SCTV Review: Philosophy Street (1-9) / Therese et Joe (1-10)

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RATINGS SYSTEM:
***** - Classic
**** - Great
*** - Good/Average
** - Meh
* - Awful

“Philosophy Street” (season 1, episode 9, aired Mar. 24, 1977)

GOOD-BYE AMERICA

  • Heraldo Rivera (Joe Flaherty) discusses the state of film over dinner at Sardi’s with several other critics before seeing Roman Polanski’s remake of Duck Soup.

  • This parody of Geraldo Rivera’s 1973-77 series Good Night America was decent, and the cast does some good work. Eugene Levy’s Rex Reed (or Reid in this sketch) gets the funniest lines, but I also laughed at Catherine O’Hara as Judith Crist (Krist) suggesting the directors have “giant fat things shoved into their- (interrupted)” and Dave Thomas’s John Simon (Symon) dropping trou as his capsule comment on Chinatown.

  • Roman Polanski had actually been arrested for statutory rape less than two weeks before this episode aired; I’m guessing this was taped before the arrest, but it pretty much instantly dates the sketch. The idea of DeNiro, Pacino, Hoffman and Stallone playing the Marx Brothers is still funny, though.

  • Theme song: “City of New Orleans” by Steve Goodman.

***

SUNRISE SEMESTER: SELF DEFENSE FOR WOMEN

  • Dr. Cheryll Height (Andrea Martin) shows viewers how to fend off male attackers.

  • Andrea Martin is hilarious in this, particularly when she’s describing Joe Flaherty’s character’s ill intent as he seems more interested in his newspaper.

  • Dr. Cheryll Height is pretty much a renamed Cheryl Kinsey; she’s a little more relaxed in these early sketches, even if she still twitches whenever mentioning anything slightly sexual (watch her when she says “groin”).

  • This is the first “Sunrise Semester” to use the Spike Jones version of the William Tell Overture with the bird noise sound effects.

****

PROMO: BATH TALK

  • Donna Davies (Catherine O’Hara) will interview Your Weight Is My Fortune author Dr. Ira Gessler (Eugene Levy) on the next edition of her morning show.

  • A forgettable piece, but Eugene Levy steals it without saying a word.

** 1/2

SCTV AM NEWS TODAY: TAPED MUSIC

  • Earl Camembert (Eugene Levy) adds taped music to add dramatic flair to his low-stakes news items, much to the irritation of Floyd Robertson (Joe Flaherty).

  • Another strong SCTV News sketch. For some reason, I love the inappropriateness of Earl playing "Sleigh Ride” during his fluff story on the orphan getting a bicycle, and especially when he plays it during Floyd’s smoking ban item.

****

PHILOSOPHY STREET

  • A favorite from the early shows (the title of my blog comes from this sketch). The scenes with Eugene Levy teaching an annoyed Dave Thomas about factual judgements and value judgements are the strongest, but I enjoy the whole sketch.

****

S&M AIRLINES

  • The airline that caters to your very special recreational tastes.

  • Short, but effective, with the memorable visual of the flight attendants wearing leather and whipping the passengers.

*** 1/2

TOTAL WOMAN WITH CASSY MACKERAL

  • Cassy (Andrea Martin) interviews Trudy Collingwood (Catherine O’Hara), Female Person of the Year, about juggling work and family.

  • This has a stagey feel to it; there’s some funny details (“I have three children-persons”, Ramis’s unhappy husband) but the whole thing is a bit underwhelming.

** 1/2

SCTV MOVIE OF THE WEEK: A FISTFUL OF UGLY

  • The non-violent Western about The Man With No Name (Harold Ramis) almost getting into confrontations with Black Bart, a Mexican (John Candy), and the man who owns the town (Joe Flaherty).

  • The scene with the Sheriff and the Mexican already aired in the previous episode, and worked much better as a promo than the full, nearly six-minute sketch, which is just a little too unfocused and repetitive to work. I wonder if they were short on material this week.

