After 15 years, Red Green is about to rip through his last roll of duct tape.
Possum Lodge’s main man checks out tonight with the 300th and final episode of The Red Green Show (7 p.m. on CBC). The storyline is besides the point — something about Red’s idiot nephew Harold (Patrick McKenna) finally tying the knot. The real story is how Hamilton’s Steve Smith kept this sucker on the air through those iffy early seasons to finally emerge with the longest-running Canadian series ever shown in the U.S. (on several PBS affiliates).
Tonight’s finale was taped last November in Toronto with a studio audience filled with Red fans. They’ll have to make do with reruns from now on, says Smith, who vows he’s never putting on those red and green suspenders again.
“I miss Seinfeld, too,” Smith told the Sun last fall, “but I still laugh at all the old reruns.”
Over the years, the loopy lodge comedy has featured the likes of Paul Gross, Gordon Pinsent, Ian Thomas and Academy Award-nominee Graham Greene (Dances With Wolves). Greene caught the show at an airport in the U.S. and fell in love with it. Later he ran into Smith at a Gemini Awards and asked him what he had to do to get onto the show. “You just did it,” said Smith.
FROM RED TO PINK: Look for another traffic tie-up on Queen St. W. Stupid Girl singer/satirist P!nk will be on Live@Much tonight at 7 p.m. Promoting her new album I’m Not Dead, she’s scheduled to do a live performance as well as take questions from MuchMusic fans via fax, phone, e-mail and text messaging.
Also on Much: the MuchMusic VJ Search ends Monday at 8 p.m. on CITY-TV and Much. Will Kitchener wildcard Tim Deegan, who jumped back in last Monday, scoop the gig? Oh, the tension!
CALYPSO UPDATE: Sun reader Richard from the Ontario Deep Sea Diving group wrote to update the Jean-Michel Cousteau story that ran in Wednesday’s Sun. Calypso, the fabled ship used by Jean-Michel’s father Jacques in his many marine specials from the ’60s and ’70s, is not rusting out in France, he writes, but is being rebuilt in the Bahamas as a museum dedicated to the famous French oceanographer. Jean-Michel Cousteau: Ocean Adventures continues next Wednesday on Buffalo’s PBS affiliate WNED.
WHAT THE, WHO THE, WHY I OUGHTTA: CTV is jumbling up its schedule again. Amazing Race fans must now tune in Wednesdays at 8 p.m. to see their favourite show on CTV (and CBS). That will bump Lost to Wednesday at 7 p.m., two hours ahead of its ABC slot. To make room, Law & Order: SVU moves to Tuesdays at 10, with Criminal Minds moving to Tuesdays at 9 starting April 11.
IDOL MUSINGS: CTV’s latest hyperventilating press release has “the most successful audition tour in the history of the Canadian Idol franchise” lurching into Toronto April 28-29. This time, auditioners will be herded outside the Winter Garden Theatre, which will make for a much better photo op than last year’s auditions, which saw a few hundred kids stranded inside the cavernous Rogers Centre. For release forms and more information check out idol.ctv.ca.
JUNO NO-SHOW: CTV’s Halifax-based Juno Awards Sunday did well across Canada (ranking 13th with 1,720,000 viewers), but stiffed in Canada’s two largest cities. In Toronto, it finished out of the Top-20 with just 284,000 viewers. That barely edged Global’s Family Guy by a thousand viewers. In Vancouver, it didn’t even crack the Top-30.
Meanwhile, CBC’s horrible At The Hotel sunk to 234,000 viewers Tuesday night. That’s across Canada, not just in Toronto!
