There’s an exchange in Shoresy’s first season episode, “Know Your Role”, where soft spoken, freshly-minted ice hockey coach Sanguinet (Harlan Blayne Kytwayhat) tries to convince foul-mouthed, knuckle-dragging veteran player Shoresy (creator Jared Keeso) to not blast his teammates so brutally. Shoresy is nonplussed.
“You're my teammate. You're my brother. I'd go to the wall for you. Would you go to the wall for me?”
“I'll go to the wall,” Sanguinet allows.
“Then you're allowed to call me a f***ing useless c*** on your way there.”
Yes, sure, we could probably have found a cleaner quote, but not one that demonstrates the near primal appeal of Shoresy, now beginning its third season.
Looking calmer than usual... Jared Keeso as Shoresy in season 3. Credit: Christos Kalohoridis
If you’re a fan of Letterkenny, you’ll be familiar with the character of Shoresy, a foul-mouthed hockey player who existed solely to trot out some of the most vile and imaginative insults imaginable, driving the victims of his verbiage into stuttering apoplexy with the sheer, brutal creativity of his barbs.
“Character” is being generous; until he jumped over to his eponymous series, Shoresy didn’t even have a face. Keeso played both Shoresy and Letterkenny leading man Wayne, and avoided any potential confusion by simply always shooting himself as Shoresy from behind or otherwise obscured. How such a limited, one-note sketch led to a whole other series is a mystery for the ages, but here we are.
We find ourselves in the town of Sudbury, Ontario, home of the Bulldogs, a struggling bottom tier team on the verge of complete collapse. That’s an existential threat for Shoresy, infamous as the dirtiest player in the league – hockey is his entire life. So, he makes team owner Nat (Tasya Teles) a solemn promise: “This team will never lose again.”
Which is a tall order for a squad of washed-up also rans, but we’re now three seasons deep, so something is working.
The boys are back for season 3.
Shoresy is a deeply, catastrophically funny series, with a laughs-per-minute ratio that puts the average sitcom in the penalty box. But if that was all there was to it, we’d be talking about something else. Like its titular character, the show has hidden depths. On the surface it’s loud, obnoxious, and wilfully offensive, to the point where it can seem like a throwback to early 2000s lad mag bro culture. It’s also steeped in Canadian culture in general and hockey in particular, which can take some effort for the unfamiliar viewer to get your head around.
What saves it – what makes it essential viewing – is a sense of self-awareness and a palpable love of its characters. The Sudbury Bulldogs are legends only in their own minds – in any other context they’d be a pack of thugs. In the barn on a Saturday night, however, they come into their own. The camaraderie, the chirping (that’s hockey for “insulting the other guy so much he loses his composure and swings on you”), the brawling, the titanic victories, the crushing losses – it all becomes mythic.
It’s hard to pick a favourite character. Of course there’s Shoresy himself, whose ice-chip-hard exterior conceals a paradoxical sweetness – check out his puppy-dog love for local sports reporter Laura Mohr (Camille Sullivan). But then what about amiable Newfoundland veteran Ted Hitchcock (If you say it fast it sounds like, well, try it and you’ll see), as essayed by pro player Terry Ryan? Or towering Québecois ladies’ man JJ Frankie JJ (Max Bouffard)? Or the trio of tough natives (“Tough natives is redundant”) collectively known as The Jims (Jon Mirasty, Brandon Nolan, and Jordan Nolan)?
We could be here all night. The secret sauce is that every character gets their own little arc – insecure goalie Michaels (Ryan McDonnell) wants the respect of his teammates, Hitchcock yearns for the love of a good woman, JJ Frankie JJ wants… 20 boxes of apple fritters, most likely.
And baked into the series is the growing sense that this all can’t last forever. Season 3 in particular deals with ageing and injury, and the inescapable truth that a career in hockey is finite, a bittersweet note among the laughs. Shoresy himself acknowledges more than once that off the ice he’s basically non-functional as a human being – the world of hockey is the only thing that makes sense to him, and he’ll keep playing as long as he can. And while he is, we’ll keep watching. This is, make no mistake, superb television.
Fast tracked to SBS On Demand, Shoresy season 3 arrives 7pm 21 June. Seasns 1 and 2 are also streaming:
