My favourite SCTV bit was when Joe Flaherty was reading a “scary” bedtime story to his son. He started out with the girl who didn’t wash her face. When she wet to school she had a zit because of it. She kept getting more throughout the day, and she was so zit-covered that when she got home, her mother didn’t recognize her. “Wasn’t that a scary story, Billy?” “No. I want a story that’s really scary!”
So Flaherty tells “Billy” a story about an old man in a lighthouse who looks out over the sea. “And what did he see, Billy? RATS! Yeah, that’s it. Rats! And they were coming toward him. And he could see them going,” [and at this point he puts his hands near his mouth and moved them as if they were whiskers and biting fangs] “‘mee-mee-meee-mee!’ and they were getting CLOSER!” As he finishes the story (the old man having been eaten by the rats) he says, “Ha ha ha! Now wasn’t that a scary story?” Billy is stiff as a board. His hair is white and standing straight up. “He’s dead,” says Flaherty, “Honey? I really did it this time!”
And then of course, there was “Johnny LaRue”, “Count Floyd”, “Guy Caballero”, “Edith Brickly”, “Sammy Maudlin”…
One of the great moments of TV, especially since Jack Burns (announcer and producer) was the only person in on Andy’s plans to screw up all through the show. And their closing fistfight–pure Andy!
Fave SCTV was the fake Soviet network, all done with a different number of scanlines and everything.
Um, Houseman, You do realize that entire show was a setup engineered by Kaufman, don’t you? Brilliant, but staged.
Dire Wolf, are you sure? I couldn’t find the answer after about 15 minutes on Google, but I’m 90% sure it was Richards. 95%, actually.
Finally, for all it’s faults, Fridays did some of the best sketch commedy ever produced.The Ronny Horror Show was as brilliant a parody as has ever been on TV, and frankly, I don’t see SNL ever putting on a 17 minute sketch.
I was 14 when Fridays aired – two seasons, I believe. I actually liked it better than the SNL that aired at the time. However, nothing quite compared to SCTV, which we kids in Buffalo got to see a few years earlier than the rest of the United States, thanks to the presence of Canadian television channels on the city’s cable system.
BTW, my favorite SCTV episide involved spoofing CBC programming, with Monday Night Curling (“SWEEP! SWEEP!”) and It’s a Canadian Fact! PSAs (“The Canadian side of Niagara Falls is bigger than the American side – it’s a Canadian Fact!”, “Our Thanksgiving comes first, in October, so we must have invented it – it’s a Canadian Fact!”).
Okay, back to topic … anyplace where you can get tapes of Fridays episodes, or see reruns?
My friends and I considered “Fridays” a blatant ripoff of SNL, but far rougher and edgier than SNL, and for the edginess it was watchable. Couldn’t stay away when Andy Kaufman would be on; while unevenly funny, his appearances were fascinating in a train-wreck kind of way. For some reason the imbibing pharmacist struck me as insanely funny. Less so was the Godzilla spoof, “Zilla, Monster from the Deep.” Turned out the monster from which everyone was running in abject terror was just a smallish guy in the rubber suit. Usually some kid would call for Vinnie the Biker (Michael Richards) to kick Zilla’s ass.
But nothing EVER beat SCTV.
My favorite SCTV episode was a spoof of the movie, “Ben Hur,” with SCTVers playing The Three Stooges playing the one part of Ben Hur. No musical guests, no ongoing skits, just a reenactment of the three-hour movie in twenty-plus frenetic minutes. And whenever they showed Jesus (only his legs and hands, as in the movie), he’s wearing checkered golf slacks.
Also loved the spoof of Evita (“Indira”), in which the role of Che was replaced with Slim Whitman.
And the “Fantasy Island” spoof, with a clumsily-reduced John Candy as the hopelessly horny Tattoo (he ends up dry-humping a Stradivarius to smithereens). “I know what YOU want to do with the girls, bossth! You want to tie them up with the rich Corinthian leather and-” “SHUT UP, YOU HORRIBLE TROLL!”
And I thought I was **so…o…o…**weird for having a crush on Melanie Chartoff! I just found out I was normal after more than twenty years. slaps self in head
