SCTV Review: The $129,000 Question (1-19) / SCTV Boogie (1-20)

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

“The $129,000 Question” (season 1, episode 19, aired Oct. 24, 1977)

DR. BENSON, THE CREDIT PSYCHIATRIST

  • Dr. Benson (Dave Thomas) promotes easy-term prices for psychoanalytic help, and shows the conditions he’s been able to treat.

  • One of Dave Thomas’s best hard-sell advertising spoofs, with him as a loud-jacketed, loud-talking doctor-salesman showing off patients as he would furniture or used cars, and offering cookies and coupons as bonus incentives.

  • I didn’t notice this until now, but Joe Flaherty’s stumbles as he delivers his lines appear to be in reaction to Catherine O’Hara’s nymphomaniac patient starting to crawl over him.

*****

WAKE UP WITH ALKI STEREOPOLIS

  • Viewers experience what it’s like to wake up next to continental Alki Stereopolous (Joe Flaherty).

  • A spoof of the 1950’s subjective-camera show The Continental (later parodied in a more widely-known SNL sketch with Christopher Walken). Flaherty’s great here, going between sleaze and cruelty, and this moves pretty fast. His interactions with Candy as the angry husband are particularly funny (including a callback to a joke about his anger over not having “jem” with his roll).

****

FLUFFY PUFF TOILET PAPER

  • The toilet paper that’s as soft as a fine tablecloth.

  • Kind of a simplistic premise, but it’s short, and I particularly like the disapproving glance that Andrea Martin shoots Eugene Levy as she leaves with O’Hara.

  • Music: “Andante from Piano Concerto No. 21 in C” by W. A. Mozart.

***

SCTV AM NEWS TODAY

  • Floyd Robertson (Joe Flaherty) reports on crowds in Luxembourg, visiting Leutonian athletes, and financial relief for the Republic of Togo. Earl Camembert’s (Eugene Levy) item about the dramatic resignation of Police Commissioner Shaeffer (Dave Thomas) doesn’t come up as cued.

  • Eugene Levy gets to demonstrate his slow-burn and comic timing as Earl is left in the lurch on-air by technical difficulties, a concept the show revisits again in season 3. It’s also an interesting change of pace to see Earl be the victim of something besides his own incompetence for once.

  • The Leutonian athlete film with Andrea Martin and John Candy has some good sight gags, though Floyd’s narration seems a little awkwardly paced.

  • The use of “Sleigh Ride” during the construction footage that comes up instead of Earl’s film always makes me laugh.

*** 1/2

PSA: TAGS

  • The “do not remove” tags on mattresses are there for a reason.

  • The joke felt a little obvious, but this was short and to the point.

** 1/2

PROMO: FAT MASTERSON: PRiVATE EYE

  • Bat Masterson’s grandson (John Candy) is a private investigator with a taste for law and order, among other things.

  • An homage to the late 1950s Bat Masterson TV series, with John Candy dressed as Gene Barry’s dandy fictionalized version of the real Masterson. As with the other sketches that seemed to be based around putting Candy in a fat joke, his performance transcends the premise.

***

THE $129,000 QUESTION

  • Moe Green (Harold Ramis) psychs a game show contestant (Joe Flaherty) out as he competes for the big prize.

  • This is Moe Green at his weaselly best, with him retraumatizing Flaherty’s fireman character by reminding him of the worst blaze he fought (where his best friend “melted to the ground”), raising the possibility of his wife cheating right, and faking audio difficulties.

****

THE POINT FROM SHICKETTE

  • A pencil-sharpener-like device gives a quick haircut and shave without breaking the bank.

  • A quick and solid commercial parody, with the memorable visual of Eugene Levy sticking his head in a giant pencil sharpener topped only by his resulting haircut. I also like that O’Hara’s character still won’t go out with him even after his makeover.

****

ELVIRA MAD AGAIN PART II

  • Sixten (Dave Thomas) has trouble fulfilling Elvira’s (Catherine O’Hara) murder-suicide request.

  • Written by Brian Doyle-Murray.

  • A parody of the final scene of Elvira Madigan, right down to Elvira chasing the butterfly and the freeze frame after the first gunshot. This sketch goes for a much sillier tone, though, with Thomas’s Sixten making several unsuccessful suicide attempts during the freeze frame, only to learn that O’Hara’s Elvira was playing a joke on him. Thomas and especially O’Hara, who plays Elvira with a callous ditziness, make this work better than it should.

  • Music: “Andante from Piano Concerto No. 21 in C” by W. A. Mozart.

***

DON PERIGNON

  • The beer of imported champagnes, for a Milwaukee-sized thirst.

  • Kind of a cheap bit, but I did get a laugh from the construction workers raising champagne glasses.

***

WORDS TO LIVE BY: FATHER CHICK MURPHY

  • Father Murphy (John Candy) gives a sermon heavy on the sports metaphors before playing basketball with some other priests.

  • The sermon portion is nothing special, but the basketball sequence is a lot of fun, especially with the priests’ Harlem Globetrotter antics.

** 1/2

Final thoughts: A pretty strong, fast paced episode with several great-to-classic sketches that show each member of the cast demonstrating what they do well.

MVP:

  • (tie) Joe Flaherty/Dave Thomas

Rhodes version differences:

  • Removed: Fat Masterson, Private Eye

Blair version differences:

  • Removed: Words To Live By: Father Chick Murphy

  • Added: new syndication promo for Dr. Tongue’s Evil House of Wax (Robert Corness v/o)

Additional screen captures from this episode are available here.

