Most of my entries of late have been about the election, for the simple fact that we’ve got a pretty big one coming up soon. But I wanted to take a moment to voice my extreme pleasure with a recent DVD purchase. Volume 2 of SCTV, Second City Television.
The episodes in Volume 2 originally aired in the Fall 1981 to Spring 1982 and I was 13 at the time. It aired after the local news on WETM with Bruce Flaherty and it ran for 90 minutes so I had to sneak down to watch it. My parents weren’t prudish or anything but they didn’t love the idea of me spending that kind of time at that sort of hour watching TV. So very often, it had to be a clandestine operation.
We didn’t have a VCR just yet. Or at least, we didn’t have one connected to the TV I was able to watch SCTV on, so I had to make use of my Panasonic cassette recorder to capture the audio. It was important to me to be able to record them somehow because I knew SCTV was something special and I had a pretty good idea that it wasn’t going to last.
Watching the show on the 19 inch family room set, I had to make sure the volume wasn’t too loud, lest I draw undue attention to myself. So I’d hold the recorder’s integrated condenser mic up close to the little speaker. It worked fine and I captured most of the shows this way but I remember having difficulty many times holding the recorder in a consistent spot because I’d be laughing so hard. Later recordings benefitted from a stack of books I’d use to prop the recorder up. The irony of using books to record television was certainly lost on a 13 year old.
I literally wore those tapes out in the ensuing years. I remember they kept breaking so I had to crack the cassette shell open and reattach the broken tape ends, usually with scotch tape or sometimes with model glue. But I listened to them over and over. I knew the scripts by rote in only a couple listening sessions. At 13, boys are fairly impressionable and I have to say that a good portion of my sense of humor was formed during this time. I credit SCTV with the lion’s share of that formation.
For the first time in 23 years, I was able to see those shows and remember it all over again…
CCCP1 – What a great concept! And it was perfectly suited for the format of SCTV. They retained the soundtrack from Star Trek: The Motion Picture during the outerspace sequence where Dr. Tongue and Bruno accompany Red Rooster to fix the SCTV satellite. However, The Crusin’ Gormet sketch, with Dave Thomas as the Pacino character in Crusin’ was missing the Eagles tune Disco Strangler from the original airing. Clearly, they couldn’t get the rights to this song and stay within the DVD production budget. I think that song was a big reason why that tiny sketch was so funny. I always hated the Eagles and now I have a new reason. Greedy bastards. Anyway, it remains one of the strongest episodes.
I’m Taking My Own Head… – At 13, I couldn’t fully appreciate the angst and turmoil that Andrea Martin’s character Libby Wolfson goes through in this show. But today, at 36, I finally “get” it. So funny! In fact, Andrea Martin and Joe Flaherty were the funniest, most versatile players on the show. To see them today, in the extra footage and special features, they haven’t aged one fucking bit! It’s amazing. Everyone else (except for Catherine O’Hara, who also looks fantastic) has aged really badly. Dare I say that Andrea Martin looks better today than she did back then. January 15 Update.
Zontar – This is one of the episodes I was never able to capture with my cassette recorder, so it was like watching for the first time. To see Conrad Bain play his Diff’rent Strokes character with those two black kids is hysterical. And Mrs. Falbo’s special guest is G. Gordon Liddy. It’s just as well I never caught this episode on tape since that joke would have gone over my head like a propeller beanie.
Walter Cronkite’s Brain – Another great show. Combining the ascent of Cronkite’s broadcasting career with the legend of Superman is pure genius. Pre-Teen World features the entire cast playing young kids in an entirely convincing way. Rough Trade is on hand as the musical guest. I finally noticed how they cleaned up the lyrics to that tune of theirs. Another missing musical license: The Doors Light My Fire from the Merv Griffin Show. Merv (Rick Moranis) would play piano-only versions of 60s pop songs, making them sound very funny. But again, The Doors were license holdouts. No matter, really, because the sketch is still very strong. And the Steeplechase game show sketch was funny as audio (the only way I could enjoy it back then) but together with the video, it’s so much funnier. Gerry Todd would have loved to point that out.
Doorway to Hell – This is the big one, folks. This one episode is the main reason I was excited to learn that SCTV was coming to DVD. If I could have only one SCTV episode to watch, this would be the one. Every single sketch, and I mean every one, is perfection. It’s one hit after another: Catherine O’Hara’s portrayal of Karen Black, Bob & Doug on microwave ovens, Pepi Longsocks (“look at his large frame, I tell you!”), Skip Bittman’s premiere on the Sammy Maudlin Show, New York Rhapsody with amazing violinist Eugene Fodor reenacting the story of Paul Boray, Nana Mouskouri, and of course, Doorway to Hell, perhaps the funniest sketch they ever did.
The Godfather – John Marley parodies his own performance as Jack Woltz in The Godfather and the entire episode revolving around a “network war” over pay TV rights. Brilliant stuff.
SCTV Staff Christmas Party – This one is not only funny but it really plays like a warm, heartfelt Christmas Show. Plus the Frank Incense gag (another one I’d never seen before, with a Frank Sinatra figurine spouting scented incense from his cigarette) is another gem!
Teacher’s Pet – I’d seen To Sir With Love for the first time recently, but I never put it together before that the Teacher’s Pet sketch was a parody of that film. So accurate a parody and funny too, with Bob Geldof and the Boomtown Rats! Plus the sketch that made me piss my pants from laughing so hard as a teenager: the Farm Film Report with Brooke Shields (Catherine O’Hara) singing Young Turks. Additionally, the Ben Hur sketch with Harold Ramis and the Lone Ranger Show.
Midnight Video Special – The Talking Heads video of Once in a Lifetime is featured prominently as well as Japanese pop group The Plastics. Good stuff all around. This episode also features the funniest Monster Chiller Horror Theater with Count Floyd describing an upcoming film, The Bloodsucking Monkeys From West Mifflin Pennsylvania (“which is a nice suburb of Pittsburgh”). Hysterical. Lust For Paint, another very strong sketch, parodying Lust For Life, the Van Gogh biopic from 1956. They switched focus to the funnier French bohemian Moulin Rouge artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Lastly, Alfred Hitchcock Presents Murder is Bad for Your Health, a sketch with Joe Flaherty trying to push Andrea Martin over a cliff, but she’s stuck in her wheelchair. That “no beef” anecdote she tells is one that I’ve memorized and can recite on demand, and have done many times.
So there you have it. My full account of SCTV’s place in my personal development. I offer a huge thank you to the producers of the DVD and of course, the cast of the show themselves (“and I mean that sincerely”). I look forward to purchasing future volumes !!
