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Second City Television

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Second City Television
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Created byAndrew Alexander, Del Close, Joe Flaherty, Eugene Levy, Harold Ramis, Sheldon Patinkin, Bernard Sahlins and Dave Thomas
StarringJohn Candy
Robin Duke
Joe Flaherty
Eugene Levy
Andrea Martin
Rick Moranis
Catherine O'Hara
Harold Ramis
Tony Rosato
Martin Short
Dave Thomas
Country of origin Canada
No. of episodes135
Production
Running time30 minutes (1976-81), 90 minutes (1981-83) and 45 minutes (1983-84)
Original release
NetworkGlobal (1976-79)
CBC (1980-81)
NBC (1981-83, rerun 2000-01)
Cinemax (1983-84)
ReleaseSeptember 21 1976 –
July 17 1984

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 original cast:

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. Harold Ramis served as the show's original head writer, but only appeared as a regular during the first season (Ramis appeared twice during the second season and again one final time during the 1982-1983 season). 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 semi-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 and music rights

For years, SCTV was unavailable on video tape or in any form except by re-edited 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 where the music is intrinsic to the premise of the sketch (such as the sketches "Stairways to Heaven" and "The Canadian National Anthem") 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 both the live television format and even filming before a live studio audience. This was mostly to save money, but it also allowed more attention and care to 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 expert makeup and hairstyling. With the luxury of being able to take long periods of time in the makeup chair, elaborate characters could be built. Not being bound by expensive and elaborate prosthetics, cast members and makeup artists worked together to 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 maladroit, 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 Senator Howard Baker on a road trip singing old tunes). Another was to take longer pieces that failed and cut them into promos or trailers. These short elements wound up being the equivalent of "blackout" pieces on the Second City stage. 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. Both Dave Thomas and Andrea Martin have guest-starred on The Simpsons.

Mystery Science Theater 3000 (another humorous program that also enjoyed a "cult" following like that of SCTV) at times featured references to the show and its' characters; for example, during the film Space Mutiny, a character with an outrageous hairdo is said to resemble Ed Grimley and prompted numerous impersonations of said character. In another example, near the end of the film Danger! Death Ray a character throws a watch out of a window, prompting Crow T. Robot to cry, "SCTV is on the air!".

The entire troupe was given a star on Canada's Walk of Fame in 2002. Also, John Candy, Martin Short, Eugene Levy and Catherine O'Hara have individual stars.

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 Jekyll 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 Celebrity Blow Up" " and starred in the To Sir With Love parody "Teacher's Pet." It reached a point where Hall & Oates appeared on a "Sammy Maudlin Show" segment, promoting a new film called "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 the show's celebrity fans clamoring to appear. Later on, Tony Bennett credited his appearance on Bob and Doug McKenzie's variety-show debacle "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. Burnett later briefly appeared in a climactic "courtroom" episode of "The Days of the Week".

Former SNL cast member and current indie-film actor Bill Murray also guest-starred on a "Days of the Week" installment, as a photography buff scrambling to make it to the wedding of singer-songwriter Clay Collins (Rick Moranis) and town slut Sue-Ellen Allison (Catherine O'Hara) in time to take pictures of the event. In that same episode, he also played two other roles: Johnny LaRue's biggest fan who is subsequently hired to be LaRue's bodyguard (and who pushes his homemade LaRue t-shirts when possible); and he also appeared as Joe DiMaggio in a commercial for DiMaggio's restaurant, where he promised anyone who could strike him out a free meal (the strikeout challenges then took place in the middle of the dining room, with many patrons injured by speeding baseballs).

Features

Parody shows included Natalie Wingneck, a Tarzan-style spoof in which Martin played 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 wilderness 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.

The TV station concept provided SCTV the ability to lampoon virtually any television genre, as well as commercials, promos, network IDs, and more. Some of the most memorable sketches involved parodies of low-budget late-night ads, like Al Peck's Used Fruit (they enticed viewers to visit by offering free tickets to Circus Lupus, the Circus of the Wolves; mocked-up photos depicted wolves forming a pyramid and jumping through flaming hoops). Equally memorable were the faux-inept ads for local businesses like Phil's Nails and Tex and Edna Boil's Prairie Warehouse and Curio Emporium.

Impersonations

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

Sketches and characters

Popular sketches and characters include:

