Mercilessly Wicked...
Rick is back to aim barbs at boob tube
The Winnipeg Sun, October 4, 1999
By Pat St. Germain
Rick Mercer and crew are having way too much fun in the second season of TV industry-skewering sitcom Made In Canada, premiering on CBC tonight.
Among the satirical highlights: Pyramid Productions boss Alan Roy (Peter Keleghan) gets pectoral implants and cancels Christmas. Kiefer Sutherland guests as himself, announcing his new vampire-fishermen TV series, The Lost Bay Boys. And Margot Kidder demands that her "melons" get prominent screen time in an over-the-top performance as an aging diva.
Following a successful six-episode run last year, Mercer says it was easier and more fun to create scripts for 13 new shows because the characters are now familiar to both the writers and the audience.
"You can kind of rely on that a little more. You can have the type of joke where it's funny because people know the character and the fact that that character is doing it is funny," he says.
In the opener, machiavellian TV exec Richard Strong (Mercer) is in exile at a rival TV production company. Banished after Roy caught him having sex with his slutty daughter Siobhan Roy (Emily Hampshire) in the boardroom, Strong is reduced to doing chimp work for a puppet show. But, you just can't keep a lying, scheming backstabber down.
Strong spearheads a takeover coup and is soon back in the Pyramid fold with fellow sharks Veronica Miller (Leah Pinsent) and Victor Sela (Dan Lett), and fish-out-of-water nice guy Raymond Drodge (Ron James), Strong's brother-in-law and victim of a date-rape drugging incident last year.
As in the first season, Strong talks directly to the camera but while that ploy is all over the dial this fall, Strong's piercing witticisms are now limited to an opening thematic observation and a closing wink to the audience, when he says, "I think that went well."
"It's funny you know, when we did it last year there was no one doing it," Mercer says.
"That's one thing where we definitely made a change. In the first six episodes I'm the only one who talks to the camera, and that essentially stays the same, except for the last line. We move that all over the office now, so it's almost like the evil or the incompetence can be passed from one to another."
Strong remains chief anti-hero, but Victor, Veronica and Alan all engage in their share of wicked behaviour. And to be fair, you can't blame them, given they have to deal with each other and with egomaniacal actors such as wife-swapping kid-TV hero Capt. McGee (Maury Chakin), Sword Of Damacles star Michael Rushton (the hilarious Alex Carter) and his imaginary evil twin, and Beaver Creek's newly militant gay, Parson Hubbard.
Mercer who turns 30 "much, much later this year," says the Damacles episode and one in which Victor joins the Church of Spirentology cult headed by Sarah Polley (The Sweet Hereafter) are among his favorites but he's proud of all 13 shows.
And while CBC hasn't committed to a third season, he hopes to be back, which means he'll have another exceptionally busy year.
Mercer was away from the This Hour Has 22 Minutes news desk last January to work on Made In Canada but says there was only one show in which he didn't appear at all and he expects to be around for the full season this year. He also stays on as host of History TV's clip-show It Seems Like Yesterday and he'll do the honours for the Gemini Awards Show coming up Nov. 7.
By the way, Mercer still wants to thank a woman whose home he was billeted in during a youth conference in Winnipeg about 15 years ago. He had an allergic reaction to an antihistamine during his flight from St. John's, and if she saw him on TV today, she might say he looked familiar, "if he gained, like about 60 pounds in his face and looked like the kid from Mask," Mercer says.
Since this story first appeared in The Sun, the woman has yet to contact Mercer.
"And I wish that she would. When I told you that story, I was kind of secretly hoping she would because at the time, when you're 15 or whatever, you're too stupid to take someone's address and realize how kind somebody's actually been to you."