Monday is back to being my favourite day of the week.
You know why?
Well, perhaps you might guess that it’s because I have Mondays off, and that would be partially correct.
But the real tipping point is Canada’s Worst Driver, which is now airing new episodes again!
This is one of the best shows on TV. I frigging love it.
If you aren’t Canadian, you don’t understand. Allow me to try and explain.
Canada’s Worst Driver operates on a simple premise: Canadians submit their friend/wife/husband/mother/father/sibling/enemy as a candidate for the show. The show investigates, and they pick some of the absolute balls-out worst drivers they can find.
The people who go on Canada’s Worst Driver aren’t seeking prizes. There’s no cash award for being Canada’s Worst Driver. They go on because they want the TV time (I’ll be famous!) or simply to prove to the world that they are NOT that bad (often those are the ones who “win”…)
Usually, in a given season, you have the following types of bad driver:
- The nervous wreck, who cries constantly, panics, and then does something really idiotic (usually a woman, but the winner of a recent season was a man who fell into this category)
- The speed demon (usually a man who fancies himself to be an excellent driver who simply chooses not to follow stupid rules like speed limits, the yellow line, or not hitting other people)
- The party animal (usually there are a couple of these of either gender: the person is just so busy chatting with their passengers/on their cell phone that they can’t be bothered to watch the road. These people usually laugh hysterically when they hit something).
- The complete moron (Can be of either gender, means well, promises to follow instructions, and then fails spectacularly. Every. Single. Time).
Once selected, these candidates have their cars and licenses taken away and they are thrown into “driver rehabilitation”, where they are given driving classes followed by “driving challenges” while a tall, worried-looking Andrew Younghusband lectures them, and then narrates to us as they proceed to screw up.
He gets very specific about exactly HOW they are screwing up, and WHY they suck so much. Every episode a group of panelists vote for the person who is most rehabilitated, and that person gets to go home.
The last person standing is dubbed Canada’s Worst Driver. They get a trophy and a good helping of shame.
It’s awesome.
It is amazing how crazy/stupid some of these people are. For example, many of the drivers are astoundingly bad at identifying basic road signs, like Angelina in Season 5 who got ONE out of ten basic road signs, or Dale in Season 6, who, when shown this road sign:
went on a ramble claiming that it means that the road is going to turn, and there will be a dead end at the end of it.
A couple of times Andrew Younghusband has had to turn to the camera and say, “THESE ARE NOT ACTORS. WE CAN’T BELIEVE THEY’RE REAL, EITHER.”
If you have never watched the show, here’s a taste:
There’s an American version of this show, but it sucks donkey balls for the following reasons:
1. It doesn’t have Andrew Younghusband.
2. It doesn’t try to rehabilitate the drivers.
3. It doesn’t point out all of the ways in which the drivers are terrible drivers.
4. It doesn’t explain how to drive properly, so that you can feel smug and say “I ALWAYS shoulder check when changing lanes”.
5. It doesn’t have Andrew Younghusband.
All it really does is steal some of the challenges from CWD, and then have Robosaurus eat the car of the person who failed the most challenges.
…Which is cool, I grant you.
CWD doesn’t have Robosaurus.
But it isn’t as SATISFYING.
No, it’s not the same.
But the important thing, is that CWD 7 is BACK ON THE AIR, and the third episode is tonight.
LOVELOVELOVE.
We don’t pay for cable, but if we did, it’d be worth it just to get CWD.
If By Yes 
I also love this show with an unreasonable amount of passion. And Andrew Younghusband? *sighs, fans face* He is just delightful.
What I love most about the show is that the expert panel are actually experts! And I’ve learned things from watching the show, too. Like how to drive correctly while towing a trailer.
Remember the season with the older lady from Manitoba who, it turned out, had absolutely butt-awful vision and didn’t know it? So they got her some glasses? AND THEN SHE WAS STILL TERRIBLE?
YES.
Angelina was their pinnacle of awfulness, though. They can never beat her.
That guy Wil is an abusive asshole. If that’s how he treats her with the camera on him, what’s he like in private? She’s afraid of him, that’s obvious. Jeez.
Don’t worry, Andrew Younghusband took him in hand and MADE HIM CRY.
I didn’t take my road test until I was in my twenties. I did driving school…and we totally watched CWD – love it! 🙂
It would be great for driving school!
i absolutely love this show but this last episode was screwed on my tv. It wasn’t even close to the full screen it was like a quarter of the size in a small box in the middle of the screen. Very frustrating, anybody else experience this or is my tv messed up?
Hm, no, mine was fine…
I just watched it because I had it on DVR (11pm is too late for me these days!) And yes, 99% of the episode was in this weird square in the middle of the screen. Almost like when you watch a widescreen movie except the left & right of the screen were black, too.
Weird. Delivery method? I have cable, non-digital, non-HD.
I do have digital cable but no HD. Huh.
They have “Britain’s Worst Driver” as well, and it was quite funny, in a scary as hell sort of way. You really wonder how on earth these people managed to get a license in the first place, considering … well … I failed my first time because I TOOK TOO LONG to adjust and hit the kerb at 1 mph when trying to do a parallel park behind a car. Hardly things that (realistically) would be very dangerous, and yet some of these people … yeah. WHY are they allowed on the road when they CLEARLY have no idea of how to drive?! o.O
It baffles me how some of these people got their license.
Speaking as a British person living in Ireland, that basic road-sign is actually very puzzling. My best guess for what it means: “Turn left if you like, but we don’t know what the hell’s down that way.”
I can see that. But if you live in Canada and got your license here, you’d be very familiar with the white-on-brown question mark sign. It means “tourist information” and they are EVERYWHERE.
Although I like your interpretation better.
I live in Ontario and have never once seen one of those signs.
Maybe you don’t live in a very touristy area, because they’re there. I found this tourist information sign on Google Streetview in a matter of minutes in Thunder Bay of all places.
And even if you don’t see them much where you live, I bet you can recognize that it’s a question mark.
Canada’s worst drivers also don’t recognize signs like the Trans-Canada Highway sign. I believe it was Angelina who swore up and down she’d never seen one of those in her life!
And what does it say that you have never seen at tourist information sign before, but at least were able to recognize that it is, in fact, a question mark, and not a weird depiction of a peculiar road?
Well, it shows I know some basic punctuation marks. But it also suggests that if I came to Canada, where I presumably would be a tourist, I wouldn’t get very much information:-) Or I wouldn’t have done before, but now I will thanks to your blog.
Oh you should come to our house Monday nights. We watch it religiously (Although we missed the first episode this year – I didn’t realize that time was upon us and didn’t set the PVR)
Also, can I say that it actually makes me really mad that Robosaurus crushes the cars at the end of America’s Worst Driver. Maybe it’s the nagging environmentalist in me, or maybe it’s the fact that being Canadian makes me just a little bit socialist… but I can’t help but think that SOMEONE COULD BE USING THAT CAR! DON’T CRUSH IT! IT’S WASTEFUL! Give it to poor people or something instead, or to one of those “Cars for Kidneys” programs.