The Trouble with Tracy

Many viewers and critics have cited this show as the worst comedy series in Canadian television history. They're almost right: it's the worst comedy series in the history of humankind.

I was a child in the early 1970's and like most kids I was in love with TV. We had cable, it allowed me to watch SEVEN! different channels on our 20 inch color TV, when my parents weren't watching, of course. When I was little I discovered I could get up before school to watch TV and my groggy parents didn't care. What's on at 630 AM on a Tuesday in 1975 Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada? Not much. The Trouble With Tracy was the only show at that time. I watched it faithfully for a month or two but I didn't think it was very funny. Is this how big people act? Why is everyone so dumb. I remember some of the other kids at school watched it also and I have vague memories of playing Trouble with Tracy in the playground. Anyway, as soon as another channel started showing Rocket Robin Hood I was outta there. I remember thinking that "The Trouble With Tracy" was the dumbest thing that I had seen until sometime in the the mid eighties, when I saw the cable series about the robot girl "Small Wonder"

The Trouble With Tracy was a formula utterly perfect for a catastrophe -scripts from a World War Two-era radio sitcom, inexperienced actors, a rickety set and the utterly inhuman demand for no less than 130 episodes produced during a single TV season (1970-71) on an almost non-existent budget.

The situations were frequently so dated as to render much of the content blissfully sexist or offensive in other ways. Fortunately not very many people saw it to be offended by it and those that did tended to remember how insanely dumb it was more than if part of it might be construed as offensive.

It wasn't just bad, it was weirdly bad. They had laugh-track not merely in place of studio audience laughter but in place of anything that might be construed of as funny. Most of the laughs you might have would be unintentional.

The network (CTV) which produced it couldn't afford to cancel it right away as even though its investment was negligible compared with what an American network might expend on a half-hour sitcom. There was no more money for pre-production on a replacement series.

They couldn't cut their losses so they did their best to make what they had marketable for American syndication which included strategic placement of American flags and other hints which implied an American setting. All they could do was cringe as it played out.

One big reason Canadian TV productions don't do well in Canada is because broadcasters here treat them as a distasteful requirement they will only fund and schedule to retain their respective CRTC broadcast licenses.

This ignores the intentions behind the CRTC requirement which is to create building blocks for a thriving domestic film/TV production industry here via the training of casts and crews of shows helping them gain invaluable experience and enhanced reputations within the entertainment industry.

Canadian broadcasters are mostly interested in making money by showing popular American programming. If they (Excluding the government-owned CBC) have ever had any genuine interest in the timely and costly process of creating domestic productions it has yet to be seen.

The result is something like this - an apparent desultory afterthought or something so spectacularly inept that it might appear to have been conceived of to discredit the legislation which provided the impetus for the productions creation.

The evident statement on Canadian television is "See, it doesn't work. Can we please just show American stuff and let our nationalism end with having a different flag and national anthem?". The answer to that will always be a resounding "No!" for Canadians but it will not be a strong enough mass sentiment for watching Canadian set and produced programs that will get very many of them made.

The reruns of the show (Like The Littlest Hobo or other Canadian productions) became a staple of a phenomenon in Canadian broadcasting known as "Beaver Hours" i.e. times during the day in which few people would be tuning in when a Canadian-based station would grudgingly play its Canadian content necessary for retention of its CRTC broadcast license.

You might have caught a glimpse of the show on the way to the john at 6 am on a Saturday morning if you used your TV as a night-light. That glimpse would serve as your accidental dose of Canadian content for the day.

This was considered by most to be the worst Canadian TV series of all time from the 1970s until other networks made worse (i.e. CBC's "XPM"). The Comedy Network in particular produced a solid number of equally awful flops the first 10 years or so of their existence. Notably the universally despised "PopCultured with Elvira Kurt" but also "Girls Will Be Girls", "Keys to the VIP", "Punched Up", "Upload Yours"..... the list goes on and on.

It was poorly produced with awful sets, acting, writing, direction... but at least it was likable, charming and hilarious in ways other than the creators intended. It was bad but in a "so bad it's funny" kind of way. That's why this show is considered one of the worst but also has kind of a beloved status among TV audiences in Canada, unlike a lot of those other shows I mentioned, which are just "bad but not even in a funny way bad".

To be Canadian seems to mean cutting up Canadian humour. But this show wasn't meant to play to adults (even if some of the lines were to hip for the room). It played in Toronto around 4 pm ! This was meant for teen-aged boys to ogle. And putting the American flag in most of the scene so that it would be picked up for syndication was brilliant.

Oh, sure it was hokey. Sure there were blunders. But it was FUN. Theatre Sports (Improv) at Queens Quay would follow in future years. Anyone taking this as serious missed the point. Heck - they probably hated Razzle Dazzle as well! If the analogy helps - you can have your NFL, but Trouble with Tracy was pure CFL!

Reverse American Plot? I received an email that put forth the theory: "By putting in an American flag and references, this show made Americans look stupid - And thus began (?) Canadian hatred for all Americans"