On Television

...the better the laughs are Besides, satire is a leading Canadian export, along with maple syrup, beavers, hockey pucks, whiskey, and cold air The current Edmonton-based program grew out of the initial SCTl from Toronto The heart of that show was a mythical television station called Channel 109, and in subsequent seasons a network called SCTV This solid gold 30 minutes made its debut in 1977, it was rerun in 1979 as a replacement for the late-night movie on NBC, following Saturday Night Live...

...On Television A TALE OF SECOND CITIES BY MARVIN KITMAN THERE ARE now 10 hours per week of "hip' sketch comedy on American television late at night When you add the reruns of Saturday Night Live (my local station carries the show every day, making it "Monday Through Friday Night Live"), that's a lot of jokes by young, irreverent comedians dedicated to satirizing a world they barely understand But the only consistently witty material comes from Second City's SCTV Comedy Network (Fridays, 12 30-2 00am) The name of this gifted group has been the source of much confusion You see, at first "Second City" had nothing to do with television It came to the tube via a cabaret theater in Toronto that is a spinoff from a similar operation in Chicago, which in the '50s had another spinoff in New York Chicago itself was the original Second City The phrase, coined by A J Liebling in a 1940s New Yorker profile, was a reference to the inferiority complex plaguing Chicago because of New York's preeminence Today Los Angeles would probably tit the role best When Liebling was writing, though, LA was a cow flop on the map, and still is as tar as late-night humor goes Cleveland, the 56th city, is lunniei and has contributed more in the way of mirth by being the hometown of Bob Hope in the early part of this century In any discussion of current TV satire, though, Edmonton and Toronto are the Second Cities, for at various times they have been the headquarters of the greatest comedy troupe around This proves my theory that the further away you get from the cocaine supply, or LA (or am I being redundant...

...This is the year for SCTV to break out, especially Doug and Bob's hit record It has to be this year Already SCTV is starting to have the feel of something that's been around forever Like Bob and Ray Second City is the living exception to TV instant stardom Two good jokes, two weeks of good ratings and you're a big item You see nonentities like Suzanne Somers getting the lucrative specials—overnight she moved up to being a mediocrity And then you look at all the incredibly accomplished work the Second City people have been doing since 1977, they are not in the express lane, believe me I am worried that when they turn the corner, they are going to see a dead end sign...

...It had also been appearing on independent stations, the real lite equivalents ol Channel 109 The syndicated halt hour starred a gag-gle of comedic geniuses John C andv, Joe Flaherlv, Dave Thomas, Catherine O'Haia, Harold Ranus, Andrea Martin, and Eugene Lew Few people realize that what is on the air now is actuallv Second Citv's seventh incarnation, although many of the same performers are present So there is a multiplicity of Second Cities, a situation bordering on the inflationary, you need a score card to keep them straight In tracing their genealogy I find it handy to number them 1 1 is the city of Chicago, 2 1 is the first television show, followed by 2 2,2 3,2 4andsoon You can tell I've been influenced by the Dewey Decimal system In 1979, some of the company started work on a second Second City series To make it seem a distinct entity for the United States market, it was dubbed The US Comedy Show(2 2) This was such a Yankee project that it was produced at The Osmond Brothers' studios in Provo, Utah, another leading satire center of North America Later this Americanized edition moved to Edmonton, never to be heard from again Second City 2 3 was a failed series of shows by the Chicago-based companv i.e...

...Nor can anyone match him as the nagging, jean-clad mother of Brooke Shields He is, in short, a caricaturist of depth Then there is Dave Thomas...

...Who could forget his Bob Hope and the Desert Classic golf tournament in Israel9 Or his Walter Cronkite9 Thomas and Moranis are not simply close, they are right on target It's eerie to see them capture their victims from the inside, as if they're casting some sort of Eskimo witch doctor spells up there in Edmonton Together they do an incredible gallery of satirical portraits, a veritable Withering Heights One of their best routines is a recurring talk show, "The Great White North," where two Canadian youths named Doug and Bob MacKenzie dn nk suds and discuss such burning issues of the day as the carpets in their van and the recipe for beer nog I HAVE A WHOLE list of moments that I laugh at simply listing them "Perry Como Is Still Alive" special, with Eugene Levy playing Mr Relaxation, Andrea Martin as Mother Teresa visiting "The Sammy Maudlin Show", the Evita-like commercial for the smash hit musical Indira, the story of a poor prime minister's daughter who wanted to be a pop singer, costarring Slim Whitman as Che Guevara, and the TV version of the National Midnight Star, with such stories as "Barbara Streisand's Nose a Fake'" I worry about SCTV's place in history, though, mostly because of Us terrible time slot Ending at 2 00 a m is what I call real late-night TV—early morning, in fact I'm often too exhausted and bored by all the preceding garbage to stay awake through 90 minutes of commercials interrupted by some comedy bits You've got to be an iron-man to work a full week and then sit down at 12 30 am for some good satire The fatigue rubs off on the lamer gags The greatest comedy show in the world deserves better At the very least, NBC should run SCTV on Saturdays at 11 30 PM and put Saturday Night Livemto the SCTV spot on Friday, let the turkey burn out in relative privacy I have an even more radical suggestion, prompted by the fact that SCTV is unique among comedy shows in being very clean Nothing in their gags prevents them from coming on at 8 00 p m This crew is The Ready for Prime Time Players, blowing in from Canada to rescue our comedy Grant Thinker, as we call him in honor of Rodin's statue, should get the bright idea to make SCTKone of these short flight series they always throw in primetime during the summer That's when they get rid of the garbage they couldn't sell, yet it's where Barbara Mandrell became a hit Everybody in America knows the Mandrell Sisters?why not the Mackenzie Brothers...

