Letterkenny

[jazzo]

Unlike most of my fellow hosers, (and some members of this board), I just can't find a way into the cultural phenomenon that is Schitt's Creek. On paper, that show should fit right into my sweet spot; It is created by, written and stars (in this child-of-the-seventies / SCTV-obsessive’s opinion) Canadian entertainment royalty, it is an almost unprecedented critical and popular success, and I like the good Canadian vibes it brings into the world.

But, two seasons in, I just don’t find it very funny.

Surprisingly, a quick search through the boards brings up no mention of another Canadian gem that I have grown to love in epic proportions; Jared Keeso and Jacob Tierney’s raunchy-yet-tender love letter to small-town living, Letterknenny, now nine seasons deep on Crave (in Canada) and Hulu (in the US).

It took me a couple of episodes to get into the rhythms and cadence of the show, but once I did, I was absolutely hooked.

The series follows the “problems” of the inhabitants of the fictional rural Ontario town, Letterkenny (apparently a thinly veiled version of star/writer Keeso’s own hometown, Listowel, Ontario). The town is populated by the followings groups of citizens: “The Hicks”, “The Skids”, and “The Hockey Players”, with “The Christians” and “The Natives” mixing it up with them pretty much every episode. The main through line for each episode is how the fuck-uppery of the townspeople, in one way or another, affects brother and sister/vegetable stand farming team, Wayne and Katy, and their surrogate family/best friends, Squirrelly Dan and Daryl.

In Letterkenny, you farm, you muse about life, you drink (or do meth), you fuck and you fight, all in glorious excess.

Since Letterkenny has no prime-time network affiliation, it has the freedom to do what it wants, and what the show really wants is to make you laugh by unapologetically trafficking in profanity and raunch. Oddly enough, the more profane it gets, the more honest it gets, and the more honest it gets, the more respect it commands. Most of it is gut-splittingly funny, in that same way Step Brothers or Walk Hard or Hot Rod are gut-splittingly funny. But it’s also a show with a very deep, very warm soul as it slowly explores (over its nine-and-counting seasons) how Wayne and Katy continue to process the still-unnamed trauma that has affected the orphans so much that they have effectively cut themselves off from relationships with anyone other than their two closest friends. Go a bit further with it, and watch how they discover that that strategy isn’t really sustainable. Family needs protection, certainly, but it also needs to be nurtured with connection from other sources in order to grow.

I’ve briefly lived in a small Ontario town, and, a bit like Napoleon Dynamite, it is frightening how absurd and accurate some of the show’s depictions of rural life can be; there is addiction and boredom, and an ugly underlying streak of generational xenophobia, but there is also a reassuring sense of community and quiet dignity. But Letterkenny threads a very specific needle as it explores small-town Canadian life and stereotypes – one that acknowledges the sometimes damaging conservative streak that can be found in rural communities, but also one that re-imagines those small-town stereotypes through a socially and culturally inclusive lens.

Letterkenny’s citizens live in an alternate reality of small-town Ontario, where they may, at first, be cautious of “the other”, but after marinating on it for awhile, they always seem to come around to embracing the differences, regardless of race, creed, gender, sexuality or skin colour. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a delicate use of stereotype to deconstruct ignorance and fear, and find pathways to empathy and enlightenment. It reminds me of the Coens in that way, and how (specifically in Fargo and A Serious Man), they were able to embrace and mock stereotypes to develop deeply complex characters.

Surprisingly, even after nine seasons, Letterkenny’s humour never stagnates. It’s repetitive, certainly, but the repetition is actually part of its evolution. Much like Seinfeld, it trains its audience to recognize its jokes and their beats, and then it comments on the absurdity of those very jokes and beats. Its wordplay is, both, goofy and highly literate, and with small-town Canadian accents and colloquialisms pushed to the forefront, it becomes almost Shakespearean in its speed and cleverness. Letterkenny never slows its pace. The onus is on the viewer to keep up, and if you do, you will be rewarded.

And Keeso and Tierney were clearly big Seinfeld fans. Keeso, when he’s not playing Wayne, voices a similar quick-talking/only-seen-from-behind buffoon to Larry David’s George Steinbrenner; Shorsey, a foul-mouthed hockey goon, who’s only purpose is to verbally abuse or threaten to sleep with the mothers of everyone he comes into contact with.

If I were asked to come up with a successor to other Canadian comedies like SCTV and Kids in the Hall, it wouldn’t be Schitt’s Creek, or one of the more mainstream (and, in my opinion, profoundly unfunny) successes that our nations has had, like Corner Gas, Little Mosque on the Prairie or Kim’s Convenience (which all tend to fall into what I like to think of as comedies that are fine, I suppose, but that are also targeted, not to me, but to CBC’s “good ol’ Canadian stock” core audience), it would be the beautifully base and touching conundrum that is Letterkenny.

