Upsetting Day: Trailer Court Justice

On an upsetting day in 2006, every program director at every television network or cable affiliate was sent a copy of this…

… and there's a good chance I'm the first person to ever hit play on it. It's a sizzle reel for something called Trailer Court Justice. "Trailer Court Justice? Why, that's exactly the right number of letters for a license plate motif!" said their graphic designer, already Photoshopping the funny number onto its registration tag. It's a fictional comedy courtroom show with a judge, plaintiff, and defendant, but every last one of those words needs sarcastic quotes around it. I'll explain.

This is the menu screen, because every decision Trailer Court Justice made was insane, including who they should put in charge of making the DVDs.

The star of the show, Nasty Judge Knobs, is played by Brian Knobbs, one half of a tag team called The Nasty Boys. You might know him more recently as the guy who went on the record to say "Hulk Hogan doesn't have a racist bone in his body" after Hulk Hogan was filmed saying the n-word inside someone else's wife. So our judge seems like a man of few abilities, and judgment could be the least of them.

The theme song plays and it sounds like someone blown in half by a landmine using their last breath to make fun of country music. "𝅘𝅥𝅮It's amateur law meets professional wrestlin'𝅘𝅥𝅮" a sad man moans from an echoey room. Random footage plays and graphics zip by as he croaks, "𝅘𝅥𝅮It ain't over… 'til the fat boy rules𝅘𝅥𝅮." It's so much worse than you're imagining. It sounds like he's going into surgery and an anesthesiologist told him to count down from his worst Trailer Court Justice t-shirt ideas.

The intro ends with the aging wrestler heaving himself up on his last knee ligament and screaming "QUIET!!!" to an empty studio where no one is talking. So viewers know it's a hillbilly courtroom thing with a hot lady and a wrestling element, but nothing else has really been communicated yet. This might be a show where you get out of parking tickets by pinning a judge, and you'll wish it was after you hear Trailer Court Justice's actual premise.

Which we don't learn yet, we have more intro to do.

Bailiff Tamie unseals the tomb of Nasty Judge Knobs who screams, "Alriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight! Let's get started!" because they used up all his good catchphrases in the theme song, and then they absolutely fucking do not get started. Instead it's another collection of zany clips, many of which they already played in the intro before it. There's sped-up footage of people kicking each other in the ass, just sitting, just talking, just entering trucks, all to a troubling banjo soundtrack. They somehow invented right-wing AI slop twenty years before there was a market for it.

It goes on for a long time. It's almost suspicious how not in a rush these people are to tell you the concept of this show.

We begin to understand why they were keeping their idea a secret when it cuts to a plaintiff in brand new toddler clothes. He is enunciating the words, "a guy was stealing my propane gas when I ain't looking." So now we know it's a scripted comedy court show with actors but without jokes. And Judge Knobs reacts to this line by looking in the wrong direction and shouting, "WHAT'S THE! PROBLEM!?" The rights for this potential blockbuster are probably still available! If anyone wants to buy this show, "WHAT'S THE! PROBLEM!?" and other catchphrases can be yours! Other catchphrases like…

"OH MY WORD YA FINALLY ANSWERED…

… ME. CORRECTLY, STRAIGHT FORWARD."

Nasty Judge Knobs is a no-nonsense judge! Maybe! I don't think he was saying this to an actual defendant. It feels like they put a camera on him and told him to imagine his side of any potential courtroom conversation. For example, if anyone mentions ladies in his court, he has this zinger ready to go:

"In Vegas when they say, 'this is my lady friend' … y-you're talking sometimes about prostitution."

Not every clip is a hilarious, all-purpose catchphrase like this, though. Some of them are from real scenes they actually filmed so we can really see what the show will look like. For example, in this one the plaintiff is suing her neighbor for blocking the sun. Judge Knobs asks if she has any proof of this, and the struggling actress does her best to perform, "Well, I'm white as can be!"

Nasty Judge Knobs' only response is "Okaaay?" like a Joss Whedon character whose new amulet just talked to her. It sucks, obviously, but it reveals an element we need to consider. I think Brian Knobbs is improvising. I think this is a fake court show where every actor has a script except the star. Brian might not even know! This show could be a prank on him! No one will ever be sure, but it seems fair to describe Trailer Court Justice as a confused wrestler heckling the least inspired Hee Haw sketch. And that's not quite a show. That's more like what happens when you trap "Hacksaw" Jim Duggan in your barn. "Where am I!? I must be marrying that chicken, tough guy! U! S! A! USA! USA! USA!" he'd definitely say.

