Web Animation / The Big Lez Show

"What the fuck?"

"You fuckin' druggo."

— Sassy the Sasquatch on Lez.

The Big Lez Show is an Australian web cartoon, created by Jarrad Wright, Izak Whear & Tom Hollis.

The show deals with the day-to-day life of Leslie "Lez" Mackerel, a short-tempered Australian man. Also along for the ride are his mates Sassy The Sasquatch, a sasquatch stoner who's never far from his bong and "every drug on the planet", and Lez's son Quintin. Lez routinely gets into conflict with his neighbour Norton.

Over the course of the series, the plot changes from a series of random vignettes into a story that involves aliens, mysterious islands, space travel, and the fate of the entire world.

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The Big Lez Show tropes:

• A Day in the Limelight:
  • Season 3's 'Yeah, Nah Mate.' is a 2 and a half minute interview with Mike Nolan advocating the reasons he should be come a city councilman.
  • Similarly, the following episode "Ahow" details Clarence winning a scratchie ticket before having a bird steal it, until Sassy finds the scratchie and rolls it into a joint
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: After all of the charges laid against Lez for beating the shit out of Norton, it's killing a bunch of puppies (which never happened) that lands him behind bars.
• Art Evolution:
  • The animation becomes progressively smoother and higher-resolution over the course of the series. The first two seasons look quite choppy and low quality compared to the latest episodes.
  • If you compare the first episode with the Season 2 finale, the difference in the animation quality is pretty astounding.
• Artistic License – Geography: The Australian mainland has no active volcanoes anywhere in it in real life, unlike the volcano bong located near Brown Town.
• Author Appeal: The creators of the series are big fans of Australian Metalcore band Parkway Drive. In the episode Busted, Sassy's car stereo happens to be playing a couple of their songs while on the way to Hallucination Land.
  • In general, stoner culture. It was initially depicted in an irreverent and joking fashion, but as the creators grew up and had more life-altering experiences on harder drugs, the series gradually started to take itself more seriously in terms of reflecting the real life culture.
• Ax-Crazy:
  • Mike Nolan to an extent, if Choomah Island is anything to indicate.
  • As a matter of fact, Lez himself probably qualifies as this.
• Beyond the Impossible: Sassy will obtain and use drugs anywhere. That includes a deserted island.
• Berserk Button:
  • Lez admits Norton makes his "blood boil" in Choomah Island 2 during his tirade on the plane. Interactions between him and his brother almost always lead to violence.
  • Sharks, or being called "a fisherman", for Ellis.
  Warnington: EVERYONE OUT OF THE WATER! THERE BE A FUCKING SHARK!
• Bittersweet Ending: Big Lez sacrifices his life to kill his father and save the earth, but Quinton is saved and everyone of Lez's friends (and Clarence) honor his memory.
• Butt-Monkey: Clarence, Norton and to some extent Quentin share this role.
• Bland-Name Product: In "Yeah, Nah Mate", Mike Nolan's favorite beer is shown to be "Three X, Bronzes" (a parody of XXXX Gold), and his brand of cigarettes are "Winnie Blue's, Mate." (That's literally the name of the brand. Also a parody of popular Australian cigarette 'Winfield Blues')
• Borrowed Catchphrase: This exchange in "Never Again Land" between Lez, Donny and Sassy
  Lez: *groans* Sassy, I feel like absolute shit. You've really fucked me up this time
  Donny: Heh heh, you fuckin' druggo!
  Sassy: Heh he-fuck off Donny it's my fuckin' catchphrase ya fuckin' druggo.
• Breakout Character: Sassy is extremely popular amongst the show's fanbase. For a while, the creators even sold T-shirts with his likeness on it through the show's Facebook page. Naturally, he got his own spin-off series.
• Catchphrase:
  • Sassy: "You fucken druggo" and "wadiyatalkinabeet?"^*"What are you talking about?"
  • Lez: "What the fuck?"
  • Clarence: "Awwwww no."
• Cerebus Syndrome:
  • The show starts off as a series of seemingly unrelated vignettes before evolving to have an ongoing continuity (though thankfully without sacrificing the series' trademark humor)
  • Clarence's Butt-Monkey nature on the show was played for laughs in the first 3 seasons, but after it's revealed he accidentally warped himself from a handsome, successful scientist to a shrivelled up potadahead who constantly suffers in unending pain despite powerful regenerative capabilities, you can't help but feel a little bit sorry for him, even if it was technically his own negligence that led to this point.
  • The seriousness arguably peaks in Choomah Island 2. Lez has an extremely psychotropic drug trip which is, for once, played completely seriously and results in a genuine epiphany about the nature of his reality. He also brutally murders Norton, casting a dark shadow over the rest of the series.
• Cloudcuckooland: Brown Town is one hell of a fucking weird place.
• Cloud Cuckoo Lander:
  • Sergio, the bounty hunter who Lez and Sassy meet in prison, probably qualifies as this.
  • Sassy's entire characterization is essentially what happens when Cloud Cuckoo Lander meets The Stoner
• Cold Turkeys Are Everywhere: Sassy starts freaking out after going without drugs for 20 minutes in Choomah Island. Donny then gives him a joint, which he smokes down in just one hit.
• Coolest Club Ever: "Never Again Land" takes place almost entirely inside one of these
• Couch Gag:
  • Every episode of Season 3 opens with Lez popping up in the 'O' of the title, and saying a new phrase.
  • In season 1, it was Lez ripping through the show's logo and exclaiming "What the fuck?!" (as shown in the page image.) In season 2 they hung a lampshade on this in the first episode, by having Lez unable to break through the logo in the first episode and taking 2 minutes to make it through the title.
• Deranged Animation: Lez and Sassy's Mushroom Samba sequences in "Trippa Snippa" and "Popcoin" thrive on this.
• A Dog Named "Dog": Sassy the Sasquatch. Also Owlie, although his last name doesn't get mentioned.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Crazy Steve initially shows up a photograph shown in "Yeah Nah, Mate". Over two years later in The Mike Nolan Show, he finally gets introduced to the series proper.
• Embarrassing First Name: "Leslie", although it doesn't seem to get brought up much
  Lez: Leslie is a sick cunt name!
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": After Ellis Warnington saves Lez's life and tells him his name, he claims that everybody calls him "Warning Guy". No one ever calls him by his proper name for the rest of the series.
• Extreme Omnivore: Sassy and Donny are this when it comes to drugs. They will smoke, snort or inject literally any substance into their bodies without any negative repercussions.
  Sassy: We fucking eat this shit for our morning breakfast!
  Donny: It keeps the heart pumping!

