Vince Russo's The Brand

*Warning: Spoilers Ahead*

Hello again everyone and welcome to another edition of my weekly Trailer Park Boys episode review. This is the fourth episode of the third season which is quickly becoming the best season so far in the series and we just got done going over what was, in my opinion, the best episode of the series we’ve come across thus far. Can this next one match or even exceed it? Let’s find out.

We start the episode with J-Roc and Tyrone on the hood of a car talking to the camera crew about this camera they have to shoot J-Roc’s new music video for a song called Microphone Assassin. As he gets ready to shoot it, he messes with some of the settings on it to get the resolution that he’s looking for with it before telling some of the girls that are in the video to hold a bag of weed and a gun. A small scene from the video plays where he raps about things he actually has no idea about while tieing it in with Randy’s cheeseburger gut. It cuts back to J-Roc and Tyrone talking about how their raps keep it real ‘gangsta’ living in a trailer park and things they deal with on a daily basis. They then show another part of the video and one of the lyrics is ripping on Lahey’s bald head before it cuts to the opening credits.

Brandon’s Take: I’m having a hard time trying to decide which opening scene was better, this one or the previous one as they were both brilliantly hilarious in their own ways.

When we get back, we have Julian and Ricky re-iterating to the camera crew about their plan to not go back to jail by committing smaller crimes that the cops don’t have time to deal with and it’s revealed that they’ve joined up with J-Roc to sell bootleg CDs in the park where some of the songs are J-Roc’s while others were ripped off from other famous hip hop recording artists. In the midst of this, we get a scene where Corey and Trevor explain to the camera crew that J-Roc knows absolutely nothing about the things that he raps about and that he’s just a white kid from a trailer park pretending to be gangsta. And that point is further driven home when we see J-Roc in his mom’s trailer where she chastises him for still living with her(while also calling him by his birth name Jamie) even though he’s almost 30 and he quickly retorts that there are people who believe in him.

Brandon’s Take: A good reminder at the beginning to remind everyone of the thread that’s being followed throughout the season. But the stuff with J-Roc and Tyrone trying to act like they’re hardcore and Corey and Trevor pretty much calling them out on it was hilarious.

We then see Bubbles talking to the camera crew as he’s the one that’s doing the work of selling the CDs and he explains how they’re doing it with pirating other artists’ music while adding his own to it and calling the CD “J-Roc and Friends.” It quickly cuts back to Tyrone and J-Roc who explain what they’re doing is called “cross promotion” and if any of the other artists such as Dr. Dre and Snoop(who J-Roc calls his “boys”) wanted to use some of J-Roc’s music on their albums then he wouldn’t mind.

Brandon’s Take: J-Roc is so delusional in all of this that’s really funny. The dude actually believes that he’s not doing anything wrong and how he plays it off is brilliant.

Bubbles is back and he talks about how unhappy he is doing this but has to since his money was invested in it at the behest of Julian and Bubbles trusts him. Ricky is washing his car and talks about the difference between his and Julian’s plans and how Julian’s are usually better and how he likes the idea that Julian came up with selling the CDs at a flea market. Julian and Ricky arrive at Bubbles’ table to see that he’s already sold a ton of CDs and made a lot of money which Julian quickly grabs and says that he’s going to use that money to make even more which leads to Ricky having a mental meltdown cause he doesn’t understand how investments work.

Brandon’s Take: I always enjoy it when Ricky has his little meltdowns like this when his intelligence is questioned and he makes himself look even dumber when he’s done. There was also a really adorable scene here with Bubbles showing off a kitten he put in a mini shopping cart with a $40,000 price tag.

Julian and Ricky then arrive at Sara and Lucy’s salon where Julian has the money and offers them their cut or says he can invest it in a rap concert where they could double or triple the money they made and Ricky asks how he’s going to promote it. Julian’s response is to offer free liquor. We see that Ricky and Ray are in charge of the liquor as they’re making some really terrible looking instant liquor that you have to add water to. Ray is worried though that the concert could cause trouble for the boys if Lahey catches wind of it but Ricky assures him that Lahey’s fine with it. Of course we cut right to Lahey refusing to allow the concert to take place in a conversation with Julian. Julian tries to talk him into it but again Lahey says no. In the process, Lahey reveals something important where he tells Julian that you can do anything you want in the park as long as you own the property you live on but most of the places there are leased. That seemed to spark something in Julian as he thanks Lahey for his time and heads out.

Brandon’s Take: And now we have the end game for this particular episode. I really liked how it was made clear that Lahey accidentally revealed a loophole to Julian and you can tell that the gears were going in his head as he left Lahey’s.

We come back with the boys and Ricky’s worried Lahey will try to shut it down but Julian says there’s nothing Lahey can do about it when Corey and Trevor show up begging to get to perform at the concert but all they get is told to leave. The boys then arrive at J-Roc’s to tell him about the concert and his mom takes them into his room where they catch him masturbating. J-Roc tries to deny that’s what he was doing but of course no one believes him but they promise not to tell anyone about it and then inform him about the concert. As they leave his room we see that unbeknownst to everyone else, Corey and Trevor saw it as well.

Brandon’s Take: Probably one of the funniest scenes we’ve seen so far in the series and Bubbles had the line of the show when he said J-Roc was “Pulling his goalie.” I think I’m gonna steal that one.

