Letterkenny Bloopers Funnier Than The Original Scene

There is no show like "Letterkenny." Though it began as a low-budget series of YouTube shorts, the show's lightning-fast repartee and expertly-woven wordplay quickly elevated the series from hidden gem to Hulu Original sitcom. Even the briefest foray into the show's world of hyper-intelligent rednecks and similarly shattered stereotypes will introduce viewers to the many successes of "Letterkenny." Such taut, crackling dialogue demands a lot from its cast, and they deliver again and again.

They don't always deliver on the first take, however. Creator, writer, and star Jared Keeso serves up scripts so hilarious that the cast of "Letterkenny" –- Keeso included –- sometimes struggles to push forward through scenes. Between this verbal toil and the cast's penchant for top-tier improv, a lot of "Letterkenny" scenes tend to sink for a time before they're able to swim. Naturally, both the hijinks and the blunders have found their way to a series of blooper reels that, just like the finished product, demand their own constant cackling.

To put it as the natives would, these 10-ply actors spend a lot of time chirpin' and throwing airballs. Though, to be fair (to be fair, to be fair, to be fair), some of them actually wheel snipes. It's a great day for hay, so let's check out some "Letterkenny" bloopers that are even funnier than the original scenes.

The town of Letterkenny is a collection of cliques. Major groups include the Hicks, the Skids, and the hockey players. But every so often, another group will join the "Letterkenny" regulars and levy their cultural quirks for fresh laughs. One of the funniest of those recurring circles is the Mennonites and, in particular, the oblivious and inadvertently-sexual Dyck family. There may not be an actor in the world that could make it through a full suite of Dyck puns without cracking, and Jacob Tierney, who plays Glen, is no exception.

The gaffs come during the episode "Dyck's Slip Out." In a scene with Noah and Anita Dyck -– whose suggestive names are no accident -– Tierney is forced to meet the two Dycks head-on. Glen, a closeted Evangelical preacher, matches the Dycks' ignorant double-entendres bit for bit. However, as Glen is scripted to spend the whole scene in a skin-tight banana hammock, all three actors have a hard time delivering lines without sneaking unconscious peaks at his groin. 

The trio leans into the bit and works the accidental eye-lines into a short improv sketch in which Glen reproaches Anita with an "Eyes up here!" but tells Noah, "You can keep your eyes exactly where they were."

Possibly the worst times to mess up a take on "Letterkenny" are when physical comedy is involved, as running those scenes multiple times means props need resetting. The toll that takes on actors and crew can be immense, even if it just means compounding annoyance on annoyance. That's exactly the situation that Keeso found himself in –- or rather, wrote himself into –- during the beginning of the episode "Letterkenny Spelling Bee." Though the finished episode is a fan favorite, as seen on Ranker, its long collection of outtakes is its own hidden goldmine.

One of the best comes when Keeso's character, Wayne, works himself into a lather by reflecting on his sister's loss in last year's Letterkenny Adult Spelling Bee to Skid leader Stewart, played by Tyler Johnston. While delivering the line "Wanna spell like that, bud," Keeso scripted himself to rip his button-down shirt open in angry machismo. Evidently, the yearning to avenge his sister's defeat was just too strong for Wayne. Though a great emotional beat on paper, the moment becomes a painful and painfully-funny series of retakes as Keeso keeps laughing through his line.

As soon as Keeso ekes out the line and rips his shirt, he bursts out laughing, ensuring he has to slowly, painstakingly re-button his shirt after the take. Over and over, he rips his shirt, only to chuckle and begin a laborious, obligatory buttoning.

Mark Forward, who plays the cantankerous, unpredictable Coach, may very well be the most underrated aspect in all of "Letterkenny." His total commitment to physical comedy and constant, subtle facial acting makes his every scene intense. Even when Coach is meant to be relaxing, like when playing golf or his ukulele, Forward gives everything to the moment.

During "Valentimes Day," Coach finds himself, against his every instinct, at a speed-dating session with most of the other main characters. When he is sat across from Reilly -– his player, half his age, and not his desired gender -– Coach's aggressive intensity flares. Forward goes all in portraying Coach's cynicism and quiet rage. His exceptionally expressive face, which includes a mouth that alternates between John Lithgow tiny and Ed Helms wide, pulls so much of the weight in conveying Coach's emotionality.