  Lez: So you're telling me Heroin is good for ya, and you should have it every day?
  Sassy: Fuck yeah, it's so good for ya!
  Donny: It's good for your cholesterol
  Sassy: And it prevents hair loss!
• Fat Bastard:
  • Norton qualifies as a slightly effeminate variation of this trope.
  • Lez himself could qualify, although he's treated slightly more sympathetically.
• Funny Animal:
  • Sassy, Donny, Wayno, and Scruffy are sasquatches, who can all somehow speak perfect English (well, Australian English anyway), drive cars, drink alcohol, smoke bongs and operate firearms
  • Owlie, on the other hand, is more of a Civilized Animal
  Owlie: Fuck off I'm not a fuckin' galah, I'm a fuckin' owl for fuck's sake!
• Gargle Blaster: Sassy's "Trippa Snippa"
  Lez: Why's it called a Trippa Snippa?
  Sassy: 'Cause it trips you the fuck out, and your whole life gets snipped from reality. Plus you hear the sound of a whipper snipper in the back of your head for about 7 hours or so...
• Gorn: The Choomahs are constant victims to over the top and violent deaths.
• Human Aliens: Lez, Norton and Clarence are all aliens from the highly-futuristic planet Kingdom Cum.
• Insistent Terminology:
  • Sassy believes that popcorn is pronounced "popcoin", claiming he's never heard the word popcorn in his entire life.
  Lez: Say pop
  Sassy: Pop
  Lez: Corn
  Sassy: Corn
  Lez: Now say, popcorn.
  Sassy: *sniff*......Popcoin
  Lez: OH FOR FUCK'S SAKE!
  • In a later episode Sassy refers to chess pawns as "prawns", insisting he was there when the game was invented and never heard them called that before
• Jack of All Trades: Mike Nolan's resume includes a postman worker, construction driver, bricklayer, bus-stop builder, lollipop man, roadside construction, maintenance at theme parks, council worker.
  Mike: You name a fuckin' job that requires a fuckin' high-vis shirt and I'll be there. You wear a fuckin' high-vis shirt and no-one questions you. You just get paid, cash in hand.
• Kangaroo Court:
  • "You're fucking going straight to prison" after Sassy's drug arrest.
  • "On behalf of the jury, I find the defendant guilty and sentence him to a life sentence for murdering those cute puppies you sick fuck." After Lez is arrested for assaulting Norton.
• Kent Brockman News: 'Goin' Home' introduces "Breaking Nooz", lead by the anchor Simon Sniffcock, and reporter Cock Nostril
• Killed Off for Real: Norton is executed by Lez and Cecil has his throat slashed by Warning Guy in Choomah Island 2. Lez and King Laranox die in the finale. Semi-retconned in the 2021 "behind the scenes" special where the characters are all shown to be actors on a set, although it's questionable if that's canon or not. It's later revealed in The Sassy Show that both are true, and the two are simply different universes in the 'mega multiverse'.
• Limited Animation: The first two season's were animated in MS Paint, then assembled frame by frame. The creators switched to using Macs for Season 3, so the animation is slightly smoother, see Art Evolution.
  • Season 4 and Mike Nolan's Long Weekend use transparent image files of the characters to use against multiple backgrounds as a time saving technique. Lampshaded in On Location with Clarence Claymore as using a blue/greenscreen.
• Long List: The ingredients of Sassy's trippa snippa:
  Sassy: Oh you know, the usual. Uhh: speed, weed, heroin, cocaine, mushrooms, Pine O Clean, petrol, battery acid, acid, sour beer, meth, some herbs and spices and some lettuce and tomato, vodka sauce, Bam! And the dirt is gone, Ajax spray n wipe, some chicken and cheese, all wrapped in a tortilla.
  Lez: *deathly scared look on his face*
  Sassy: Yeah, you're starting to feel the Sassy food magic, mate!
• Made of Iron: Kingdom Cummians are able to survive absurd levels of injury with little more than a few gashes in situations that would normally dismember or outright kill humans.
• Mind Screw:
  • Lez's hallucinations in The Trippa Snippa and Popcoin definitely qualify.
  • Also the scene in Never Again Land after he downs Sassy's Gargle Blaster and sees Clarence.
• Mushroom Samba: Among other examples, Sassy has a weird variation of this. In 'Goin' Home', Sassy claims to have seen a blue caterpillar come down from the sky and give him a bowl of Mac 'n Cheese and a bottle of apple juice. Lez chalks this up to Sassy's constant drug use. However in 'Attack Of The Choomah's Part 2', the caterpillar makes an appearance and gives Sassy his Mac 'n Cheese and apple juice. Lez then asks where the fuck Sassy got the food from
