Richard "Ricky" LaFleur is a fictional character in the television series ''
Trailer Park Boys
''Trailer Park Boys'' is a Canadian mockumentary sitcom television series created by Mike Clattenburg that began airing in 2001 as a continuation of his 1999 film bearing the same name. The show follows the misadventures of a group of trailer pa ...
''. He is one of the three main protagonists on the show, along with
Julian and
Bubbles. Portrayed by
Robb Wells
Robb is a surname of Scottish people, Scottish origin, formed from a diminution (reduction) of the name Robert. Robert was a popular name, especially after its use by three Scots Kings in the fourteenth century. Rob is first recorded as a surname ...
, the character was created by series creator
Mike Clattenburg
Mike Clattenburg is a Canadian television and film director, producer and screenwriter. He is best known as creator, executive producer, writer and director of the TV comedy series ''Trailer Park Boys'' (2001–2008), for his work with ''This H ...
. Ricky also appears in five films; two short, and three feature length. Before the show, he appeared in the short films ''The Cart Boy'' (1995), and ''Trailer Park Boys'' (1999). He appears in the feature-length films: ''
Trailer Park Boys: The Movie'' (2006), ''
Countdown to Liquor Day'' (2009), and ''
Don't Legalize It'' (2014). Ricky also appears in numerous spin-offs, including ''Out of the Park: Europe'', ''Out of the Park: USA'', and ''
The Animated Series'', for which the latter Robb Wells voices him.
Season 12's first episode "Chlamydia" officially revealed Ricky's last name to be LaFleur.
Character biography
Ricky is a fun-loving, dim-witted slacker who enjoys
marijuana
Cannabis, also known as marijuana among other names, is a psychoactive drug from the cannabis plant. Native to Central or South Asia, the cannabis plant has been used as a drug for both recreational and entheogenic purposes and in various tra ...
,
Jalapeño Potato Chips,
pepperoni
Pepperoni is an American variety of spicy salami made from cured pork and beef seasoned with paprika or other chili pepper.
Prior to cooking, pepperoni is characteristically soft, slightly smoky, and bright red. Thinly sliced pepperoni is one ...
,
chicken chips
Humpty Dumpty Snack Foods is an American food company, operating as a subsidiary of Old Dutch Foods, that packages and sells snack foods. The company is named after the nursery rhyme character and features the character as the company logo. Humpt ...
,
licorice
Liquorice (British English) or licorice (American English) ( ; also ) is the common name of ''Glycyrrhiza glabra'', a flowering plant of the bean family Fabaceae, from the root of which a sweet, aromatic flavouring can be extracted.
The liq ...
, cigarettes,
ravioli
Ravioli (; singular: ''raviolo'', ) are a type of pasta comprising a filling enveloped in thin pasta dough. Usually served in broth or with a sauce, they originated as a traditional food in Italian cuisine. Ravioli are commonly square, though o ...
,
chicken fingers
Chicken fingers (also known as chicken goujons, chicken strips, chicken tenders, chicken nuggets or chicken fillets) are chicken meat prepared from the pectoralis minor muscles of the animal. These strips of white meat are located on either side ...
,
fish sticks
Fish fingers (British English) or fish sticks (American English) are a processed food made using a whitefish, such as cod, hake, haddock, shark or pollock, which has been battered or breaded. They are commonly available in the frozen food se ...
, and alcoholic beverages. He is also a fast-talking schemer. His daughter Trinity is a
kleptomaniac
Kleptomania is the inability to resist the urge to steal items, usually for reasons other than personal use or financial gain. First described in 1816, kleptomania is classified in psychiatry
Psychiatry is the specialty (medicine), medical ...
and his ex-girlfriend, Lucy, is a stripper. He and Julian have been best friends since they were kids.
