This hope hails from Toronto and, at least it appears, cheaply produced. It’s a low-tech pseudo-reality series shot in shaky shoulder-cam documentary style, á la “cinema verité,” which follows the daily antics, travails, survival long-shots, and bone-headed best laid plans of drunkards and pot-heads – all living in the Sunnyvale Trailer Park, somewhere in Canada.
Many TV connoisseurs have been waiting for this superbly written tragicomedy to surface since the classic high-brow series from the days of yore, Car 54 Where Are You?
The lead characters – it is difficult to call them protagonists, but the viewer will indeed find oneself cheering them on – are unwitting antiheroes: Julian (played by John Paul Tremblay), dresses in black and perpetually toting a rum and coke highball with pinkie extended, is the brains of the outfit. Ricky (Rob Wells), sports sideburns to shame Elvis Presley in his waning days, and wants to land back in jail where he knows he can get free booze and hash from the guards to whom he sells pot. Bubbles (Mike Smith), a cat-loving shed-dweller totes cartoonish coke-bottom glasses and has no compunctions when it come to feeding psychedelic mushroom burgers to the trailer park superintendent before the targeted buffoon has to give a political stump speech to keep his cushy job. Together, the trilogy is simply trying to make a dishonest living, mostly by growing hydroponic pot inside abandoned trailers. At times, they have to supplement their undeclared income by running a one-day quickie brothel… if they can get away with the brilliant idea of stealing shoddy beds from a local hot-sheet motel.
A Refreshing Alternative to Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire
Trailer Park Boys is a peak into strip mall-town mentality that gets very, very rough – and funny – around the edges. As the viewer watches Ricky lose his trailer and fall stumble-bum drunk into his new home (a car) to sleep in, sell hash for potato chips, or bribe the neighborhood bicycle pre-teen terrorists to lob flaming “poop pies” at Supervisor Layhee and his shirtless boy-toy assistant, Randy, he or she can’t help but to think, “Yeah, I’d do it too if it meant my next barbequed hamburger.” As Deadwood was a send-up to Shakespearean prose, Trailer Park Boys is a brutal but classic eye-popping gander into what we all are: almost there, but for that one next mouth-to-mouth paycheck.
American Idol should shrivel up and get stuffed in a time capsule. And do the Prime Time Gods seriously think the American God Box consumer is going to gag down one more variation of House of Babies or Octomom? How much longer will the bored, tired, overworked masses drag-ass into the family den in the evening to slump upon their second-hand sectional just to be insulted by Jon and Kate Plus Eight?
Lazy Low-Lifers Can March Proudly out of the Closet!
Trailer Park Boys is for the underground brethren of slackers, the reviled couch potatoes, the vast swarming unwashed underbelly of jobless boob-tubing channel surfers desperate for something to soothe the savage beast of their guilt-ridden frontal lobes in the desperate quest for a meaningful television experience they can relate to.
For those of us frantic for true TV entertainment, the kind that wakes up one’s last remaining raw nerve and strikes a chord of mutual experience in our mundane lives, watch it and laugh and say, “I’m just about there,” or “I am there.” Be warned: parental discretion is advised. The most commonly used adjective, noun and adverb in the show's script begins with an “F.” This masterpiece of satire, or “mockumentary,” is written, directed and produced by Mike Clattenburg. It was born out of Clattenburg’s acclaimed 72-minute movie, “Trailer Park Boys,” which debuted at the Atlantic Film Festival in 1999. The TV series started airing in January, 2008, and is still going strong.
Watch Trailer Park Boys on Direct TV's The 101, Channel 239. New episodes debut every Thursday night with two back-to-back without commercials. Reruns of the latest misadventures show throughout the week. To learn more about Trailer Park Boys, check out the show’s web site at http://www.trailerparkboys.com/.