• Pensieve Flashback: Parodied in 'Never Again Land' where Sassy injects Lez with a "flashback drug".
• Prison Episode: 'Life In The Can'
• Put on a Bus: Warning Guy was attacked by the Kraken during Choomah Island 3 and hasn't appeared in any follow-up series or spinoffs since. In-universe, several characters claim he isn't dead and is simply missing in action (justified as he claims to have fought the Kraken before), possibly hinting at a return.
• Random Events Plot: Season One and, to a lesser extent, Season Two.
• Real Men Wear Pink: Lez
• Real-Place Background:
  • Many of the backgrounds in the show, such as the beach Lez and Quentin go surfing, or the close they live in seem to be based on the landscape of the Gold Coast in South East Queensland (which coincidentally is where the creators live and work.)
  • The city Surfer's Paradise is visited and mentioned various times in the show.
• Scare Chord:
  • Used throughout "Choomah Island" every time the namesake creatures initally appear.
  • Happens at the end of "Attack Of The Choomahs (Part 2") when it's revealed a mailman is actually one of the choomahs in disguise
• Sir Swearsalot: Pretty much everybody in the cast (except for Clarence)
• Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: Norton is this to Lez until it cranks up to 11 in Choomah Island 2.
• Smoking Is Cool: Mike Nolan personifies this. In Choomah Island, it's revealed that he's apparently been a smoker since the age of 4, and never exhales (Unless of course it's Malboro Reds)
• Shout-Out:
  • The Choomahs bear a very strong resemblance to Homer Simpson. In the "The Big Lez Show: Documentary" video it's revealed the Choomahs originally weren't so much "designed" as they were "just drawing Homer Simpson retarded".
  • "Lez and Quinton Charge the Scooby Doo Spooky Coaster" as it's name suggests, takes place at the Scooby-Doo Spooky Coaster at the Warner Bros. Movie World in the Gold Coast, downright to including a field recording of the ride's audio.
  • The Big Lez Show has a lot of shout outs to Lost including the entirety of "Choomah Island"'s first and second acts, episodes featuring music used in the show, Daednu and Warning Guy being Expys of the show's characters and a LOST DVD found in Sassy's boot in "Busted".
    • Quite a lot of subtle references include Lez having John Locke's black and white eyes in a hallucination, Mike and Sassy's LampshadeHanging of Mike's jet crashing on the island, Norton's death, and a character falling down a pit and activating a bomb.
  • Dragon Ball Z is yet another series constantly referenced. "The Brutal Truth" features Lez and Norton wearing the Saiyan Battle Armour on Kingdom Cum and the climatic fight from "Choomah Island 3 - Denouement" is basically an Eshay version of a Super Saiyan fight.
    • The original Choomah Island bears heavy resemblance to the island where Goku had his first Super Saiyan transformation.
  • Earlier on, Sassy and Donny also change the radio station until they find a station playing the Sam Kyser version of Jingle Jangle Jingle, which was featured in Fallout: New Vegas.
  • In Season 2, Donny's "Stealthy Fucker" costume resembles Sam Fisher's MK V Tac Suit.
  • In "Busted", when Sassy and the gang are thrown in prison, they're wearing the prison uniforms from The Shawshank Redemption.
  • In "Attack Of The Choomah's Part 2" when the gang are fighting off the Choomah's, you can see Sergio jumping around while twisting through the air in 360 degree motions.
  • In "Choomah Island 2", Lez leaps rightward identically to the shoot dodge animation from the original Max Payne.
  • In "Plac-Key" The Doom Slayer symbol from Doom (2016) can be seen on the Monolith during the Secret Sasquatch Society meeting.
  • Big Lez's death and the scene of the nuclear missile being fired in "Choomah Island 3 - Denouement" heavily resembles the ending of The Iron Giant
    • Sassy and Donny meet the spirit of John Lennon in the DMT world. Meanwhile the spirit of Terrence Mc Kenna witnesses them with two Machine Elves and, seemingly not knowing that he's dead, is quite surprised by this. The joke there being that Sasquatches are nowhere near the strangest things that he's seen, with the added implication (believed by some psychedelic users) that the afterlife and the psychedelic realm are one and the same.
    • King Laranox's Pre-Mortem One-Liner is taken directly from the Pizza episode "Christmas Pizza".
    "Have you been to India? Get this in to ya!"