So, without reservation, I heartily suggest that board members give their balls a quick tug, and then the citizens of Letterkenny a chance. Like I gave all of your mothers last night.

[beamish14]

If I were asked to come up with a successor to other Canadian comedies like SCTV and Kids in the Hall, it wouldn’t be Schitt’s Creek, or one of the more mainstream (and, in my opinion, profoundly unfunny) successes that our nations has had, like Corner Gas, Little Mosque on the Prairie or Kim’s Convenience (which all tend to fall into what I like to think of as comedies that are fine, I suppose, but that are also targeted, not to me, but to CBC’s “good ol’ Canadian stock” core audience), it would be the beautifully base and touching conundrum that is Letterkenny.

So, without reservation, I heartily suggest that board members give their balls a quick tug, and then the citizens of Letterkenny a chance. Like I gave all of your mothers last night.

Thank you for this. I'm curious if you're a fan of Ken Finkleman's The Newsroom or Michael: Everyday. The former in particular is, I think, possibly the apex of Canadian sitcoms in the 21st century, and I love its drollness. I know a lot of people are sick of Don McKellar's uniquity (he may have been grown in a lab to fulfill Canadian content requirements), but Michael and Twitch City still hit the sweet spot for me.

Corner Gas AND Letterkenny have animated spin-offs, but I've never seen them.

[domino harvey]

Letterkenny is far, far from the vibe of SCTV or KITH. More like the successor to Trailer Park Boys. But I'll agree that Judd Apatow fans would prob love it, as it's like the Ultimate Bro Humor show

[jazzo]

If I were asked to come up with a successor to other Canadian comedies like SCTV and Kids in the Hall, it wouldn’t be Schitt’s Creek, or one of the more mainstream (and, in my opinion, profoundly unfunny) successes that our nations has had, like Corner Gas, Little Mosque on the Prairie or Kim’s Convenience (which all tend to fall into what I like to think of as comedies that are fine, I suppose, but that are also targeted, not to me, but to CBC’s “good ol’ Canadian stock” core audience), it would be the beautifully base and touching conundrum that is Letterkenny.

So, without reservation, I heartily suggest that board members give their balls a quick tug, and then the citizens of Letterkenny a chance. Like I gave all of your mothers last night.

Thank you for this. I'm curious if you're a fan of Ken Finkleman's The Newsroom or Michael: Everyday. The former in particular is, I think, possibly the apex of Canadian sitcoms in the 21st century, and I love its drollness. I know a lot of people are sick of Don McKellar's uniquity (he may have been grown in a lab to fulfill Canadian content requirements), but Michael and Twitch City still hit the sweet spot for me.

Corner Gas AND Letterkenny have animated spin-offs, but I've never seen them.

I was a big fan of The Newsroom at the time. I haven't seen it since its original broadcast, but I do wonder if it would hold up for me now, given the glut of docu-comedies that followed in its wake. And no matter how much I liked it, it also lacked the warmth and humanity that Ricky Gervais seemed to find under all the cynicism of his various shows.

I liked Michael: Everyday quite a bit, but full disclosure - I'm pals with Matt Watts and kinda predisposed to like things he's associated with.

Re: Don McKellar - Going to film school in Toronto in the early nineties, you couldn't throw a brick in Hogtown without hitting Bruce McDonald, Don McKellar or Atom Egoyan, or hearing a professor or or some Cinemateque elite pontificate how wonderful their films were. Each one of them guest-lectured at Ryerson at least once a year, and after a while I started reacting to each of them in an emperor's new clothes kinda way. I was never a particularly huge fan of those early "groundbreaking " films from any of them (and have never come around to Atom Egoyan), because they always felt like bigger scale student films to me, or a social lecture where the filmmaker was telling me rather than showing me a real human story (including, alas, The Sweet Hereafter), but I will add that, over the years, I've grown to love some of Bruce's work (Hardcore Logo, Pontypool and Dance Me Outside), and actually think Don McKellar's affectations work way better in long-form television than in a single film. So, I did like Twitch City quite a bit.

[jazzo]

Letterkenny is far, far from the vibe of SCTV or KITH. More like the successor to Trailer Park Boys. But I'll agree that Judd Apatow fans would prob love it, as it's like the Ultimate Bro Humor show

I suppose I mean in the grand tradition of edgy satire. At least more than those other shows that I mention.

[jazzo]

And totally agree that Trailer Park Boys is woven into Letterkenny's DNA, but that earlier show never found any warmth for its characters, at least for me, only the raunchiness, and I couldn't make it past the first two seasons.

