From jackets to scarves, caps and bracelets, the Roots x Douglas Coupland line is intended, said the author of Generation X and Girlfriend in a Coma, to "explore a new way of seeing Canada" far removed from "birch bark and moose and Mounties".
Wes and Tom-Tom and their girlfriends, in a panic, follow Vern and Howie to Exeter, hoping to rescue the boys from a too-early experience of "female companionship".
The best of these is Cinderella's Joan Crawford-esque stepmother (incarnated with hilarious outlandishness by Michela Meazza), but there are stepbrothers as well as two stepsisters (not ugly ones), potential boyfriends and girlfriends, a father in a wheelchair and servicemen.
Some early scenes – Deen and Lohan meeting Ryan and his girlfriend in a restaurant, Lohan and Deen in their swanky LA house – are banal in the extreme.
Bugles at dawn, Crowe and girlfriend asleep in a hayshed after making love, interiors smoky with golden light.
What is perhaps more poignant is a relentless need to create, to develop and learn, and to play to more than your mam and your girlfriend in a dingy, sweaty pub.
(The New York Times profiled Cubby — now known as Jack — and his girlfriend in a 2011 article about navigating love with Asperger's).
"Bonnie is an actress, and a girlfriend in a dance class asked us both to meet these people to suggest some names for a slate of candidates," he recalled.
Particularly impressive is a level in which the single-player form changes to include Vincent, the protagonist, and his girlfriend in a fast-paced joint race to solve a puzzle.
A Fabergé box, pornography allegedly written by Proust, a matchbox signed by Elvis and other knick-knacks illustrate his gothic tall tales, told to narrator John Harper and his girlfriend in a French village.
