Bubbles | |
---|---|
First appearance | Episode 101 |
Portrayed by | Mike Smith |
In-universe information | |
Gender | Male |
Occupation | shopping cart repairman |
Bubbles is a fictional character on the Canadian television series Trailer Park Boys portrayed by Mike Smith. He is one of the three main characters on the show along with Julian and Ricky.
Character summary
Bubbles is Julian and Ricky's best friend and conscience, known for his hoarse voice, absent-mindedness, and coke-bottle glasses. Abandoned as a five year old, Bubbles lives in Julian's tool shed with his cats, who are his only family (aside from Julian and Ricky). He makes a living by stealing and refurbishing shopping carts. The scheme entails the theft of the carts from numerous local malls by tossing them into a ravine from which he retrieves them at night. He then takes the carts home, fixes them up, re-paints them, and resells them to other malls for $18 per cart, an act which he calls 'remarketing' and does not consider a crime (because the proceeds ultimately go back to the malls, towards cat food). Lahey and Randy do not interfere with this scheme, but Bubbles was given a hard time by Gary the Mall Cop and Ricky during his temporary job as a guard. In recent seasons, Bubbles seems to have largely abandoned this line of work in favour of the "Kittyland Love Centre", a daycare centre for cats, complete with playground equipment Bubbles put together from scavenged junk. Despite an initially rough start (with Ricky messing up Bubbles' initial appearance on a local cable access show to promote his new business, and, ultimately, with Lahey - pretending to be drunk to obtain evidence of Ricky's illegal activities - and Randy - there both to torment Ricky and to keep Lahey in line - interrupting), Kittyland is doing quite well, as Bubbles takes very good care of his customers' cats.
In the first season, his voice was low and monotone, but in the second season, his voice changed to one he has kept since. He explained that he accidentally had his tonsils removed while Julian and Ricky were doing three months in jail, and this is the reason for his currently hoarse and rough voice.
An animal lover, Bubbles makes the ballooning population of stray cats his own responsibility, feeding and looking after them. Even though most are grown, he refers to them as kitties. Once, he actually tried to care for a mountain lion which he named 'Steve French', and discovered in the half-eaten dope fields near the trailer park. When 'Steve French' got out of control in the park, Bubbles was forced to release him back into the wild. At the end of Season Four, Bubbles was charged for the first time for driving, and crashing, a courier truck with a blatantly fake license. But because it was his first offense, he was given permission by the judge to keep one of his kitties ("Vince the Pince") in his cell during his two month sentence, since the cat had a deformed paw and therefore was (allegedly) unable to look after itself. However, Bubbles revealed that he had lied to the judge, "so I could have the little ma'fucker in here with me!"
His name comes from his childhood love of blowing bubbles. His parents abandoned him on Christmas Eve, leaving an explanatory note and an antique bubble making machine (a "1961 Electro-bubble"), which for a time Bubbles used to entertain his cats. Sadly, the machine was destroyed into a tangled lump of metal when his shed caught fire (the result of a poor wiring job by Ricky, Cory and Trevor who were trying to use it as a temporary home for Ricky's grow-op). After being abandoned by his parents, Bubbles was raised by Julian's foster parents for his own safety due to his parents being hunted down for his father's gambling debts, fighting, and shooting his mouth off down at the Legion. Bubbles moved into a van owned by J-Roc, and paid $12 a month rent. A new shed, outfitted with a TV, video games, satellite hookup, and furniture, was later purchased for Bubbles by Julian with some of his drug money after he got out of a three-month jail sentence. He apparently had another shed (a wooden one that let rain in on Trailer Park Boys: The Movie), which Lahey destroyed, but he constructed a new one with the help of Julian. This incident seemed to take place between the third and sixth seasons.
Bubbles' favourite band is Rush; he was guitar tech for Alex Lifeson at a Rush concert. Bubbles loves professional wrestling and even dresses up as his own character, "The Green Bastard," from "parts unknown." (There is also an alcoholic drink named after this persona, made from Sour Puss, Vodka, and Butter Ripple Schnapps) In addition, he acted in two pornographic films, From Russia With The Love Bone and The Bare Pimp Project, both of which were directed by J-Roc. He also drives a go-cart (which Ricky, bought for Bubbles using some of his drug money after he got out of jail) while wearing a Cooper hockey helmet, which he is good at doing (although he often crashes), and makes expert use of the word cocksucker. He also dressed as C-3PO Halloween 1977, which was the same night they got into trouble with Mr. Lahey for the first time. Bubbles has remarkable musical talent, most especially with the guitar, although he was also very skilled in singing off-the-cuff rap music at J-Roc's rap concert, keeping the crowd entertained until J-Roc himself returned to the stage. His guitar playing occasionally gets him into trouble-on one occasion when he got extremely drunk, he annoyed Officer George Green so much with his drunken guitar playing that he and Julian were hauled downtown to spend the night in the city drunk tank.