[brundlefly]

Surprisingly, a quick search through the boards brings up no mention of another Canadian gem that I have grown to love in epic proportions; Jared Keeso and Jacob Tierney’s raunchy-yet-tender love letter to small-town living, Letterknenny, now nine seasons deep on Crave (in Canada) and Hulu (in the US).

It took me a couple of episodes to get into the rhythms and cadence of the show, but once I did, I was absolutely hooked.

The series follows the “problems” of the inhabitants of the fictional rural Ontario town, Letterkenny (apparently a thinly veiled version of star/writer Keeso’s own hometown, Listowel, Ontario). The town is populated by the followings groups of citizens: “The Hicks”, “The Skids”, and “The Hockey Players”, with “The Christians” and “The Natives” mixing it up with them pretty much every episode. The main through line for each episode is how the fuck-uppery of the townspeople, in one way or another, affects brother and sister/vegetable stand farming team, Wayne and Katy, and their surrogate family/best friends, Squirrelly Dan and Daryl.

In Letterkenny, you farm, you muse about life, you drink (or do meth), you fuck and you fight, all in glorious excess.

Since Letterkenny has no prime-time network affiliation, it has the freedom to do what it wants, and what the show really wants is to make you laugh by unapologetically trafficking in profanity and raunch. Oddly enough, the more profane it gets, the more honest it gets, and the more honest it gets, the more respect it commands. Most of it is gut-splittingly funny, in that same way Step Brothers or Walk Hard or Hot Rod are gut-splittingly funny. But it’s also a show with a very deep, very warm soul as it slowly explores (over its nine-and-counting seasons) how Wayne and Katy continue to process the still-unnamed trauma that has affected the orphans so much that they have effectively cut themselves off from relationships with anyone other than their two closest friends. Go a bit further with it, and watch how they discover that that strategy isn’t really sustainable. Family needs protection, certainly, but it also needs to be nurtured with connection from other sources in order to grow.

I’ve briefly lived in a small Ontario town, and, a bit like Napoleon Dynamite, it is frightening how absurd and accurate some of the show’s depictions of rural life can be; there is addiction and boredom, and an ugly underlying streak of generational xenophobia, but there is also a reassuring sense of community and quiet dignity. But Letterkenny threads a very specific needle as it explores small-town Canadian life and stereotypes – one that acknowledges the sometimes damaging conservative streak that can be found in rural communities, but also one that re-imagines those small-town stereotypes through a socially and culturally inclusive lens.

Letterkenny’s citizens live in an alternate reality of small-town Ontario, where they may, at first, be cautious of “the other”, but after marinating on it for awhile, they always seem to come around to embracing the differences, regardless of race, creed, gender, sexuality or skin colour. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a delicate use of stereotype to deconstruct ignorance and fear, and find pathways to empathy and enlightenment. It reminds me of the Coens in that way, and how (specifically in Fargo and A Serious Man), they were able to embrace and mock stereotypes to develop deeply complex characters.

Surprisingly, even after nine seasons, Letterkenny’s humour never stagnates. It’s repetitive, certainly, but the repetition is actually part of its evolution. Much like Seinfeld, it trains its audience to recognize its jokes and their beats, and then it comments on the absurdity of those very jokes and beats. Its wordplay is, both, goofy and highly literate, and with small-town Canadian accents and colloquialisms pushed to the forefront, it becomes almost Shakespearean in its speed and cleverness. Letterkenny never slows its pace. The onus is on the viewer to keep up, and if you do, you will be rewarded.

Thank you for this appreciation!

When Letterkenny started streaming on Hulu, I described it (terribly, perhaps; confusingly, definitely) as Newhart crossed with Guy Ritchie’s Snatch, only set in rural Canada. With the caveat I’d never seen Guy Ritchie’s Snatch and had spent less than two weeks total north of the border. Five years later, I still have not seen Guy Ritchie’s Snatch, but have scarfed each of Letterkenny’s twelve seasons as made available. I am going to miss not ever having more.

(Inevitable reunion specials aside.)

Even as it hit and miss, its pleasures seemed perpetually sustainable. Its flaws were featured. "There are 5000 people in Letterkenny. These are their problems." That’s how it introduced the content, conflict or no, and how it introduced its characters. Even as the cast expanded, the population stayed fixed; the people weren’t going anywhere, their problems had no place to go. As it was, so shall it be.

(Assume all links are NSFW/language.)

Its insularity was key. I’m sure some of the performers have other credits – it was a shock to see Kaniehtiio Horn turn up in Brandon Cronenberg’s Possessor, Tanis strayin’ far from The Rez – but the preponderance of fresh faces helped it feel authentic. Attempts to bring in high-profile guest stars – Sarah Gadon, Jay Baruchel, Québécois supermodels – never worked (though at least the latter group offered new twists on the pervasive wordplay.) Even when characters travelled (and occasionally, the show with them), they always existed within Letterkenny’s echo chamber. The ultimate example would be the criminally underused Alexander, whose entire world of concern and expression have shrunk to a single gross room.

