Joe Flaherty, ‘SCTV’ and ‘Freaks and Geeks’ star, is dead at 82

Joe Flaherty, founding member of “SCTV” and ubiquitous comic actor for decades including a stint as the Dad on “Freaks and Geeks,” has died at the age of 82, according to multiple reports.

The Pittsburgh-born performer (a rare American in the Canadian comedy sphere) got his start with the Chicago-based Second City Theater, first appearing on the “National Lampoon Radio Hour” before resettling in Toronto to become part of Second City’s core in the Great White North. He was one of the initial writer/performers on “SCTV,” a vanguard sketch comedy series co-starring John Candy, Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Rick Moranis, Catherine O’Hara, Harold Ramis (for a little while), Dave Thomas, and, later, Martin Short, that mixed parody programming with behind-the-scenes shenanigans at a low rent television station in “Mellonville.” Indeed, if “SCTV” could be said to have a main character, it would be Flaherty’s Guy Caballero, the corrupt, blockhead owner of the station who used a wheelchair not because he was disabled, but because he thought it would make others feel bad for him. (Naturally, he would frequently forget about his ruse, and often get up and walk around in the middle of meetings.)

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His other mainstay characters included “Count Floyd,” a parody of John Zacherle (or Elvira, Mistress of the Night), who would introduce unscary scary movies, often in 3D. (Count Floyd clips later made their way into the Canadian rock band Rush’s live show.) There was also the jazz-playing private detective Vic Arpeggio (a spin on John Cassavetes’s Johnny Staccato), his Merv Griffin-esque talk show host Sammy Maudlin, and a recurring impression of Kirk Douglas. He also had maybe the funniest line in “SCTV” history on the Night School High-Q sketch, where he buzzed in on a quiz show and said, “well, I might be wrong, Alex, and you can correct me if I am and I’ll eat a bug.” 

The series ran from 1976 to 1984, and once the show gained popularity Flaherty parachuted into a slew of memorable and not-so-memorable comedic short roles, including in “1941,” “Used Cars,” “Johnny Dangerously,” “Club Paradise,” “Innerspace,” “Who’s Harry Crumb?” (directed by Joe’s brother Paul Flaherty), “Back to the Future II,” and “Happy Gilmore.”  It was not an uncommon phenomenon that if you saw one “SCTV” alum in something, you simply needed to wait a few scenes before you’d see another.

Flaherty was also a constant on television, popping up for one episode here and there in shows like “Married … With Children,” “Dream On,” “Ellen” and many others that haven’t really stood the test of time. But in 1999 he aged into the role of a TV Dad, and landed the part of Harold Weir in Paul Feig’s “Freaks and Geeks.” Married to Becky Ann Baker and offering guidance to Linda Cardellini and John Francis Daley, Harold, like the rest of the show, couldn’t be fit into a box—hopelessly square one minute, then kinda cool the next, a little clueless, but perhaps wise, too. 

Ironically, considering Count Floyd’s appearance on tour with Rush, here he is telling Jason Segal that Neal Peart is a bad drummer.

Flaherty won two Emmy Awards during his stint at “SCTV,” shared awards for Outstanding Writing in a Variety or Musical Program. He was nominated in that same category seven other times. 

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