looking like a creepy hippy, then she convinces Davis that if he does end up in charge, everyone will start gunning for his head, turning him into a paranoid wreck. All so Wanda can prove how much more capable she is so the townsfolk will pick her to be future apocalypse leader over either of them. But, as Lacey points out, this just highlights how underhanded Wanda can be and in the end nobody trusts her.

• Shout-Out:
  • Lacey states that Hippothermia is a rip-off of Sharknado.
  • During the disaster plan meeting, Helen wants to know who will compete for their district "if there's a Hunger Game."

• Stealth Insult: Wanda tells Karen that if she wants to show everyone she'd be a better apocalypse leader than Davis, she needs to use her brains to trick him. Because "without brains, you're just a couple of meat sticks walking around with an arm load of groceries", she says as Oscar and Hank walk up with their arms loaded with groceries.

• Toilet Humour: Eating bad peaches from Emma's cold cellar leaves Brent feeling "like a football stadium after the game ends. Every exit is busy."

• Verbal Backspace: Davis tries to use Won's support of Karen to further discredit her by claiming she's in bed with local business.
  Davis: Now when I say "she's in bed with business", I mean figuratively.
  Wanda: [Hiding behind the patrol car] Or do you?
  Davis: [Sinisterly] Or do I?