Billy the Exterminator

Billy the Exterminator is a Reality Show about Billy Bretherton and his family, who run an extermination buisiness in Louisiana. The show chronicles mainly Billy's adventures trying to rid homes of various pests, ranging from roaches to snakes to beavers. Occasionally, Billy's brother, Ricky, joins him or has some cases of his own.

Billy's first appearance was on an episode of Dirty Jobs. That segment proved popular enough that the show returned the next season to follow Billy on a different task.

Billy the Exterminator has aired for four seasons on A&E in the U.S, with a 5th season beginning in Feb. 2012.

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Tropes used in Billy the Exterminator include:

• Badass Longcoat: Used by Billy as part of an improvised bee suit he used in early episodes. Along with a snowboarding mask and a feather boa. The entire getup worked quite well with the exception of the boa, as the bees were able to crawl through it and sting him several times in the neck.
• Cluster F-Bomb: Billy usually doesn't swear very much, but the bleeps will start to flow during particularly difficult jobs, such as when he had to remove a gigantic bee nest and took hundreds of stings through his clothes.
• Cool Shades: Ricky usually just wears sunglasses while driving, but Billy almost always has his on, to the point that when he doesn't have them on, it seems odd.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Billy, Ricky, and the rest of the Vexcon staff all wear black, yet provide a valuable service for their community. Even moreso in that when possible they prefer to relocate animals as opposed to killing them.
• Did the Research: A necessity with their line of work.
• Everything's Worse with Bees: The bee and wasp jobs tend to be especially grueling, and even dangerous due to the potential to get swarmed by thousands of venomous insects.
  • Ricky has an allergy to wasp venom so could die from getting stung.
• Family Business: Billy's parents run Vexcon and his co-workers include his brother and (briefly) his & Ricky's wives.
• Gory Discretion Shot: One episode had the camera cut away when an alligator was shot in the head in compliance with local wildlife regulations regarding nuisance alligators over a certain size.
• Hell-Bent for Leather: Billy and Ricky will often wear combinations of various black leather clothing articles as part of their wardrobe, sometimes with spikes or studs. Billy once explained that the leather is thick enough to protect him from most stinging insects, and the spiked wristbands safeguard his forearms from snake and animal bites.
• Large Ham: Billy is this, but it's hard to tell if it's for the cameras or if he really does act this way. Either way, it's for the better, as it can make him much more fun to listen to.
• The Men in Black: See Dark is Not Evil above. They even drive black vehicles.
• Mr. Exposition: Happens in several ways. In some instances, Billy and Ricky will talk about the possible harm a pest can cause on their way to a job. As they both already know this, it seems to be filmed mainly to let the viewer in on it. There are also times when Billy explains things to Donnie after she has given him an assignment. Since Donnie is the office manager and doesn't actuallly go out on jobs, it may be necessary to explain to her why it's important to take care of the pest but the way the conversation is carried out makes it seem as though this is also filmed mainly to explain things to the viewer.
• Reptiles Are Abhorrent: Subverted in that the men of Vexcon don't treat the snakes they take care of are any worse than anything else they deal with.
• Road Show: Season four has Billy and Ricky visiting various new locales, such as Phoenix, Chicago and Florida, to deal with different threats, such as javalinas.
• Totally Radical: Billy's vocabulary, to an extent where you can make a Drinking Game out of the number of times he says "dude" and "man" alone.
• Viewers Are Goldfish: There are times it seems like they don't know how the episodes are being put together, and just film each segment to paste together later. This means that Billy will explain the dangers of each insect over and over (mahogany wasps and cockroaches seem to be the worst in Louisiana,) alongside explaining what the chemicals he uses are, and how they work.
• Very Special Episode: One episode saw Billy and Ricky go down to the Gulf Coast to see the damage that was caused by the BP oil rig explosion.