The Trouble with Tracy

You think you've seen bad TV? You haven't seen the worst until you've seen this gem. A few seasons were made and then rerun for years on Canadian stations to fulfill Canadian content rules.

The acting was atrocious, the direction non-existent, the production values were laughable, and the writing ... oh, the horror! Add in a tinny laugh-track and cheesy muzak and you've got Trouble. Flubbed lines were left in (and it was on video!), "jokes" were recycled ad nauseam, you could see the walls move when a door was opened or closed. Dyan Nylan as Tracy was cute in her micro-miniskirts but she had little acting ability or comedic timing, and the lines she was given to speak were cringe-inducingly lame. Every embarrassing stereotype was included, every Lucy and Honeymooners setup was ripped off, every stale Henny Youngman joke was massacred.

Simply excruciating, unredeemably puerile, so bad it's not funny! So why is it I wish I could see it again?

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.

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"

This show was shot at the Agincourt CFTO studio of CTV. I was then a teenager (Bill Gregory Terlecki), and waiting around to sit in for extra work on a neighboring set of FAMOUS JURY TRIALS. With time to kill, I wandered over to the TRACY set to admire this fascinating process.Things halted when the scene called for ice cubes in a glass of scotch, but of course, none were to be found. I said to one of the production people to crumple up some cellophane wrap and jam that in and pour the liquid over it...not only would the lights pick up the refraction, but the "cubes" would not melt and the effect would be lasting. They did this, and it seemed to work as the show went on. I mention this as that memory stayed with me that the crew of both shows were very kind and appreciative to me at that wide-eyed age, and as my very first venture into TV, it was an honor that my suggestion was used. This show played late afternoons, and yes, it was always the same set, no outdoor scenes, but it was Canadian and well...gave work to many for a short time. It gave me the impetus to act.

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.