Back to what I was saying about Brian not having a copy of the script– we only get one example of how this dynamic might play out. This is the first and only full exchange of dialog they show us. A defendant actor is having trouble remembering his lines, which doesn't matter because as soon as he gets going, Brian interrupts to go, "OH, SO YOU'RE NOT GAY." I made a little comic:

That's the end of the bit, cut. Brian Knobbs asks this handsome young man if he dates guys, realizes it didn't land the way he pictured it in his head, and tries to cover for it by saying "I was just wonderin'!" and then "I was just wonderin'!" It's too dark to imagine what they threw in the trash if this is the only clip they showed potential executive producers.

Speaking of 2006 and not being fuckin' gay, bro, let's talk about Bailiff Tamie.

Tamie is disruptingly hot. The entire set stops and stares at her even when the script doesn't call for everybody to stop and stare at her. Which is an entire gag they do, more than once. This woman is not safe around these men. And if you're wondering how much she got paid to be here, it's less than you're thinking. Probably about $200,000 less than you're thinking.

According to a lawsuit filed in 2013, Tamie was paid negative $195,000 for her appearance on Trailer Court Justice. So she might be confused. Imagine how hot you'd have to be to think you get the money back if your pilot doesn't get picked up. Imagine how hot you'd have to be if it was your only skill and you still had $195,000 to bet on an idea this stupid. Or not bet, I guess, since she thought she got it back if it failed, whatever, I'm not Tamie's accountant. My point is, this disaster was expensive. It had a huge cast and crew, a massive custom set, and at least one of its eight producers, probably not the savviest one, invested the yearly salary of three underwater welders. A second crew of people had to move and rebuild this set at the 2006 National Association of Television Program Executives Convention where it won multiple awards. Trailer Court Justice was competently made and marketed and cost so much fucking money! What they didn't seem to have any budget for… was writers. Wait, stop, I accidentally wrote that like a punchline, but it's more of a fun fact. Look at this clipping from the extremely short-lived trailercourtjustice.com website:

They were planning on writing this show by trading "kewl" bowling shirts for scripts! They could have tried tricking another Maxim model into paying for a writing staff, but they figured it was easier to ask for submissions from any random asshole who wears a 3XL. The webmaster of trailercourtjustice.com would have loved that joke. Speaking of, they had a perfect 50% chance of getting a photo to face the right direction.

Captions can be hard to write. Like, it took me ten minutes to decide on Brian Knobbs only knows how to make one face and it's "baby angry about immigrants."

"Case! Closed!" I've shown you the entire thing. It's 3 minutes and ten seconds long and doesn't make any sense because it's a fictional courtroom show written by fans and it doesn't have any of those yet. But there's one last surprise. One of the producers was having drinks with Willie Nelson, and he was drunk enough to agree to say on camera, "Shrailer Court Justish. There ain't no meshin' when this court's in session."

Hulk Hogan also appears to botch the show's title and its 17th best catchphrase while translating for the hearing impaired. "Trailers Court Justice! Justice isn't! [seductive Batusi dance] Blind! It's! [double-handed brain cranking] Crazy!" It's not a great sales pitch. It'd be like "Hacksaw" Jim Duggan escaping your barn to say, "Tamie Sheffield's money [thumbs up] and some guy's mental breakdown! [thumbs up] USA! USA!" but that's a bad example because any network would have bought it if they put it like that.

And then for the true Trailer Court Justice lovers, they include one last, last surprise.

It's a full minute of Nasty Judge Knobs in an empty room, workshopping different outbursts. He tries out, "YOU WANT ME TO GET ANGRY UP HERE, NOT TOO MANY PEOPLE LIKE ME WHEN I'M ANGRY, ASK THE BAILIFF, I'M NOT VERY NICE, I'M NASTY!" which is maybe too long? One of them is perfect for when he's trying a case with a Vanessa. He screams, "VANESSA!? WHO THE HELL IS VANESSA!?"

It's easy to see what they were going for. It's an untrained actor trying to fake a Judge Judy highlight reel. "WHAT DO YOU THINK I AM? A MORON!?" this idiot says to no one, but he could one day ask an actor if your network is buying expensive semi-improvisational courtroom comedy shows. Most of the quotes are him chaining together a bunch of WHOAs or telling imaginary people to shut up. It's an inauthentic, embarrassing creative process and no one hates it more than Brian Knobbs. After five or six, he gets legitimately angry and starts making chimpanzee noises. "AH! OOH! AAAAH! SPEAK UP, OLD MAN!" He follows this up with "BEEPA DEEPA BEEPDA DEEPA BEE!? WHA- WHAT'RE YA, BUGS BUNNY!?" It'll be perfect for the day he needs to mock a defendant with a stutter who doesn't know much about cartoons.

There are no more surprises. We watch a fake judge lose his temper in seventeen arguments that did not and will never happen, fail to come up with a single usable catchphrase, and that's it. But here's the good news: TV executives, as of press time, it's still available!

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Matt Reiley, a sweaty little kobold who loves tricking people into investment schemes. Too bad he will never see justice for his crimes.

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