Catherine O’Hara and the Late-Night TV That Shaped a Generation of Comedy Fans

From a personal point of view, one of my earliest memories of Catherine O’Hara doesn’t come from a movie theater or a prime-time sitcom. It comes from the quiet glow of late-night television, long after most of the house had gone to sleep.

As a youngster, I remember staying up late enough to catch Second City Television (SCTV), which aired after Saturday Night Live and Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert. That meant it didn’t come on until around 1:30 a.m. Pacific Time, deep into Saturday night and early Sunday morning. Even at that young age, I knew I was watching something different. The humor felt sharper, stranger, and somehow smarter — and Catherine O’Hara stood out immediately.

Even before I understood why it was funny, I understood that it mattered.

Late-Night Television as a Classroom

Looking back now, it’s clear that late-night television quietly shaped my taste in comedy. SCTV didn’t feel like it was aiming for the widest possible audience. It felt like it trusted the viewer to catch up. Catherine O’Hara’s performances weren’t just about delivering punchlines — they were about inhabiting characters completely, no matter how absurd, subtle, or offbeat they were.

That kind of comedy asks you to pay attention. And for a kid watching far past his bedtime, it was oddly captivating. I didn’t have the vocabulary for “character work” or “commitment to the bit,” but I recognized authenticity when I saw it. O’Hara had it in abundance.

Seeing the Through-Line Years Later

As the years went on, Catherine O’Hara kept showing up in new places — and each time, something clicked. In Beetlejuice, there was that same fearless weirdness. In Home Alone, she brought warmth and panic and humanity to what could have easily been a one-note role. She grounded the chaos without ever dulling it.

Then came Schitt’s Creek. By the time Moira Rose entered our cultural vocabulary, it felt less like a reinvention and more like a full-circle moment. The bold choices, the musicality of her voice, the unapologetic commitment — it all traced back to those SCTV performances from decades earlier.

Moira Rose didn’t come out of nowhere — she came from years of late nights, sharp instincts, and fearless comedy.

Why Those Early Moments Matter

What I didn’t realize at the time was that those 1:30 a.m. viewings were teaching me how to appreciate comedy that lingered. Not everything had to land immediately. Not every joke needed a laugh track. Some performances simply stayed with you.

Catherine O’Hara’s work did exactly that. It stayed. Through different decades, formats, and genres, her performances carried a consistency of intelligence and heart. For many of us who grew up sneaking glances at late-night television, she became a familiar presence — someone who trusted the audience enough to go all in.

A Personal Goodbye

With news of her passing, those memories feel closer than ever. Not just of Catherine O’Hara the icon, but of Catherine O’Hara the performer who helped shape how many of us learned to watch comedy. She wasn’t just funny — she was formative.

Late-night television doesn’t always get credit for the role it plays in shaping taste, curiosity, and imagination. But for those of us who were there, watching quietly while the rest of the world slept, it mattered. And Catherine O’Hara was a big part of why.

— STM Daily News

For more on her early career in comedy, see Forbes retrospective on Catherine O’Hara’s career history and influence. [oai_citation:3‡Forbes](https://www.forbes.com/sites/hannahabraham/2026/01/30/how-catherine-ohara-became-beloved-across-three-generations-from-sctv-to-home-alone-to-schitts-creek/?utm_source=chatgpt.com)

Learn about the cultural impact and awards for Schitt’s Creek Schitt’s Creek Wikipedia overview. [oai_citation:4‡Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schitt%27s_Creek?utm_source=chatgpt.com)

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See a broad overview of her life and legacy from PBS NewsHour PBS retrospective. [oai_citation:5‡pbs.org](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/arts/catherine-ohara-emmy-winning-actor-and-comedian-of-schitts-creek-fame-dies-at-71?utm_source=chatgpt.com)

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Geoff Childs, Washington University in St. Louis

Dorje Dundul recently had his foot gnawed by a brown bear – a member of the species Ursus thibetanus, to be precise.

