Recap / The Great North S1E5 "Curl Interrupted Adventure"

RECAP:
Index
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Original air date: March 7, 2021

Written by: Matt Lawton
Directed by: Joel Moser

Wanting his adult curling team to win, Beef enlists Judy to help coach his team, despite knowing that Judy has an ugly competitive side. Meanwhile, Wolf tries to turn the family fishing boat into a sunset cruise for lovers with Ham, Moon, and Honeybee helping him.

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Tropes:

• Assurance Backfire: When Ziska doesn't show up to Wolf's tour and she doesn't answer Werner's call, Werner believes Ziska is no longer interested in him anymore. Moon tries to comfort him by telling him maybe she fell off a cliff while Honeybee bluntly tells him maybe she's not coming on purpose because she doesn't want to be here, but Wolf assures Werner she's definitely not dead.
• Bilingual Bonus: Some of the German tourists’ dialogue (ex., Werner answers his phone “Wo bist du?” which is “Where are you?” when Ziska calls him.)
• Brick Joke: When Wolf makes Moon the entertainment coordinator and he asks Moon if he can play "Caribbean Queen" by Billy Ocean on his guitar, Moon reveals he only knows "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)" by Green Day and "Round and Round" by Ratt and Wolf wants him to play Green Day's song instead. Later when Werner returns to Wolf's sunset cruise and Wolf and everyone are trying to cheer him up after Ziska ditched him, Moon sings to him "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)", which makes Werner cry and Wolf tells Moon to stop, so he instead sings "Round and Round", which still makes Werner cry.
• Competition Freak: Judy had to quit curling because it brought out her aggressive side. She starts doing it again after Beef makes her assistant coach of his over-36 league.
• Couch Gag: The boat in the intro is named Fifty First Mates.
• Counterpoint Duet: Beef and Judy sings about working together again to play curling. While Beef sings about the good times they had, Judy sings about destroying the other players.
• Germanic Depressives: The German tourist couple Werner and Ziska fit the stereotype perfectly, dressing in black and acting blasé all the time. Werner then gets real depressed when Ziska leaves him.
• Innocently Insensitive: When Wolf is able to get Werner and Ziska to return to his sunset tour, Werner is the only one to show up while Ziska just ditched him. Wolf and the others try to cheer him up, but they just make Werner feel miserable and Moon playing a Break Up Song like "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)" didn't help the matter.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Judy refuses to put Delmar in because he's super old. She mainly does it out of arrogance because she wants to win and she thinks he's holding them back, but when Beef overrules Judy and has Delmar throw, he gets carried away by the stone and breaks his hip.
• Parents as People: Beef confesses to Judy that letting her be assistant coach of his curling team was not a good idea. He says he did it because he missed being with Judy like when she was playing and did not think of the rest of the team.
• Pop-Culture Pun Episode Title: The title is a shoutout to Girl, Interrupted.
• Rage Breaking Point: When Beef puts his curling team in a losing position, Judy, who held back her super competitive nature, finally unleashes it on his team in front of everyone. This leads to Beef firing Judy from being their coach but it doesn't stop her from ranting.
• We Are Not Going Through That Again: After Beef admits he allowed Judy to coach his team, knowing full well she wasn't ready to return to curling, because he missed spending time with her, Judy admits to missing him too. When she points out they could always do curling during off-hours, Beef immediately shoots that idea down after what happened during their curling match.
• Worse with Context: When Judy is telling Alanis her time on the curling team before she was kicked out, she tells her she made the other players cry. Alanis assumes she probably did it to psych the other team, but Judy clarifies she made her own teammates cry, including her coach.

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♫ This is the story of a snow-farin' man
Who curled over mountains and curled over land
One day he and his brothers got marooned on jeezly ice
But he curled them all to safety and his hair still looked nice
The world's greatest curler
Big Stan, the world's greatest man
When Stanley curled a grizzly, he also pushed a puffin
Curled his best gal to the altar as if it were nothin'
In the history of curlers, he's the top guy
And if you look up in the night you'll see him curling in the sky
The world's greatest curler
Big Stan, the world's greatest man
Big Stan, the world's greatest man! ♫

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