In its ninth season, time stands still in "Letterkenny."
Thanks to ongoing issues, plenty of people found themselves staying put over the holidays in lieu of traveling back to their hometowns. For me, that meant not battling it out at LAX to grab two flights to get me halfway through the country, only to have to rent a car and drive the last two-and-a-half hours to my hometown (pop. 2,000). Even without global health concerns, I might not have made it back to my family anyway, thanks to a late-breaking Christmas blizzard that left the area a morass of ice and snow that my skin, thinned by years of California life, never could have withstood.
And yet, thanks to the release of Season 9 of Hulu’s “Letterkenny,” I’m suffering from far less homesickness than one would expect under the circumstances.
For the uninitiated, the sitcom began its life as a YouTube series titled “Letterkenny Problems” before getting optioned into a TV show that premiered on Crave — a Canadian OTT streaming service — in 2016. But it wasn’t until the show’s arrival on Hulu in 2018 that “Letterkenny” arrived on America’s radar, yet another comedy series goofing on life in small town Canada. See also: “Schitt’s Creek.”But “Letterkenny” is a far cry from “Schitt’s Creek.” The humor is coarser, the atmosphere more rural, and the stereotypes more severe, but each element is executed to great effect, resulting in a whole that manages to be subversive, surprising, and stupidly hilarious. The show’s acumen at exposing the inner workings of a very small town comes directly from creator and star Jared Keeso who based the show’s fictional location on his own hometown of roughly 7,000 people.
This is all well and good and, if it sounds intriguing, all nine seasons of the show are available to stream on Hulu. But that said, don’t start with Season 9. After all, what do fans want from a show once it has reached its ninth season? Certainly something different than an audience coming to the show for the first time, but is it enough to provide superfans with more of what they know and love, or do we expect long-running shows to still push themselves no matter how long they run?
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