  • Dave Thomas’s one-armed Civil War soldier was probably the funniest characterization, but Flaherty does pretty well as the villainous Mr. King.

**

LONGJEANS G-11 WATCH

  • No other timepiece can do what the Longjeans G-11 can do, from playing music, to squeezing orange juice, to much more.

  • A pretty straightforward commercial parody, but it’s just the right length for it to work.

***

FEEDBACK

  • Moe Green (Harold Ramis) solicits calls about SCTV programming policy, but gets fired by his boss Guy Caballero (voice of Joe Flaherty).

  • Moe Green’s starting to get a little more definition here as a station host in this strong closing segment. Ramis has some very funny reactions to the various callers (John Candy’s casually suicidal guy, Catherine O’Hara’s feminist and Eugene Levy’s confused viewer asking “Moo” why the show is called “Feedbag”), but it is Flaherty’s first (voice-only) appearance as station president Guy Caballero that makes this sketch notable, though Caballero is more short-tempered and mean than the lovably sleazy character he would become.

  • In the original Rhodes version of this sketch, the “national anthem” Caballero introduces is followed by a few bars of the Stanislawski Polka Band’s “Emilia’s/Always In The Way/Helena”

****

Final thoughts: An uneven show, marred by the overlong and scattered A Fistful of Ugly and a few weaker-than-usual sketches, but there’s still more good than bad, and what’s good is still very good (Sunrise Semester, SCTV News, Philosophy Street and Feedback).

MVP:

  • (tie) Eugene Levy / Harold Ramis

Rhodes version differences:

  • Removed: SCTV AM News Today: Taped Music (moved to 1-11), Longjeans G-11 Watch (moved to 1-6), Feedback (moved to 1-11)

  • Added: SCTV AM News Today: Helsinki Trip (from 1-11), Extreme Close-Up (from 1-8), Firing Squad (from 1-7)

Blair version differences:

  • Removed: Feedback

  • Added: new syndication promo for Therese et Joe (Robert Corness v/o)

Additional screen captures from this episode are available here.

“Therese et Joe” (season 1, episode 10, aired Apr. 7, 1977)

SCTV NEWS: NEW DELI

  • Earl Camembert (Eugene Levy) misunderstands his assignment to New Delhi.

  • Not the most sophisticated sketch, but the Earl and Floyd dynamic helps sell it. This also seems to be a bit of a topical piece, as the 1977 Indian General Election happened in March.

  • This is the first SCTV News segment to reference an earthquake in Togo (Togoland was the name used for the region before the country became independent in 1960), a running joke throughout the series.

  • Tony Rosato is prominent in the background of the sketch; I also get a little bit of amusement from the super-70s outfit Dave Thomas is wearing.

***

SUNRISE SEMESTER: POLITICAL SCIENCES 101

  • Dr. Hammond Greer (Dave Thomas) rants about all the ways scientists steal from us.

  • Dave Thomas disparages his performance in this sketch in SCTV: Behind the Scenes, but I’ve always enjoyed this one, and felt this was ahead of its time in its depiction of unhinged conspiracies. I especially like how petty and personal the examples get (tying up the phone lines, stealing the top third out of cereal boxes).

*** 1/2

ROBCO UP-YOUR-NOSE POLLUTION FILTER

  • Stop respiratory problems with the filters you stick directly in your nostrils.

  • Again, not the most sophisticated, but the execution was pretty well done, largely due to Thomas’s fast-talking voiceover (which he would personify as the character Harvey K-Tel).

***

SCTV NEWS: ACTION LINE / NUTRITION REPORT

  • Francesca Reams (Andrea Martin) solves the international arms race; Dr. Jennifer Colby (Catherine O’Hara) discusses research that proves “you are what you eat”.

  • The Action Line segment was alright, but it felt a little too similar to the segment in show 7’s SCTV News. The nutrition report was a little better, though most of the jokes were a bit obvious; Candy’s slurred “I like them” as the subject fed only cola and cheesies was my favorite part.

