Who is I Kill the Bear laughing at?

In 2002, Ryan Wedding was an Olympic snowboarder at the top of his game. Ryan's style is really gun it and go. And in less than a minute, it slipped away. But he continued to chase the high. Ryan James Wedding. He controls one of the most violent drug trafficking organizations in this world. I'm Michelle Shepard and from CBC Podcasts and the Toronto Star, The Most Wanted Olympian. Available now on Amazon Music. This is a CBC Podcast. One thing Canada is incredibly good at is we make incredibly weird comedies that sometimes really hit. This past weekend, we got the first episode of a wild new series from Jared Kiso. That's the guy behind Letterkenny and Shorzy. And we got a documentary about this country's greatest contribution to comedy, SCTV. I'm Alameen Abdel-Mahmoud and this is Commotion. Terry Hart is here. Vish Khan is here. Paul Myers is here. Good morning, everybody. Nice to see you. Nice to see you. Oh, come on. We're going to have a great time. And I think we're going to have a great time because we are going to start right here. We are Burr Wrangler for film and TV set with our friend Burr. Easy, no? We run things. Things not run we. Our methods are unconventional. You go, hey. You go, ah. You go, ah. You go, ah. You go, ah. But they work. You would have to take the burr cough, like I'm saying, and place it back. In our spur times, we play in a band with our buddies to get out our aggression. And we have much of that because of our colleague from New Hollywood. So that is the trailer for the new show, I Kill the Bear. That is a new Crave show from Jared Kiso, who created and stars in Letterkenny and Shorzy. If you've seen Shorzy, he plays Shorzy. Okay. Terry, I think I'm going to need your help in just contextualizing the thing that people just heard there. What is going on with the show? What is your show about? I'm going to try. So the framework is that two documentarians are making a film about a Francophone family who have been bear wranglers in the movie business, film and television business, for like 100 years. And they're currently working on their final movie as bear wranglers for a bunch of different reasons. I mean, that's kind of the construct, I mean, that's kind of like the macro story. They did Legends of the Fall. Yes, absolutely. There's lots of references to Brad Pitt in Legends of the Fall. Yeah, that's what the show plot-wise is about. Terry, what is the show really about? Okay, so they're using that plot point. And the construct of a Hollywood movie set to talk about cancel culture, to talk about celebrity, to talk about our need for celebrity and our want for celebrity, it's pitfalls, it's, you know, all of the things that are bad with it. I don't think they talk much about anything good with celebrity, but I think, you know, this is going to sound really broad, but it's really about very contemporarily how people are interacting with one another. Yeah. What they feel free to say to each other, what they feel free to judge each other for. And I think they're using the idea of a movie set as a microcosm of the world. I think that's actually a really lovely and grounding description of what the show is. Paul, I've never had this experience where I watch the first episode of a show and say, immediately when it ends, I go, I need to watch this again because I don't know what I just watched. You know, it was one of those shows that I had a reaction to it. I was like, I don't understand the thing that's happening for me as I watch this thing. This is the third major show from Jared Kiso. What are the signature qualities of a Jared Kiso show? Like, what's the thing that he does really well and how does I Kill the Bear sort of fit into that? Well, I'll take a stab at that. The things that I've noticed in all his shows are quick cutting and sort of weird for me because I'm a kids in the hall, I guess, expert. And the quick cutting reminds me a lot of the kids in the hall. And of course, having Scott Thompson in this just is like a hook to that. But the quick cutting, the fast pacedness, the sort of irreverence in a slightly Shakespearean way, lots of soliloquies, you know, and I say Shakespearean loosely, but in the sense that everyone seems to be speaking in couplets and or short sentences that seem to have a rhythm to them. It's all about the rhythm. Yes. Oh, yeah. The rhythm of the show. Very much. So those are the signature things. And I think they're whereas in Letter Kenny, he introduced the idea. He surprised everyone by having people be more diverse and talking about diversity in this show that ostensibly was about a small town with hockey players. Yeah, this is like the opposite of that. It's like, OK, I'm done with all that. And now now now he seems a little angry at at at that sort of thing, because he's saying that everyone just gets in trouble, which to me is very reductive. But but I do think that that is another signature is he's sort of having a conversation about the culture through what is ostensibly. And in a ridiculous setting, you know, it's not it's not saying we're going to have a serious talk. It's