For twelve seasons, 105 episodes, and three movies, the cult
Canadian mockumentary “Trailer Park Boys” has taken us into a cartoonish
trailer park named Sunnyvale in fictional, rural Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.
The show
centers on three friends: Ricky (Robb Wells), who failed 6th grade three times,
lives in his car, and despite working multiple jobs throughout the run of the
series claims that he has never had a real job; the perpetually drunk Julian
(John Paul Tremblay), who brings a camera crew to Sunnyvale to follow him
around; and Bubbles (Mike Smith), a maritime Milton Waddums,
known for his thick, obscure accent, thicker glasses, and his penchant for
AK-47s and stray cats. These actors are bringing their characters and what
they’re calling “one of the craziest Christmas shows ever” to the Kodak Center
on Wednesday, December 5.
“You can
expect a lot of crowd interaction and a lot of fighting,” Robb Wells told CITY
via phone from Nova Scotia. “We’re gonna be drunk for
two weeks straight. That’s our only plan. We have a day off after Rochester.
You’re gonna get out our all.”
“It’s gonna be a naughty one,” Mike Smith added, in character as Bubbles,
with his signature creaky, maritime accent (and gasping for air with every
other syllable). He added that at the group’s Minneapolis show the previous
night, “there was almost a riot.”
Minneapolis
and Rochester are two stops of a twelve-city US tour. Live shows have become
routine for the Trailer Park Boys in recent years, since the show was resurrected
by Wells, Tremblay, and Smith after a long run on Showcase, a Canadian TV
channel. The actors bought the rights and are said to have acquired funding for
the show’s production from the Canadian government. The group has since
partnered with Netflix to produce its most recent seasons.
The actors
used the show’s cult following to launch a successful podcast named after
“Trailer Park Boys,” as well as their own streaming service called SwearNet. SwearNet has become
something of a petri dish for the trio, allowing them to put existing “Trailer
Park Boys” characters in new situations. The cheerfully low budget spinoffs
form an extended universe, most notably the podcast spoof, “The Jim Lahey Show and Randy.”
That show
centers on bit players Jim Lahey (the crabby manager
of the trailer park) and his shirtless sidekick-assistant manager Randy. (Lahey was portrayed by John Dunsworth,
who died in 2017). When asked about Dunsworth, Wells
said: “That’s a tough one. His memory will live on.” As will the Trailer Park
Boys, who say they have a new project coming in 2019.
This article appears in Nov 28 – Dec 4, 2018.
