The Red Green Show

As you know I'm Canadian, and very proud of it, we have quite a few popular musicians and a couple big name comedians, and we have a couple of TV shows that make it big. One of those TV shows is "The Red Green Show". I remember watching the very first episode of Red Green, and I loved the show. It is very funny, and the cast is hilarious. The show is about a guy, Red Green (Steve Smith) who holds a meeting every day at the Possum Lodge, that's where the show takes place. Every show Red Green teaches the audience something, whether it's lessons on life, campfire songs, or how to make something out of nothing in Handyman Corner. As well as Mr. Green there's his nephew Harold (Patrick McKenna), Dalton Humprey, Mike Hammer, Old Man Sedgwick, a bunch of others and of course Bill. I love watching Adventures with Bill, and I kind of feel sorry for him, because in every episode of Adventures with Bill, something always happens to him, or to Red Green. One of my favorite segments is Handyman Corner, because he comes up with the neatest ideas. I remember this one-time it was a Christmas episode, and Red was making an advent calendar. You'll have to see the episode, because it's hilarious.

...and you might come close to getting the essence of what made "Red Green" so enjoyable. Never mind "The Man Show", THIS was the real deal!

What originally attracted me to the show was that it was indeed funny (in a bemused, Newhart way), but it also had a bit of an edge to it. There were some genuine barbs and mean-spirited feelings, some real cynicism and misanthropy concealed in the campfire songs and moose-poop jokes. In the last few years, that edge sort of went away (similar to the way "The Simpsons" lost a lot of their original venom after more than 10 years), but it was always funny and packed with clever word plays and tongue-in-cheek observations of the male psyche and character.

Many characters came and went over the years mostly wonderfully played by talented actors; the one I missed most was 'Garth Harple', the first "Animal Control Officer", whose sad sack demeanor and heavy handed irony ( his motto, "Another Super Day!!" could be teaser for every awful work assignment you ever had) was perfect for the show.

I admire Smith and company for quitting when they were still ahead...it must have been hard to abandon the money machine and a relatively sure thing, but to admit that you need to move on to other projects is the hallmark of true craftsmen at their best. Many many thanks to "The Red Green Show" for innumerable moments( over more than a decade) where I would almost snort beer (or milk) out my nose at some well done jape, sight gag or pratfall.

Look out! This show has supplied me life-saving laughs since the early 90s. I feel so lucky to have on tape nearly every episode, from the very beginning of the series - when old Red was so clean-cut and young that you can hardly recognize him as Steve Smith.

It definitely has lost its edge in the last couple of years, but the rustic humor is still pure. They just seem to be out new ideas for the Bill segments, The Experts and the Word Game.

I can't think of any other show or movie that could match this, in its style of humor and its near-accidental staging. This kind of show only comes along once. The way it's staged, it could have been a great live hit in the earliest days of TV.

It's more than likely that I love this show because it talks about people like me, who'll use duct-tape to fix a machine I depend on my life for, because it's easier than drilling holes and setting bolts.

No show that I'm aware of has done so much to celebrate men, even though the show mostly ridicules them. I'm sorry to see how much it's degenerated, in the last season, but you can only come up with so many believably outrageous (or is it outrageously believable) stunts.

I don't know from whence the concept originated, but I'll always love Steve Smith and Pat McKenna for giving me a show about myself, and the people I know.

A fantastically funny show about Red Green and some other men living up at Possum Lodge in the Yukon Territory. It's Canadian, but you don't need to be Canadian to love this show. Some of the older episodes are a little bit boring, but they still manage to top American shows like "Will and Grace". I will be very sad if this show goes off the air.

I think that the Red Green Show is always nonstop laughs, no matter the date of the episode. As long as it keeps going as it is (maybe if Bill comes back?), then it will be the top Canadian humour show!

I always love the Handyman Corner, the possum lodge Word Game, and ESPECIALLY the Ranger Gord cartoons... Harold is funny, even as a beaver... even that sound he makes. I can imitate that sound. Wahahhhh!