Royal Canadian Air Farce is having one of its yearly “Year of the Farce” news roundups/show retrospectives.  It airs New Year’s Eve at 8:00 PM ET/PT on CBC, but that’s beside the point.  This edition of “Year of the Farce” marks the end of Royal Canadian Air Farce after sixteen seasons on television and twenty-four seasons on radio.

Much has been written about the show’s passing.  Personally, I’m glad the show is dead after thirty-five years.

I don’t hate the show for no reason.  It was Air Farce‘s radio show that introduced me to the world of Canadian comedy.  I was a part of the Air Farce fan club when the show was on CBC Radio.  I went to a December 1995 taping of the television show.  I remember what Air Farce was and I hate what it’s become.

Air Farce was never the funniest comedy series on CBC Radio, but it had its moments.  Twenty Twenty, a compilation of the show’s best non-political sketches, shows that Air Farce wasn’t all cheap jokes about Brian Mulroney’s chin and Ed Broadbent’s being Ed Broadbent.

Many of John Morgan’s characters, in particular socialite Amy de la Pompa, were entertaining to listen to.  Dave Broadfoot was the main reason to listen to Air Farce in the 1970s and 1980s with his Bobby Clobber and Sergeant Renfrew routines.  It’s fashionable to say “Air Farce has been shit since the 1930s,” yet the radio show was still listenable when its most well-known television counterpart was launched in 1993.*

Air Farce was not the funniest show on CBC Television at the time it debuted.  Kids in the Hall was still a going concern.  Comics! was given a prime-time slot, a boon to Canadian stand-up comedians everywhere.  This Hour Has 22 Minutes was beginning its long run.  Even so, Royal Canadian Air Farce didn’t start off unfunny.

I know people complain about Saturday Night Live‘s reliance on recurring characters and lack of actual humour, yet Air Farce has become the worst sketch comedy show in North America for those reasons.  Air Farce has been overly reliant on the same catchphrases, easy jokes about political figures (haha, Stephen Harper really is a robot!) and broad-based humour.  The same writers, castmembers and director have been on the show for years.  How does a show not get stale with the same people at the helm?

I’ve given Air Farce a chance multiple times since 1996-97, only to be met with “Ralph Klein makes me want to RALPH!”-type gags and sweetened laughter at every turn.  I have the same love-hate relationship with Saturday Night Live, but SNL replaces some of its personnel every few years.

Jessica Holmes, Alan Park, Craig Lauzon and Penelope Corrin might be funny away from Air Farce, but they’re new people attached to a horribly outdated show.  The newer castmembers combined do not equal the talents of Dave Broadfoot and the late John Morgan.  This isn’t a slight on the new castmembers, as no one can replace Broadfoot and Morgan.

Even Morgan’s work suffered due to Air Farce‘s late-1990s quality decline.  Mike from Canmore can be done only so many times before his idiot savant routine grows stale.

Royal Canadian Air Farce has run the gamut from popular comedic institution to the bane of Canadian sketch comedy.  I don’t care if a comedy isn’t “edgy,” but it should be at least funny.  Air Farce has not met my personal mandate for more than a decade.

I await the impending Kids in the Hall revival.

^{*There was an attempt to mount a Royal Canadian Air Farce television series in 1981.  It was quite literally a televised radio show and stiffed after one season.}

Finally, the show I’ve been waiting for!  Canwest took a long time to get to this episode of Make or Break TV.  Unlike every other show MoBTV has covered this season, Supertrain is unmitigated crap.  MoBTV knows it’s unmitigated crap.  The person who runs the Supertrain fan site knows it’s unmitigated crap.  I have no idea how this ties in with CanCon regulations, but who cares?

Fred Silverman was a huge part of CBS’ early-1970s “relevant programming” push.  At ABC he destroyed CBS’ claim to network supremacy with escapist fare.  As an independent producer, he appealed to seniors with Matlock, the Perry Mason films and Diagnosis Murder.  NBC is his only tangible career low, Supertrain being the white whale that almost ate the peacock network*.

Supertrain was based on the notion that cloning The Love Boat – a show Silverman helped champion at ABC – would be enough of a concept to hang a series on.  His career highs were the result of exploiting niches, yet he didn’t do that while at NBC.

In fact, NBC seemed to be throwing anything on the air that would attract an audience.  In 1978-79, NBC was banking on Grandpa Goes to Washington, Dick Clark’s Live Wednesday and two nights of The Big Event.  The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, The Rockford Files, Saturday Night Live and a few other programs held the network together with glue and toilet paper.  NBC is not that badly run today.

