We Should Never Get That Drunk Again

Why does this show have to be so good? As I’ve lamented in the past, Shoresy (as played by Jared Keeso) wasn’t meant to be a likable character. He was a jackass on Letterkenny, a hockey player you didn’t see, only heard, who mocked two other hockey players, Reilly and Jonesy, making very rude, sexual comments about their mothers. It was crass, and juvenile, yes, but also funny. But the fact is that, on paper, this is not a character that should be able to lead their own series. Who would possibly want to watch a show about Shoresy?

I would. When the first season came out, I gave the show a chance just for completeness sake. I’d reviewed all of parent show Letterkenny up to that point (go read all my reviews if you’re interested) and had even watched the absolutely terrible web-series spin-off, Littlekenny, and so, just to be able to say I did my due diligence, I watched Shoresy, too. Letterkenny, at that point, had gotten pretty terrible and I assumed Shoresy was going to be bad as well. To my surprise, my utter shock, it wasn’t. In fact, it was really good. Too good, in point of fact.

Where Letterkenny was a series stuck in time, keeping its characters from growing and changing and becoming better versions of themselves, Shoresy has made a point, from the very beginning, to actually engage with its characters and its story and to actually grow and evolve. Shoresy may have come from the town of Letterkenny but, to paraphrase that series, he had none of their problems. He went from a shallow, one-note, joke character to one of the deepest and most interesting characters in the franchise. And I hate it so much that he’s become my favorite character in this little universe.

Season three continues the trend, pushing Shoresy forward even more. When last we saw him and his hockey team, the Sudbury Blueberry Bulldogs, they’d just completed their main season in their division, going 24 for 24, setting an unbeatable record for the league and becoming, basically, the greatest of all time (for their whale shit hockey league). As we learn, though, their last match of the season, the championship match against the Americans, didn’t go well. They lost, and most of the team left that match injured and unable to play at the top of their game, including Shoresy himself.

Despite losing their league championship match, the Bulldogs were already selected as the host for the National championship this year, and because of that they get a free slot in the tournament. This gives them, with Shoresy as their team captain, a chance at redemption. But the competition is fierce, and the team keeps getting injured. One particularly bad incident happens to Shoresy, when he gets snapped across the ankles and then knocked out on the ice. Two concussions, and his body a mass of pain, everyone keeps telling him that maybe he’s gotten too old, maybe it's time to hang up the skates. But who is Shoresy if he can’t play hockey anymore?

This plotline is exactly why I appreciate Shoresy so much. This season is willing to push the character into a place he’s never been before, doubting his ability to recover and continue playing hockey, which then also makes him question his identity, his desires, and his future. It’s the kind of storytelling that Letterkenny gave up on after season seven. No one seemed interested in becoming more than who they currently were from that point forward, but here, Shoresy is clearly preparing its titular character for a change of circumstance, an evolution of who he is and what he really wants out of life.

It’s remarkable, really, because the show could have easily coasted on its characters and its basic ideas for another few seasons. Sure, at a certain point the character would have become too old to play hockey no matter what, but they could have saved that development for later in the show, maybe as a series finale storyline. The third season opens with them having lost their league championship and that would have been enough to give them motivation to regroup, refocus, and find themselves for another few seasons. I remarked to my wife, at the start of the season, that having them lose was “smart storytelling.” If they’d won there would be nowhere else to go for the series. You can only win so many times before it becomes boring.

Instead, though, the series doesn’t just keep the team struggling, it also punished Shoresy as a character. It decides that his future doesn’t just have to be playing hockey for the rest of the series’s run. Maybe he recovers and plays hockey, but maybe he also becomes a sports commentator, or a motivational speaker (something he’s weirdly good at) or a coach for a hockey team. Just because he might not be able to play doesn’t mean he has to leave the world he knows behind him. It just says that he has to reinvent himself in some way and become something more, and newer, in comparison to who he was.

Compare this to Letterkenny’s last season, where the show actively sets all the characters back to where they started at the very beginning of the series. The show actively ran from the idea of actually making anyone grow or change or be more than who they were. Maybe it could be viewed as a joke about how small towns never actually change, but what it really amounted to was a series afraid of doing or saying anything with its lead characters. “We have to leave these characters frozen in amber so the fans of the show can watch something uncomplicated and unchallenging over and over again.” I am so glad Shoresy isn’t following that path.

That’s not to say that the lead character has somehow lost his identity as the series has evolved. He’s still a crass and, at times, rude hockey player. He has two new guys, Liam (Keegan Long) and Cory (Bourke Cazabon), who he makes fun of (and makes sexual jokes about their mothers) like he used to do with Reilly and Jonesy. He still has it in him to be an obnoxious dude towards people he doesn’t like. He’s foul-mouthed all the time, and cares about few things more than hockey. But the show gives him heart and makes him a strong enough character to carry the series and keep you coming back for more.

If there’s a weakness with this season (and, honestly, the show in general) it’s that it doesn’t spend quite as much time investing in the other characters as it does Shoresy. The rest of the team – Terry Ryan as Ted Hitchcock, Ryan McDonell as Mark Michaels, Jon Mirasty as Jim #1, Brandon Nolan as Jim #2, Jordan Nolan as Jim #3, and all the others, plus the management team played by Tasya Teles as Nat, Blair Lamora as Ziigwan, and Keilani Elizabeth Rose as Miigwan – doesn’t get anywhere near the deep storytelling that Shoresy receives. They care about the team, and the game, and they are individual characters and not just cardboard cut-outs, but you don’t learn much about them outside the rink, keeping them from being people you care as much about as Shoresy. I would love to see later seasons delve into them more and flesh them out with real plotlines showing the same level of care that our lead character gets. They’re here, so let’s appreciate them.

Still, there’s no denying that this is a series that works despite, on paper, it being a show that should have crumbled and flopped on the ice. There’s magic to this series that can’t be denied and as it pushed forward into a future that seems uncertain for the show, and the lead character, I have to admit that it’s become one of my favorite comedies on the air. Considering its lead character and how obnoxious he was over on Letterkenny, that’s an impressive feat by any measure.