Recap / The Great North S4E09 "Idita-Ruth Adventure"

RECAP:
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Original air date: April 14, 2024

Written by: Matt Lawton
Directed by: Michael Baylis

When Honeybee's mother, Ruth, comes for a visit during the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, Wolf has trouble acting normal around her and does his best to try to get her approval. When Moon and his friends discover the librarian of their school is throwing out books that have written vandalism on the pages, they decide to sell the vandalized books to their classmates. Ham wants to bake a dog-friendly cake for one of the sled dog in the race, but he, Beef, and Judy have trouble trying to resist eating the cake.

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Tropes:

• Accidental Kiss: Technically the kiss was on purpose, but Wolf intended to kiss Ruth on her cheek, but accidentally kisses her on her lips. When Wolf tries to kiss Ruth on her cheek again to correct himself, he accidentally kisses her on the lips again and causes himself and Ruth to fall on the ground.
• Acting Unnatural: Wolf gets so nervous around Ruth that he does embarrassing things like accidentally kiss her on the lips and pour a milkshake on his head. His attempts to stay as far away from her as possible just make things even more awkward.
• Actually Quite Catchy: After Wolf passes out, Jerry starts singing the song Wolf wrote before Honeybee cuts him off.
• Alcohol-Induced Idiocy: While trying to write a country song for Ruth for the sled dog race, Wolf decides to drink a lot of whiskey in order to get into the country mood. He gets so drunk that he decides to sing his song to her, and also to the rest of the family, now. During his song, he reveals he's wearing bottomless pants and exposes his butt to all of them, he accidentally sits down on his guitar and gets splinters on his exposed butt, and then finally falls facedown and passes out.
• Brick Joke: When Wolf decides to write a song for Ruth, he says that Honeybee told him "country music is the dirt road to her heart." Honeybee denies both having said that and that her mom loves country music that much. Near the end, Ruth says she wants Wolf to sing the song he wrote at the festival because "country music is the dirt road to my heart."
• Couch Gag:
  • The boat in the opening is "The 40 Year Old Sturgeon".
  • Wolf's T-Shirt says "Air Butt".
• Cringe Comedy: Wolf's mortifying-to-watch attempts at interacting with Ruth, including accidentally kissing her on the lips twice and singing a poorly written country song to her while drunk.
• Freudian Excuse: Wolf acts so crazy around Ruth because Kathleen both had no boundaries and only paid him attention when he acted crazy. Ruth gets him to realize and overcome this by talking him through it and establishing healthy boundaries between them.
• Hands-Off Parenting: Because Kathleen barely put any effort in raising her children, she never set any boundaries for them (except telling them to not drink her vodka) and Wolf is only able to get her attention and make her smile is by doing crazy stuff.
• Let Us Never Speak of This Again: Ham made a dog-friendly cake for the lead dog of the Lone Moose team running the Iditarod race, but it looks so delicious that he, Judy and Beef end up eating it. Beef makes them swear to never speak of it again (twice.)
• Smash Cut: Whenever Ham makes a dog cake, he describes the ingredients to Judy and Beef, and it suddenly cuts to all three of them having devoured the cake.

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♫ 'Twas the night of a thousand dogs
Running through the land, through the snow
Through the ice and fog
Standing haunch to haunch
And braving the terrain
Every year we look to the sky
And remember their names
There was Chuckles, Poncho, Biter, Old Snuff
Pukey, Sully, and John McGruff
Taco, Pancake, Waffles, Sir Sniffs-His-Butt
Chunky, Dangler, Tweaky, Butter, and Gary the Mutt
It was the night of a thousand dogs, hyah!
Running through the land, through the snow
Through the ice and fog
Hyah! ♫

—Wolf