Make or Break TV goes through the obvious Supertrain talking points in entertaining fashion.  The interviewees don’t sound exciting on paper – writer Brad Radnitz, actor Joey Aresco, producer Curtis Spinner, plus executives Robert Singer and Joseph Stern.  They all give entertaining behind-the-scenes stories, which stuns the hell out of me.

The interviewees paint Dan Curtis as a bit of an asshole here.  He was a control freak, which allowed him to make a small fortune off Dark Shadows and contributed to his success.  He was a big reason why Supertrain failed – his mystery plots didn’t mesh with Fred Silverman’s ideal of a Love Boat clone, and it’s not like he was paying attention to Supertrain‘s runaway budget.

All the same, it’s hard to install Curtis as the reason for the show’s failure.  Supertrain was the very definition of “polished turd.”  The show was rushed onto the production schedule before anyone knew the form the show was going to take.  In addition, the show was placed in the unfathomable position of “saving” NBC.  Since when does one show negate hours upon hours of crap?

Make or Break TV implies that Supertrain was the reason Fred Silverman resigned from NBC in 1981, which is simplistic at best.  Supertrain was just one of the many high-profile bombs NBC dropped during Silverman’s tenure, including Hello, Larry, Pink Lady and Jeff, The Misadventures of Sheriff Lobo/Lobo, Mrs. Columbo/Kate Columbo/Kate Loves a Mystery and The Big Show.  Even when Grant Tinker and Brandon Tartikoff began to rebuild the network in 1981, NBC still greenlighted bombs like Manimal and Mr. Smith.

This is the best episode of Make or Break TV, which is bittersweet as the show likely won’t receive a second season.  Make Believe Media’s Lynn Booth admitted as much in an e-mail she sent me.  Hopefully Make or Break TV will receive a DVD set, but I’m not expecting it.  At least the show finished its run, which is more than I can say for My Own Worst Enemy and the new Knight Rider.

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As a special bonus, here’s ten minutes of Express to Terror, the “film version” of Supertrain.  Prism Entertainment put this video out in the late 1980s.  It looks great on one’s shelf next to Desert Warrior, Almost Human and Curse of the Living Corpse.

^{*Bizarrely, the official NBC logo didn’t feature a peacock until the fall of 1979, when Fred Silverman slapped a peacock onto the Big N logo of 1975.  Incidentally, the Big N reportedly cost $600,000 to develop.}

Silverman based NBC’s 1979-80 fall campaign around the peacock.  Thanks to campaigns like “Proud as a Peacock,” the American boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics and shows like Pink Lady and Jeff, NBC almost went bankrupt.  Go figure.

Teletoon recently aired six Robot Chicken episodes, officially the odds and sods of the show’s third season.  In America, the third season began in August 2007 and ended fifteen months later.

This tied in nicely with the release of the third-season Robot Chicken DVD, which I bet everyone bought before the economy started to eat itself.  Here now, some reviews of the frottingest show on television, not including Howie Do It.

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“Tubba-Bubba’s Now Hubba-Hubba” | It’s nice that Robot Chicken references the Superpets.  To be fair, it’s the Legion of Super-Pets and Seth Green’s adaptation of the infrequently remembered superhero team is hardly faithful.  Seriously, Hissy the Super-Snake?  Is Proty II screwing with us?

Anyway, they forget to feed themselves, even though at least two of the Super-Pets have human-like intelligence and Krypto is shown drawing a ring around his left eye.  Hissy can type articles for The Daily Planet…oh, who cares?  Watch Streaky the Super-Cat smile at you while he’s taking a shit!  Believe it or not, this sketch is more intelligent than any Superman comic from the 1960s.

The running gag of a 24 parody features Dracula sleeping.  Eventually, Drac foils a terrorist plot and destroys Van Helsing in the process.

He also makes puns and follows them up with pregnant pauses while looking at the camera.  It’s hard not to like Drac’s style.  His puns have that certain bite.

As for other sketches, “Girls Gone Wild: Cenobitches” is great.  The Pac-Man/Matrix sketch has Pac-Man do his best Neo impression before dying.  The entire sketch is time filler and wouldn’t have been funny nine years ago.

