Season Review: Trailer Park Boys: The Animated Series Season One

Has Trailer Park Boys found new life in the animated format?

Overview:

The Trailer Park Boys are back for another season in the park.  However, things are a little different this time around.  The season opens up with the crew in prison once again, a pretty typical way to start things off.  This time though, the boys wake up into a completely animated world, and they are conscious that they are in a cartoon world.  Assuming that the effects are based on a mushroom trip, they quickly realize that just because they are animated, the common laws of cartoons don’t do not apply, and they can still be injured or die.

Accepting their new world, things return to normal and Ricky, Julian, and Bubbles are back to their schemes of making money and protecting their way of life.  The characters may forget that they are part of a cartoon, but the plot takes them to places that they never could go before.  Highlights of this special season include the boys growing the first cannabis in space, a hurricane destroying the trailer park, and an appearance by the Great One himself, Wayne Gretzky.

 

Our Take:

Trailer Park Boys is a Canadian mockumentary series that premiered in 2001.  The series which follows a group of residents of the Sunnyvale trailer park in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, has exploded since its release and become a significant part of Canadian culture and media.  The low budget show has continued on through 12 seasons, spawned multiple feature-length films, and was even rebooted on Netflix after its cancellation.  It seems like nothing will stop this little show that could, and a full-on animated reboot may just help to continue the Trailer Park Boys domination even further.

I call this new animated season a reboot, but it acts more like a continuation.  The season takes no time to reintroduce us to any characters or plot.  This is not really a series for new fans but rather the series definitely plays to its many loyal fans.  Without much context to what the premise of the series has been thus far, I would think that new fans would struggle to understand what was happening.  However, if you are a new fan, it may be worth sticking out a couple of episodes, because once you get it, this show is hilarious.  You may even feel inclined to go back and revisit some of the shows previous live-action adaptations.  And, for those longtime fans, or even fans that haven’t been around for the last few years, the animated series steps up the game.

One thing that was evident from the very start of the first episode was that the writers of this show were extremely excited about the new animated format and the doors that it would open.  We have seen animated reboots of live-action shows before, and the easiest one to compare this series to would be last year’s award-winning Corner Gas Animated.  Both are simplified Canadian series’ that worked on a low budget and minimal settings.  While Corner Gas Animated took their reboot as an opportunity to continue their story of the small town of Dog River, Trailer Park Boys thought bigger.  Much bigger.  The animation opens the doors to take these beloved characters anywhere, without the fear of blowing a budget.  And, the writers of this series capitalized by going all in and trying things they never could before.  In one instance the entire trailer park is destroyed by a hurricane, another features a massive concert featuring the likes of Helix and Queens of the Stone Age.  The highlight of the season though is when Julian, Ricky, and Bubbles go to space to grow the first weed plants in zero gravity.  These are things that could only be accomplished in the animated format, and the show should score high points for utilizing the tools available to them.

As for the animation style itself, it is pretty well defined.  The characters are all instantly recognizable, and there is even attention to detail in the park itself that should be commended.  There is further use of the animation style used when the boys can build massive new structures in the park, or I one instance get a tricycle handlebar lodged in one of the characters’ asses.  The only thing that throws things off a bit is what sounds like a sub-par recording of audio.  There are more than once instances where the voice recordings sound out of place.  There is a separation that sounds like the audio is recorded in an empty room that echoes, which doesn’t fit well when the characters are shown on a busy street or a loud park.

One of the most significant question marks that fans had going into this season had to do with the recent passing of John Dunsworth.  Dunsworth’s character, Jim Lahey, has been a central cast member of the series since its inauguration.  Many speculated that the show opted to go animated because of this significant loss.  Lahey is in fact taken out as a main cast member, and given quite the glorious death.  However, he does continue to make appearances, mostly as a ghost or memory in his partner, Randy’s drunken dreams.  The audio must be from the previous work of the brilliant actor as it is evidently much different from the rest of the cast.  And, in one instance they even play on this as the Lahey ghost begins rambling on about nonsense that has nothing to do with the situation.  Probably just a chance to use some of the characters’ more memorable lines.

In all honesty, this may be one of the best Trailer Park Boys seasons that we have had since the early years of the series.  We get to see things that would have never been possible in the live-action version, and the humour is stepped up to match.  We even get a whole flashback episode that features the boy’s origin story as friends – which is arguably one of the best episodes of the season, I would take an entire spin-off series with the characters as children.  I am sure that many fans had doubts going into this animated series, much like I did.  In fact, the show had dropped off my radar in recent years, and I only wanted to see the new format out of curiosity.  However, I was pleasantly surprised that not only did the show go above my expectations it delivered in a whole new way, while still staying true to the premise.  We will have to wait and find out what is next for the boys of Sunnyvale trailer park, but I would be quite happy if we got another animated season or two.