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Second City Television

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Second City (Volume 1) DVD

Canada Second City Television, or SCTV, was a Canadian television sketch comedy show offshoot from the Toronto troupe of The Second City. It ran from 1976 to 1984.

Performers

The show's original cast included:

Many of them had previously been regulars on The David Steinberg Show. All of the original featured cast went on to successful careers in American film and television. Rick Moranis (1980–82), Tony Rosato (1980–81) and Robin Duke (1980–81) joined the cast for Season 3 to replace Candy and O'Hara. Rosato and Duke were called upon by Dick Ebersol to help fix Saturday Night Live in the spring of 1981, while Candy and O'Hara returned for SCTV's network debut on NBC. Martin Short (1982–84) joined the cast at the tail-end of Season 4 to replace Thomas and Moranis, while John Hemphill and Mary Charlotte Wilcox (now an Anglican priest in Edmonton, Alberta), though never full cast members, appeared regularly through Seasons 5 and 6.

History

SCTV first aired as a half-hour show on Global in Canada, starting in 1976, for two seasons. In 1980, after a one year hiatus, the show moved to the CBC for its third season. The first three seasons also aired in syndication in the United States starting in 1977. In 1981, it was picked up as a 90 minute show by NBC as a mid-season replacement (for The Midnight Special), airing first as SCTV Network 90, then as SCTV. During its network run, the show garnered 15 Emmy nominations, winning two (both for outstanding writing in a variety or music program). The show continued to air on the CBC in Canada as a full hour, compiled from the NBC shows. In the fall of 1983, for its final season, the show moved to pay-TV channels Superchannel in Canada and Cinemax in the United States, changing the name slightly to SCTV Channel.

Premise

The basic premise of SCTV is that it is the television station for the city of Melonville. Rather than broadcast the usual TV rerun fare, the business, run by the greedy Guy Caballero (Joe Flaherty) who sits in a wheelchair only to gain "respect" and leverage in business and staff negotiations, puts on a bizarre and humorously incompetent range of cheap local programming. This can range from a soap opera called "The Days of the Week", to game shows like "Shoot the Stars", in which celebrities are literally shot at like targets in a shooting gallery, to full blown movie spoofs like "Play it Again, Bob" in which Woody Allen (Moranis) tries to get Bob Hope (Thomas) to star in his next film. In-house media melodrama was also satirised with characters like Candy's vain, bloated variety star Johnny La Rue, Thomas' acerbic critic Bill Needle and Martin's flamboyant, leopard-skin clad station manager Mrs. Edith Prickley.

See also UHF, a movie which used a similar premise to SCTV, but without the sketch comedy.

Laugh Track

One other point of contention between SCTV and several different networks they were on was the use of laugh tracks. As SCTV wasn't a live show, it paced its comedy accordingly, and several pieces were more outré than standard network fare. The use of a laugh track often stepped clumsily on the punchlines as a result, and there are some reports that the laugh track editor admitted to not getting SCTV's humor and just threw laughs in wherever they would fit[citation needed].

The laugh track used in early episodes was actually recorded using audience reactions during live performances in the Second City theater.

Syndication/Music Rights

For years, SCTV was unavailable on video tape or in any form except by reedited half hour programs. This is because the producers and editors putting the original shows together never bothered to get clearance to use copyrighted music—for example, the "Fishin' Musician" show ended with Bing Crosby singing "Gone Fishin'", even though SCTV never got the rights to use the music or performance. As a result, the shows couldn't be reproduced on DVD or video tape until after the laborious rights issues were resolved and clearances were received. In some cases (as with the aforementioned Crosby song) clearances couldn't be secured after the fact and new music had to be edited in its place for the 2005 DVD releases of the 90-minute shows. In a few cases ("Stairways to Heaven" and "The Canadian National Anthem") where the music is intrinsic to the premise of the sketch and rights could not be obtained, sketches have been dropped from the DVDs.

