These Are Their Problems

[lydy]

Ok, who else has seen "Letterkenny"?  And why, oh why, did you not tell me about it?

I am still in the "Oh, my god, what the fuck has happened to me" stage of the experience.  When they say, "This is for mature audiences only" they are not fucking around, my friends.  Is is easily the crudest, most casually obscene thing I have ever seen, with no graphic sex and very little violence, but oh my god, so crude.  Hysterically, hilariously, intensely crude.

Also, and not joking here, it is extremely poetic.  They use repetition in a way that I have not seen, but I believe some forms of poetry do use repetition in this fashion.  

I am unsure if I like any of these people.  But I am entranced by this show.  It is really, really rare to have something with intensely vibrant verbal pyrotechnics combined with an amazing range of obscenity and vulgarity and profanity.  I mean, they fucking use all the goddamn words.  All the words.  

 This, for example, is a description of a bar fight in alphabetical alliteration.  The guy giving the prompt is Daryl, and the guy describing the fight is Wayne, the toughest guy in Letterkenny.  

Warning, there is Language.

"Letterkenny Season 2 - Cold Open" (Watch on YouTube)

Comments

[lydy]

Update: I do like these people. I like them a lot.

Oh, and there is no sexual violence. I don't think there have been rape jokes, even.

[mrissa]

INTERESTING WOW

[lydy]

I know. You just assume crude humor will include that. There's gendered insults and slightly sexist and racist insults, like "bitch" "sally" and so forth. Also a number of Canadian insults I can't parse. And some hockey slang that sounds obscene. And now that I'm thinking about it, I'm not sure about racist. Maybe only casually sexist. Also weirdly gay-positive. In a very crude sort of way.

[mrissa]

Can you tell me about the obscene-sounding hockey slang? I mean, I'm going to investigate myself, but I might not notice it, because it will probably feel fairly natural to me.

[lydy]

Alas, no. When the two hockey dudes get going about the things they do and don't like about praccy (which from context clearly means practice) I cannot understand anything except I can usually distinguish which words are nouns versus verbs versus modifiers. Grammar is so helpful. I do have a long-standing algorithm derived from listening to pop music that anything someone says I don't understand is probably about sex.

[mrissa]

Well, if I remember I will come back with explanations.

"The crease" is not actually default-obscene, it's the bit right in front of the goal, just off the top of my head. The "this is probably about sex" algorithm is generally right on but can lead one astray.

"Five hole" is between the legs. Not default-obscene! It's talking about shooting the puck into the net between the goalie's legs! (The other spaces for scoring around the goalie's body are also numbered.) But...it does go there.

[dreamshark]

OMG, these people are CANADIAN?? I just assumed it was set in either West Virginia or east Texas.

[dreamshark]

Huh. I am still Hulu-ing, so I have of course seen the one ad for this show which appears over and over and over again. It's Wayne intoning over a montage of drunken hillbilly mayhem: "Your gal has a cousin who's fun. And now she's no longer your hon. So you had to drop him. Oh hell did you pop him. Yep, you did what had to be done." I now suspect that the reason they show this particular recitation repetitively is because all the rest of Wayne's performances are too filthy for the "This is Us" fans.

It honestly had not occurred to me to watch this show, which appears to be about as "mature" as Future Man, another show which advertises on Hulu. But I have to admit that Wayne's intense poetic performance amuses me every time, despite all the offensive southern stereotypes exercising themselves in the background. Now I'm curious.

[pameladean]

I too have seen this ad repeatedly and had conceived a deep repugnance towards the show that was, of course, entirely undeserved. I was wondering why they thought that was a good kind of ad, but now that Lydy has shown me one short bit, I feel that your theory is entirely correct and nothing else was safe for, well, anywhere or anybody.

P.

[lydy]

Well, at least the clip includes poetry, so that's true to form.

The show is playing with the trope of a town so small that there only things to do are fighting and fucking. Presumably hockey counts as fighting and meth as fucking, I guess. What is not apparent in short clips, and in fact was not apparent after watching a couple of episodes, is that it is also rooted in a deep affection for these people and their social milieu.

The thing that I find striking, but basically missed until I'd seen eight episodes or so, is how the humor really doesn't punch down very often. The gay characters are pretty annoying stereotypes, but they are also valued and accepted members of the community.

I think that if you only tolerate vulgarisms, if you're the sort of person whose teeth grit a little bit every time someone says "fuck", even if you don't disapprove of such language, you aren't a good fit for the show. But if you have any sort of delight in balls to the wall verbal virtuosity, if you've ever admired a truly eloquently obscene insult for its artistic merit, my gods is this the show for you.