Its struggle with its ugliest aspects was open and real and frustrating. The sexism and homophobia could perhaps be excused as germanely backwater, and as jazzo said, by constantly featuring them and trying to reconcile them with idealized upstanding traditional values the show realized the honest squirm of integration and acceptance. It would double down on the most puerile reactions, then desperately overcompensate. Jared Keeso’s Wayne, for all his faults, was situated as the show’s hero and moral center, and from the start was declared “the toughest guy in Letterkenny.” (Keeso’s square figure and features default into squinty, steadfast constipation, and he masterfully worked subtleties through that.) Toughness and loyalty were held to be the highest virtues. The women on the show were always shot like Carl’s Jr. ad objects – don’t know if there was a more embarrassing episode than the International Women’s Day Special, which came late in the run – and the swelling population of gay characters in the town were always tainted by otherness. But as long as they could tough it out with everyone else, they belonged.

The show’s biggest villain wasn’t changing times, it was time itself. Tick-tock, pitter-patter. There was time for chorin’ and then time to fill. The show had two modes: The Hangout, which would often cycle through its various subcultures and their distinct takes on elaborate blather – Seinfeld in the sprawl of The Simpsons’ Springfield – and The Action, either brawling or ogling, always done in slo-mo, several times done to Death From Above 1979. The Action always felt like padding, appropriate enough for a show about spinning your wheels, but weirdly less eventful than a torrent of brainstormed music genres or minute-long lists of cheese. (In line with its mix of high-functioning linguistic skills and low urges, the jocks often got the thickest dialogue.) Quick tongues on slow days, chirpin’ dense and catching phrases. Its comic timing was often impeccable.

It was par-ticularly good at serving up a crisp cold open (sometimes even a super cold open): A casual mention of car trouble sets off a round of anonymous macho posturing that slowly reveals a history of deep grievance. A stray whistle leads to a symphony of discomfort .

The quality varied drastically but its hits were hearty. It ended strong, with a final season that observed the traditions of television:

SpoilerShow

Teasing change, staying put

and celebrating itself. It brought together its made-up lived-in community and let them waste one last time together. Good show, great show.

Letterkenny is survived by one spin-off (the hockey-centric Shoresy, an inorganic, imbalanced effort which fails to engender affection) and the threat of others. (I would be there for Roald, especially if his long-lost dad was played by Sir Patrick Stwrt.)

[Mr Sausage]

Letterkenny is survived by one spin-off (the hockey-centric Shoresy, an inorganic, imbalanced effort which fails to engender affection)

I just can't get over how much Shoresy's stupid accent sounds like Jordan Peterson.

[brundlefly]

Letterkenny is survived by one spin-off (the hockey-centric Shoresy, an inorganic, imbalanced effort which fails to engender affection)

I just can't get over how much Shoresy's stupid accent sounds like Jordan Peterson.

I'm lucky to be limited in my exposure to Peterson (wasn't surprised, but definitely didn't need to see he's a Letterkenny fan), and now I'm wondering if Shoresy is worse than uninteresting.

Then again, if we get a video of Contrapoints bathing in milk with Jared Keeso, maybe it'll all be worth it.

[Mr Sausage]

There’s nothing in Shoresy that shares Peterson’s ideas or ethos that I can see. It’s just the ridiculous high-pitched rural Ontario accent Keeso is putting on sounds exactly like Peterson’s actual voice, and that’s funny to me.

[cdnchris]

it’s just the ridiculous high-pitched rural Ontario accent Keeso is putting on sounds exactly like Peterson’s actual voice, and that’s funny to me.

It's funny how I never really noticed that accent until I moved away from it. Now whenever I go back to visit friends and family, it always surprises me just how distinct it is.

[Mr Sausage]

it’s just the ridiculous high-pitched rural Ontario accent Keeso is putting on sounds exactly like Peterson’s actual voice, and that’s funny to me.

It's funny how I never really noticed that accent until I moved away from it. Now whenever I go back to visit friends and family, it always surprises me just how distinct it is.

Yeah, I hear the accent a bit more now in my dad and especially my grandma, who grew up on a farm, than I did in the past. And even in Jared Keeso’s normal talking voice I can hear that rural accent he must’ve gotten from Listowel and which he exaggerates for comedy on his shows. But growing up I thought that that Bob and Doug Mackenzie Canadian accent thing was made up, because I didn’t know anyone who talked like that. And I‘m pretty sure no one but a linguist would be able to tell I wasn’t from New York or Michigan or Illinois or whatever, because I sound like a generic North American.

[jazzo]

Sure ‘bout that, there, bud?