Les Bougon
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Les Bougon - c'est aussi ça la vie! is a popular Quebec sitcom broadcast by Radio-Canada from 2004 to 2006, written by François Avard and Jean-François Mercier and produced by Fabienne Larouche. The show won three Gémeaux in 2004. The show aired its first episode January 7th, 2004 and its last episode on April 17th, 2006.
[edit] Overview
The show follows the antics of the Bougon family, which has sworn to do anything they can to cheat the system. They issue fake ID cards to immigrants, cheat money out of honest businesses and plan all sorts of schemes to scam money out of normal citizens, which is easily accomplished thanks to their many accomplices, who are just as crooked as they are.
[edit] Main characters
[edit] Paul Bougon (Rémy Girard)
The brains of the family. His current lifestyle is the result of a disillusionment after he attempts to denounce illegal traficking at the harbor where he worked, only to have his mouth forced shut by his union, his bosses and the juridicial system all at once. Ever since, he has taken an openly defiant attitude against the guidelines of good citizenship and expects his family to follow suit religiously.
[edit] Rita "Tita" Bougon (Louison Danis)
Paul's vulgar, alcoholic, chain-smoking wife. Although she spends the barest minimum of time to cook and clean (meaning she still does), she has an unconditional love for her family and the same attitude as her husband. She has no qualms about doing whatever she wants no matter how appropriate (or inappropriate) the current situation is.
[edit] Paul Bougon Junior (Antoine Bertrand)
As the aspiring star of the family, obese Junior fervently puts his father's teachings into application and attempts to do the most outrageous stunts he can think of. While he is a successful crook, he has little education and culture, and his lifestyle doesn't appeal to the women he attempts to conquer. He has himself proven multiple times to lack the ability to read, use common sense and logic, and often missuses words, deforming them. He also proved to lack a sense of respect, burping in the face of anyone, even women he aims at. Despite his idiocity, he has a good heart, and if anyone touches his family, he would make it clear that it's a big no. A potential reason for his lower level of intelligence and learning incapabilities is that Rita smoked and consumed beer thorough her pregnancy of him, as she explains later to a pregnant Dolorès.
[edit] Frédéric "Uncle" Bougon (Claude Laroche)
As the only family member to attempt to get back into the system, he is often the butt of jokes, especially due to his idealist views about the world. His attempts at getting a real job always fall flat as he realizes the people at his job actively follow the Bougon lifestyle thorough different sorts of ways, and he learns that the world is not as honest as he wants to believe it is. Thorough the series, he usually fails at most things he does, including finding and keeping a job, without being fired --- usually for being too "good" --- and even failed at commiting suicide. Despite how the family show dislike toward him, they prove to show their affection at the appropriate time, such as Paul, after he read his suicide note, scolding him and telling him "he won't take away his only brother" and that he "needs him."
[edit] Dolorès "Dodo" Bougon (Hélène Bourgeois-Leclerc)
A nude dancer, several years older than Junior, Dodo has a reputation for bringing some work back home after her shift; a running gag being that she's always followed by a different man as she exits her bedroom. Easily swayed by the perspective of instant pleasure and gratification, she sometimes deals with drugs behind her parents' back, but is discovered the two critical times she's had any. She also once joined a sect, which she was brainwashed to believe it was a religious group, who believed in the "srevinu;" the universe's mirror. In the end, it was nothing more than a sex-based sect, which Paul and Rita pulled her out of. Out of all her family members, she's one of the least supportive, often replying with a bad temper to distress calls from her siblings, such as when Junior once told her he was going to commit suicide, she yelled out an inquiry whether she was the only normal member of the family.
[edit] Mao Bougon (Rosalée Jacques)
An adopted Chinese, and originally considered an investment by the family, who thought an Asian kid would assuredly know a lot about computers, hacking and the Internet. Mao loves the family, and considers the lifestyle to be nothing but a big, fun game. She almost always skips school to take part in her siblings' escapades. During the first season, Mao was thought to be a boy, but during that season's final episode, it is learned that she is actually a girl. We then learned in the second season that she was informally and lovingly adopted by Paul Bougon when he used to work the night shift in the Port of Montréal. One night, he heard moaning and gasping from a ship container arriving from China, and delivered her when he discovered 15 chinese stowaway refugees dying or dead from asphyxiation and starvation. Mao's mother died seconds after giving birth. Paul brought her home and raised her as his own child.
[edit] Léo Bougon (Pierre Ebert)
"Pépère" to the immediate family, until his death in 2004. He never spoke, in fact spending all his time in a wheelchair in a state of vegetation, usually hunched over, eyes nearly always closed, and mumbled incomprehensible words.
[edit] Beaudoin (André Lacoste)
The straitlaced landlord of the duplex occupied by the Bougons, constantly aggravated by their shenanigans. More than once he has attempted to sell the house just to toss them out.
[edit] Ben Laden, the family pet
A little dusty white dog (name derived from Osama Bin Laden) who isn't really appreciated by anyone but Paul Senior. He is permitted to do pretty much whatever he wants, whether it is eating on the counters (despite Rita's complains), drinking beer (in fact, Ben Laden is a heavy alcoholic), anything. Conscious of others' words, obvious when he growls at Fred for having refered to Ben Laden with ill words in his TV scripts.
