Shoresy

Only 6 episodes thus far and they damn well better come back with more.

The dry humor is refreshing and hilarious, and the one liners are gold.

The scenes where Shoresy is ref'ing the kids is the best and if you don't laugh you should check your pulse.

American here, and only an occasional hockey watcher, but Letterkenny makes me laugh SO hard I've watched them all. Now one of Keeso's characters, Shoresy, gets his own series and it's more of the same.

Keeso is so talented - I checked out 19-2 because of him. That show was a little too soap operaish for me, but Keeso is a solid dramatic actor, too. I'm looking forward to Shoresy, and looking forward to seeing what Keeso comes up with in the future.

(Review updated after Season 3).

Shoresy, notorious as one of the dirtiest players in all of (ice) hockey, plays for the Sudbury Bulldogs. The Bulldogs are last in the four-team Northern Ontario Senior Hockey league and the owner is thinking of folding the team. Shoresy is determined to not have that happen and assembles a formidable team.

For me the best part of Letterkenny was the hockey stuff. The Reilly and Jonesy sub-plots, often consisting of satire on jock culture, were always very funny and were the only consistently funny part of the show.

It's for this reason that I watched Shoresy, a Letterkenny spin-off concentrating on an occasional-yet-incredibly-memorable character in that show. Initially it showed some of Letterkenny's shortcomings: the repetitiveness, the wasted potential for great drama and sentimentality, the clumsy sub-plots. It was never dull though and the humour generally worked.

As it went on the show developed more of a heart and the comedy got sharper, making for a very entertaining and engaging experience. The dramatic plots got better as time went on, moving from merely a structure to hang jokes on to the essence of the show. We see the trials and tribulations of a sports team, the camaraderie, the rivalries, the internal struggles, the milestones, the career choices.

By the end of Season 3 it is absolutely brilliant and has seamlessly transformed itself from a decent comedy into an excellent drama. There's still a fair amount of humour but it's the drama that drives it now.

Shoresey is a fresh take on a sport that has more than a few TV and big screen products. This show is clever, funny, hearwarning and brutally forward all at once. You need to leave some time to get fast enough to catch all the jokes. Rapid fire humor at paces hard to keep up with. I'm thinking a cold,crazy, violent and Canadian Ted Lasso. All the characters seem like somebody you know but really never met. Each character sports a uniqe persective that is only revealed through the rapid fire conversations that take place. The sould of this show is a layered approach to manly mundane subjects. The right stacking, layering and uniqe takes make this a shining example of a small evolution in comedy writing.

Usually, spinoffs flop or at the most meet the expectations of their origin stories. This spinoff certainly meets the level of charm that Letterkenny has to offer, and so much more.

Do you love the verbal assaults Shoresy delivered to Jonsey, Reilly, and anyone else who rubbed him the wrong way in Letterkenny? Do you love the quick-witted banter that exited in Letterkenny, not just including that which involves our new protagonist? Do you want a fairy-tale story told with a fairy-tale ending but not in a traditional fairy-tale manner?

If your answer to any of that is a firm "yes," then this is the spinoff for YOU. If not, give your balls a tug, you loser.

EDIT: Just watched the season 3 premiere. This is one of those shows that can keep the original creative magic from start to finish. I was dying. The "your mom" Shoresy jokes are just absolutely brutal.