Significance

SCTV initially adapted its comedy from existing sketches and improvisation from the Second City stage show. However, especially after expanding to a ninety minute format, SCTV quickly pushed the envelope on television sketch comedy. While showing some influence from Monty Python's Flying Circus and Saturday Night Live, SCTV eschewed either the live television format or even filming before a live studio audience. As a result, far more attention and care could be taken in building a premise and supporting it.

Having a moderately low budget and limited resources (the most fertile years of the show's production occurred in Edmonton, Alberta, which saved on money but lacked a lot of the resources available in larger cities or more traditional production venues), SCTV got a reputation for making the most out of what it had, reusing sets and particularly taking advantage of makeup and prosthetic devices in the creation of characters. With the luxury of being able to take long periods of time in the makeup chair, elaborate characters could be built. Cast members credited their makeup artists as having helped create their characters, referring to the process in interviews as "improvisation in the chair."

To add to the feel of the show—which after all was supposed to be a low budget local television station that went national—the SCTV crew recruited their dance troupe from the writers on the show, led by costumer Juul Haalmeyer. The "Juul Haalmeyer Dancers" were spectacularly inept, parodying dance teams on variety shows through their sheer ineptness, and ultimately attracting a cult fandom of their own. (Juul Haalmeyer himself reports still being asked for autographs years later.)

The core premise of the show allowed for tremendous variety in presentation, but unlike Monty Python, which often would cut from one sketch to another without any resolution, the SCTV format required television style bridges. One technique they used was to build premises into "promos" for shows that would never run (such as "Melvin and Howards," a parody of the movie Melvin and Howard which featured Melvin Dummar, Howard Hughes, Howard Cosell, Curly Howard and others on a road trip singing old tunes). Another was to take longer pieces that failed and cut them into promos or trailers. However, the internal logic of the series—that this actually was a television station producing low budget programming—was never lost. SCTV's techniques helped inform and influence later shows, with clear influence on The State, the Upright Citizen's Brigade, and The Kids in the Hall.

Later shows built a tight theme, sometimes acting as a metaparody—as in the Emmy-winning "Moral Majority" episode where advertisers and special interest groups forced significant changes to SCTV’s programming, "Zontar" (a parody of the John Agar film Zontar, Thing from Venus) which featured an alien race seeking to kidnap SCTV’s on air talent for "a nine show cycle plus three best-ofs" (which was the actual deal NBC worked out with SCTV that season), and an ambitious parody of The Godfather featuring an all out network war over pay television between SCTV, CBS, NBC, ABC and PBS. (The last featured mafia style hits on the sets of The Today Show, Three's Company and The NFL Today, as well as an extended sequence with guest star John Marley reprising his Godfather role of Hollywood mogul Jack Woltz.) While these shows continued to incorporate the broad range of television parodies the show was known for, they also had a strong narrative thread which set the show apart from other sketch comedy shows of the time.

The show would also have a huge influence on The Simpsons. In the DVD commentary for Homer vs. The Eighteenth Amendment (in which Dave Thomas guest-stars), everyone says how much they loved the show and how influential it was because "it was so funny". Matt Groening goes on to say that he was specifically inspired by the town of Melonville, its own little universe with many recurring characters, and that that was the type of universe he wanted for The Simpsons. Actor Dan Castellaneta has stated that much of the inspiration for his portrayal of the Scottish character Groundskeeper Willie came from the SCTV character Angus Crock, who was played by Dave Thomas.[1] Both Dave Thomas and Andrea Martin have guest-starred on The Simpsons.

