Just For Fun: Memories Of SCTV

By Emily Carney

Growing up in the early 1980s, television comedy was all about Saturday Night Live on NBC. Television sketch comedy was still in its infancy. SNL underwent sort of a strange period between 1981 and 1982 with the addition of entertainers like Eddie Murphy and Joe Piscopo, who elevated the show from being utterly boring and routine after the departure of the “Original Prime Time Players.” However, another television comedy show entered the canon in 1981, imported from Canada. Second City Television (or more commonly known as SCTV) became the “cult” antithesis of SNL, featuring mainly Canadian performers. In many ways, SCTV was “smarter” and more hilarious than its American counterpart, and here’s why.

SCTV actually started in 1976, but wasn’t picked up as sort of a Canadian version of SNL until 1981. SCTV was meant to be a low-class TV station bordering Canada, and was run by shady characters who maintained generally crappy, low-budget local programming. The constantly drunk McKenzie brothers—who later had their exploits made into a feature film—had their own show called “The Great White North” in which they would propagate awful Canadian stereotypes involving back bacon and getting completely schwasted. In 1981, NBC added SCTV to its comedy lineup. The show began to include musical guests to be more like SNL, but generally maintained its sketch comedy format.

So, there’s some historical background into SCTV. Now I’m going to share some of my favorite SCTV moments with you, dear readers.

For some reason, SCTV‘s “Gerry Todd Show” was OBSESSED with ex-Doobie Brothers singer Michael McDonald, years before enterprising “Yacht Rock” hipsters took up the cause. Gerry Todd was an aging video-phile played by Rick Moranis; Gerry’s show contained random music videos narrated in a terrible faux-American accent.

There were several examples of this Michael McDonald fixation on the Gerry Todd Show. A washed-up singer named Tom Monroe—who looks like combination of Perry Como and Gary Glitter (What the . . . ?)—sings a medley of the Petula Clark classics “Downtown” and “Don’t Sing in the Subway.” Listen to the backing track and the background vocals. SCTV‘s juxtaposition of The Doobie Brothers’ “What A Fool Believes” with some awful 1960s nostalgia still has me collapsing in fits of giggles.

Tom Monroe also tried to tackle “new wave” music with his take on a then-popular Police song. (He wasn’t successful.) The best comment about Tom Monroe’s songs on YouTube: “All of Tom’s arrangements end on a Major 7th. Classy!”

. . . But, back to Michael McDonald. If you don’t laugh at this video from “the Grammy winner himself!” Christopher Cross, something is probably wrong with you. SCTV making fun of the ubiquity of Michael McDonald’s vocals materializing on every track in early 1980s music was nearly 30 years ahead of its time (later, the YouTube show Yacht Rock would tackle this same . . . issue).

One of my favorite sketches on SCTV came near the end of its eight-year run. It’s based around a TV talk show called “Just For Fun” and features Joe Flaherty as William F. Buckley, Andrea Martin as Indira Gandhi, and Martin Short (a relatively late addition to the SCTV lineup) as Pierre Trudeau. It’s rather fascinating to view the excellence of the actors’ impersonations of each historical figure (Flaherty’s William Buckley is especially spellbinding). Eugene Levy and his mammoth eyebrows succeed in bringing the cheese to perhaps the most tasteless talk show ever. And of course, Short’s Trudeau gets punched out at day’s end by an angry husband (I know, it’s a spoiler, sorry).

SCTV ended in 1984, but inspired legions of other sketch comedy shows in Canada and in the US as disparate as The Royal Canadian Air Farce and the Upright Citizens Brigade. Occasionally you can still see it on late-night television in the US, just like the good old days.

For more details on SCTV, visit the SCTV Guide website.