Second City Television - Features - Bob & Doug McKenzie

Bob & Doug McKenzie

Ironically, the most popular sketch was intended as throwaway filler. Bob & Doug McKenzie, the dim-witted, beer-chugging brothers in a recurring Canadian-themed sketch called Great White North, were initially developed by Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas (Bob & Doug, respectively) as a sardonic response to the CBC network's request that the show feature two minutes of "identifiably Canadian content" in every episode. The Bob and Doug McKenzie segments first appeared in 1980 at the start of Season 3 and continued in every episode until Thomas and Moranis left the series.

The characters ultimately became icons of the very Canadian culture they parodied, spinning off albums, a feature film (Strange Brew), commercials, and numerous TV and film cameos. Bob and Doug helped to popularize the stereotypical Canadian trait of adding "eh" to the end of sentences, a facet of Canadian life that is often gently ridiculed in American shows featuring Canadian characters. Lines from the sketch, such as "take off, you hoser!", became part of North American popular culture. Thomas later revealed in his 1996 book SCTV: Behind the Scenes that the other members of the cast grew bitter at the immense financial and popular success he and Moranis received from their Bob & Doug McKenzie albums, ultimately leading to their departing the show in 1982. Joe Flaherty and John Candy accused Thomas of using his position as head writer to increase the visibility of Bob & Doug, even though the original segments were largely unscripted. An SCTV episode even poked fun at the duo's popularity. Station manager Guy Caballero declared that they had become SCTV's top celebrities, supplanting Johnny LaRue. This led to the pair being given a Bob & Doug "special" with Tony Bennett as their guest, which wound up being a disaster.

Recently, Moranis and Thomas recreated Bob and Doug in the form of a pair of moose in the animated feature Brother Bear from Disney. During Canadian rock band Rush's 2007 Snakes And Arrows tour, Moranis and Thomas reprised their Bob and Doug Mackenzie roles in an introductory clip projected on the rear screen for the song "The Larger Bowl". Previously, Rush used Joe Flaherty in his Count Floyd persona to introduce their song "The Weapon" during their 1984 Grace Under Pressure Tour. Rush vocalist Geddy Lee sang the chorus on the hit single "Take Off" from the 1982 Mercury Records album The Great White North by Bob and Doug McKenzie. That chorus was aired in a 2002 episode of The Simpsons which depicted the Simpson family visiting Toronto.