like we're going to have some wacky stuff with them. They've even got a punk band. But, you know, you know, and and they're Larry Darrell and Darrell from the Newhart show who raised bears like and it's kind of like Nope by Jordan Peele in the sense of this old Hollywood wrangler tradition, you know, but it doesn't go any of those places because it's still Jared Kisa. Well, first of all, you said a sort of expert on kids of the hall, Paul, you literally wrote the book. So I feel like we can just give you the quality of being expert on this. I want to pick up on something that both Paul and Terry have mentioned here, which is like this idea that Jared Kisa was trying to sort of feel his way around talking about cancel culture. He's not just satirizing Hollywood, not just satirizing celebrity is sort of trying to figure out some kind of way of commenting on how we think about the idea of cancel culture. There's, you know, in the first episode, there's jokes about land acknowledgements. There's jokes about defunding the police. You have a character. Say if you disagree with people now, they want to ruin your life. When you receive the show, how did all of those land for you? How did, how did you sort of receive them? Well, I mean, at this point, some of us have seen more than just the opening episode. For the opening episode, I was a little like, okay, it's just what Terry and Paul described. The only thing I would add about Kisa's oeuvre, if you will, if I can use a fancy word this early in the morning, is regionalism. So like the things that- That matter to a community seem maybe quaint to those of us who aren't part of the community, but it's all that matters on some level. It's very specific. They tend to be very specific. But bringing, in this case, the show is bringing what we've all been sort of immersed in, in terms of online policing, a hyper speculation of what celebrities are actually like. Who are they really? Like, that's a fascinating aspect of the show. So I feel like, yeah, on the one hand, it's doing that sort of like assessment of where we're all at in terms of policing one another about what we can say and what we can't say. But like any good satire, I think it also platforms what might be construed as the opposite view. Like, you might read this as like, oh, he's clearly attacking cancel culture. And I don't want to spoil the show for anyone, but I'll just say this. There's a scene early on where there's an actor portraying, well, I mean, it's an actor playing an actor who is very self-righteous. So much so that in the middle of a romantic scene, she inserts a land acknowledgement. And the producer, Scott Thompson, bristles, like, looks at the script, like, what the hell? That's not in here. What is she doing? And then you're like, OK, I think I understand the perspective of the show. It's kind of making fun of all that. But then later on, again, no spoilers. I'll be careful. Later on, a different actor is inserted into the same scene. And she, too, does the land acknowledgement. So it's kind of like some things are, like, I think the point of view is some of what we police is absurd. Like, it's too much. But some of it is necessary and it should be happening. So I think it's walking the line, like any good satire, of platforming the thing it's making fun of. So we all think about it. And then you walk away, maybe not just thinking it's foolish. You have to think about it. OK, how are we behaving? What's right? What's wrong? What makes sense to me? So I think there's a balancing act there, if that makes any sense. Yeah, I don't think the show, I don't read the show as a show that's committing to a specific set of politics. I think it's sort of time to wrestle with what all of these ways of politics have kind of, like, become a part of our daily language and what that does to communication. How that obscures how people actually are able to talk to one another. Terry, how did the satire land for you as you were watching the show? So, yeah, I mean, certainly in the first few episodes, there was a lot. There was a lot that made me really uncomfortable. You know, there's a montage about, you know, women are always right. And then a montage of women behaving absolutely ridiculously. And, you know, it all feels kind of anti-woke. And I like rebuff. The first episode, you mean? More than the first episode. Like, I watched the first four. So and it all does feel kind of anti-woke. And I like as a person, I rebuff at that. Woke is. Woke was kind of corrupted somehow along the way in a really, really fast way. Oh, woke. was meant to be was empathetic to my mind that is what woke culture is being decent to other people if i may paraphrase my late friend steve albini who mentioned that like if you if you replace woke or political correctness with being decent to other people you sound like a fool yeah i'm anti-decent to other people like i mean this is so so i have this like visceral reaction to the idea and that's to me what i kill the bear is kind of looking at this idea of anti-wokeness and and yes people are being ridiculous but i'm not sure the world is ready for