It's not just Reilly actor Playfair that breaks, however. Forward's outlandish improv also gets to Katy actress Michelle Mylett. His incomprehensible hand-motion for sex is as cryptic as it is side-splitting. Also, Forward's uncharacteristically pathetic line-reads break half the cast. His insistence on referring to his deceased spouse as "my dead wife Barbara who died" is too much for most of the cast to bear. Overall, Forward certainly added time to the "Valentimes Day" shooting schedule.

Mark Forward is back with another outstanding blooper. The scene could not be any more straightforward, but in typical Forward fashion, he's given an atom and starts an avalanche.

The clip in question asks no lines from Forward and only specifies that he laugh. In a close one-shot, Forward begins his take and, by the end, creates something that somehow manages to be both impossibly unnerving and incredibly funny. What starts as a somewhat (for Coach) average display begins to slowly evolve –- very slowly, as the laughter lasts a full 30 seconds. Coach's cackling gradually descends into a weaselly, gasping, witch-like wheezing. He takes it even deeper until his face is inhumanly contorted and a purplish-red, and the laugh sounds like the evil, schadenfreude-driven rasp of the Crypt Keeper.

After 30 seconds, Forward drops the monstrous spectacle instantly, as if it had never happened. All at once, his face returns to its normal shape and color, and he playfully shrugs his acting off. Where his laugh ends, however, everyone else's begins. The insane acting causes the cast and crew to burst out laughing, likely louder than in any other outtake.

In the Season 7 episode "Nut," Reilly, Jonesy, and their fellow hockey players find themselves missing their recently-disbanded hockey team, the Letterkenny Irish. When asked what they miss about the game the most, every player responds with some variation of "broads." When asked what they miss besides the girls, they all choose cheese. Not quite as insane as it sounds, cheese is a local Letterkenny slang term for scoring a perfect goal and more generally for pulling off some moment of excellence.

The big problem with actors Playfair, Herr, and the rest spending 50 long seconds listing (and inventing) cheeses is that not one of them can pronounce their assigned cheeses correctly. Playful stumbles over gorgonzola enough that he drops a loud F-bomb and stops the scene. Herr is even worse, managing to absolutely butcher asiago so badly through so many takes that the director and his fellow actors had to stop filming and teach him how to say it correctly. Herr's repeated use of "asah-gi-oh" sounds more like an anime franchise than a type of cheese. Even Jay Bertin, who plays the laconic Tyson, chimed in during one of Herr's flubs that "I screwed mine up, too." For all the hockey players love cheese, their actors seem to have never heard of it.

One of the most revered "Letterkenny" shorts, "Roberta Bondar," is a single scene in which Wayne, Daryl, and Dan debate the logistics of self-pleasure in space. After reaching a unanimous consensus on how such an activity would best be handled -– the solution involving a series of cones -– the trio discusses Roberta Bondar, a real-life Canadian astronaut and the first Canadian woman in space, per CBC. The original short is seven minutes of wall-to-wall dialogue while Wayne relays a story he overhead about Bondar's time in space and how frequently she dealt with male genitalia. By now, you should be able to predict that the three actors did not get through filming in one take.

One of the official "Letterkenny Problems" blooper reels devotes a large portion of its runtime to cataloging all the times that Keeso, Dales, and fellow actor K. Trevor Wilson, who appears as Dan, spend cracking up. From the footage, their biggest issues seem to be twofold. First, any mention of male genitalia, sex, and self-pleasure seems to tickle them pink –- a genuine problem when filming a lengthy scene exclusively about male genitalia, sex, and self-pleasure. Second, the fact that Keeso's script puts "space" in front of every noun can only add to the challenge. "Spacemen," "Space-people," "space-pants," and a host of others get to Keeso, Dales, and Wilson. 

The three are in good company, though, as it seems the entire cast of "Letterkenny" has a blast on set, and it shows through some bloopers that are funnier than their original scenes.