1. A cult favorite TV show comes to the Cosmopolitan the other dayyyyy… Letterkenny Live, a stage version of the Hulu comedy series, arrived at the Chelsea some two years past its original scheduled date. Unfortunate, as Wayne would say, his brow set in an annoyed squint. But the COVID-necessitated delay might have actually been a blessing in disguise: it allowed more Americans to discover the pleasures of this Canadian import, logging dozens upon dozens of pandemic hours hanging out in front of the produce stand. As a result, the crowd of aspiring hicks, skids, hockey players and degens who greeted series stars Jared Keeso, Nathan Dales, Michelle Mylett, K. Trevor Wilson, Dylan Playfair, Andrew Herr, Tyler Johnston, Evan Stern and Mark Forward at the Cosmo on April 2 was massive, grateful and well-versed in Letterkenny lore. When Keeso asked the Vegas crowd “How’re you now?”, the “Good, and you?” he received was Texas-sized.

2. Nice execution. You’re doin’ terrific. Letterkenny Live (well, actually Puppers Golden Lager Presents Letterkenny Live!, named for the Ontario-only beer inspired by the show’s fictional beverage) consisted of a mix of original skits (and one classic, but more on that in a moment), standup sets by Forward (Coach) and Wilson (Squirrely Dan), video clips—some new, but most of them familiar—and a few good-natured chirps at Vegas. (UNLV took the brunt of it, but the Vegas Golden Knights, Boulevard Mall and, unexpectedly, Downtown sandwich shop The Goodwich also served to tee up gags.)

Some bits of the show got over on personality alone; I might’ve traded off the in-character explanations of why certain cast members weren’t of the stage in favor of some out-of-character Q&A. (Though to be fair—to be faaaaaaair—I didn’t mind hearing what Gail, Glen, Tanis, Jimmy Dickens and Bonnie McMurray are up to these days. And I just now noticed that only a few people in Letterkenny, Ontario seem to have first and last names. Huh.)

Anyway, to paraphrase a certain group of hicks: If a friend asks you to hang out, you hang out with ‘em. Even if the cast of Letterkenny Live had simply walked onto the stage, sat down and spent two hours drinking Puppers Golden Lagers in beatific silence, the show would’ve been worth every penny. Letterkenny is, above all things, an excellent hang. It felt good just to be in the same room with that crew.

3. That’s what I appreciates about you. I can’t tell you much of what was said on stage for two important reasons. One, most of it was gleefully, even religiously profane, and two, a lot of the wordplay flowed so quickly that I couldn’t follow it all. (Both things are completely on-brand for Letterkenny, a show whose biggest laughs often come from its rapid-fire, whip-smart and sometimes even poetic conversations between friends.)

But I can tell you that we heard Daryl (Dales) ruminating aloud about the habits of the Secret Service. We witnessed Katy (Mylett) dressing down the hockey players for their tardiness and shoddy IKEA assembly. Best of all, we got to hear Shoresy (Keeso) working Reilly (Playfair) and Jonesy (Herr) into an apoplectic rage by talking about their mothers, which is tantamount to watching Hendrix bust out a solo, only the notes are exquisitely lurid descriptions of sex acts. (On a related note, the show ended with the “Yes, yes, yes” porno skit, whose particulars I can’t describe here. Just Google it.)

The stand-up sets were more hit than miss. Forward fumbled a bit with his “Hitler’s Mother” TV pitch (“Every week, someone comes back through time to try to kill her son”), but ended strong with a sing-along about an underappreciated Canadian folk hero who just … named bears. And Wilson’s likening the insertion of a suppository to the five stages of grief was an inspired choice. (“Stage one: Denial. It just spits it right out.”) And the comics were introduced, in character, by Stewart (Johnston) and Roald (Stern), who took the opportunity to show off some strong hip-hop dance moves.

4. Yew! Letterkenny has cosplayers now! I spotted several Squirrely Dans, Stewarts, Roalds, Katys, McMurrays, Shoresys and even a family of Quebecois degens on the floor of Chelsea—which, like the rest of the venue, was packed solid. Letterkenny may still be a bit of a cult favorite, but that cult is growing exponentially.

5. You gonna fight with those shades on, or play PokerStars.com? At the end of the show, the cast group-hugged, then stepped out of character to say their real names, the names of their hometowns and to acknowledge their family members and sweeties in the crowd. There were a lot of them, because this wasn’t just a tour stop, Keeso admitted: The Letterkenny crew intended to stay on in Vegas for a day or two to enjoy what our hometown has to offer.

I sincerely hope they enjoyed it. I hope that Shoresy got to chirp at his countrymen in the Golden Knights. I hope that Reilly and Jonesy got to crush a few Goodwich sandos. I hope that Katy, Letterkenny’s reigning spelling bee champ, got to hit up the Writer’s Block. And above all, I hope that Vegas treated them well enough that they’ll come back. Or, at the very least, to chirp about the city again, this time on their home turf, in a future season of the show. Thanks for comin’ up the property, Letterkenny, even if you weren’t on (expletive) time.