miscellanium | Dec. 31st, 2024

the way his handwriting stands out, the height difference, the playing with his suspenders, the hhggrAAAGH

the "is it worth watching this for lawrence dane" rating: 2.5/5

the plot: a small-town lumberjack gets injured in a lumberjack competition with money riding on it, and our doggy hero smells sabotage. also there's hockey-related posters wherever possible. could this be any more canadian? it's very much a children's show and it shows in the writing and overall lack of imagination in the direction, though at least unlike wishbone there's no annoying children (not in this episode anyway).

that said, dane's acting is more than decent given the context and he has so much screentime. so so much. i wanted to rate this more highly because he's in this a lot and he's still in the era where to me he is in peak physical form (roughly speaking my preference is for 1967-1987, 1990 at the latest, though of course he's devastatingly handsome prior to 1967 too) but i showed this to an objective yet still supportive second party and they said that in their opinion it'd merit a 2 at most because, well, it's a children's tv show episode. nothing especially artistic about it, and even from a cultural studies angle there's not a lot going on that'd be interesting to analyze. which isn't to say there's nothing--i do find myself curious about the way they styled the appearances of the "bad guys" and the hint of a backstory for one of them that goes completely unexplored--but if i take off my horny goggles i'm compelled to agree with the lower rating since you wouldn't be missing much by not watching this, so the 2.5 is my compromise between id and ego.

this is pretty easy to find online with autocaptions at the moment, though it seems that the only version available is one specific vhs rip of a tv recording since i've yet to see any uploads with better quality. here's the episode on youtube, and here it is on the internet archive (episode 5x08).

highlight: those eyes......