In the 1999 original black-and-white ''Trailer Park Boys'' movie, Ricky used
cocaine
Cocaine (from , from , ultimately from Quechuan languages, Quechua: ''kúka'') is a central nervous system (CNS) stimulant mainly recreational drug use, used recreationally for its euphoria, euphoric effects. It is primarily obtained from t ...
with his friend Julian, which he references in the first episode of season one: as he is getting out of prison, he tells the camera crew Julian hired that "
ulians the one force-feeding me drugs and every other goddamn thing. ..." Ricky and Julian have been best friends since childhood and are almost codependent, with Ricky relying on his friend to guide him and keep his antics in check. While good-natured towards his friends and family, Ricky is also selfish, foul-mouthed, volatile, and aggressive, and almost always manages to anger, offend, and alienate those around him. He has always been a troublemaker and often refuses to take responsibility for his actions, illegal or otherwise.
He seems to believe that any form of evidence of wrongdoing can be dispensed by simply flinging it into the air from where he is standing or by submerging it in a nearby lake. As a result, the grounds of the trailer park and the lake are littered with evidence of crimes. A lifetime of drinking, smoking dope, and slacking off have left Ricky with a below-average intelligence, for which he is often ridiculed. Even Ricky considers himself stupid, having repeatedly failed grades before entirely dropping out of school after Grade 9. It is only in Season 2 that Ricky resumes his education; he eventually passes Grades 10 and 11 only to fail Grade 12 in ''Countdown to Liquor Day''. However, he has moments of cleverness and displays practical expertise, as in growing marijuana (at which his skill is unsurpassed), fixing cars, siphoning gas, playing ball hockey, and cooking. He is also extremely adept at fast-talking, negotiating himself and his friends out of seemingly impossible situations with a mixture of quick thinking, confident acting and overwhelming subjects with nonsensical yet somehow credible arguments. Though characters such as Lahey or the police deride him as a loser and a criminal, he's devoted to his friends and family, especially to his daughter Trinity. In the Season 3 premiere, after discovering that he squandered all of his earnings on a successful drug deal from Season 2, Ricky was forced to pick between purchasing his own trailer or buying encyclopedias that he ordered for Trinity; Ricky chose the latter at the expense of having to kiss Lahey's bare buttocks in front of the rest of the trailer park residents after losing a bet with him.
Although he often tries to take the easy way out by breaking the law instead of getting a real job, he occasionally demonstrates dedication to work and education to prove that he's more than a criminal lowlife. Ricky is known for his trademark
malapropisms
A malapropism (also called a malaprop, acyrologia, or Dogberryism) is the mistaken use of an incorrect word in place of a word with a similar sound, resulting in a nonsensical, sometimes humorous utterance. An example is the statement attributed to ...
("Denial and error"; "Catch-23 situation"; "Get two birds stoned at once"; "Worst case Ontario"; "It's clear to see who makes the pants here"; "gorilla see, gorilla do"), dubbed "Rickyisms" by fans. He usually wears black track pants and a
Houndstooth
Houndstooth, hounds tooth check or hound's tooth (and similar spellings), also known as dogstooth, dogtooth, dog's tooth, (), (), is a duotone textile pattern characterized by broken checks or abstract four-pointed shapes, traditionally in black ...
patterned shirt and enjoys listening to Canadian '80s rock bands such as
Helix
A helix () is a shape like a corkscrew or spiral staircase. It is a type of smooth space curve with tangent lines at a constant angle to a fixed axis. Helices are important in biology, as the DNA molecule is formed as two intertwined helices, ...
,
April Wine
April Wine is a Canadian rock band formed in 1969 and based in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Led by singer-guitarist-songwriter Myles Goodwin since its inception, April Wine's first success came with its second album, '' On Record'' (1972), which reac ...
, and
Kim Mitchell
Joseph Kim Mitchell (born July 10, 1952) is a Canadian rock musician. He was the lead singer and guitarist for the band Max Webster before going on to a solo career. His 1984 single, " Go for Soda", was his only charted song on the US ''Billboa ...
. For most of the series, Ricky lives in and drives the "Shitmobile", a dilapidated 1975 green
Chrysler New Yorker
The Chrysler New Yorker is an automobile model that was produced by Chrysler from 1940 until 1996, serving for several decades as the brand's flagship model, or as a junior sedan to the Chrysler Imperial luxury brand. A trim level named the "Ne ...
that used to belong to Julian's grandmother.
