Cynical Cinema

Trailer Park Boys has long been the best show on Canadian television. For me, it was an acquired taste, and it wasn’t until about the middle of Season 2 that I started to really enjoy the foul-mouthed criminal antics of Ricky, Julian and Bubbles as they sold weed and stole shopping carts and spent time in jail. I am now completely sold on the show, and when I got Season Seven on DVD from Alliance Films, I sat down and watched the entire thing in one day. In the seventh season, Mr. Lahey is back on the police force, tension develops in his bizarre three-way relationship with Barb and Randy, Ricky’s father is more of a drunk and sadder than ever, and Lucy announces that she’s having Randy’s baby. Which kind of sounds like a soap opera. And it is - only with a lot more guns and idiocy and foul language.

As far as trailer parks go, one would hope that Canadian trailer parks are not well-represented by this show, and that ours do not compare to the ones that make constant appearances on Jerry Springer south of the border. But one has to wonder. There is something about Trailer Park Boys that (despite the insane plot twists and bonkers characters) seems oddly authentic. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but the show is oddly familiar. Like, maybe, just maybe, if the people I know started abusing lots of substances, lost about thirty points off their IQ, and decided that a life of crime wasn’t such a bad thing, this might be what it would look like.

There are some memorable guest appearances during Season 7, most notably Sebastian Bach who shows up as a model train enthusiast and really shows that he has the ability to laugh at himself. Here’s how the season plays out, basically: Leahy is back on the police force, and the other cops hate him. Phil Collins moves back into the park with a giant RV, and starts a cheeseburger chip-truck style business with Randy. When Phil and Randy see corrupt cops beating up Leahy, they run over to help, only to be beaten themselves. When those corrupt cops try to kill all three of them, they are saved by Ricky Julian and Bubbles. In order to get back at those cops, they set them up by staging a scene, filmed by Bubbles, in which they beat Ray with baseball bats. In return, Lahey gives Ray his license back, he rents a rig, and Bubbles comes along for the ride in order to get to his train show. Ray gets busted for soliciting a prostitute, and Bubbles is stranded and goes a little (more) crazy. Ricky and Julian pick him up and drive him to the train show, where Sebastian Bach is the speaker of note, and he is hilarious. He has a crazy beef with Patrick Swayze, the two of them having battled it out in the model train world for some time. (Swayze does not appear in the show.) So Bubbles, now completely out of it, steals Swayze’s train on the way out, and they take it back to Canada, where Julian and Ricky come up with a plan to run the model train track through the woods and into the States, so that they can smuggle weed with it.

OK…you with me so far? If you are, and it sounds hilarious, pick up Season 7 of what continues to be the best Canadian TV show, Trailer Park Boys.