  • The “Diet of Worms” joke with Ramis dressed as a priest went over my head for the longest time until I found out what it was referencing.

***

DINING WITH LARUE: TANG GARDENS

  • Johnny LaRue (John Candy) reviews his friend Lin Ye Tang’s (Dave Thomas) restaurant after the two have already gotten bombed on wild rice wine.

  • The performances liven this one up a little bit, particularly from Thomas, who seems to be doing his best to make Candy break.

***

SILVER BULLET SUPPOSITORIES

  • The Lone Ranger (Joe Flaherty) solves Zeke’s (John Candy) hemorrhoid problem.

  • Lowbrow as heck, but once again the execution is a large reason why it works.

*** 1/2

NORTHERN IRELAND PERSPECTIVE ‘77 WITH LOU JAFFE

  • In a pub in Belfast, an encounter group has Protestants and Catholics open up to each other.

  • Swing and a miss. It helps if you know that Andrea Martin’s character Molly Bloom is the character from James Joyce’s Ulysses (she pretty much quotes the last part of her soliloquy verbatim here), but the sketch on a whole is weak. I did get a few laughs from Thomas’s barely intelligible character.

  • First appearance of Eugene Levy’s Lou Jaffe, whose “I’m Lou Jaffe” introduction isn’t quite as shrill as it would become.

**

PAINFREE AND STAYBRITE

  • Druggist Mr. O’Connell (Harold Ramis) recommends Painfree analgesic chewing gum and Staybrite, the once-a-year toothpaste to arthritic Mrs. O’Reilly (Catherine O’Hara)

  • Another bait-and-switch commercial (the real thing being sold is the money-making possibilities of owning a drug store), with some funny visual gags. Catherine O’Hara does a good old lady voice.

***

SCTV FOREIGN FILM OF THE WEEK: THERESE ET JOE

  • Jean-Luc Renais’ French New Wave film about the existentialist despair of lovers Therese (Andrea Martin) and Joe (Joe Flaherty)

  • SCTV would do better parodies of foreign films once they had the budget and a director who was better able to capture the look of what was being parodied, but this sketch is still worth checking out, and has its highlights (particularly the face-painting scenes and invocation of Jerry Lewis).

  • The song that the devastated Therese sings to herself at the end is Francis Lai’s theme to Un Homme et Une Femme.

*** 1/2

SCTV PM NEWS: TERRORISM COMMENTARY

  • Earl Camembert (Eugene Levy) pleas to all terrorists to stop and surrender.

  • A lot of humor coming from Earl’s naive wrongheadedness and suggestion that the terrorists surrender to him personally (“I can’t guarantee that you won’t be tortured for withholding information…”), but Floyd’s silent amusement as his co-anchor digs his own grave and last line (“Don’t all surrender at once”) steals the sketch.

*** 1/2

Final thoughts: A comparatively weaker show, especially in light of the roll that the previous episodes were on; most of the sketches tonight were decent but just a little below the standard that was being set throughout the season. The less sophisticated pieces worked, but some of the more intellectual references felt very out of place in this episode.

MVP:

  • Dave Thomas

Rhodes version differences:

  • Removed: Sunrise Semester: Political Science 101, SCTV News: Action Line / Nutrition Report, Silver Bullet Suppositories (moved to 1-3), Northern Ireland Perspective ‘77 with Lou Jaffe, Painfree and Staybrite (moved to 1-11), SCTV PM News: Terrorism Commentary

  • Added: An SCTV Before-School Special: Beauty & The Beets (from 1-7), Golden Hits of the 11th Century (from 1-3), Three Mariners (from 1-11) and Challenge My Sermonette (US Only)

Blair version differences:

  • Removed: Silver Bullet Suppositories (moved to 1-11), SCTV PM News: Terrorism Commentary

  • Added: new syndication promo for Broads Behind Bars (Robert Corness v/o)

Additional screen captures from this episode are available here.