Two things right off the bat, the first is that the title is sort of a clickbait lie. Shoresy does a lot of things very well, but I only wanna focus on one or two. The other thing is that I’m writing this mostly before I have access to season two so most of my observations are going to be focused on Season one.

Shoresy has a… tall task. Take a one off, hyper-joke character made up almost entirely of a foul mouth and your mom jokes whose face is never shown and make him the star of his own show for however long they keep renewing him for. 

And yet… when people ask me if I’ve seen Letterkenny (a show I hesitate to call a cult hit, but very much a show that if you’re into television you’ve at least seen a season or two) I’m far more likely to turn to them and say “yeah, but have you seen Shoresy?”

The pitch: foul mouth hockey player Shoresy must help rebuild an adult hockey team to prevent the team from folding. Hijinx and insults thus ensue. Deceptively simple, but aren’t most great shows?

The magic of Shoresy is definitely Jared Keeso. If Letterkenny proved that he could make a joke out of anything, and structured it in such a way that made it feel like High God Damn Art (seriously, I think that both the “‘berta beef” and the gay hockey flirt off will live in my brain rent free for the rest of my life), then Shoresy is proof of… empathy? It feels weird but the only core change of the title character is that we’re being asked to empathize with him and then get six episodes of excellent television to not only do that but to see what makes this loud mouth enforcer tick and the circumstances that put the gears in place. And most importantly, you learn that he’s just a guy, with a lot of feelings.

It’s sort of a near perfect sophomore show, take what you learned from the first outing (character craft, complex regional insults, tight story with room for gags) and improve. The improvement this time around is fleshing out. The sentiment I got fairly early on in Letterkenny can be best summed up with “oh it’s hilarious. Oh, it’s traumatized” and a lot is thrown out in off handed reference because to those characters, it doesn’t matter in the now, it’s just history these characters have known forever the way that everyone knows everything about everyone in a town (at least implied) to be that small. So you get hints, little one off explanations for certain aspects, but never the full story. At least, not so far. With Shoresy, it can’t help but matter in the now, even if the other characters aren’t privy to it. Really, the difference is summed up in their titles, the idea of main vs ensemble, the town of Letterkenny vs just Shoresy.

And don’t get it twisted, it’s still so fucking funny. The heart hasn’t detracted from the main central fact that Shoresy is a foul mouthed hockey player who can frequently can only be responded with a resounding “fuck you Shoresy!” I swear in… ten years? We’ll be writing academic papers about the use of language. Not just the hyper specific insults but the extremely localized and niche slang that the show expects you, the audience member to… well… figure it out.

Even in a protagonist focused show still has a side cast to worry about, and luckily the supporting cast is stellar here too. Between Nat’s absolute dedication to keep the team in the hopes of trying to keep the memory of her parents close to her, the delightful fun bitchiness of the twins, the eccentricities of the team Shoresy pulls together, and Sanguinet whose growth as a coach and unifier of the team is just as important as Shoresy’s is.

Oh, and of course we’ve gotta talk about the hockey. I’ll admit I’m probably biased in the fact that it’s my favorite sport? And it’s not even close, so watching a fictional team whose wins and loses are scripted are probably the most fun I can have without the heart palpitations of a real game. It’d be one thing if it were just beautifully shot (which it is), but it also captures the sensation of why people like this slightly violent soccer on skates. Watching the community around the Bulldogs grow is… heartwarming and makes me feel like even when the NHL fails me (again. This week.) I’ll always have the Sudbury Blueberry Bulldogs

One last thing, not for nothing, but “I swear to god I’ll be so good to ya” is one of the most romantic things I’ve ever fucking heard. Bar none.

(also, I know he probably doesn’t want the gig, but ever since Nando v Movies put the idea into my head of Jared Keeso as Wolverine I haven’t stopped thinking about it and I would like it very much please if we can’t get Daphne Keane’s Laura Kinney as the next Wolverine)