SCTV News vs. Weekend Update: A Comparison

Although SCTV is often compared to "Saturday Night Live," one key distinction is that the recurring characters of SCTV often had extended narratives. The recurring sketch "SCTV News" is a prime example. Although the news producers insisted that they considered anchormen Earl Camembert (Eugene Levy) and Floyd Robertson (Joe Flaherty) equals, Floyd almost always got the good stories, while Earl was typically given humiliatingly insignificant news items. On at least one occasion, Earl attempted to compensate for the obvious imbalance by improvising a dramatic but imaginary news story on the spot -- and was further humiliated when Floyd called him on his fabrication while still on the air.

The dynamic between Earl and Floyd was almost always with Flaherty playing the gruff, Bud Abbottesque straight man, while Levy’s hapless Earl Camembert was a wholly original character, with his every broadcast turning into a vain struggle for dignity – a dignity that seemed to come naturally to Floyd Robertson by contrast.

Note that this dynamic emphasizes another key difference between SCTV News and SNL’s equivalent news sketch, “Weekend Update” – SCTV’s news was character-based humor, while Weekend Update’s humor has always been more joke-based.

Now, ostensibly, that may seem an odd thing to say about Weekend Update, which has consistently given us memorable and wacky characters ever since Gilda Radner’s Emily Litella in SNL’s birth year of 1975. But those characters, featured in commentaries and interviews, were never the focus of Weekend Update. The bulk of Weekend Update has always been the anchors, who invariably play minor variations of either themselves or their own personas; the Weekend Update anchors’ humor has, as a result, always, always been joke based – a joke that has consistently followed the same formula. (This is not a criticism, mind you, because the formula happens to work.) The formula being: Actual headline as the joke’s set-up. Followed by a punchline. Headline. Punchline. Headline. Punchline. Headline. Punchline. Etc. until the sketch ends.

Incidentally, that very intentional dependence on actual news headlines marks the third and perhaps final major difference between SCTV News and Weekend Update. SNL, broadcast live for 40 years, has always strived to be “of the now,” i.e., topical, and Weekend Update has always been the most obvious example of that agenda. Weekend Update’s jokes are steeped in current events until they’re steeped in history, and in order to appreciate its humor, you must be either already educated in those topics, or allow the show itself to educate you as much as it can. SCTV, taped and originally broadcast at least a week later, and often even later than that, never attempted to be topical in any way, and thus, regardless of your knowledge of current events or history, any given SCTV News sketch is exactly as funny (or unfunny, depending on your tastes) as it was when originally broadcast.

One advantage to the character-based humor of SCTV News is the freedom it gave Flaherty and Levy (who did all the writing for the news segments) to explore those characters over time. Most SCTV News segments can stand on their own, but they also have a humor that’s cumulative, as you realize that poor Earl has screwed up (or, just as often, has been screwed over) countless times before, and has just screwed up again.

The show did turn the tables on the characters one notable time, however, when Earl found himself in the “more professional” role, and Floyd showed up drunk. As a punishment for Floyd’s on-the-air drunkenness, fictional station manager Guy Caballero (also played by Flaherty) punished Floyd by making him divide his time between co-anchoring the news and taking a more humiliating role, as “Count Floyd Robertson,” sporting a very spotty Transylvanian accent and dressed as a vampire, hosting B-grade horror movies. Many fans of SCTV fondly remember Count Floyd, but not many know or remember that he was supposed to be the same character as news anchor Floyd Robertson, precisely because after the one episode establishing the reason for Count Floyd’s existence, it was never addressed again. The two can be appreciated as either the same character, or two different characters entirely. Such was the multi-layered humor of SCTV.

The link I’m posting below illustrates how impervious SCTV News is to the passage of time: Decades after SCTV went off the air, Flaherty and Levy revived their SCTV News characters for a sketch celebrating the 25^th anniversary of Second City Toronto. You can watch some behind-the-scenes clowning around, or skip to the precise 2-minute mark to watch the actual sketch, which re-enacts the “Earl just makes something up” variation, and is still, in my opinion, remarkably funny.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XAVS9KzTPc