Special guests and musical guests

With the coming of the NBC years also came a network edict to include musical guests (in part because of their use on Saturday Night Live, which NBC executives considered the model for SCTV, despite their being very different shows). At first, the SCTV cast, writers and producers resisted special guests, on the theory that famous people wouldn't just "drop into" the Melonville studios. However, they soon discovered that by actually working these guests into different show-within-a-shows, they could keep the premise going while also giving guest stars something more to do than show up and sing a song. As a result, Doctor John became a featured player in the movie "Polynesiantown," John Mellencamp (then still known as John Cougar) was Mister Hyde to Ed Grimley's Doctor Jeckyll in "The Nutty Lab Assistant," Natalie Cole was made into a zombie by a cabbage in "Zontar," and the Boomtown Rats were both blown up on "Farm Film Report" and starred in the To Sir With Love parody "Teacher's Pet." It reached a point where Hall and Oates appeared on a "Sammy Maudlin Show" segment, promoting "Chariots of Eggs," which was a parody of both Chariots of Fire and Personal Best, only to show scenes from the faux movie as clips.

This, along with SCTV's cult status, led to celebrity fans of the show clamoring to appear. Later on, Tony Bennett credited his appearance on "The Great White North Palace" as triggering a significant career comeback. Sketch comedy giant Carol Burnett did an ad for the show in which an alarm clock goes off next to her bed, she rises up suddenly and advises those who couldn't stay up late enough (the NBC version aired from 12:30 to 2 a.m.) to go to bed, get some sleep, then wake up to watch the show.

Features

Parody shows included Natalie Wingneck, a Tarzan-style spoof in which Martin plays a girl raised by geese after her family died in a plane crash. A parody of the popular western drama Grizzly Adams—retitled Grizzly Abrams—depicted the burly western hero as the owner of a wild tortoise, which took weeks to lead police to the skeletal remains of its master, trapped beneath a fallen log.

As one chronicler has noted, the TV station concept gave the show the ability to parody virtually any TV genre, as well as advertising. Some of the most memorable sketches involved parodies of late-night low-budget advertising, such as "Al Peck's Used Fruit", in which viewers were enticed to come early with the offer of free tickets to 'Circus Lupus', the Circus of the Wolves (accompanied by mocked-up photos of wolves forming a pyramid and jumping through flaming hoops). Equally memorable were the faux-inept ads for local businesses like Tex and Edna Boil's Prairie Warehouse and Curio Emporium.

Impersonations were also an integral part of the comedy, with almost every cast member playing multiple roles as well-known personalities. Some impressions include:

Popular sketches and characters include:

