Trailer Park Boys Is No More

Randy and Lahey stole the show. John Dunsworth goes above and beyond the sleazy call of duty as Jim Lahey sinks into liquor fueled madness. I absolutely adore that final shot of Lahey through the shattered lens, reminiscent of something out of TOO MANY WAYS TO BE NO. 1. The episode seems a bit like they crammed an entire season's main story arc into an hour, jettisoning many subplots, characters, and scenes in the process. Barb has absolutely nothing to do - on the bright side, Jacob Collins has been minimized and his brothers eliminated, though that's still too much Collins for my liking.

"Say Goodnight To The Bad Guys" has me amped for COUNTDOWN TO LIQUOR DAY, which is a title that I hope they stick with. The uncensored original series is supposed to be hitting DirecTV in the US this month, according to Mike Smith in an interview. Good for DirecTV, if that's true.

Love the series. The movie was hit and miss for me, but the series is amazing. I do miss Corey and Trevor and Ricky's mantra of "Corey, Trevor. Smokes. Let's go." Looking forward to seeing the last bits. Hopefully this movie will turn out a little better.

Unlike seemingly everyone else, I liked the last movie quite a bit, but you have to make the assumption going in that it's the fictionalized Hollywood version of the "true story" presented in the "documentary" TV series, starring most but not quite all of the actual people from the "documentary" show as characters based upon (but not quite) themselves. Look at everything that makes THE BIG DIRTY different from the TV series - it's all stuff that a Hollywood producer adapting the "documentary" for the big screen would do to jazz up, condense, and make the material more palpable to the US market.

Which of course, is exactly what it was in real life - Ivan Reitman's misguided attempt to make the show more appealing to US audiences. It just so happens that working from the starting point that the show is "true" makes THE BIG DIRTY seem like a more logical extension of the TV series, clicking nicely with the fact that towards the end they've aggressively pushed things in a mythological direction that's wholly absurd given the pseudo-documentary nature of the TV show.

"Why don't you try one of these liquorcicles, Mr. Lahey? Then tell me who's not the liquor. You are the liquor. You've always been the liquor."

Corey and Trevor leaving the show really threw the formula out of balance, this much is certain. It'd be nice if they returned for LIQUOR DAY but I'm not holding my breath for that. The attempts to fill that void with both "alien" versions of the characters and the misguided focus on the Phil Collins family really weakened the final season - better to do without "Coreys" and "Trevors" than to deal with half-assed placebo versions of them. It's a testament to the show's quality that even a greatly weakened season is still pretty entertaining.