...the original original Second City cabaret theater in Chicago None of the 2 1's crew participated The summer 1980 premiere of this dud was 90 minutes long, starred Bill Murray and was taped live in the renowned nightspot where so many famous careers have been launched (Alan Arkin, Robert Klein, Alan Alda, Joan Rivers, Valerie Harper, Mike Nichols, Elaine Mav, Shelly Berman, John Belushi—every-body got their start at SC, probablv even Marcel Marceau) Here also, as Murray explained in his opening monologue, "the careers ot thousands were killed " Second City 2 3, a production of the Coast-to-Coast Network (the poor man's commercial netvv ork founded bv Paul Klein), lasted lust one episode It didn't sell enough ads In the tall ot 1980 there appeared Second City 2 4 alias Big City Comedy, featuring John Candv It was made lor primetime (7 30 p vi ) and ran for one season The round Candy probably was too fat to star in his ow n show or something (He went on to mimic Orson Welles brilliantly in SCTV Comedy Network) In any case, Second City 2 4 begat 2 5, an unnamed pilot developed bv the Second City TV management in Toronto, the Osmond Brothers production company in Utah, Paul Klein, and the NBC network (Among the closet Canadian satire freaks, apparently, was Freddie Silverman ) After all the publicity hoopla, though, the deal died when the Osmonds discovered that the troupe poked fun at the establishment, TV and other sacred cows Meanwhile, 2 6 went on the air in the fall of 1980, too Technically the show was called From Cleveland, an hour-long pilot for a national series taped there—a TV first From Cleveland was not an official Second City production, it simply used the brilliant cast from SC 2 1 Everybody from the Toronto show slipped across the Great Lakes for this gig—except John Candy, who was busy in 2 4, and Harold (the Sell-Out) Ramis, thus nicknamed because he had turned to a lite of crime as a Hollywood screenwriter af ter his enormous success in 2 1 This is getting to sound like a tale of Second Cities, but I'mapproachingthe end now with 2 7, the SCTV Comedy Network Show My explanation for SCTV 's quality is that there is nothing to do in Edmonton, Alberta, except be funny It's hard to be a superstar out there on the prairie and get a swelled head the way vou can in Hollywood and New York It's also cheaper to put on a show there, although not as economical as St Pierre or Miquelon The newest late-night version features most of the all-time, all Canadian superstars of American TV satire Thomas, Martin, Levy, Flaherty, Candy, and O'Hara, with Rick Moranis replacing Ramis I can hardly contain my joy at seeing the gang work together They are comic titans When it was first aired last May, however, I was upset with the bloated format of SC 2 7 It seemed unnatural at three times the usual length, with excess baggage like the rock n'roll acts Gone was the fast pacing of SC 2 1, and there were some clinkers mixed in with the good stuff The 90 minutes threatened to become a tiring cross country run where the original had been a beautiful 440 high hurdles I knew NBC had 90 minutes to fill for reasons too boring to go into here Yet why not put on two different comedy shows, or even three9 NBC had discovered a perverse alchemy, a way of turning gold into dross, and wouldn't stop until it killed SCTV What a waste, I thought Ah, but I should have remembered how sturdy were the talents of the Edmonton Seven Despite the dull stretches, SCTV is still funnier than anything else on the tube Rick Moranis has proved to be the most hilarious young comedian of the 1980s His rendition, for example, of Dick Cavett interviewing Dick Cavett is deadly accurate ("Can I be blunt am I blushing . we're out of time") And his Merv Griffin is incredible (asking Yasir Arafat, "Is WKRP in Cincinnati on in Palestine...