this kind of you know stripped back idea of anti-wokeness when it's still being weaponized in such a terrible manner so i i don't know i i kind of think like are we really doing this guys are we really are we ready for this right now so i think but this is why i brought up that one example where like early on the land acknowledgement that occurs twice by two different people seems to me to suggest it's not a fixed it's played for a lot of different ways is what you mean i guess so but i also think they're sort of acknowledging that that kind of acknowledgement is necessary but some of the other stuff like and again one of the plot points is an actor has a nervous breakdown because people specular are judging him for something he did when he was six years old so it's trying to take a look at okay what do you know terry do you see where i'm coming from there well yeah i mean i you know i i feel like again the absurdity of the idea of anti-wokeness is something that i'm trying to judgment of what he did for when he was six years old would never actually occur so we use we use absurdity for actually things that are occurring to say this is ridiculous and then when somebody is actually being um ostracized it's for the most ridiculous thing and i think that that's a dangerous position to put on the idea of cancel culture or political correctness which again has become a terrible weaponized term i just think that we are getting we're dipping our toes in into some really dangerous territory so i just want to orient um orient us a little bit here because we don't all share the same amount of information in the sense that uh the only the first episode is out so far of the show um and so people might watch that first episode and get a very specific impression of the show all of you have seen the first four episodes so like you you've you know you've kind of got a little bit further along because of some of these advanced screenings have been made available so you can sort of see where that trajectory is going so you're speaking from a bit more experience than the people might have from just reacting to that very first episode uh paul what what do you what do you make of i kill the bears attempts to sort of deal with cancel culture and and sort of try to contextualize how these conversations have been happening well a bit and listening to what terry said too and this i think the the thing that the thing that jarred me or was jarring to me is the phrase i would like to use uh is performative wokeness this seems to be what they're trying to go at like they're not i would hope like and again i'm not in jared kiso's head and what a weird place that would be i wonder a surreal place for sure lots of quick cutting and soliloquies yeah but he he um he seems to be with the land acknowledgement joke which again we're spoiling it if you haven't seen any of this i don't i don't believe for a second they were making fun of actually acknowledging you know uh land land and stuff like i think they're making fun of the fact that these actors are self-righteous and think that they can make you know it's like we all saw those videos during the lockdown of actors you know tearfully looking at the camera right and in this show spoiler alert there's a couple of you know montages of actors getting behind a cause including including the one that we were just obliquely referring to um and i what i think terry touched on something is i always think of it is you know it was warren warren zevon's problem randy newman had this problem which is people don't think on those levels a lot and so and i'm gonna say specifically kind of bro culture might just find themselves laughing at the thing and not necessarily get why that's funny and i i know my friends in the group called the odds had a song called heterosexual man which was making fun of what we now probably refer to as toxic masculinity and they would have this song about heterosexual men and then they would find bros at their gigs singing it like it was their national anthem you know and and and so that is definitely the danger of being of treading that line and it's interesting that scott thompson is in this show because scott always trans he tread that line and still if you talk to him in conversation proudly talks about wanting to you know knock down performative culture you know cancel absolutely one of the most outspoken critics of this time yeah both on and off camera i've had those conversations with him yeah but to me like i actually kind of find that satisfying like the idea that uh you would make a satire and then the people that it's meant to satirize it would go over their heads is maybe more satisfying to me like it's like that's just a funny spectacle to watch i think like if that ends up being the case but you're right it is risky because it's risky and it's a funny spectacle to watch i think like if that ends up risky because like some of those people might not receive it as satire and so they might not literally register that they're meant to be invited to like look inwards in terms of like how they're operating in the world but the rest of us maybe