Vehicle Force Voltron is made reference to in one sketch, which must have pleased a few Dairugger XV fans but relies on a “transforming robot takes too long to form” gag.  The repeating five-note fanfare is the best part of the sketch, which is sad.

Kevin Shinick has a sketch built around his hosting Where in Time Is Carmen Sandiego?, but it relies too much on Robot Chicken tropes like kids being yelled at and domestic disturbance as a plot device.  ”Tubba-Bubba’s Now Hubba-Hubba” is a typical Robot Chicken episode.  Let’s move on.

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“Boo Cocky” | The opening sketch, where the nerds from Revenge of the Nerds earn jail time for their shenanigans, is lost on me.  The sketch is a variation on the standard “what if reality intruded upon nostalgia” Robot Chicken trope.

The second-best sketch in “Boo Cocky” has Conan the Barbarian and friends make a musical production number out of the line “crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of the women!”  Truly, Conan knows what is best in life.  It’s a simple idea, and it works.

The best sketch is where a giant anthropomorphic carrot jumps out of the ground and eats a bunny.  What the carrot says is Robot Chicken at its absurdist best.  Big surprise the best sketch airs right after the second-best sketch.  It’s best to skip the next seven minutes.

Those who plan to watch the next seven minutes will be rewarded with some hilarity.  The Star Trek Las Vegas Experience sketch has its moments, even though it blows its comedic load halfway through.

A PVR-based sketch reuses the “farting and retards” joke from earlier in the third season.  Robot Chicken fans know the show isn’t just about farting and retards – nut shots have been part of RC since the beginning.  At least the farting retards make for intellectually stimulating television.

The Saw/Saved by the Bell mashup outright sucks.  How the hell can the show waste Mark-Paul Gosselaar, Mario Lopez, Dustin Diamond, Lark Voorhies and Dennis Haskins on such a lame sketch?  Robot Chicken has screwed the proverbial pooch while attempting to skewer the vast and magnificent world of Saved by the Bell.  Please GO TO HELL!

“Boo Cocky” is funnier than “Tubba-Bubba’s Now Hubba-Hubba,” but that’s not saying much.  ”Boo Cocky” needed more monster carrot.

Press release for Tripping the Rift‘s third-season DVD set.  I wonder why Anchor Bay’s bothering to sell this to non-fans.  Sci-Fi blew through the third season.  Teletoon currently airs the series every night at 11:30 PM, which is the ass-end of the Detour block.  I think the marketplace has made its decision on Tripping the Rift by now.

Also, here’s more Tripping the Rift box art.  The box art claims “…more fun than a fifty-kronig lap dance!”  Like Chode, the blurb lies.

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Rick & Steve: The Happiest Gay Couple in All the World gets a second-season set.  Cuppa Coffee Studios animates the series, so this counts as Canadian.  I find Rick & Steve unfunny and pedantic, so naturally it’s a good fit with the Tripping the Rift news.

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The Best Years‘ first season out March 10, 2009 through Koch Vision.  I’ve seen bits and pieces of the show and I’m not crazy about the series, just like I’m not crazy about most shows set in college.  Nevertheless, Global gave the show a fair shake last season, so it’s worth a look.

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Two Stargate SG-1 direct-to-video films, The Ark of Truth and Continuum, are being rebundled by Fox for a March 3, 2009 release.  Standard DVD and Blu-ray versions of the films are affected by the rebundling.

If you’ve bought the two films separately and/or pre-ordered the Blu-ray version of The Ark of Truth, this news has to be a piss-off.  No doubt the repack will sell well, Stargate being the newest deathless sci-fi franchise with a strong fanbase.

Hmm, maybe I should review one of the films and mention how I’ve never seen a full episode of Stargate SG-1 prior to seeing said film.  Throw in a comment about how Richard Dean Anderson sucks and that’s sure to piss off a lot of people!  My God, I’ve found my reviewing formula!  I’M A GENIUS!

Parodies of Christmas specials are hard to pull off.  Christmas sentiment tends to erode edgy comedy.  Take Dave Foley’s The True Meaning of Christmas Specials from a few years ago – Foley apes Bing Crosby-style specials too much for the show to be funny.

Then again, Robert Smigel constantly hits bullseyes with Christmas-themed Saturday Night Live “TV Funhouse” segments.  ”Christmas for the Jews,” “The Narrator That Ruined Christmas” and a couple of cartoons referencing Peanuts are holiday classics.  The “Christmas Day” episode of TV Funhouse, where the Anipals snort Christmas cheer, is almost sublime.  It is possible to create edgy comedy while respecting the holiday season’s right to exist.

