Letterkenny
DVD Release of Seasons 1&2
December 17, 2019

Before we get into discussing the quality of the Letterkenny Seasons 1&2 DVD set, I need you to carefully consider the following question. And I’m totally serious.

How do you feel about fart jokes?

If you read that question and couldn’t come to a conclusion (which I doubt), then consider the following.

Would you watch an entire 22-minute episode of a show centered on sharing farts on a social media platform called “Fartbook”?

Does that bring things into sharper focus for you on what to expect from Letterkenny? It should. Like most worthwhile TV, though, the show has more to it than farts. Letterkenny is at once an immature expression of base humor repeated ad nauseam and a collection of very modern and socially up-to-date examples of unexpectedly fair treatment among genders and races. (Caveat: I’m aware that most of the cast is white, but the show depicts rural Canada and is created by people in-the-know for that region. I bet they’re close enough to reality.) No one is better than anyone else in Letterkenny and if they ever think so, they will have a team of surly hicks to deal with.

The Show

The show’s heroes refer to themselves “hicks” with a measure of pride. Wayne (Jared Keeso), his sister Katy (Michelle Mylett), and friends Daryl (Nathan Dales) and Squirrely Dan (K. Trevor Wilson)  make up the central cast of Letterkenny‘s favorite farmers. Although we rarely see them perform any kind of manual work on screen, they spend some portion of most episodes manning a rarely-visited produce stand. From there, they expound on important questions, like what kind of music is appropriate to play in the Ag Hall? Or, whether or not to create the aforementioned fart-based social media platform? And they do it using so much slang that casual American viewers will have a tough time deciphering the Canadian, hockey-centered dialect from the stuff the writers just made up.

By and large, it works.

Although others from around town figure into each episode, Letterkenny centers on Wayne and those closest to him. When they’re not talking about work or sitting around the produce stand, they might be fighting. Letterkenny is in fact, the only sitcom I can think of that regularly uses a stunt/fight coordinator. They need one, because as the self-appointed “Toughest Guy in Letterkenny”, Wayne routinely gets into long, slow-motion, rock-music accompanied fights. I suppose if I created my own show, as Jared Keeso has done with Letterkenny, I’d also cast myself as the town superhero.

The actors’ delivery and the style of comedy resembles something more like performance art rather than straight-up TV acting. In certain ways, the show creates its own joke-telling tropes. It clings to them tightly and reuses them unabashedly. I bet that sounds annoying and repetitive. Well, it is. But I think the writers know it. That explains why within those round-robin contests of pun one-upmanship, the things they say get more and more outrageous. The show has totally reset my misbegotten stereotype of the average, mild-mannered Canadian. In the best way possible.

The DVD Set

Letterkenny‘s first DVD presents the show with almost no frills whatsoever. The two discs in the box each contain a six-episode season of the show. Don’t buy this hoping for in-depth director’s commentary or behind the scenes footage. The one bonus item appears on the Season 2 disc as a bonus episode, available through the bonus sub-menu or the main menu in sequence with the other episodes. I guess they really didn’t want you to miss that one.

Should you buy this DVD Set? See fart-joke requirements above. If you can pass that test, then this 2-Disc DVD set might be exactly what you need. At $14.96 on Amazon, what could it hurt? And yes, the entire show is available right now to stream on Hulu, but what if that changes? Would you still be able to get your Letterkenny? Are you willing to take that chance? It’s better just to buy it. 

Letterkenny Seasons 1&2 was released on DVD on November 5, 2019. In addition to being available for purchase on Amazon, the two-disc DVD set is also available in Walmart and Target stores across the US.

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More on Letterkenny.

Check out the whole series (including the new season) on Hulu. Visit the home for Letterkenny, both the TV show AND the traveling stage show. And, on Social Media: Twitter | Facebook | YouTube

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