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'm finding it very hard to rate this show... on the one hand I remember watching it and cringing at how bad the production was. The sets were so cheap and the acting was so over the top and the writing was so amateur level... but on the other hand the people on the show were doing some badly written characters so it must have been hard to act as them, and they (especially Tracy) were so likable and fun to watch... and I remember that when I watched the show I also laughed a lot. It's like cringe comedy before The Office but where the cringing wasn't actually intentional. So it was a very bad show but unintentionally good in a way.

Anyway I look back at it and remember it was awful but I also look back at it and really love it in a way. So it's hard to rate!

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"

O.K, it sucked big time , but I learned english watching this show and Dyan Nyland was indeed a hot babe! I don't think this show was as bad as say,"Mork And Mindy" or "Laverne And Shirley" but it stands alone as the worst Canada has ever made.

For years I remember reading about this show "Trouble With Tracy" in the TV Guide. CFTO-TV Toronto every Saturday morning at 6 am! I lived about a two-hour drive north of Toronto and we couldn't get CFTO, but you know how it is - we always want what we can't have.

Well, I knew what I wanted and what I wanted was to see what this "Trouble With Tracy" was all about. Did it have a beautiful girl in the starring role? Was there nudity? Was there suspense? Was it a comedy? It would've been fine if there was some promotion of the show. At least I could've known what I was missing. But, NO! The mystery drove me bonkers, until CTV affiliate CKCO built a re-transmitter in Wiarton, Ontario and began to broadcast "Trouble With Tracy" at the same time as CFTO....Saturday mornings at 6 am!! One Saturday morning I got up and turned the TV on at 5:59 and at last I got to see what "The Trouble With Tracy" was. Yes, the "Trouble With Tracy" was that it was Canadian content and stuck in the harmless 6 am spot so no one would ever see how awful it was.

Talented Canadian Actor Steve Weston died a few years afterward, but many would argue he effectively "died" the first time he appeared on this show. When I saw it for the first time that cold Saturday morning and fell despondent back into my bed, part of me died, too.