A moment for the passing of Joe Flaherty. I never had access to SCTV as a kid, but there were plenty of other opportunities to see the man at work. I best liked him in the role of Mr. Weir in Freaks and Geeks, where he played a classic TV Dad role: deeply clueless yet deeply caring.
He also had a certain resemblance to Abraham Lincoln.
Aw, no - I grew up watching and loving SCTV and every single person involved in it. Joe was kind of a more understated player, which I guess is kind of funny considering he played Doctor Tongue, but he was always fun to watch. I even watched the TV series Maniac Mansion partly because he was involved (and ok, partly because it was called Maniac Mansion though it had little to do with the game).
edit: oh wait, he didn’t play Doctor Tongue, that’s the name of the movie he introduced. My memory is not holding up its end of the deal. Count Floyd! How could I forget?
LOL. No. Dave Foley looks more like John Wilkes Booth than Flaherty looked like Abe Lincoln.
God I loved Harold Weir though!
Same, this is so sad.
This has ruined my morning. SCTV was the greatest sketch comedy show of all time.
That Abraham Lincoln sketch is fantastic. Perfect role for Joe Flaherty. A lot of comedians get mileage off of irrational anger, but Flaherty’s version is always so lovably dumb. It’s what made him the perfect dad on F&G.
Count Floyd is just killing me. So good!
My old man used to say “Blowed up real good,” constantly. He was a massive SCTV fan to the point that his answering machine message was a Johnny La Rue’s Polynesian riff for nearly a decade.
The whole Count Floyd thing is even funnier when you consider how meta they got - the fact that SCTV was played as an actual TV station, and all the skits being presented as shows playing on that station. So consider that Count Floyd is being “played” by the same person, Floyd Robertson, who is also the newscaster on the SCTV nightly news.
That is sad news. I watched SCTV right from the start when he was billed as Joseph O’Flaherty.
I think they were having a bit of fun with the fact that newscasters of that era often had to do double duty as hosts for kids shows and the like. WKBW’s long time weatherman Tom Jolls did double duty as Commander Tom.
Same here, I loved 'em all. Even when I didn’t fully ‘get’ the skit, I loved watching the troupe do their stuff. Sad to see Joe pass on.
I had to stop when nobody got the reference.
I’ve been saying this forever without even knowing the source!
Same. I saw his picture and immediately thought of him in Happy Gilmore.
Add me to the list of SCTV/Flaherty fans who are mourning him today.
RIP
Per Martin Short on CBC, apparently Flaherty had been very ill for a number of months. Short said that over the last few months, the entire cast and some of the crew from SCTV had been getting together on Zoom calls with Flaherty, the last one about a week and a half ago.
RIP. I’ll remember him as Al Bundy’s Dentist. But like many people I have seen him in dozens of shows.