We then have a couple of scenes about Bubbles talking about how he feels bad for J-Roc getting caught and Sarah and Lucy mentioning Corey and Trevor blabbing about seeing J-Roc masturbating and questions what they were doing peeking in his window. Corey and Trevor then state that they were only looking cause they wanted to talk to J-Roc about getting on the concert. Back with Lucy and Sarah, they’re worried that Corey and Trevor telling everyone about what they saw could ruin the concert and they also speculate that Corey and Trevor possibly have a crush on J-Roc. J-Roc then emerges from his trailer and after some awkward encounters with a couple of the park residents, he gets paranoid that people know what happened, even after Ricky assures him that no one could no cause they didn’t tell anyone and they reveal to him that the concert is going to take place on his mom’s roof. Tryone shows up and, loudly, asks about J-Roc getting caught and J-Roc blows it off and then quietly tells him to shut up. There’s a quick cut to another scene of J-Roc and Tryone sitting on the hood of a car while J-Roc tries to explain that what he was doing was method rap and he was writing a song of a sexual nature and was trying to get himself into that mindset.

Brandon’s Take: It was a hoot to see the way that J-Roc kept coming up with different excuses for what he was doing. This episode has been a showcase for his character and he’s been delivering so far.

Back with all of the boys together, J-Roc is still worried about people knowing what was going on when Bubbles tells him that he’s been selling his CDs all day and Julian chimes in and says that only happened cause J-Roc’s a rap start which gives him his confidence back. They then take J-Roc back to his trailer where the stage is being set up at which really gives J-Roc an even bigger confidence boost. However the celebration is cut short by the arrival of Randy and Lahey who want to shut the concert down but because J-Roc’s mom owns the property, there’s nothing he can do. Lahey again says that was firm in that he wanted no rap concert at all and now they will have to face the consequences for it. As they leave, Lahey mentions that he warned the boys and when he arrives at the trailer, he calls one of the artists that J-Roc pirated music from and informs him of what’s going on.

Brandon’s Take: Things are about to come to ahead as the concert begins and Lahey has put a plan in motion to ruin things for the boys. And that s**t analogy Lahey used was one of the best ones he’s done and Randy trying to figure out the logics of it was laugh out loud funny.

At the concert, Bubbles is getting everyone warmed up and lays down the ground rules cause of the legal issues about staying on J-Roc’s property. While that’s going on, Ricky uses duct tape to lay out the boundary that no one can cross otherwise Lahey could legally call the police. Inside the trailer, J-Roc is getting ready while Julian gives him a pep talk to get his morale up before he goes on stage and even turns the masturbating into a positive by saying it just shows he has a healthy sex drive which the ladies love. When that’s done, Detroit Velvet Smooth, the rapper that Lahey had called, arrives and meets with Lahey and Randy who show him the CDs that the boys have been selling and DVS gets pissed and wants to see J-Roc immdiately and Lahey is only too happy to oblige. They arrive at J-Roc’s and DVS is a bit amused at what he’s seeing but quickly grabs everyone’s attention by firing a gun in the air and says he’s there to speak to J-Roc. Julian tries to diffuse the situation but DVS isn’t having any of it and demands royalties from the boys for pirating his music. J-Roc hops down from the stage and, for lack of a better term, marks out for DVS and says how big of a fan he is, but DVS is all business and just wants his money. J-Roc tries to use his cross promotion angle and in the process refers to DVS as his brother which sets him off and he calls out J-Roc’s blackness and calls him a punk which completely shatters J-Roc’s confidence and self identity. There is a scene in there with Sarah and Lucy who explain that no one has ever questioned J-Roc being black before cause everyone in the trailer park always went with it cause J-Roc legit believes he is black. When they’re done, we go back to J-Roc and Tyrone on the hood of the car talking to the camera crew as J-Roc tries to explain how there are different degrees of black and where he falls on the chart. DVS finishes his tirade by calling J-Roc a punk and that’s enough for J-Roc to head back inside his trailer.

Brandon’s Take: A very good scene with some much needed character development for J-Roc who had always been just a lackey for the boys when they needed something done. Funniest parts of this section was Bubbles repeating everything Ricky was saying over the microphone at the start of the concert and when J-Roc was explaining the degrees of black, Tyrone’s facial expressions were fantastic.

With J-Roc having an identity crisis, the boys have to figure out how to keep the crowd interested so Julian has Corey and Trevor, calling themselves Prime Minister C and T-Bag hop on stage and start rapping and as expected, the bomb horribly as the crowd boos them and starts throwing trash up on stage. J-Roc’s mom goes into his room and she’s stunned to see him dressed like a stereotypical suburban white kid and he admits that he’s white. Julian can’t let Corey and Trevor stay up there any longer and sends Bubbles on stage to rap while he tries to get J-Roc his confidence back. J-Roc’s mom though is working on it herself as she tries to encourage him to get back on stage, reminding him that she was the one who bought him his turntables and that she did it because she believes in him. At the concert, Bubbles starts rapping about his kitties while J-Roc’s mom continues encouraging her son by revealing that before he was born she was involved with black guys, hinting that J-Roc may possibly have black genes in him. Julian pays DVS the money that’s owed to him and then calls J-Roc’s mom over to talk to DVS and she manages to convince him to give J-Roc a pep talk. While that’s going on, Bubbles keeps rapping and the crowd is chanting for him. Inside the trailer DVS manages to convince J-Roc to get back out there by telling him he hasn’t figured out what J-Roc is but he’s cool and he enjoyed some of his songs. The two of them then head out and perform a rap together as J-Roc starts rapping about him getting caught masturbating earlier as the episode ends.

Brandon’s Take: Excellent way to end the episode and this isn’t the last that we’ll be seeing of DVS as he’ll be back for seasons 4 and 5. Trevor and Corey trying to rap while ripping on J-Roc was a riot.

Final Thoughts: 10/10 Make no mistake about it, this episode’s purpose to get J-Roc over and it did just that. Maybe not quite as high of importance as Julian, Ricky, and Bubbles, but definitely the tier below them. The comedy was very good and we saw one of the minor characters get some much needed development. It was after this episode that I ended up falling in love with J-Roc as a character. Great episode.