As a whole, or for the rest of the seasons, whichever.
Letterkenny was something we started watching with our buds— I’ve seen a bit of it before, yeah, and our buds reminded me it existed so I says, hell yeah. We’re gonna watch it. Pull it up.
Now we just finished all twelve seasons and the final episode was upon us. The final shots of all the settings were heartfelt, showing them straight on and empty…
My ass cried. And I’ve been watching it repeatedly. Thinking about the whole of Letterkenny.
It went on for ten years. We absorbed it in a few months and it captivated us.
I noted before that I thought it was funny that the drama happened off screen— it added to the comedy, that such things would be happening and be so resolved in such a way. The offbeat and fast-paced humor was incredible, and despite the original premise (feuding groups in Letterkenny) it ended up still managing to grow the characters and make them more.
And man, it was fun. It was so much fucking fun.
One could go from the the Dyck’s dick puns:
To amazing music-backed sequences where the music and the show work together to make something beautiful:
The music illustrates what’s going to happen after we cut to black. It’s lovely!
The show loves its cast, loves it viewers. There’s not a single moment where I— a brown queer fella with a chip on their shoulder— felt I had to admonish the show or step back and say, “It needs to address x, y, z, but I promise it’s good.” Perhaps it’s because I’ve watched the whole thing and the familiarity with the characters blew it out of the water. Maybe because it’s very punch side to side and upwards. Maybe because any time something came running in they stomped a foot and said, “Now hold on. What did the homosexuals ever do to you?”
Fuck, dude, it’s fun.
When the final season was moving… it was hitting me, man. The theme was being “stuck”. Wayne is being asked how important being “the Toughest Guy in Letterkenny” is to him anymore. His sweetie is flirting with the idea of moving to BC. Katy is thinking about moving to Mexico. Daryl joins a new group of friends. Dan is considering becoming a Mennonite. And so he’s the only one who stays where he is. “Stuck.”
And yet he’s happy where he is. Rosie asks him to look around, to see if the grass is as green as he thinks it is. “I don’t grass can get any greener.”
Because he is where he is, he’s the place where people come back to. Because he is happy to be this unchanging touchstone, it’s where he’s happiest. A show metaphor. Even though things move in a circle— everything is unchanging, and yet different— we as the audience are reassured that even without us watching, Letterkenny will remain Letterkenny no matter how far we go.
And then we bring in the skids. They’re no longer antagonists, not really. They’ve become familiar faces, they hang around with everyone, and no matter what weird new things they do? They’re bored. “We’ve done everything. There’s nothing left to do.” You can feel the writers speaking through them.
So what do they do in the end?
What’s best for everyone. They’re ultimately redeemed. They go around town to figure out how they can throw a rave that everyone will like. “Will you like this? Will you like this? How about this? This?” But no one is going to be happy with what they choose. And what that is is to acknowledge every part of Letterkenny, not just their own indulgences. “It’s the last thing we haven’t done.”
When they take the stage, they weep and cry because no one is there. No one wanted to see this. No one wanted the metaphorical end, and no one was happy with it. And then someone bangs on the window and says, “The door is locked. Aren’t you going to let us in?” And lo! The characters! It becomes a party, a real party. They’re happy with how things turned out. The answer ended up being cherish everything in Letterkenny. The characters. The people. The gooses.
And when we pull away for these final scenes, emptied of characters, showing the sets with the sun dipping below the horizon and an amazing score swelling? Everyone is gone, but it’s Letterkenny. It’s gone, but it’s still there.
So scroll on up to the fucking final scene, man. I’m fucking crying again.