Bubbles has been said to be the moral centre of the group, in that he represents the purity and innocence that the other characters seem to lack. His perspectives are often rooted in the ideals of staying out of trouble, and helping the meek, illustrated by his love for kitties. In spite of sometimes appearing slightly mentally disabled to some people at first glance, he is really not that dim at all, "the sharpest guy in the park," as proclaimed by Ray, and often he is the very first to really understand what is going on. Bubbles is in fact extremely intelligent and intellectual, reading and quoting Plato and Socrates, as he mentions in one of his raps. He feels very remorseful when Ricky (falsely) tells Bubbles that it was Bubbles who accidentally burned down Ricky's dad's trailer after leaving a pot of French Fries frying too long, and so raids the town dump to get his friend new stuff, as an apology (when in fact, it was Ricky who burned down the trailer with the pot of fries). Surprisingly, whenever the cops swoop into the trailer park to bust one of the boys' operations, Bubbles usually manages to avoid getting busted or nailed by the police in most of the show, with even Randy vouching for him at one point, at least until he was caught at the end of Season Four by Officer George Green in the episode "Working Man".Bubbles is also a great shot, probably the best of the three boys, even though he dislikes guns. His prowess was shown in the season 2 finale, in which he helped Ricky in Julian against Cyrus and Sam in a gun battle using an AK-47 assault rifle and in the season 5 finale, in which he fought alongside Ricky and Julian using a sub-machine gun.
Bubbles' birthday is sometime in July, in 1972, placing him at 35 years old as of 2007.
Jail Count: 2
- Season 4, episode 8: Reckless Driving With A Fake License.
- Season 4, episode 1: Spent the night in the Drunk Tank.
Conky
Bubbles' evil alter-ego is a ventriloquist dummy named Conky, who he constructed in grade six (though, in season 7, Bubbles explains that Conky was originally his grandfather's, who used the puppet as part of a vaudeville act). The pair bear a striking resemblance to each other. Every time Bubbles operated the puppet, it took over his mind and was very fond of insulting Julian and Ricky, especially the latter. They threw Conky into the swamp to protect Bubbles while the boys were drunk in grade 6, but years later, they crossed heads again when Bubbles, who had to see a doctor, insisted on taking the puppet with him. They soon caved in, rescued Conky, and Bubbles took the doll to the hospital. Conky tormented Julian by calling him Patrick Swayze which resulted in the puppet getting shot by Julian, effectively breaking the curse on Bubbles. However in "Let the Liquor Do the Thinking" Bubbles starts to worry that the police will find out about the model train he stole earlier in the season. At the very end of the episode it is revealed that sometime after he found out that he was wanted by the police he went to the swamp where Julian and Ricky, dumped Conky's remains and retrieved them. Throughout Season 7, Conky's (or perhaps some other) personality would occasionally surface and compel Bubbles to make certain scathing, sarcastic remarks in Conky's falsetto voice, or otherwise behave oddly in moments of intense stress. Bubbles often seems unaware of it when it happens, and the Boys seem to let it slide without too much thought, as they are often preoccupied. Conky met his final end in "A Shitriver Runs Through It" when Bubbles himself "drowned" Conky in the river. This is different then the other times Conky was killed as it was not Ricky (tossed him into a swamp) or Julian (shooting him in the head) doing the job. This might show the good-natured Bubbles' finally removing Conky from his psyche for good. Evidently, as soon as Conky "died", Bubbles instantly surrendered and told the others to do the same. This may not be the end of Conky; even though he was officially drowned, as Conky mentions to Ricky in his first appearance "luckily I don't need oxygen to live underwater, idiot!".
After the incident at the border, Bubbles uses some of his share of the money on a therapist, who tells him that Conky was a defense mechanism to cope with the sheer absurdity of Julian and Ricky's schemes, and that, in a sense, Conky saved him.