get a good laugh out of that i i will say that uh this is the first episode of the show is is out um i do think this is going to be one of those shows that grows in profile as the more episodes kind of come out over the next few weeks um uh vish d glasswork do you see i kill the bear sort of catching on the same way that letter kenny did um like are people going to be dressed as the tebow brothers you know next halloween is this where we're going or no uh i mean that's an interesting who's to say on the one hand i do think that the tebow brothers are i think clearly modeled sort well mostly modeled after the hansen brothers from the slap shot film like and speaking of who's going to be offended i wonder what french canadians are going to make of these characterizations you know like it's pushing buttons left and right so maybe maybe maybe i can't i can't speculate but i mean it's right there the outfit's right there it's possible it's pushing buttons left and right is actually a really good way to be terry maybe i'll give you the last word on this do you do you see the show having a big sort of life uh i think it's going to be niche like a lot of kiso comedies are certainly letter kenny and shorzy reach a certain peak um you know we've got cameos in here from edward norton and every single canadian comedian known to man is beloved you know we we we see and we've all heard the from john ham to brad pitt to you know people have fallen for him and i think he's incredibly talented yeah i i'm not sure that the subtleties that maybe they think they achieved in i kill the bear are going to be received by everyone watching it well and this is a show by the way like we've already been talking about like yeah yeah this is going to be misinterpreted i think the point is things get misinterpreted in culture and this is i'm genuinely looking forward to all the misinterpretations i think that will be kind of a nice part of this i'm glad that you mentioned some of those cameos that appear in it uh emma hunter has this lung she has this line the first episode where she says i just think pokemon should be voiced by real pokemon and i swear to you i fell out of my chair laughing at her it was just the most the most brilliant delivery uh we are going to take a quick break we'll be right back in just a moment in a world where the news feels bigger louder and harder to make sense of canadians need more than headlines hi i'm karen seolin news reporter and host of the big story podcast from world shaping events to the everyday stories that spark debate my team and i will explain what matters and why it matters to you we're here to help you make sense of the news and give you the context you need for those kitchen table conversations trusted canadian focused curious listen to the big story wherever you get your podcasts okay we are back my name is alameen abdul is called commotion i got paul myers here i got terry hart here i got vishkana here uh we've been speaking about jared kisa's new show i kill the bear but now we're going to switch gears and talk about the people who paved the way shall we say for absurdist canadian comedy have a listen to this edith prickly and earl camembert and johnny larue jerry todd the five neat guys high school high q jerry lewis halfwits i'm looking for one culinary dish from italy swedish meat floss i have watched those things i'm gonna say 122 times and i still laugh okay you have the voice you heard there tom hanks bob odenkirk two of many many many famous people that we see in the netflix documentary sctv the greatest show you never heard of uh that documentary was produced by uh executive produced by jimmy kimmel uh paul i'll start with you on this i feel like we've been hearing about an sctv documentary in the works for so long why did it take this long for it to come out oh there's a lot of reasons but i suppose it starts with martin scorsese uh the uh when i was interviewing uh cast members from second city for the john candy book that i did uh joe flaherty was still alive and and uh he was saying in his beautiful guy caballero voice he said like i don't know where the hell that film is uh he was angry then and i'm sure wherever he is he's angry now probably if there's a version of heaven that looks like pittsburgh that's where joe flaherty is right now and but um i think martin or marty as we like to call him i think he got uh i think he got uh busy with the cinema again and he started making movies and i think i think it just languished and then what happens is when something languishes long enough it becomes a little at least dated to yourself because i know that jimmy kimmel who was participating in the original film uh was also asking where it was and then at some point he looked at the footage apparently uh that's what i've read and said oh some of these interviews don't feel right like anymore and uh so that he was like oh i don't know what to do with this That's how they got. is it Jason Herr, is that how you pronounce his name? To re-cut, re-interview people. And of course, Joe was gone by then and they have footage of him in the film. But, you know, and