RIP Trailer Park Boys
Cats: Canada, geeky things|The show is over.
The roguish, dysfunctional, foul-mouthed boyz of Sunnyvale Trailer Park will be no more.
And it doesn’t seem right, somehow.
For anyone unfamiliar with Trailer Park Boys, the show is a collision of concepts: Think the Spinal Tap mockumentary, the US show My Name is Earl and the Burt Reynolds slapstick flick Cannonball Run – and you’re getting close.
The show ran on Showcase TV for almost a decade. Not sure why it was cancelled.
TPBs depicts the life and times of a bunch of bad-ass boys living in a trailer park in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. They are petty-criminals and low-functioning misfits from broken families. They have drug and alcohol problems. They can’t keep jobs. And they swear like troopers.
Ricky – the emotional one – lives in a car half the time, a car with only one door. Julian – the rational one – always has a rum and coke in his hand and scheme up his sleeve. And sweet-hearted Bubbles – the heart and soul – wears coke-bottle eye glasses and acts as the conscience of the crowd.
Throw in a drunken trailer park supervisor, a cast of other oddlings and a decidedly British sensibility of humour, and you have the Trailer Park Boys phenomenon.
Some people think that Trailer Park Boys is a satire or exaggeration. It is not.
I grew up in the Dartmouth, the town in which this show takes place, and trust me, these people exist. I knew and hung out with them in Graham’s Grove Park and in the lounge or lobby of the Dartmouth Inn (when I was 15 and well below drinking age!) We were all from broken and troubled families. We found safe haven in our gang of misfits.
Perhaps that is why I’ve never been able to embrace the usual middle class mores and norms. I like being on the outside. That’s why I loved this show.
I will miss Ricky, Julian and Bubbles. I will miss their honesty, hardships and humanity. Real humans do swear.
The Trailer Park Boys are my people.
November 13th, 2008 at 2:58 pm
While I’ve never seen the show this sounds exactly like the guys I grew up with. Most were from families of the “working poor” and were not above minor criminal activity. They drank too much, smoked too much, and swore profusely, but for all of their faults, they looked after each other like brothers.
Now will have to find this show and check it out.
Doc
November 13th, 2008 at 4:34 pm
I’ll have to check these cats out on DVD, they sound like my people as well.
November 13th, 2008 at 5:17 pm
We have a picture of Bubbles with a kitty on his head on our fridge door. TV’s just not going to be the same without the boys.
November 13th, 2008 at 6:08 pm
Had no idea you were such a bad-ass. Probably only truly shows when you’re into the bourbon?
November 13th, 2008 at 9:42 pm
Well now I guess I’ll never get to see it. And it came so highly recommended too!
November 13th, 2008 at 11:07 pm
Doc, I think it’s archetype which is why the show is so universally appealing
Barbara, the actor who plays bubbles lives a ten minute walk from me.
Monkey, it might be on youtube too.
YAM, I wasn’t as bad as the real bad asses, but I travelled in the same circles
BeckEye, I know, what a coincidence after raving on your blog about them the other day. Check out Youtube
November 13th, 2008 at 11:42 pm
I am coming to visit and you have to introduce me to Bubbles! You know ALL the coolest people!
November 14th, 2008 at 12:41 am
I didn’t like TPB when I first saw, but I hadn’t sat down and watched an entire show. Once I sat down and watched it I laughed so hard – I grew up not far from a small trailer court near Truro and I knew people exactly like “the boys” right down to the guy with the coke bottle glasses. I love the inside jokes that only people from N.S. would get – like Bubbles singing the Casino Taxi jingle – I haven’t heard that in years and I can still sing it! I will miss you TPB.
November 14th, 2008 at 9:38 am
Barbara, all zombies always welcome here.
H n P, yup, the boys are everywhere but it’s nice to see the Nova Scotia spin they put on things
November 14th, 2008 at 3:15 pm
NOOOOOOOOOOO! Tell me it isn’t true! I am in mourning
November 15th, 2008 at 11:58 pm
I LOVED this show, and laughed harder at it than I have any TV show, and yet it was such a hard one to get people to watch. I guess there is a part of us, as Canadians, that found it a bit embarrassing because it was so bang-on. That’s why I thought it was so brilliant.
Randy: Mr. Lahey, is that you or the liquor talking?
Mr. Lahey: Randy, I AM the liquor!
November 16th, 2008 at 9:37 am
Tonardo, yeaaaaaaas, I;’m afraid it’s true.
Trixie, you said it. And that line is so funny.