Trailer Park Boys is gonzo heaven comedy
Written on 2 September 2021 by Andrijan Kalashnikov
Trailer Park Boys is a mockumentary TV series that dates back from April 2001, originally made for Canadian fringe TV network Showcase. What makes this show a perfect choice for your absurd and dark comedy needs is the special gonzo comedy that entangles the whole universe.
First of all, it’s very difficult to sell Trailer Park Boys to audience that’s not familiar with it, and I assure you that Netflix didn’t pay me a single dime to write this. But I’m going to do my best, as when I’ve found the show by accident, it opened me to a whole new category of comedy that I didn’t know existed prior: gonzo comedy.
The show is physically located within a fictive Sunnyvale trailer park that’s based in Dartmouth in Canada and features anti-hero stars of the everlasting comedy topic of criminals vs the cops, however it goes to further absurdly bash at them both whilst delivering on comedy without any real censorship, nor compromises. This formula ends up in delivering one of today’s most cult comedy shows, and the reason why they got bought off by Netflix after six years of silence after the seventh season was aired by prior-mentioned Showcase network, is the very same reason you’ll find the show gained cult following and status in the first place.
The very first pilot starts by having main characters Julian and his friend Ricky shooting all around the place in front of a bank. Next thing you know is they’re being interviewed inside their prison cells jabbering how they won’t hang out with each other anymore because they’re bad influences, only to become friends again just few moments after they got released out of prison.
And after they’re back in freedom land, they have challenges and obstacles that the world of their trailer park throws at them everyday that includes their friends such as the autistic and kitty-loving Bubbles being entangled unwittingly into their highly illegal adventures, to ghetto wannabe rappers who illegally produce adult porn films in their mom’s trailer park in order to get famous and rich.
As mentioned before, this is a classic comedy take of criminals vs cops within a very fucked up and absurdly shown world. But the fact that the law enforcement agency that has jurisdiction within the trailer park itself consists of Mr. Lahey, a former police officer who lost his job because he was a drunk, and Randy, his shirtless associate (and secret sexual partner) which are only park supervisors and have no real law enforcement power whatsoever, don’t help the fact that Julian, Ricky and Bubbles try to realize absurdly stupid and dangerous ideas every day, and try to humiliate Mr. Lahey who has the highest goal of putting those guys in jail by creating surveillance missions with his associate, as they’re trying to decode what the boys are planning next.
This combination of anti-heroes works like galore and ends up in the show having a total of twelve seasons of completely original and unapologetic humor from the ghetto’s of Canada’s trailer park world.
We’ll make some good fucking money here, boys! – starts jabbering Ricky just before they get into a grocery store to rob it from all the meat depository it has, while leaving Bubbles in the car and waiting while on talkie-walkie, while he gets high on a bong and accidentally switches to the frequency of the grocery store PA, so every customer inside can listen to the fucked up Bubbles singing and jabbering every single detail of their very precise criminal mastermind operation.
What’s the best part of it all is that the combination of anti-heroes trying to achieve their goals with criminalistic ways ends up in a highly dynamic and non-conforming comedy that you can definitely binge and expect to get laughters from the unapologetic gonzo that freely reaches wild taboo themes such as drug dealing and growing weed, pornography, becoming rap superstars at the cost of music theft, tampering with votes and the voting system within the park, and lots of cursing and foul language that only translates to the educational level that these anti-heroes got under their belt.
Like I said before, it’s truly hard to sell Trailer Park Boys to people who aren’t familiar with the show. But if you like gonzo journalism, be assured that this show follows the same unapologetic principle of including the most fucked up themes and reports it like it’s a real documentary with the anti-heroes in focus being interviewed for the world. And it succeeds in that very magically, creating a twisted universe of prior-mentioned absurd comedy, with this weird David Lynch like magic in directing that reaches the magical Twin Peaks in the opening title the most, and continues to evolve dramatically in the mockumentary realist universe the show’s based on.
If you don’t mind rednecks, porn, wannabe gangsters, scams, lots of swearing and foul language, and you think you will find the Balkan aesthetics of the early film-mafia uprise from movies such as Serbian Rane that scattered the youth and depicted a gangster reality like no else, Trailer Park Boys does everything better with a high comedy philosophy behind the stupidity and simple swearing of the anti-heroes that’s based within the core of the show itself.
The show also has several full length movies aside, but I highly recommend turning on Netflix and starting with the very first pilot and continuing from there.