SCTV: Volume 4
SCTV, though, has a higher batting average than most sketch comedies. The latest DVD set chronicles one of the series’ later years, but it’s still got plenty of laughs. There is the occasional skit (or episode) that completely falls dead, but most of these pack enough laughs still to merit your viewing.
Photo Credit: Copyright ©2005 Universal Studios Home Entertainment.
I am not a fan of sketch comedy.
I’ve never seen the appeal of most of the Saturday Night Live I’ve seen. I love the famous sketches from Monty Python and Kids in the Hall, but once I get beyond those, I feel rather let down. Fox’s The Sketch Show was one of the worst shows I saw last season.
The very format of sketch comedy works against itself. It’s just a long series of build-ups to punchlines that often aren’t funny enough to merit even telling the joke. If you like a sketch comedy, it’s often because the build-up is funny enough to merit your laughter.
SCTV, though, has a higher batting average than most sketch comedies. The latest DVD set chronicles one of the series’ later years, but it’s still got plenty of laughs. There is the occasional skit (or episode) that completely falls dead, but most of these pack enough laughs still to merit your viewing.
One would think that sketch comedy wouldn’t travel well enough through time to stand up 20 years after it first aired, but SCTV goes against that grain, too. Most of the humor here refrains from sheer topicality to be general enough to remain funny. When I watch Chevy Chase play Gerald Ford on old SNLs, it’s not as funny as it could be because I have little frame of reference for Gerald Ford outside of Chevy Chase making fun of him. I know he was the president and a very athletic man, but the Chevy Chase impression of him has been so subsumed by the culture that it doesn’t seem funny anymore.
Whether SCTV is general enough in its humor to avoid this pitfall or whether it was just so little seen and absorbed by our society, it remains brazenly funny to this day.
While SCTV has the same problems as any sketch show, if you like this sort of thing, this could almost constitute a must buy.