  • Farm Film Report aka Farm Film Celebrity Blow-Up: Two hicks named Big Jim McBob (Flaherty) and Billy Sol Hurok (Billie Sol Estes and Sol Hurok, played by Candy) interviewed celebrities and ultimately encouraged them to "blow up" (creating the catch-phrase "... blow'd up good, blow'd up real good!"). Exploded guests included Dustin Hoffman, David Steinberg (both played by Short), Bernadette Peters (Martin) and Neil Sedaka (Levy).
  • The Sammy Maudlin Show: Joe Flaherty was the afro-coiffed, knee-slapping, overly-effusive host welcoming a panel of "stars" who did nothing but heap lavish praise on each other and applaud their pointless profundities. Originally a parody of Sammy Davis, Jr.'s short-lived gab-fest, Maudlin (the word means overly sentimental, treacly) evolved into a late-night universe all its own. Eugene Levy is "a comic in all seriousness" as egomaniacal funnyman Bobby Bittman (younger brother Skip Bittman, played by Moranis, eventually appeared on Maudlin as well, with disastrous results); Andrea Martin skewered Liza Minnelli and Lorna Luft with "real terrific" combo-character Lorna Minnelli; Catherine O'Hara inhabited pill-popping boozer Lola Heatherton, a Joey Heatherton-Lola Falana amalgam who greeted fans with her trademark shriek, "I love you! I wanna bear your children!"; John Candy portrayed constantly-chuckling Ed McMahon-style sidekick/sycophant William B. Williams, who often wound up kneeling on the floor as guests came out and the couch filled up. The Maudlin regulars would later appear together in the Rat Pack movie parody Maudlin's Eleven.
  • Mel's Rock Pile was a knockoff of the Citytv show Boogie (and also closely resembled American Bandstand). This teen dance program was hosted by "Rockin' Mel" Slirrup (Eugene Levy), a nervous, bespectacled nerd who played lame pop songs for surly in-studio teen guests. One memorable episode of ROCK PILE featured an appearance by Sex Pistols-type band The Queen Haters, featuring the entire Short-era cast in perfect '80s punk-band mode.
  • Martin Short's Jackie Rogers Jr was an earnestly smarmy Albino Las Vegas headliner afflicted with an accent of indeterminate origin and a grating, lisping laugh. He's partial to sequined jumpsuits, Jack Jones-style song standards, and "eligible ladies". Later, Rogers would run for political office but drop out of the race when he realizes it's cramping his show-biz lifestyle.
  • Insufferable talk show host Catherine Timber (O'Hara), star of Enough About Me (also her trademark phrase).
  • Martin Short's somewhat-unclassifiable uber-nerd Ed Grimley (later featured on Saturday Night Live when Short became a regular) was an SCTV fixture, appearing on numerous assorted shows, commercials, promos, and "behind-the-scenes" dramas.
  • Half-Wits and High-Q were parodies of quiz shows College Bowl and Reach For The Top hosted by a highly-irritable Alex Trebek approximation named Alex Trebel (Levy), a thinly-veiled riff on the real-life Jeopardy! host.
  • The 5 Neat Guys, an absurdly clean-cut, '50s style vocal group (á la The Four Freshmen), were portrayed by Candy, Flaherty (as the drunk one), Levy, Moranis, and Thomas. The "5" sang songs like I've Got a Hickey on My Shoulder, Pimples and Pockmarks and other "memorable" tunes.
  • Another Martin Short character, talk-show host Brock Linehan was a parody of real-life Canadian interviewer, the late Brian Linehan. Linehan was famous for his overpreparation, which Short satirized by going in the opposite direction: on SCTV's version of the Linehan show, called Stars in One, all the research compiled about any particular episode's guest was totally and completely wrong, making for some unhappy guests and one frustrated, uneasy host.
  • Harry, the Guy with the Snake on his Face (John Candy). Harry ran Melonville's adult book and X-rated video stores.
  • "Video deejay" Gerry Todd (Moranis) hosted a "televised-radio" type of video show. Moranis' turtleneck-sporting, smooth-talking radio-personality parody was perfectly pitched, and eerily presaged the first group of MTV VJs.
  • Mayor Tommy Shanks (John Candy) was Melonville's "easygoing" (corrupt) mayor who was prone to sudden fits of rage and physical violence, and gave regular fireside chats on SCTV while his stuffed dog sat motionless by his side. Throwing out one non-sequiter after another, Shanks managed to discuss absolutely nothing of relevance during his mayoral broadcasts. Eventually, Shanks succumbed to mental illness and was institutionalized. While still in the institution, he ran for re-election with the campaign slogan "Get me outa' here!" Ultimately, he won by a landslide.
  • SCTV News (later Nightline Melonville), anchored by Joe Flaherty as mostly professional (but alcoholic) newscaster Floyd Robertson and Eugene Levy as geeky, clueless Earl Camembert, a model of oblivious self-importance. The SCTV news-team was modeled after Canadian news anchors Lloyd Robertson and Earl Cameron respectively.
  • Monster Chiller Horror Theater: This fright-film showcase featured laughably non-frightening z-movies like Dr. Tongue's 3-D House of Stewardesses. Dr. Tongue was played by John Candy and Monster Chiller Horror Theater was hosted by Flaherty character Count Floyd, who was revealed in a later episode to be SCTV News anchorman Floyd Robertson working a second job.
  • The Shmenge Brothers and their polka band, The Happy Wanderers. Like Bob and Doug McKenzie, the Shmenges were breakout characters and their popularity resulted in the HBO special The Last Polka (a parody of Martin Scorsese's The Last Waltz). (John Candy would go on to play another polka clarinetist in Home Alone, which also starred Catherine O'Hara). In one episode, the Shmenges performed a memorable tribute to composer John Williams.
  • Dave Thomas as actor Richard Harris in a skit where "Harris" sang an extended version of his famous hit MacArthur Park, then dances endlessly in total agony during the elongated orchestral stretch while the show moves on to other skits. The song finally ends when an audience member hurls a brick at his chest.
  • The famous CCCP1-Russian television episode in which SCTV is taken over by Soviet programming. At first, nothing seems out of the ordinary at the station: on the air, Eugene Levy plays Perry Como in a promo for Still Alive, a TV-special in which Como's trademark "relaxed" style is taken to ludicrous extremes. The nearly-comatose Como sings one song while propped up against a dancer, another swaddled in bed with the covers pulled up to his chin, and performs a third number sprawled face-down and almost-motionless on the floor, mic laying next to his mouth, one finger moving to the beat. But SCTV is suddenly knocked off the air, replaced by an illegal signal from the Soviet television network. Throughout, the old Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, which is abbreviated USSR in English but CCCP in Russian, is referred to as "three CP one". From there, all the "shows" are Russian-related spoofs (a situation comedy about a talking tractor similar to My Mother the Car, a game-show called What Fits into Russia? which celebrates the USSR's massive size, etc.), and "Hey, Giorgy", "everybody's favorite Cossack" with the memorable line "Uzbeks drank my battery fluid", uttered when Rick Moranis's Lada won't start outside an alehouse; popping the hood reveals the battery's six old-style cells sporting bendy straws.
  • A Jazz Singer parody which reversed the story by having musical guest Al Jarreau play a popular jazz singer who wants to become a cantor (hazzan). His father is a disapproving pop-music impressario played by Eugene Levy's befuddled Sid Dithers character. Hassidic Dithers, four feet tall and cross-eyed behind "Coke bottle" glasses, spoke with a thick early vaudeville-style Yiddish accent ("San Fransisky? So how did you come: did you drove, or did you flew?"). The payoff of this parody made for a classic SCTV moment: Jarreau has become a synagogue cantor, fulfilling his dream against his father's wishes, and he wonders if his father will ever speak to him again -- until, during the service, he is interrupted by a disco-clad Dithers standing in the doorway in dancing shoes, spangled jacket, and corn-rowed hair.
  • The episode in which a janitorial union went on strike, forcing stations to broadcast the network feed from CBC Television. Parodies ensued, such as Hinterland Who's Who, Front Page Challenge and It's a Fact, among others. Meanwhile, Eugene Levy's Sid Dithers played the union president, barely able to see over the conference table as he detailed the progress of the strike-talks.
  • Magnum, P.E.I. wherein John Candy plays a savvy private investigator a la Magnum, P.I., chasing his quarry through the scenic potato patches of Prince Edward Island.

