A not-so-Friendly but decidedly Giant disagreement

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 28/11/2007 (6723 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Early one morning, just as the sun was rising … I saw this item listed on the CP-story wire: UNDATED — Rusty the Rooster and Jerome the Giraffe are caught in a tug of war.The show that made them famous among a generation of Canadian children — The Friendly Giant — has been off the air for over 20 years.The children of the late Bob Homme — the Friendly Giant himself — have reclaimed the iconic puppets from CBC’s Toronto broadcasting museum.They did so after the characters were used last month in a comedy skit on the 2007 Gemini Awards without the family’s permission.In a brief clip that aired October 28th, Rusty and Jerome were portrayed by a narrator as smoking, drinking and having sex while living in retirement.Richard Homme, Bob’s son, says the comedy skit was distasteful to those involved with the show which ran from 1958 to 1985.Former CBC employee Faye Blum, who had looked after the famed puppets, lost her job in October.She says the Canada Science and Technology Museum in Ottawa agreed to acquire them.The CBC still wants to display them at the Toronto Broadcast Centre. I don’t know if you saw the sketch in question last month (if not, you can view it on YouTube) during the George-Stroumboulopoulos-hosted Geminis, which made a concerted effort to be edgier, a bit darker and a lot more hip than Canada’s TV trophyfest has been in the past, but I did, and I found it mildly amusing and not in the least bit offensive. And I say this as a child of the ’60s who grew up with Friendly, and as a grownup who genuinely grieved when the CBC yanked the show off the air in the mid-’80s.I love the Giant. Always have. Always will.I understand the Homme family’s desire to protect the legacy of one of Canada’s most beloved kids’-TV icons, but I don’t believe the Gemini-show sketch did any harm. If anything, it probably got a couple of laughs out of the TV audience and then prompted viewers of a certain age to spend a few minutes waxing warm-and-fuzzy nostalgic about Friendly, Rusty and Jerome. Folks who probably hadn’t thought about their favourite castle-dweller in many, many cow jumps over the moon.No harm, no foul, I say. Put the puppets back in the CBC museum where people can see them and enjoy the memories.What do you think? Did Strombo’s writers go too far, or is it OK to poke a little edgy fun at TV history?Let me know what you think of this Giant controversy.