While I stand by my initial reaction to The Drunk and On Drugs Happy Fun Time Hour, now that I have seen the other episodes I can’t recommend this series. All the potential that this show held never paid off.
The surrealist nature of the first show seems to have been abandoned, preferring a more absurdist approach of throwing the variety of characters into various combinations, seeing what kind of laughs can be gotten. While this style of storytelling worked for Trailer Park Boys, it doesn’t here. Trailer Park Boys was grounded in a reality of everyday banality, making the outrageous situations all the more amusing. The Drunk and On Drugs Happy Fun Time Hour is so far removed from reality, we have no frame of reference to see what is out of proportion, and thus humour is lost.
I’d hope we’d have an understanding of who, what and why regarding the pirates, gangsters, superheroes, radio station DJ and the other characters played by Wells, Smith and Trembley, but it never came. Not to mention the show, in its last scene, seems to admit to the viewer it does not know how to end this story.
My biggest disappointment was John Dunsworth. Nothing short of brilliant as the tragic and flawed Jim Lahey on Trailer Park Boys, he is wasted as an armless pizza maker… or something like that.
All in all, The Drunk and On Drugs Happy Fun Time Hour is talking loud, but not saying much.