then, so we do get the last Catherine O'Hara appearance as a result, which is, you know, kind of bittersweet about the whole thing. And I think generally, yeah, it fell off. There was this whole presentation they did at the Winter Garden Theater in Toronto. That was what Marty was supposed to be recording, right? Yeah, yeah. Our good friend Marty. Yeah, our good friend Marty. Well, this is going to get complicated because Martin Short is also known as Marty to his friends. That's true. So we have a tale of two Martys and no film. But I think, yeah, generally what happened is the original became kind of stale and Jimmy Kimmel's people decided let's make it into something different. And I know we're all a little, in Canada, a lot of us were upset to hear about, I'm Canadian, a lot of us were upset to hear about the greatest show you've never heard of. And certainly in the comedy community, the people I talked to, like we all heard of that show. It's not a mystery to any of us, yeah. I think it was more of about the generations. I think it was more the fact that the show stopped being made in the 80s. So there's a good chance that many people have been born and some people have even died since the show has gone off the air. So that's why they'd never heard of it. But I mean, YouTube, you know, come on. Vishal, I'll come to you on this in just a moment. But Terry, let me ask you, there is a cause I think of celebrating the great talents who were involved in making this documentary. What makes the SCTV story worth revisiting in 2026, do you think? I mean, these people came together and they stayed together. I think that, you know, it's kind of ironic. We have this right now. We also have the Godspell documentary right now where a lot of them originated. And I think that it is what Andrea Martin says towards the end of the documentary, that they still love each other. They still work together. They still see each other. Here they are, for anybody who hasn't seen it, they're kind of sitting in L-shaped couches and watching. Watching different scenes from the show. And when Catherine O'Hara is in a scene, you know, Andrea Martin, Marty Short, and Eugene Levy are laughing harder. And they laugh at each other so much. They adore each other. They obviously still crack each other up. And it's really, really emotional to watch that. I mean, I think that there are very few people who can sustain relationships outside of the Hollywood machine. And here are these people, here are these Canadians who maintain these friendships with all this other success, with all these other things going on. And it's incredibly emotional. And that, to me, that is the core of SCTV. It's why the Dave Thomas, it's why the, you know, the brothers, the, why can't I think of their names right now? The Bangy? Bob and Doug. Bob and Doug. There's too many brothers. Why that debacle of, you know, them, Dave and Rick kind of, getting a bit big for their britches. I feel like that's such a Canadian term, but how that, and Eugene's like, yeah, they could have done better. I mean, they're just all so nice. And so I think that that is the story. And that's a really nice framework for this documentary. Vish, one thing that I think that struck with me as I was watching this documentary is like, there's a lot of SCTV sketches that revolve around impersonations of celebrities that people might just not know. Like, I don't think if you were walking down the street and doing Merv Griffin impressions, I don't think you'd be able to do that. I don't think you'd be able to do that. People go like, oh, I know the thing that you're doing in front of me. So if those people are not necessarily culturally relevant in 2026, what about the show still holds up for you, you think? Well, just speaking to that point, I mean, Paul already invoked, or we've all invoked the kids in the hall. I think the kids in the hall did something really smart. They made evergreen, timeless comedy in the sense that they didn't do anything too topical. One thing that resonates with me about SCTV still is that it created its own, literally its own little town, its own little, and so at this point, whatever generation you are, even for me, sometimes when I'm watching it, I had forgotten about Perry Como or Gene Shalit or whomever. Yeah. But to me, the impersonations, but at the same time, like Johnny LaRue is a character and they have so many characters. These celebrity impressions just become other characters to me. Right. And I think that's a unique aspect of what SCTV does, that the actual impressions are so absurd. You don't really need to know the story. It's a resource, I think, personally. They just work. Paul, I'm going to give you a minute here, if you don't mind, to just draw a line between Jared Kiso and SCTV. