I
reviewed this show eight years ago, back in 2011, after having seen two
seasons. At that time they were up to
seven seasons and two movies. It began
in 2001 with season 1.
Now
it’s 12 live action seasons; one animated season; two special 8 episode seasons
(Europe & USA); three movies; and three live specials. It seems the show was originally cancelled
after season seven (2007) and picked up again for seasons 8 (2014) through 12 (2018),
then the animated series.
Out-of-the-Park
Europe had the trio start in England and work its way across Europe performing tasks
(e.g. walk across Abbey Road, sample the drug district of Copenhagen without
doing any drugs) which were really set up for them to fail. Then they picked up again in the US with a
similar set-up. “Beat this guy at basketball”
– who turns out to be Dennis Rodman. “Out
smoke this guy in weed”, and the opponent turns out to be Tommy Chong. You get the idea.
It’s
similar to Beavis & Butt-head (Beavis asking about Black Sabbath, “are
these guys American?” Butt-head: “No, they’re from Seattle”) in that while most
of the characters are stupid, the humor itself is very clever. However, I find it’s something I can tolerate
in small doses. The live specials are my
least favorite, but they are entertaining and have some good audience participation.
Basic
Premise. A trailer park in Darmouth, Nova Scotia pays
host to a trio of dysfunctional Canadian rednecks, Ricky (Rob Wells), Julian
(Jean-Paul Tremblay), and Bubbles (Mike Smith).
Ricky is easily the most arrogant and maladjusted, one of these guys who
constantly misquotes words – like Bush Jr. and Trump – and throws his weight
around, blaming everyone else for his own mistakes. Julian is always with a rum and coke in his
hand, having some elaborate but dishonest scheme hatched up which usually gets
them back in jail by the end of the season.
Bubbles lives in a storage shed with cats and rustles shopping
carts. The trailer park supervisor, Lahey
(Dunsworth) is a drunk, his assistant Randy (Pat Roach) loves cheeseburgers and
never wears a shirt despite a huge pot belly, and a variety of other characters
(J-Roc, Cyrus, Barbara) come and go.
As
the show progressed through the seasons more celebrities graced the show with
their presence. Canadian band Rush, guitarist
Alex Lifeson in particular, are big fans, and Lifeson himself shows up multiple
times. In the Dublin special the group
did a video of “Closer to the Heart”, with Bubbles as Alex, Julian as Neil, and
Ricky as Geddy Lee (who he refers to as “Freddy”), which wins them a trip to
Ireland on Rush’ private plane to catch a Rush concert there. But toking on the plane gets them arrested and
they plead out – the judge himself is a fan of the show – by doing a comedy
special for charity. Other celebrities
are Sebastian Bach, Tom Arnold, Snoop Dogg, and in the final episode of the
animated series, Josh Homme and Queens of the Stone Age.
Back
in the early 70s, after the original series of Star Trek was cancelled, they
did an animated series. A big advantage
of animation is that you’re no longer limited to humanoid aliens, and what happens
is only limited by the animators’ imagination.
Likewise, the animated TPB series gives us the guys as boys, a mission
to outer space, a hurricane, and finally meeting up with QOTSA.
From
seasons three onward the trio remains the same:
Ricky, Julian and Bubbles. Lahey remains drunk, Randy never wears a
shirt, and various other characters come and go. It’s not something I could binge watch all thirteen
seasons, three movies, three specials, and two miniseries, but I’m glad I kept
up with it.
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