“SCTV Boogie” (season 1, episode 20, aired Oct. 31, 1977)

ATTENTION SPAN BOOKLET

  • Actor (Dave Thomas) endorses Scientific Method Acting for those with diminished attention spans.

  • This was pretty weak by the show’s usual standards, though Thomas’s part does inject a little life into the sketch.

**

SUNRISE SEMESTER: METEOROLOGY 101

  • Cheery April Squall (Andrea Martin) teaches the basics of television weathercasting, particularly writing backwards on a lucite map.

  • Another subpar bit. Andrea Martin’s characterization is good, but this sketch is one joke stretched thin for way too long.

**

PROMO: MICK MASON: POLICE PHOTOGRAPHER

  • Former fashion photographer Mick Mason (Eugene Levy) brings his skill set to police work in this new series.

  • A stronger piece than the preceding two sketches, with a good silly premise and some fun tasteless humour (Mason posing the bodies, the chief wanting a wallet-size copy of a photo of a victim’s legs).

*** 1/2

IT WAS THAT WAY WITH KEITH HAMPSHIRE

  • Keith Hampshire (Dave Thomas) recalls a lopsided 1938 match with Billy Masters (Joe Flaherty) and Terry Hardin (Harold Ramis).

  • Thomas brings back his SCTV Sports co-anchor here. I found the sketch a little draggy at times, but Harold Ramis’s perma-dazed characterization is particularly solid.

***

JOIN THE SHELLEY PEOPLE

  • A blind reading test convinces Keats fan Mrs. Sharon Laplante (Catherine O’Hara) to read more Percy Bysshe Shelley.

  • I’ve always liked this one, treating the works of the Romantic poets as if they were competing brands. Catherine O’Hara reading them with a Sylvester-like speech impediment is funny enough, but the random, out-of-nowhere profanity at the end (“Are you going to read some Shelley tonight?” “Oh, (beep) right, this guy’s (beep)ing profound!”) makes me laugh even more.

****

POCKET BELT, POCKET HAT, AND SPARE SOCK CADDY

  • The gift of the century. Never be stuck carrying things in your hands again.

  • Joe Flaherty’s performance makes this sketch; his facial expressions, pauses and general tough-guy demeanor give this idea an extra layer, as well as the bits of randomness (the hat holding up to three cabbages, “Arbor Day is just around the corner!”, and the change to the mail-in address when it’s repeated at the end). I wonder if he largely improvised this.

  • Flaherty says “Billiard Box, Missouri” for the repeated address, but the chyron says “Billiard Box, Kentucky”.

*** 1/2

I CRY EACH DAY I DIE

  • A very nested melodrama featuring an up-and-comer (Catherine O’Hara) and a washed-up actress (Andrea Martin).

  • Written by Brian Doyle-Murray.

  • Andrea Martin’s performance as the depressed, alcoholic Bonnie holds this sketch together; the idea’s clever but the execution is a little too repetitive.

** 1/2

PROMO: MONSTER CHILLER HORROR THEATRE - DR TONGUE’S EVIL HOUSE OF WAX

  • Count Floyd (Joe Flaherty) reminds viewers to send away for their 3-D glasses as SCTV shows “Dr, Tongue’s (John Candy) Evil House of Wax”.

  • The first classic MCHT bit, with John Candy’s Dr. Tongue appearing for the first time in his role of horror movie villain, and the earliest demonstration of the cheap 3-D effect that would define these sketches. This time, the joke is more the gratuitous excuses use to have a 3-D scene, but this also gives us the first appearance of Eugene Levy as Dr. Tongue’s hunchbacked sidekick Bruno.

  • Is Dave Thomas playing the storekeeper as his weaselly William Morris character?

*****

SCTV BOOGIE

  • Mel Slurrup (Eugene Levy) chats with the boss high-schoolers dancing in the studio.

  • The first appearance of Eugene Levy’s Mel Slirrup (not Rockin’ yet) is actually a parody of a real show called “Boogie” that aired on rival station Citytv at the time; Mel’s look and mellow demeanor seems to be based on R. Paul Godfrey (though Paul didn’t have glasses). Even without knowing this information this sketch holds up. Unlike “I Cry Each Day I Die”, the repetition actually makes this sketch even funnier, from the dull chats with the dancers to the same song (“Don’t Leave Me This Way” by Thelma Houston) being introduced with different titles.

  • Catherine O’Hara plays a character named after Robin Duke, O’Hara’s real life friend from high school and then a current member of the Second City Toronto company. Duke would join the cast of SCTV three years later when O’Hara took the year off, after which she would join the SNL cast in O’Hara’s place after the latter decided against staying in New York. I wonder if O’Hara’s also impersonating Duke here.

  • This is also the first appearance of John Candy’s Paul Fistinyerface; I got a laugh from his overly serious demeanor when answering Mel’s questions.

  • Laela Weinzweig, now a talent agent, is credited as a “special guest appearance” for her very small speaking role as one of the dancers.

**** 1/2

Final thoughts: A very uneven show, with some weaker material by the show’s current standard appearing alongside two major sketches featuring some of SCTV’s most beloved characters. The beginning is particularly slow, though as the show goes on, the shorter pieces work better than the long ones until we get to the back-to-back classics at the end.

MVP:

  • Eugene Levy

Rhodes version differences:

  • Removed: Pocket Belt, Pocket Hat and Spare Sock Caddy (moved to 1-11)

Blair version differences:

  • Removed: SCTV Boogie

  • Added: Filips Milk of Amnesia (from 1-18), Stan Musial’s Greatest Hits (from 1-2), new syndication promo for The Sammy Maudlin Show (Robert Corness v/o)

Additional screen captures from this episode are available here.