I read an interview with Dave Thomas after Joe died. He said that when their production moved to Edmonton, Joe loved Edmonton more than any of the Canadian cast members!
Note that in reruns the 90 minutes episodes are split up.
OTOH, I’m still going thru the old 30-minute ones and I find sometimes a “movie” promoted in one episode appears in the next, (And some sketches are repeated. I suspect an inappropriate sketch was replaced. Although they leave in the Dave Thomas doing Asian guys stuff. Errrr.)
Ohhhh. I did not know it was originally 90 minutes.
It wasn’t, SFAIK. The first syndicated episodes I saw back in 1977 were all 30 minutes long.
The show was picked up by a major network (NBC, I think) as a Friday late-night filler around 1980. Those episodes were 90 minutes long and had guest musical acts in spots like “The Fishin’ Musician” (hosted by John Candy)… It was basically an attempt to emulate the SNL format, and it was never as good. New comic actors were also brought in who (IMHO) were nowhere near as funny as the original cast members. (The show really lost something when Harold Ramis left in the middle of the second season.)