Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Trailer Park Boys: The Animated Series’ On Netflix, Where The Boys Are Actual Cartoons Instead Of Live-Action Cartoons

If you thought the gang from Nova Scotia was gross and cartoonish during the first twelve seasons of Trailer Park Boys, then you may be surprised to see that Season 13 is an actual cartoon. Everyone is back, after tripping so hard in their jail cell at the end of Season 12, they all became animated. How much more chaos can they get into now that they’re animated?

TRAILER PARK BOYS: THE ANIMATED SERIES: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A group of guys wake up in a holding cell, tripping balls due to a particularly strong batch of mushrooms. Oh, and they all happen to be cartoons.

The Gist: If you’ve been watching Trailer Park Boys on Netflix through all of its 12 seasons (all of which are on Netflix, though its first seven seasons aired on Canada’s Showcase network, from 2001-07; Netflix revived it in 2014) or its handful of movies, you know all the characters and how crazy things can get with them. The main three are Julian (John Paul Tremblay), the “calm” one, who always seems to be holding a tumbler of rum and Coke, Ricky (Robb Wells), the hothead who gets everyone into trouble, and Bubbles (Mike Smith), who wears thick glasses and is somewhat naive.

Picking up from where they ended Season 12, when the gang takes mushrooms at the end of a police chase and are tripping so hard, they all start looking like cartoons, the trio are in that cell with trailer park manager Jim Lahey (the late John Dunsworth) and his shirtless assistant/lover Randy (Patrick Roach), Cory (Cory Bowles) and Jacob (Jacob Rolfe), who thinks his neck is broken. They think they can ride out this trip in their cell until their lawyer springs them. Ricky is especially curious to see what they can do as cartoons — like smash his fist into a car window in order to steal it, but then realize that it bleeds but doesn’t hurt a lot.

While being chased by the cops, Ricky tries to jump a ravine but doesn’t make it, twisting Jacob’s head around and breaking Cory’s arm, which he swings around until it falls off. They try to get it reattached at a hospital, but are behind lots of emergencies. So they turn to former veterinarian Sam Losco (Sam Tarasco), but he needs a favor that no one wants to perform.

Our Take: This is Trailer Park Boys in all its glory, except its animated. All the swearing, all the drugs, drinking and smoking, all the guns and cartoonish violence you’ve come to love about this show, only instead of the gang being live-action cartoons, they’re real, actual cartoons. And since this is the product of all of them tripping balls at the end of Season 12, it stands to reason that this will be a season-long trip.

Still, it does give Smith, Tremblay, Wells and their writers the chance to put the gang in the middle of physical mayhem that wasn’t possible when the show was live-action. Jacob’s neck head can be twisted all the way around, Julian can come out of a car wreck without spilling a drop of his Cuba Libre, and Sam Losco can have a flap between his legs because, well, “long story short… a bear ripped off my cock and ate it.”

It also allowed them to give a nice tribute to Dunsworth, who died in 2017 after Season 12 wrapped. We’re guessing he was around long enough to voice Lahey in episode one, which led to a B-story where Randy has to find the “shithawk” who took Lahey. It didn’t turn out well for the old man, but Lahey comes to Randy out of a beer bottle, telling him to carry on. Of course, he didn’t tell Randy to put a shirt on, so we’ll continue to see his big belly in cartoon form.

Sex and Skin: Randy’s hairy belly. That’s it.

Parting Shot: Back at the boys’ gathering spot, Randy busts in and tells the story of Lahey’s ghost. He drinks more to try to bring the ghost back, passes out, and pisses himself. “Let’s do it,” Ricky says, “Let’s draw a cock on his cock!”

Sleeper Star: This show has been on in various forms for 18 years; we don’t think any actor is sneaking up and surprising its fans.

Most Pilot-y Line: The show’s mockumentary format doesn’t quite translate to animated form, with camera shots zooming in and out and shifting around, it just makes things more dizzying.

Our Call: STREAM IT if you’re a fan of the show. Otherwise, it seems like an odd spot to be starting the show after so many years.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.

Stream Trailer Park Boys: The Animated Series on Netflix