    King Laranox
• Souvenir Land: We never see it, but Sassy and his mates are driving to a theme park called "Hallucination Land".

Funnily enough, Donny eats a trippa snippa on the way there and freaks out, while Scruffy forgets to bring his shoes.

• Surreal Humor: Plenty of episodes thrive on it, but Lez's Mushroom Samba in "The Trippa Snippa" deserves special mention. Also the entirety of 'Choomah Island'.
• Stylistic Suck: In various hallucination sequences later in the series, the animation will resemble low quality, blocky MS Paint Art (parodying the first season) or pre-colour renders.
• Take That!: In "Attack Of The Choomah's Part 2" Lez's comment after falling into a sewer:
  Lez: *sniffs* Smells like Aussie rap down here. SHIT.
• Tempting Fate:
  Donny: So when are you going to Thailand to get one of these 'ripstarts', Nollsy?
  Mike: God me flight booked for next weekend mate, it's gonna be fuckin' tops.
  Donny: Fuck yeah, let's just hope your fuckin' plane doesn't crash in the Pacific and land on some fucked up crazy island, ay?
  Mike: Yeah, hahahahaha!
• The Stoner: Sassy and the other sasquatches. Justified in that drugs are actually good for them.
• Villain Protagonist: It's quite hard to sympathize with the thoroughly evil Lez.
• Wham Episode:
  • "Potadahead" Clarence is revealed to have been a scientist on Kingdome Cum who's negligence led to accidentally developed a formula which hideously mutated him into his potato headed form, and was then kicked into an escape pod after the formula spilled everywhere. Then, after crash landing on Choomah Island, he accidentally dropped the formula down a large hole, causing the formula to spread like a fungus and evolve into the Choomahs.
  • "Choomah Island 2" is where Lez finally kills Norton. There's also more hints as to Laranox's plans, and Lez is given an ominous warning that he might be doomed by karma.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Sergio Warnington disappears without explanation after Choomah Island 2 due to Izak Whear (his voice actor) moving away.
• You ALL Look Familiar: The police officer, prison guard and nightclub bouncers that appear over the course of the series all have the same muscular body, sunglasses and short hair. However, it's unknown if they are implied to be the same person. They are eventually revealed to be identical cyborg foot-soldiers.

