When Good Shows Go Bad: Royal Canadian Air Farce

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The History:

In 1970 The Jest Society was a sketch comedy troupe that was founded in Montreal, Quebec. The troupe would morph into the Royal Canadian Air Farce in 1973 with a core group consisting of founders Roger Abbott, John Morgan, Luba Goy, Don Ferguson and Dave Broadfoot. Writers Gold Holtam and Rick Olsen later joined and the group were a hit on radio. In 1980 the troupe got a few appearances on television but it wasn't until a New Year's Eve special Year of the Farce 1992 aired that the team got a fresh shot at television. Broadfoot had left the group as a regular but remained an occasional contributor. Royal Canadian Air Farce or just Air Farce for short started airing in 1993. In 2001 John Morgan left the act and Jessica Holmes was added as a regular in 2003 after rotating guest stars (including amongst many The Red Green Show's Patrick McKenna and Whose Line is it Anyway?'s Colin Mochrie). John Morgan would later pass away in 2004. Alan Park and Craig Lauzon both joined after a CBC lockout in 2005. Penelope Corrin joined in 2007 when Jessica Holmes was on maternity leave and the show became Air Farce Live! Before ultimately ending on New Years Eve 2008. Reunion specials have been an annual event on New Years Eve since the show's dissolution, Jessica Holmes vanishing as a regular while Arnold Pinnock joined on. Roger Abbott passed away in 2011 and Holtam and Olsen both retired after 2008. Air Farce has been honoured many times over the years, including receiving the Order of Canada (think Canadian equivalent of Congressional Medal of Honour).

The Show:

Air Farce is a traditional sketch comedy program. A series of comedic shorts play out over the course of the half-hour with usually nothing joining the sketches together, though characters within them may be recurring. Topical sketches were common, with the lampooning of current politicians, commercials and popular media. Other sketches would be a bit more timeless, such as the mocking of stuck-up film snobs and barrages of puns. As there's not much else to say let me offer up a few recurring characters and segments: Mike from Canmore (played by John Morgan), a simple man from a real small town in Alberta who'd go through life in a state of bewilderment while often coming out on top of situations he'd find himself in (such as winning on Who Wants to be a Millionaire? Or shutting down an idiot making fun of him being Canadian); Prime Minister Jean Chretien (Roger Abbott) being entirely unintelligible and borderline happy-go-lucky crazy; The Chicken Cannon, in which Colonel Stacy (Don Ferguson), Teresa to his close friends, would fire the best military weapon Canada had (a giant air cannon often loaded with rubber chickens or topical ammunition) at a subject in need of lampooning; Brenda the Bingo Lady (Ruby Goy), who would often play an insane number of bingo cards while talking about topical news stories, only to almost always lose to her husband who played a single card; and A Canadian Moment, in which the whole cast would sit around a doughnut shop shooting the breeze while adding way too much sugar to their coffee and saying individual catchphrases of agreement whenever someone made a good point.

The Good:

What makes the show funny can be tricky. You get quite a bit of people saying what you're probably thinking about current political or national news. Some have taken this to mean the show is biased and I argue it's not (though since the CBC does take tax-payer money there is an actual reason to worry about this, unlike other topical shows) since the most important thing to remember about topical political humour is it is often a lot easier to make fun of the people in power than out of power. Air Farce was still more than happy to skewer political rivals to the party in charge (the Reform Party and its leader Preston Manning were a running joke for the better part of a decade despite never being in power), and when Chretien finally left they had no problem continuing having the character of Paul Martin (Don Ferguson) be a somewhat pathetic and incompetent sad sack before shift to the android-stiff and heat-vision bearing Stephen Harper (Craig Lauzon). They simply wrote what they thought was funny and really probably only played fair because they found stuff to make fun of with the other parties.

