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Tuesday, November 4, 2014

The Red Green Show

     The Red Green Show was a Canadian television comedy that aired in Canada, with its ultimate home at CBC Television, and on Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) stations in the United States, from 1991 until the series finale April 7, 2006, on CBC. It was essentially a cross between a sitcom and a sketch comedy series, and is a parody of home improvement, do-it-yourself, fishing, and other outdoors shows.
     The title character, Red Green (Steve Smith), was a handyman who tried to find shortcuts to most of his projects, trusting most of his work to duct tape, which he calls "the handyman's secret weapon". He is the president of the Possum Lodge, a fictional men's club in the small northwestern Ontario town of Possum Lake, near the also-fictional town of Port Asbestos.
    The show's structure evolved over time and included several regular segments that appeared in almost every episode. These segments were interspersed with each episode's three main plot segments. The most frequent segments were "The Possum Lodge Word Game", "Handyman Corner", and "Adventures with Bill".
     Red attempted to demonstrate creative and often humorous ways to tackle relatively common tasks, such as taking out the trash or making use of derelict cars, or to create something extravagant out of whatever he could get his hands on.
     A black-and-white segment in the form of a narrated home movie, in which Red attempted to accomplish a task, trying out a sport, or go on some adventure, invariably leading to slapstick comedy.
     In The Possum Lodge Word Game the objective was to get a contestant to say a certain word in 30 seconds by giving them various clues. The contestant almost always gave answers that were either way off or very odd throughout the segment, but finally said the correct word by accident.
     Red gave sage advice from behind his fly tying workbench, usually talking to older men about married life or coping with changing society. In many shows, Red was sitting at a campfire, usually strumming a guitar and singing an original humorous song.
     A regular segment involved reading a letter supposedly from a viewer and Red would answer it, often misinterpreting what the viewer was asking always give ridiculous advice, often debating on what the viewer meant or needed. The show usually concluded with Red giving a message to his wife, Bernice and delivering his signature piece of life advice in the form of a hockey metaphor: "Keep your stick on the ice."
     This was followed by a general meeting of the Possum Lodge membership while the credits rolled, which began with the ritual stating of the Lodge motto: "Quando omni flunkus moritati" (Pseudo-Latin for "When all else fails, play dead"). This was often followed by the Man's Prayer: "I'm a man, but I can change, if I have to, I guess."  Red Green YouTube Channel

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