To his embarrassment, he resembles the hypnotist
Peter Reveen
Peter J. Reveen (8 October 1935 – 8 April 2013) was an Australian illusionist and hypnotist who performed mainly in Canada, and particularly Atlantic Canada.
Early life
Reveen was born in Adelaide, Australia, and traveled to the US in J ...
. He has also been compared to
Elvis Presley
Elvis Aaron Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977), or simply Elvis, was an American singer and actor. Dubbed the "Honorific nicknames in popular music, King of Rock and Roll", he is regarded as Cultural impact of Elvis Presley, one ...
. In season 8, Ricky gets a pet goldfish named "Orangie", who dies because Ricky fills his bowl with alcohol in an attempt to "party" with the fish. Bubbles convinces Ricky that the fish is merely in a deep slumber, eventually employing Jacob and Cory to replace the fish without Ricky's knowledge. For the remainder of the season, Bubbles keeps a supply of "Orangies" in his shed as replacements as Ricky repeatedly kills his pet.
In season 9, Ricky acquires a pet baby goat, which he names "Willy Goat"; Ricky also becomes a grandfather in season 9 when Trinity gives birth to a son, The Motel, of whom Jacob Collins is the father. Ricky struggles to accept this at first, but soon seems to realize that Jacob is similar to himself and gives Jacob his blessing to marry Trinity.
As in previous seasons, Ricky remains devoted to his family, including his new grandson, and to his pets despite his attempts to get them drunk and stoned. In the ninth episode of season 10, Ricky is shot by Pvt. Dancer, who struggled with Jim Lahey, after they agreed that they would kill someone to solve their problems. Alcohol was involved. The bullet struck his temporal lobe, sending him into a coma. During this coma, in episode 10, a very drunk Jim Lahey visited Ricky.
At this time, Lahey claimed that Ricky was his biological son, explaining that this caused Ricky's mother to leave Sunnyvale and Jim and Ray to hate each other. However, in Season Eleven, after Ricky discovers the "truth" of his heritage, it is revealed that Lahey is not his father, although Lahey himself firmly believed that he was. After doing research at the hospital, Bubbles and Julian discovered that neither Lahey nor Ray are Ricky's biological father.
Reception and legacy
''College Humour'' described Ricky by saying: "... it's Ricky that keeps us coming back – the dumbest of the show's core trio, often the highest, sometimes the scummiest, but always uniquely himself. We love you, Ricky, you greasy bastard". ''Screen Rant'' described Ricky by saying: "The audience learns about the details of the crime later, and our knowledge of Ricky gets filled in the same way. We don't know much about him at first except what we hear about him from other people. Then we see the rumors come to life with hilarious and cringeworthy results. Even the most popular guy in the trailer park has his secrets."
In 2005, Robb Wells in character as Ricky, along with
Mike Smith and
John Paul Tremblay
John Paul Tremblay (born May 17, 1968) is a Canadian actor, screenwriter, and comedian who is most well known for his role as Julian in the TV series Trailer Park Boys.
Career
Before acting in Trailer Park Boys, Tremblay and his future co-sta ...
as
Bubbles and
Julian, threw out the first pitch at the
home opener of the
2005 Toronto Blue Jays season at the
Rogers Centre
Rogers Centre (originally SkyDome) is a multi-purpose retractable roof stadium in Downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada, situated at the base of the CN Tower near the northern shore of Lake Ontario. Opened in 1989 on the former Railway Lands, it ...
.
See also
*
List of Trailer Park Boys characters
The following is a list of characters featured in the Canadian television series ''Trailer Park Boys''.
Main characters
Ricky
Richard "Ricky" LaFleur (played by Robb Wells), is one of the three primary characters in the series. Ricky is descri ...
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lafleur, Ricky
Trailer Park Boys
Fictional characters from Nova Scotia
Television characters introduced in 1995
Fictional criminals
Fictional managers
Fictional drug dealers
Fictional unemployed people