For the past 11 seasons, Letterkenny has opened with “There are 5000 people in Letterkenny. These are their problems”. Have any of those problems been solved? Not really. Can we expect any of them to be solved in the final season? Let’s be honest: no. And that’s exactly how we like it.
The locals in the small Canadian town of Letterkenny talk fast and fight hard. They like their hockey but don’t always like the players, and have love lives that can often be surprisingly complicated. Farming siblings Wayne (Jared Keeso) and Katy (Michelle Mylett), along with Wayne’s buddies Daryl (Nathan Dales) and Squirrely Dan (K. Trevor Wilson), have been the heart of the series from the beginning. They’re a classic sitcom crew: Wayne is the toughest guy in town, Daryl is his best friend, Katy is the hot one who doesn’t take crap, and Squirrely Dan’s… really into women’s studies. And like Letterkenny itself, in their final season they’re just as funny as ever.
Jared Keeso, K. Trevor Wilson and Nathan Dales. Credit: New Metric Media
Keeping a comedy going strong over twelve seasons is no mean feat. In Letterkenny’s case, it’s no surprise either: the series came out of the gate hard and fast and never slowed down. The cold open for episode one remains a high point of the series, as Wayne and Daryl verbally beat down hockey players Jonesy (Andrew Herr) and Reilly (Dylan Playfair), who try to fight back against the torrent of insults (“you look like a twelve-year-old Dutch girl”) by… taking off their shirts?
That scene wasn’t a one-off. Letterkenny is a small town full of groups that mostly keep to themselves – when they’re not hitting or hitting on each other – but the one thing that unites them is the ability to think fast and get in a good one-liner.
It’s a show where people talk a lot and they drop a lot of (often hilarious) slang; the number of jokes in any given episode is absurdly high. Going back over conversations to pick up on everything you missed the first time around is part of the fun, and those conversations can be pretty out there. Mixing the absurd with the deadpan is a Letterkenny trademark, serving up a heightened version of the kind of hilariously meandering conversation you get between friends who are willing to take a stupid – or brilliant – idea just that little bit too far.
The series’ early confidence was no accident. Letterkenny started out as a series of shorts on YouTube called Letterkenny Problems, which was often just Wayne and Daryl firing off rapid one-liners at each other. But the shorts served as a test run for the series, giving Keeso an idea of what worked and what didn’t. Originally Wayne had two sisters, each dating one hockey player; when they decided the family dynamics would work better with just Katy, they kept Jonesy and Reilly and just had her date both at the same time.
Michelle Mylett in ‘Letterkenny’. Source: SBS
With short seasons – a string of six or seven stand-alone episodes tied together by an overall plot, whether it’s Daryl’s attempts to date again, dubious business schemes, or a hockey-related donnybrook - and a large group of characters, nobody gets much of a chance to wear out their welcome. By the time viewers have had the chance to welcome back the regulars, get caught up on the catchphrases, and settle back into the familiar rhythms, the season’s over.
So on the one hand you have an extremely well-thought out comedy universe (well, small town) that runs like a well-oiled (whether it’s beer or energy drink) laugh-getting machine. On the other, you have a schedule that ensures audiences don’t get too much of a good thing. The result: a sitcom that’s stayed remarkably consistent over the years, building up an array of in-jokes, quirky characters, and weird lore that keeps on getting funnier, while maintaining a straightforward set-up that newcomers can grasp pretty much right away.
Understated and firmly committed to keeping the stakes small, it's a series where familiarity breeds contentment. It’s cosy, it’s comfortable, and it knows exactly what it’s doing. It’s the kind of comedy where it barely takes an episode for the characters to become old friends; even after the final six episodes are done, Letterkenny will always be out there. Pitter patter, let's get at 'er.
All 12 seasons of Letterkenny are now streaming on SBS On Demand. The final season will also screen Saturday nights 10.20pm on SBS VICELAND from December 30.
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Letterkenny
