7 timeless SCTV characters worth another look
There's an enormous pool of beloved Saturday Night Live and Monty Python characters, some to the point that phrases like the Second City-born but SNL-popularized "livin' in a van down by the river" have been ingrained into our comedic lexicon—even before the Internet. But there’s not as much love for Second City Television. Despite six solid seasons from 1976 to 1984, few are quoting Rick Moranis' smooth-talking DJ Gerry Todd or making Eugene Levy's sleazy Bobby Bittman character an Internet sensation. That seems odd; six seasons with a cast full of household names, and there isn’t one character still worthy of a goofy T-shirt? So before Martin Short, Harold Ramis, Catherine O'Hara, and others reunite for SCTV's two reunion shows on Friday, The A.V. Club went through the SCTV archives and found seven characters that at least ought to be held in as high esteem as Massive Head Wound Harry.
Character: Count Floyd, played by Joe Flaherty
Basic hook: The Count hosts SCTV’s Monster Chiller Horror Theatre, a low-budget production that usually begins with Floyd emerging from a Dracula casket in a cheap vampire suit while howling and woofing, his character apparently unable to distinguish a vampire from a werewolf. Each show presents a “horror classic” that invariably turns out to be either disappointingly tame or some art-house film with a deceptively scary title like Whispers Of The Wolf (or softcore pornography), causing a dumbfounded Floyd to berate his off-camera staff. Count Floyd’s popularity would later spread to his own segment on The Completely Mental Misadventures Of Ed Grimley animated show, as well as his own EP, featuring the soon-to-be holiday standard “Reggae Christmas Eve In Transylvania.”
Best moment: The preview of Dr. Tongue’s Evil House Of Pancakes in 3-D, in which Dr. Tongue (John Candy) thrusts a plate of pancakes and a container of syrup back and forth into the camera, forces a quick-thinking Floyd to convince his predominately juvenile audience that pancakes are very scary, and that “buckwheat, particularly, can be frightening.”
Character: Bob and Doug McKenzie, played by Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas
Basic hook: Bob and Doug host The Great White North, a kind of Canadian-themed version of Wayne’s World—just replace Aurora, Ill. with Melonville, Canada, affection for Aerosmith with affection for beer, and the word “schwing” with “eh?” With a map of Canada plastered behind them and covered with ski caps and parkas, Bob and Doug adhere to every Canadian stereotype by persistently discussing hockey and the lack of parking at the local take-out donut shops while bottles of cheap, assumedly skunky beer surround them as discarded symbols of the Canadian way of life.
Best moment: The segment’s popularity eventually led to the 1983 feature film Strange Brew, where the two dimwitted heroes have to foil a plot of world domination from an evil brewmaster. In one of the movie’s best scenes, the boys place a mouse inside a beer bottle in order to “legally” claim a case of beer for compensation. (Bob claims “It’s in the Canadian criminal code, eh?”)
Character: Ricardo Montalbán, played by Eugene Levy
Basic moment: Levy's faithful portrayal of the late Latino actor is one of those impressions that’s effective simply from being dead-on, capturing the subtle details of Montalbán's overtly dramatic acting—the straight and tall posture, the left hand tucked into his Fantasy Island character's classic white suit, and his delivery, speaking the most mundane of lines with pure theatric panache, as if he were playing Hamlet instead of, say, some villain from a Star Trek film.
Best moment: "The Ricardo Montalbán School of Fine Acting," where Montalbán teaches his students to how to speak with a Spanish accent and with sudden emphasis on seemingly unimportant words, as he advises Joe Flaherty to retool Marlon Brando’s classic On The Waterfront line: “I coulda been a somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am.”
Characters: The Recess Monkeys, played by Rick Moranis, Eugene Levy, and John Candy
Basic hook: All the lovably crappy elements of a typical pre-pubescent rock band—the inconsistent drumming, the timidly off-key singing, the frightened look on each member’s face—are magnified in The Recess Monkeys, a pitiful three-piece with no bassist, and worse, Rick Moranis as lead singer.
Best moment: In the band’s only appearance, the trio covers Chilliwack's "My Girl (Gone Gone Gone)" on the Pre-Teen World Telethon, as Moranis, dressed in an oversized suit, leads the guys in a blisteringly raw (read: sloppy and incoherent) version of the fellow Canadian band’s biggest hit. Funniest unintentional subplot: trying to make John Candy appear younger than 18.
Character: Lola Heatherton, played by Catherine O'Hara
Basic hook: Ditzy and glitzy starlet Lola Heatherton (based on dancer/actress sensations Joey Heatherton and Lola Falana) frequently stops by The Sammy Maudlin Show or any of the station’s endless variety shows to tout her new movie and profess her love to SCTV station manager Guy Caballero (who rides around on a wheelchair despite not being disabled).
Best moment: The “Bouncin’ Back To You” episode, where a pathetically wasted Heatherton finds her special canceled by Caballero (Heatherton rips into him: “You cancelled my special like you cancelled our love!”), though he eventually relents and lets the show back on—which Heatherton uses as a means to scathe every man she’s ever loved.
Characters: 5 Neat Guys, played by John Candy, Joe Flaherty, Eugene Levy, Dave Thomas, and Rick Moranis
Basic hook: A parody of serene '50s vocal groups, the 5 Neat Guys' synchronized shuffling and finger-snapping mixed with color-coded sweaters and bow ties to form one of the SCTV’s most absurd images. It’s funny even before the songs, which are mostly about high-school dances and who in the neighborhood has the largest breasts.
Best moment: The Neat Guys’ commercial for their “Neatest Hits” album, featuring songs like “My Mom Framed My High School Diploma” and “Slow Dance Anyone?” Try not to lose it during the close-up shots of each dopily smiling face, especially Flaherty, clearly playing the alcoholic of the group, and Candy, who appears to have crafted his image after John Ratzenberger’s Cheers character (or perhaps the other way around).