Sadly, Stephen Colbert’s more a Foley than a Smigel with A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All! (The Comedy Network: December 13/15, 10 ET/PT; December 24, 6/11 PM ET/PT; December 25, 8 AM ET/PT)  Parts of A Colbert Christmas are funny enough – his opening spiel, where he mispronounces “broadcasting” and adds to the glut of festive jingles – sets the tone for fun to come.

The main weakness of the special is adherence to the Crosby/Perry Como variety-show conceit.  For instance, there’s a running joke about reindeer and mice being goats with funny headgear, not that TV viewers will notice.  Another running joke has Colbert and guest stars under the mistletoe, prompting the phrase “well, this is awkward” from Colbert.  Making fun of comedy clichés doesn’t make them any better.

A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All! is also scattershot in its musical numbers.  Willie Nelson’s paean to weed isn’t funny despite Colbert’s best choral efforts.  John Legend’s ode to nutmeg/excuse for sexual double entendres is.  Toby Keith’s middle finger to political correctness could have been better.  Feist is just there to be Feist.

A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All! is a quite enjoyable Christmas special, even if it isn’t vintage Colbert.  The Jon Stewart and Elvis Costello appearances are quite good, and Colbert is making a concerted effort to entertain.  It’s too bad that the special features on A Colbert Christmas‘ DVD release sound funnier than anything in this special, but even weak Colbert has some merit.

If A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All! airs every year, it’ll be a welcome sight.  After all, much worse specials have been given yearly airings.

I have to admit something.  I have never sat down and watched an entire episode of Trailer Park Boys.  I could never get past the casual swearing, even though the show is one of the most popular Canadian comedies going.  I don’t think I would have requested a Trailer Park Boys screener if it wasn’t the final episode.

After watching “Say Goodnight to the Bad Guys” (Showcase: December 7, 10 ET/PT), I should have given this show a chance when it was in first run.  While I still find Trailer Park Boys‘ profanity fucking gratuitous, the show isn’t nearly as bad as I thought it was.

For first-time viewers, the show revolves around Julian (John Paul Tremblay), Ricky (Robb Wells) and Bubbles (Mike Smith), three Maritimers living at the Sunnyvale Trailer Park.  Their shared nemesis is Jim Lahey (John Dunsworth), a former police officer and the trailer park’s supervisor/chief souse.

Lahey’s deathless enmity towards Julian and the gang stems from a 1977 Halloween prank gone horribly wrong.  Lahey is flanked by shirtless bisexual assistant Randy.  ”Say Goodnight to the Bad Guys” focuses around Lahey’s desire to rid himself once and for all of the Boys, as well as other trailer park irritants.

The acting in “Say Goodnight to the Bad Guys” is a mixed bag.  Mike Smith is great as Bubbles and the other two Boys are almost as good.  Dunsworth is awesome as alcohol enthusiast Lahey.  Trailer Park Boys doesn’t have the talent depth of The Red Green Show, but its mockumentary nature helps mask this deficiency.

Jonathan Torrens’ role as wigger J-Roc is the only acting low point, but it’s been that way since Torrens first appeared on the show.  He’s always worked better as a television host, as seven seasons of Street Cents and five seasons of Jonovision demonstrate.

It’s not much of a spoiler to say that “Say Goodnight to the Bad Guys” isn’t the final word on Trailer Park Boys.  A feature film, the show’s second*, is forthcoming.  The Ricky, Julian and Bubbles Community Service Variety Show tour existed before the finale and will hit Toronto’s Massey Hall in January 2009.

Trailer Park Boys creator Mike Clattenburg claims that this special and the film will end the series.  The film’s working title is “Countdown to Liquor Day.”  Without spoiling the special for longtime viewers, the countdown starts near the end of “Say Goodnight to the Bad Guys.”

I hope Clattenburg isn’t using the special to shill the film, but I wouldn’t put it past him.  Like Don Cherry and Red Green, no one will ever fully get rid of Trailer Park Boys.  Both Bob and Doug McKenzie and The Kids in the Hall are coming back to television within two years.  Look for a Trailer Park Boys comeback four years from now.

^{*The 1999 Trailer Park Boys film doesn’t count as Trailer Park Boys wasn’t a television show back then.  Please don’t correct me on this.  Oh, and fuck bologna sandwiches.}