Mike Cratty ‘20
Staff Writer
If you ask people if they know about “Letterkenny,” chances are they will not know. This is partly due to the fact that, until this past summer, the television show was only available in Canada. Season five was released this past June. Those who have seen “Letterkenny” know that it is a wildly interesting, funny and clever comedy series. With inspiration from fellow Canadians who created the world-famous Netflix hit “Trailer Park Boys,” “Letterkenny” provides viewers with similar outrageous hilarity.
Jared Keeso, who plays Wayne, and Jacob Tierney, who plays Glen direct this hilarious Canadian sitcom. Every episode starts with a cold open, with Wayne, the main character saying, “So you…” and so on and so forth. The byproduct of each episode is comedy with extremely witty wordplay and cleverness to it. It’s like nothing else that I’ve ever seen.
Wayne is a hard-nosed farmhand that is very set in his way that likes to have some beer and/or whiskey in his leisure time. He’s the toughest guy in the town of Letterkenny so he won’t shy away from a scrap when he feels one is necessary. Daryl, who is portrayed by Nathan Dales, is a farmhand that’s a bit of a simpleton and a good friend of Wayne’s. Despite being smaller than Wayne and not as intelligent, Daryl won’t shy away from a scrap. Squirrely Dan, who is portrayed by K. Trevor Wilson, is, well, a squirrely man who is a tower with feet and a thick beard. Squirrely Dan looks dapper in a pair of overalls and is a voice of reason amongst the group with a teddy bear personality and a warm heart.
Some comedies attract their audiences with simple jokes. Whether they are raunchy, racist or offensive in some other way, “Letterkenny” has a different style when it comes to their humor. One small detail that always sticks out is the posture of the characters in the show. Whether they are feeling confrontational or not, they stand up hastily with an oddly-fixed posture that is so bizarre, that just the sight of it is humorous. Wayne, specifically, has a very tight posture in which his traps are always flexed, any hand gestures he makes are robotic in nature. It may sound stupid, but it’s pretty funny on screen.
What sticks out the most is their witty, often long-winded comedy. When I say long-winded, I don’t mean that in a bad way. It centers around chirping and insults. For instance,
In the show’s first episode where Reilly and his buddy Jonesy try to fight Wayne, Reilly takes his shirt off to fight without taking his sunglasses off and have a ‘donnybrook.’ Daryl took the lead role in their rebuttal when he said. “Pump the brakes, you take your shirt off, but leave your sunglasses on?” Wayne backed that up by saying, “What sort of backwards (expletive) pageantry is that?” Daryl then finished with, “You gonna fight with those shades or play pokerstars.com?” Their comedy based on piggybacking off of each other is my bread-and-butter. I find it wildly entertaining.
