You may recall that I have only been recently introduced to the Trailer Park Boys, and I have spent the ensuing days in something of a daze, slowly turning over each episode in my mind like a jewel.
Nicole says many wise things; it was in Nicole’s kitchen today that she said perhaps the wisest thing she has ever said to me.
“Who is your favorite Trailer Park Boy?”
I needed no deliberation. “Ricky. I love Bubbles, obviously, but…Ricky.”
(It should go without saying that Julian, while better than 99% of any characters ever created on television, was not a contender. Every character on this show is a flawlessly rendered work of art, but one can only have one favorite.)
“Ricky,” Nicole said, “is a modern Falstaff.”
HAS ANYONE EVER BEEN MORE RIGHT ABOUT ANYTHING? “A knave without malice, a liar without deceit, and a knight, a gentleman, and a soldier without either dignity, decency, or honour. This is a character which, though it may be decompounded, could not, I believe, have been formed, nor the ingredients of it duly mingled, upon any receipt whatever. It required the hand of Shakespeare himself to give to every particular part a relish of the whole, and of the whole to every particular part…” could those words have been written about anyone but Ricky?
Give Ricky these four-and-a-half minutes. Watch him grow in strength and conviction as he realizes the system is no match for him. Watch him leap from triumph to triumph. Ricky is irrepressible, a male Molly Brown.
It would be a mistake of the first order to confuse the Trailer Park Boys with something goofy and inoffensively stupid like Super Troopers. The Trailer Park Boys are like nothing I’ve ever seen before. They are eternal, they are comic in the Grecian sense of the word, they are Bacchian, they are satyrs, they are night revelers, they are the Lords of Misrule. Ricky is half Loki and half Orson Welles, eternally dreaming, eternally unruly, a pompadoured Bacchus. Ricky is the single greatest comedic character of the twenty-first century, and actors will be studying his arc for years to come.
N.B. I have never hated anyone, fictional or otherwise, as much as I hate Jim Lahey. Fuck Lahey.
“Ricky Is A Modern Falstaff”
…..I think you’re exactly right. Thank you for putting my unformed notion into words.
Or Nicole is, it seems. Sorry, I saw that and instantly knew I had to instantly approve.
I feel like a failed Canadian: I can’t bear to watch Trailer Park Boys. I can’t do sitcoms in general, or many of the cartoons (Archer! South Park!) that others enjoy.
Am I the only one that feels such deep embarrassment for the characters that it is all impossible to watch?
That’s why I couldn’t watch The Surreal Life, or that show about getting together a team of male strippers (except for the last episode where they’re all like “we can’t do our debut routine without our buddy who got cut last week there with us, it just wouldn’t be right”).
Hell, Three’s Company and Frasier are hard for me to watch. I’m a sponge for discomfort and tension.
I’ve been rewatching Frasier lately, off and on, and I like the characters but the cringe factor on that show is THE WORST for me. Sometimes I literally watch through my fingers and also shout “stop!”
mishpucha
It’s why I can’t watch the Martha scenes in The Americans.
You’re not alone! It’s physically impossible to be in the room with that going on, on a screen; I have to leave.
And the ones where the humor consists of people shouting abuse at each other—resentment simmering or boiling over driving the laugh track and the plot—those are unbearable (I’m looking at you, “Everybody Loves Raymond” which my mother always seems to have on). Even when the characters supposedly like or love one another, they never show it.
I still will put everything down and watch “M*A*S*H” when it comes on, though there’s also embarrassment, humiliation, and other difficult-to-bear emotional stuff. Mmmaybe the difference is that the characters do respect one another and it’s shown? Even Frank, though he’s shown as an irritating hypocrite, is handled kindly. He’s a foil, a goat, and Hawkeye and Trapper John et al. seem to be aware that they’ve deliberately cast him in that role in their little society.
Ugh.
I am so glad to meet my people!
Yep, second-hand embarrassment! I really want to like shows like Parks & Rec or The Office, but I had a tough enough time with 30 Rock, which I basically trained myself to like.
I’m so ready for the current era of cringe-comedy to be over.
This video has been “blocked in [my] country on copyright grounds” which is pretty rich considering that it was entirely set, filmed and produced in my country.
Found a copy that works!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqqsxfEDXu4
Don’t be a CAN’T-adian!
Also, according to Wikipedia, Ricky is a distant cousin of widely reviled Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper, who is actually 2000% worse than Mr. Leahy.
Fact. It is my position that I’d hate Harper somewhat less if he were more incompetent. Unfortunately, he persists in being fairly good at getting shit done, it’s just all the shit I completely disagree with.
