Late Night Habits

 I was one of those punk kids who actually preferred SCTV to Saturday Night Live. You read that right. I was one of those who stayed up searching the dial for what was, for the masses, that second string Canadian show that came on after the Not Ready For Prime Time Players were on their way out to whatever post-show drug fueled orgy were shuttled off to. The trick here was that the folks over at Second City TV weren't performing live. Or even on tape delay. They were cobbling together their little comedy show north of the border and churning out a consistent barrage of satire that was neither as "edgy" or "groundbreaking" as their counterparts in the lower forty-eight. 

SCTV was best when it was poking fun at the very medium in which they chose to to work. All those odd characters were just trying to put on the best show possible. Whether it was Johnny LaRue, as portrayed by John Candy or Lola Heatherton, played by Catherine O'Hara, or station owner Guy Caballero embodied by the late Joe Flaherty. Somewhere in there, as a tweak to the Canadian Broadcasting Company who insisted that there be two additional minutes of strictly "Canadian Content," Bob and Doug McKenzie sprang from the imaginations of Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas. All of  these bits were making fun of television, the very medium that was responsible for putting them on the air in the first place. It felt, in its polite Canuck way, a slice more rebellious than what was happening on Saturday Nights in New York City. 

Which is interesting, since so much of the DNA came from the same comic spores. Lorne Michaels, a Canadian, raided the Chicago cast of Second City for his SNL group, as well as snapping up many of the writers and performers from National Lampoon's Radio Hour. Toronto's Second City group was where many of the SCTVers came from, with the mild exception of Dan Aykroyd who served his apprenticeship in both Toronto and Chicago. 

Time has been more kind to the Canadian comics than those who chose the fast lane down south. No John Belushis or Chris Farleys at SCTV. Even though many of them found their way into Hollywood, the tragic ends of some of the Saturday Night cast could only find a faint echo in the early passing of John Candy in 1994. The rest of the gang continues to hang around, showing up just often enough for us all to say, "Hey. Isn't that the guy who..." 

Joe Flaherty, who will also be remembered by me as Sam and Lindsay's dad on Freaks and Geeks, passed away last week at the age of eighty-two. He played bits in Back to the Future, Stripes, and Happy Gilmore. He was "that guy." Hewas "that guy" for nearly fifty years. And while it wouldn't be too terribly Canadian to suggest that he stomped on the Terra, he was originally from Pittsburgh where that sort of behavior is expected. 

He will be missed.