Ironically, the most popular sketch was intended as throwaway filler. Bob & Doug McKenzie, dim-witted beer-chugging brothers in a recurring Canadian-themed sketch called Great White North, were initially developed by Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas (Bob & Doug, respectively) as a sarcastic response to the CRTC mandate requiring Canadian-based programs to feature two minutes of "identifiably Canadian content" in every episode. The characters ultimately became icons of the very Canadian culture they parodied, spinning off albums, a feature film (Strange Brew), commercials, and numerous TV and film cameos. Bob and Doug helped to popularize the stereotypical Canadian trait of adding "eh" to the end of sentences, a facet of Canadian life that is often gently ridiculed in American shows featuring Canadian characters. Recently, Moranis and Thomas recreated Bob and Doug in the form of a pair of moose in the animated feature Brother Bear from Disney.

DVD releases

Shout! Factory has released SCTV on DVD in Region 1 for the very first time. To date, all episodes from Season 4 & 5 (which aired on NBC) have been released in 4 Volumes and a Best-of DVD has been released which features episodes from Seasons 2 & 3. It is not known if the remaining episodes (Seasons 1-3,6) will be released at some point.

DVD Name Ep # Release Date Additional Information
SCTV- Vol 1: Network 90 9 June 8 2004
SCTV- Vol 2 9 October 19 2004
SCTV- Vol 3 9 March 1 2005
SCTV- Vol 4 12 September 13 2005

Other Releases

  • Christmas With SCTV: Released October 4, 2005
  • SCTV- Best of The Early Years: Released October 24, 2006

See Also

List of late night network TV programs

  • SCTV homepage
  • SCTV Guide, including a searchable episode guide
  • The Canadian Encyclopedia: SCTV
  • Canada's Walk of Fame: SCTV cast, 2002 inductees
  • CBC Arts (8 June 2004). "IN BRIEF: Classic SCTV hits DVD, century-old overdue book returned". CBC News. Retrieved 2007-06-18. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  • At The Internet Movie Database
  • Audio interview with head writer Dick Blasucci on The Sound of Young America
  • Edmonton SCTV Locations
  • Joe Flaherty talks about the early days of SCTV on public radio program The Sound of Young America
  • Southside Johnny discusses his appearance on SCTV
  • SCTV landing page on Shout! Factory
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