The Mike Nolan Show tropes:

• Ax-Crazy: During an RBT inspection, Mike Nolan verbally assaults the cop conducting the search and casually shrugs off a taser shock in order to prove his innocence.
• Bait-and-Switch: Season 2 has a few scenes teasing the then-upcoming Sassy the Sasquatch series, which fans had been demanded since forever. In one scene, Mike breaks the fourth wall and asks what's going on with Sassy's spin-off show, to which Sassy just laughs and sighs, implying that it's not happening. Later, Sassy speculates that Nigel will definitely be the next protagonist. Nigel does appear in Sassy, but only as a supporting character.
• Bearded Baby: The series reveals that Nolan has had a full beard since he was a toddler and has been working in construction since that age, smoking without exhaling all the way through.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: About as much as The Big Lez Show. In one episode, Mike and Crazy Steve have an extended conversation about why the show's creators haven't outsourced the illustrating or animation, and whatever happened to the Comedy Central deal (the first season was partially produced by them).
• Chekhov's Gun: The Lantana Bush firearm stash that Nolan and Donny use on Clarence later comes in handy in The Big Lez Show proper, when Lez uses the Halo plasma gun to destroy a bunch of Choomahs.
• Lighter and Softer: The show is more relaxed and grounded than Big Lez, with most episodes simply following Nolan's day-to-day life with few to no alien or supernatural events.
• Prequel: The first season is a direct prequel to Big Lez, with the final episode showing Nolan's first ever encounter with Lez at the Lantana Bush. Averted with the second season, which takes place after the Big Lez finale.
• Verbal Tic: Mike, Crazy Steve, Bill, pretty much every male character does the stereotypical Aussie "yeah nah yeah nah yeah nah" thing.

Sassy the Sasquatch tropes:

• Deadpan Snarker: Sassy comes off as much more intentionally snarky than in the original show, especially where the Area 51 interrogators are concerned. Upon landing in a nonsensical acid trip dimension, Sassy has this to say:
  Sassy: Finally, somewhere normal.
• Hidden Depths: The show reveals that there's more to Sassy than simply being a constantly stoned druggo.
• Prequel: With the first episode taking place millions of years before the first Big Lez episode, the series is set up to tell Sassy's origin story. Well, sort of, but not really. It's complicated. The show is actually both a prequel and sequel, with the final episode taking place after Mike Nolan's Long Weekend, though a major plot point is Sassy constantly erasing his memory, time travelling with the grey aliens from the first episode, and reliving the entire Sassy/Big Lez/Mike Nolan storyline over and over again.
• Spotlight-Stealing Squad: While melted as fuck after eating a Trippa Snippa that Sassy gave him in The Stinger of Mike Nolan's Long Weekend, Donny breaks the fourth wall and accuses Mike Nolan of stealing the spotlight after having two of his own shows.
• Take That, Audience!: Averted. While show contains a few light digs against the fandom, namely those who mishear Sassy's catchphrases and act impatient for the next episode to come out, the big reveal that Sassy constantly relives the story, which reflects fans who do the same in real life and refuse to let go of the show, isn't played off as a simple Take That!. Sassy can't be condemned for wanting to relive all his happiest memories with his best friends, but eventually he does have to move on, though it's his choice to make when he's ready.
• Time Abyss: Sassy and Donny have been around since the Cretaceous period and walked alongside dinosaurs. Sassy claims to be millions of years older than that. Sassy is so unfathomably old that when a military interrogator tries to get a simple answer about where he comes from, he genuinely doesn't have the first clue.
• Walking the Earth: Most episodes feature Sassy aimlessly wandering about and taking in the natural beauty of his surroundings. The episode titled "Walkabeet" appropriately focuses entirely on this.

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