Now we need to examine the idea of impression versus caricature. Impressions, you're effectively being the other person. Caricature you're exaggerating their traits, often for comedic effect. Air Farce is loaded with caricatures. Now this isn't a bad thing as while good impressions are impressive (seriously, mad props to Bill Hader when he was on SNL I hope he finds a way to use that talent of his in future ventures) caricatures offer a little more to do as they can take on a life of their own while still being used to lampoon the subject. The Chretien caricature got so popular that the real guy at one point showed up on the show and made fun of it.

There are two sketches I always recommend people track down. I can't for the life of me remember the official name of either one but they have specific subject matter. The first sketch has as Scottish shepherd telling his parents he's fallen in love with a woman from outside the clan whose ancestry is of Ines, Buchanan and McTavish. Unfortunately the shepherd's family (who were of course relieved he wasn't talking about a sheep) remind him she's an IBM and they are of the MacIntosh clan, so they'll never be compatible. Yeah it's a hurricane of computer puns (“She's the apple of me eye!”) and I love it. The other famous sketch involves Mike from Canmore walking into the MENSA office after thinking it was the men's room (the 'a' had fallen off, and funnily enough MENSA was originally called MENS for poorly-conceived reasons) and being hit with a barrage of double-entrendres. Mike never catches on to the mistake he made, nor does the interviewer for prospective membership.

The Bad:

Somewhere around 2001 the show started to decay. John Morgan's departure was a problem as the troupe hadn't really found someone specific to replace him so tagged in several guest stars. The guest stars were pretty good for the most part (like the guy who wrote an article begging for Whose Line to return is ever going to say something bad about Colin Mochrie, even if Black Fly is mentioned) but a sort of void was created. John Morgan did have a fair number of established characters that weren't just limited to Mike from Canmore but had also included a Scottish political commentator (Morgan was Welsh), a member of the A Canadian Moment crew, and the Colonel's assistant Dorothy when handling The Chicken Cannon. The transition was a bit rocky to say the least despite some quality performers showing up.

Jessica Holmes showing up was kind of a mixed bag. While she probably had more range than I remembered she seemed to have four modes: straight woman, lisp woman who makes weird faces, gross woman who often makes weird faces, and Celine Dion. Now her Celine was fine, it felt right at home. Unfortunately around the time Holmes showed up gross-out humour also popped up more, and not the good kind (IE implication rather than visual as per the Roger Corman Rule or or Harold & Kumar 1 versus the sequels). Around the same time Chretien was gone from politics, a man who'd been Prime Minister effectively since the television series began. The tonal shift was there and it never really went away.

As the years rolled on and the older IE original cast members stepped back to be less of a focus the show rolled out material meant to be more biting and edgy. This is really where the bias argument could have merit since the show became more willing to offer angry rants and criticisms of the current administration in particular as well as George W Bush. Alan Park infamously pointed out that since the presidency of Kennedy Bush seemed set by the rule of averages to be the next one to die in office, not far removed from the pretzel incident. Really some of the humour tended to enter that Carlos Mencia area (Mencia Syndrome, coining it) where they're trying to be edgy without the logic or wit needed to make what's being done not just seem mean-spirited. The addition of the live element in the last couple of seasons felt like desperation to imitate SNL. It didn't help that in the last while we've gotten stuff like Knob of the Week, making fun of douchebags without any real wit, and literal F-Bombs showing up in the spirit of The Chicken Cannon. Edge without wit isn't edge, it's Bono.

The Blame:

Jessica Holmes I would argue wasn't a great fit (a bit more of a surrealist for sure), but she didn't tank the show. Unfortunately the arrival of Alan Park and Craig Lauzon as regulars did cause some serious problems. While I enjoy Lauzon's Stephen Harper as an android with heat-vision his main comedy foible seems to be screaming, which is usually grating (it's why I can't stand more than 30 minutes of Lewis Black). Alan Park meanwhile initially showed up to be a sort of SNL Weekend Update kind of guy but his political commentary screamed arrogant douche without any real charm or self-depreciation (IE stuff that prevents The Daily Show from ending up like Real Time). Too many one-trick ponies showed up to bulk up the cast as well as the non-memorable Penelope Corrin and it's no wonder the show felt like it had lost its luster.