Albanians do not back down from a fight. Vietnamese women are like cartoon characters. It’s okay for Italian-Canadians to calls themselves wops. At least, that’s what an upcoming reality TV series based in Toronto would have fans believe.

Taking after the popular MTV show Jersey Shore, Lake Shore will follow eight young Torontonians as they party hard, hook up and try to get along under the same roof.

The gel that holds the American series together — Guido pride — is notably absent from the Toronto version. In its place, however, is a multicultural cast of characters who threaten to clash in the most unCanadian of ways.

The show’s eight-minute trailer became a trending topic on Twitter after its release Monday night. Torontonians are concerned the show’s unflattering stereotypes will tarnish its city’s image as a vibrant, cultural mosaic.

Each character in Lake Shore is labelled by their ethnic background. For Sibel Atlug, cast as “the Turk,” cultural pride means denigrating everyone else.

“I’m not racist because I hate everybody equally. Especially Jewish people,” she reveals in the preview.

The show won’t start filming until early 2011 but it already has a fan base. On Wednesday, lake-shore.ca crashed after receiving more than a million visitors.

The trailer has also grabbed the attention of broadcasters in Canada and abroad who want to get the series on the air, said Lake Shore’s 26-year-old executive producer, Maryam Rahimi.

“We could go into production as soon as next week. Everything is assembled and we’re looking to get attached to a network,” she said. “There’s a demand for it.”

The show’s concept a step away from Canada’s tradition of producing socially minded “observational documentaries” in favour of American-style reality TV, said Peter Thompson, a professor of Canadian culture at Carleton University in Ottawa.

But unlike the homogenous Jersey Shore, Thompson said its Canadian counterpart purposely invites housemates to draw ethnic lines during their daily dramas.

“Maybe it will be harder to attack it because there are so many ethnic stereotypes circulating in the show,” Thompson said.

Italian-Americans criticized Jersey Shore when it first aired in December 2009, but its viewership continued to grow. Its second season premiered with 5.3 million viewers this past July.

Will Canadians be able to resist watching the outrageous antics of a group of twentysomethings who live by the motto, “Every night is Saturday night?” Bernie Farber, CEO of the Canadian Jewish Congress, hopes so.

“It’s silly, puerile trash TV. … But it’s sadly the kind of television and entertainment that seems to titillate people nowadays. You throw in a racist comment, or a sexist comment, or an anti-Semitic comment and it becomes provocative,” Farber said.

Stereotyping aside, the show does Canadian youth in general a disservice, said Martin Stiglio, director of the Italian Cultural Institute in Toronto.

“I don’t think the problem is ethnic — far from it — the problem is stereotyping of young people as empty-headed, soft-porn types of people who are always off and drunk in night clubs,” Stiglio said.

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But for Rahini, who is enjoying attention from all over the world, it’s easy to brush off the criticism.

“We’re creating entertainment,” she said. “I think everyone should take this with a grain of salt. I don’t think anyone should take it seriously.”