  • The "Farm Film Report," in which two hicks named Big Jim McBob (Flaherty) and Billy Sol Hurok (Candy) interviewed celebrities and finally encouraged them to "blow up" (creating the catchphrase "get blow'd up real good"),
  • "The Sammy Maudlin Show," whose sleazy showbiz guests and hosts usually did nothing but sit around and praise each other. Originally a parody of a short-lived talk show hosted by Sammy Davis, Jr., "The Sammy Maudlin Show" eventually evolved into a full-blown re-creation of the Rat Pack, with a Joey Bishop-like comedian named Bobby Bitman (Levy), a faux Liza Minnelli named Lorna Minelli (Martin), and a quasi-Joey Heatherton named Lola Heatherton (O'Hara). The group even appeared together in a Rat Pack film parody called Maudlin's Eleven.
  • "Mel's Rock Pile", an American Bandstand knockoff - which also closely resembled the Citytv show "Boogie" - hosted by "Rockin' Mel" Slirrup (Eugene Levy), who delivers unpopular hits for the audience in an apologetic, insecure style. One of the most prominent sketches involved an appearance by the fictional Queen Haters.
  • Insufferable talk show host Catherine Timber (O'Hara), host of talk show Enough About Me (which is, not surprisingly, her catchphrase)
  • Martin Short's Brock Linehan, a thinly veiled impersonation of real-life Canadian interviewer Brian Linehan, who was famous for his overpreparation.
  • "Half Wits" and "High-Q," parodies of College Bowl and Reach For The Top, hosted by highly irritable Alex Trebel (Levy), a thinly-veiled impersonation of real-life Canadian game-show host Alex Trebek.
  • The Five Neat Guys, an absurdly clean-cut, 50s style vocal group (á la the Four Freshmen) portrayed by Candy, Flaherty, Levy, Moranis, and Thomas, who sing songs with titles like I've Got a Hickey on My Shoulder and Pimples and Pockmarks.
  • Gerry Todd (Moranis), host of a music video show, who eerily presaged the first group of MTV VJs.
  • Harry, The Guy With The Snake On His Face (John Candy), who runs Melonville's adult book and video stores.
  • Monster Chiller Horror Theater, which featured non-frightening z-movies like "Dr. Tongue's 3-D House of Beef" and "The House of Cats", with Dr. Tongue played by John Candy. Hosted by Count Floyd, who was revealed in one episode to be Floyd Robertson working a second job.
  • Dave Thomas playing actor Richard Harris in a skit where "Harris" sings an extended version of his most famous hit "MacArthur Park", then dances in total agony during the orchestral stretch while the show moved on to other skits. The song finally ends when an audience member throws a brick at his chest.
  • The famous Russian television episode in which Perry Como (obviously played by cast member Eugene Levy) "stars" in his TV special "Still Alive" with Como's trademark 'relaxed' style taken to ludicrous extremes (including singing a song while propped against a dancer, singing another song while in a full featherbed with the covers pulled up, and singing a third song sprawled collapsed on the floor, microphone set near his mouth, with only one finger moving to the beat) only to be interrupted by an illegal signal from a Russian television station, CCCP-1. From there, all the skits are spoofs of Russian television network shows.
  • A parody of "The Jazz Singer" that reverses the story by having musical guest Al Jarreau play a popular jazz singer who wants to become a cantor (hazzan). His father, a pop music impressario who disapproves, is played by perhaps Eugene Levy's funniest character, Sid Dithers. He's approximately four feet tall, cross-eyed behind thick glasses, and speaks English with an exagerated Yiddish influence probably not heard since early vaudeville (Example: "So yer from San Fransisky? So how did you come: was you flew or did you drove?"). The parody's climax is probably one of the funniest shots in the show's history. Jarreau has fulfilled his dream against his father's wishes by becoming a cantor in a synagogue, and is performing his role when he stops, having seen something at the back of the sanctuary. The camera cuts to the doorway, and starting at floor level, pans up (not a long distance) a disco-clad Sid Dithers (dancing shoes, spangled jacket), topped off by hair in dreadlocks framing his perpetually confused face, his crossed eyes dancing behind his Coke-bottle-bottom glasses. Considered by some a sight gag equal to the wearing by Carol Burnett as Scarlett O'Hara in a Gone With the Wind parody of the curtain rod along with the curtains she's fashioned into a dress.
  • The episode in which a janitors union went on strike, causing station owners to instead draw a feed off of CBC television. This featured parodies of Hinterland Who's Who, Front Page Challenge and It's A Fact, among other things. Meanwhile, Sid Dithers plays the union president, barely peeking over the news conference table as he reports on the progress of talks to end the strike.

Ironically, the most popular sketch was intended as throwaway filler. Bob & Doug McKenzie were the imaginary Canadian brothers in The Great White North sketch. The sketch was initially developed by Rick Moranis ("Bob") and Dave Thomas ("Doug") at the end of a day's shooting, as a sarcastic response to the CRTC requirement for two minutes of "identifiably Canadian content". The brothers ultimately became icons of the very Canadian culture they were meant to parody, spinning off albums, a movie (Strange Brew), commercials, and cameo appearances on TV and film. It has been said that Bob and Doug popularized the stereotype that Canadians say "Eh" after every sentence, which is often poked at in American shows featuring Canadian characters. They recreated the characters as a pair of moose in the Disney animated feature film, Brother Bear.

  1. ^ Adrian Turpin (2006-10-22). "The strange world of Oor grown-up Wullie". The Sunday Times Scotland. Retrieved 2006-10-22. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
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