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's there. It's there. It's totally there. So the through line, so basically the continuum is, you know, Second City Television creates the idea that in Canada we can make a show. I'm speaking very fast. Speaking about the, so the very quick cutting show that's not topical necessarily has its own world. Kids in the Hall take that and run with it for their generation. And they create an even more, even more like, like self-contained show, as Vish was saying. And then, and then I think, you know, they, they, as they say, they walked so Kiso could run. And, and I think that Kiso putting, like I said, Scott Thompson in the show, basically, you know, and it's interesting because Schitt's Creek also had that completion of a circle. So there is a sense that in a weird way, I'm interested in what's happening with, with Canadian comedy culture, film content, I think is what I'm saying, and sketch comedy. And it's, it's interesting to see that, you know, while we're sort of talking about how controversial Jared is, I'm glad that he's doing it. And I'm also thinking that he's also making it for Canadians because it's about the American film business is part of this story too. And, and are we just a backlot for, you know, runaway American productions, Terry? And I will say that none of it happens without CanCon. You can draw the full, not just because of 30% CanCon, regs, not just, but because CanCon forced all kinds of regional television to happen that made things, yeah, that made things particularly absurd, that created the sketches that happen on SCTV, that created like it, it all, yeah, it all comes from CanCon too. So just to spell that out, like you're saying that the imperative to say, okay, we got to create some Canadian content. We got to fund some Canadian content, very specifically that ends up creating an ecosystem where every region says, okay, what's funny here? What's funny here? Well, not just what's funny, but some of the CanCon that went on not to be comedic, like the Polka brothers that then the guys from SCTV go, well, this is ridiculous. And yes, it is ridiculous, but it's there for a reason. It's there for a cultural reason. And so Canada, because of us wedging CanCon down our throats, we are able to actually have a culture that looks at the broadness of Canadian culture. And I think- But what does it mean? All of this exists, especially in I Kill the Bear. I think that it's really rooted in the beginnings of CanCon, in how Canadian regulations have changed over time, in this runaway production thing, which I think is a really, really great point that Paul makes, that like at the very beginning, oh, do you really want to go to Sundance? Is this really a Canadian thing? Or are we just trying to go to Sundance? Like all that, all that is there. I just question if people are really going to get it or if they're going to go, yeah, why are we going to Sundance? Why are we doing land acknowledgments, man? But, okay, so there's that part. I invoked regionalism earlier, but it's interesting to me that all the places, all the shows we've talked about, invented places. Letterkenny is not a real, I mean, it's not a real place, right? Allenville is not a real place. So to transcend, this is a very Canadian complex issue. Like Canadians have a complex, I mean. But if you name the place, if you name the place, then it's not at least too specific to that place. Letterkenny is every place that I've been to. But, you know, if you say like this is set, you know, this is a very specific town, then suddenly like, you know. And Schitt's Creek's also a place. Yeah, I've been to Schitt's Creek. That's what I'm saying. It seems interestingly strategic to me and uniquely Canadian to be like, we're not setting this in New Jersey or New York. Yeah, it's not Fargo, right? We're setting it in Mellonville. We're setting it in Schitt's, like, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, I have something on this too. Like, so the elephant in the room is my brother created Wayne's World. They've set it in Aurora, Illinois for the TV show, but that was just because they were told they had to make it an American town. That could have been no town. That's what I mean. That could have been every town. And we all recognize it from where I'm from as being Scarborough, Ontario. Right. I mean, we knew it was Scarborough, Ontario. We knew Stan Mikita was Tim Hortons. We knew. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You guys, thank you so much for doing this. This has been such a wonderful time. Like, I could talk about this truly forever, so I really appreciate your time. Thanks again for doing this. I like this crew. It's a good crew. Yeah. Good hang. Thanks, guys. Terry Hart is an entertainment reporter for Super Channel and host of the Heart of It All podcast. She was in Toronto. Vishkana is the host of the Creative Control podcast that's Creative Control with two Ks. He lives in Edmonton. And Paul Myers is the author of John Candy, A Life in Comedy, which is, by the way, now out in paperback. And he's also the host of the Record Store Day podcast. He was in San Francisco. You can watch SCTV, the greatest show you've never heard of, right now on Netflix. And that show that we've been talking about, I Kill the Bear, can be streamed on Crave. My name is Elamin Abdelmahmoud. This show is called Commotion. We'll be back tomorrow. We'd love to see you then. We'll be right back.