So … If Stephen Harper = Jim Leahy, then who on earth is Stephen Harper’s Randy?
Look at a picture of Randy. Now look at a picture of Jason Kenney.
Stephen Harper is a real mustard tiger.
Wait…mustard tiger? What does that even mean?
It’s the insulting nickname that Ricky gave to that hilarious asshole/rival fish salesman Phil Collins.
Well, okay, I recently watched some Trailer Park Boys because my friend watches them when he is traveling and since he travels frequently to parts unknown rural there isn’t much on TV.
And I didn’t laugh at all. Why? Because the Trailer Park Boys ARE my step-father. It’s like his life, on-screen, and I kept thinking to myself as I watched, “What the hell did someone follow my step-dad around and just write shit down?”
I think I will start laughing after I take a step back and … uh … stop myself from remembering my childhood through every scene in every episode and … wow, just, I don’t know. Trailer Park Boys is REAL, people.
When “Look Who’s Talking” came out I saw it with my mom and sister. My mom had just gotten divorced again earlier that year and there’s the scene where Kirstie Alley is envisioning her possible future with John Travolta and he’s a chuckling uncouth oaf in a tank top (#2) with unlabeled reject cans from the grocery store (my dad). “I just saw two marriages in one place.” Freaked her shit out for a minute there.
I keep thinking about my step-dad someday watching the show and, recognizing himself, will keep saying loudly, “Okay, WHY is this funny now?”
So, I’m going to get my daughter right on that, introducing her grandpa to Trailer Park Boys and recording the response. Evil lurks in my heart, that I know.
Oh and “Roseanne” was just grim to me. “I am really not enjoying this as dinner viewing! We have a knack for being a busted-ass family!” I’d think.
But maybe he’ll just think he’s, you know, the hero! Long as there’s no laugh track he’ll be fine.
I’m afraid he’ll start taking notes himself while watching the show and doing some of the stuff that the guys on the show do. Because he’s been known to do that.
Future youtube show, “My Dad Being the Trailer Park Boys, like, For Real”.
“Hot damn, that’s a good plan!”
My best horse bud is a GIANT fan of TPB and when the actors who played Lahey and Randy came to town (they were doing a Canadian tour…long story), he went nuts! Went to see them, got to have a private, small chit-chat with “Lahey”, called him a “super nice, funny guy”. This happened years ago and whenever TPB gets mentioned, he launches into his story how he saw them live, etc.
I know what you really meant, but instead I’m going to imagine a large majestic stallion going wild in a small comedy club.
Hah! My buddy was a large, majestic stallion in his salad days (he’s 68 this year): he rodeo’d, was a field hand for a large haying operation, bred and sold Quarter Horses, was a show Reiner, sweet-talked his way into a Ray Hunt ranch clinic before anyone knew who Ray Hunt was, etc.
He’s got a million hunting/horse/wilderness hijinks stories but one of his proudest moments was selling his last remaining home-bred broodmares to the Douglas Lake Ranch (courtesy of yours truly; I contacted DLR re: his mares and the rest is history).
Sent from my iPad
Yeah, I didn’t see the word “bud” at first and ended up with a very similar mental image. Actually, since the only comedy club in town that I know of is in the basement level of a restaurant, I was stuck on the mental image of a horse having to negotiate a narrow, dark staircase. That horse must really be a fan of TPB.
Holy shitballs, is Trailer Park Boys Tuesday going to be A Thing, because I 100% support this being A Thing.
PLEASE please please make this a regular feature! I love TPB so MUCH. What episode are you on, Mallory?
I eagerly await a post named Philosophy 101 with Bubbles.
Fun fact: My nephew looks just like a little J-Roc, and his parents are already peeved at me because I cannot resist referring to the tot as “J-Roc.”
But do you know what he’s sayin’?
But do you know what he's sayin'?
Honestly Jim Lahey is full of pathos later on? Is that a spoiler?! I actually like him as a character.
He goes from evil to deeply sad and upsetting over time, its true. Still a rotten scoundrel but no worse than anyone else in the park.
Actually, the deeper you go into the seasons, the less it’s about funny dumb guys and the more its about crippling alcoholism and shattered dreams. But somehow is still funny? Its a masterpiece of sad, petty, hilarious catastrophe
He goes from evil to deeply sad and upsetting over time, its true. Still a rotten scoundrel but no worse than anyone else in the park.
Actually, the deeper you go into the seasons, the less it's about funny dumb guys and the more its about crippling alcoholism and shattered dreams. But somehow is still funny? Its a masterpiece of sad, petty, hilarious catastrophe