It wasn’t his first such encounter. Recounting the first of three such violent experiences over the past five years, Dorje told our research team: “My wife came home one evening and reported that a bear had eaten a lot of corn from the maize field behind our house. So, we decided to shoo it away. While my wife was setting up camp, I went to see how much the bear had eaten. The bear was just sitting there; it attacked me.”

Dorje dropped to the ground, but the bear ripped open his shirt and tore at his shoulder. “I started shouting and the bear ran away. My wife came, thinking I was messing with her, but when she saw the wounds, she knew what had happened.”

Researchers Dolma Choekyi Lama, Tsering Tinley and I spoke with Dorje – a 71-year-old resident of Nubri, a Buddhist enclave in the Nepalese highlands – as part of a three-year study of aging and migration.

Now, you may be forgiven for asking what a bear attack on a septuagenarian has to do with demographic change in Nepal. The answer, however, is everything.

In recent years, people across Nepal have witnessed an increase in bear attacks, a phenomenon recorded in news reports and academic studies.

Inhabitants of Nubri are at the forefront of this trend – and one of the main reasons is outmigration. People, especially young people, are leaving for education and employment opportunities elsewhere. It is depleting household labor forces, so much so that over 75% of those who were born in the valley and are now ages 5 to 19 have left and now live outside of Nubri.

It means that many older people, like Dorje and his wife, Tsewang, are left alone in their homes. Two of their daughters live abroad and one is in the capital, Kathmandu. Their only son runs a trekking lodge in another village.

Scarcity of ‘scarebears’

Until recently, when the corn was ripening, parents dispatched young people to the fields to light bonfires and bang pots all night to ward off bears. The lack of young people acting as deterrents, alongside the abandonment of outlying fields, is tempting bears to forage closer to human residences.

Outmigration in Nubri and similar villages is due in large part to a lack of educational and employment opportunities. The problems caused by the removal of younger people have been exacerbated by two other factors driving a rapidly aging population: People are living longer due to improvements in health care and sanitation; and fertility has declined since the early 2000s, from more than six to less than three births per woman.

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These demographic forces have been accelerating population aging for some time, as illustrated by the population pyramid constructed from our 2012 household surveys in Nubri and neighboring Tsum.

A not-so-big surprise, anymore

Nepal is not alone in this phenomenon; similar dynamics are at play elsewhere in Asia. The New York Times reported in November 2025 that bear attacks are on the rise in Japan, too, partly driven by demographic trends. Farms there used to serve as a buffer zone, shielding urban residents from ursine intruders. However, rural depopulation is allowing bears to encroach on more densely populated areas, bringing safety concerns in conflict with conservation efforts.

Dorje can attest to those concerns. When we met him in 2023 he showed us deep claw marks running down his shoulder and arm, and he vowed to refrain from chasing away bears at night.

So in October 2025, Dorje and Tsewang harvested a field before marauding bears could get to it and hauled the corn to their courtyard for safekeeping. The courtyard is surrounded by stone walls piled high with firewood – not a fail-safe barrier but at least a deterrent. They covered the corn with a plastic tarp, and for extra measure Dorje decided to sleep on the veranda.

He described what happened next:

“I woke to a noise that sounded like ‘sharak, sharak.’ I thought it must be a bear rummaging under the plastic. Before I could do anything, the bear came up the stairs. When I shouted, it got frightened, roared and yanked at my mattress. Suddenly my foot was being pulled and I felt pain.”

Dorje suffered deep lacerations to his foot. Trained in traditional Tibetan medicine, he staunched the bleeding using, ironically, a tonic that contained bear liver.

Yet his life was still in danger due to the risk of infection. It took three days and an enormous expense by village standards – equivalent to roughly US$2,000 – before they could charter a helicopter to Kathmandu for further medical attention.

And Dorje is not the only victim. An elderly woman from another village bumped into a bear during a nocturnal excursion to her outhouse. It left her with a horrific slash from forehead to chin – and her son scrambling to find funds for her evacuation and treatment.

So how should Nepal’s highlanders respond to the increase in bear attacks?

Dorje explained that in the past they set lethal traps when bear encroachments became too dangerous. That option vanished with the creation of Manaslu Conservation Area Project, or MCAP, in the 1990s, a federal initiative to manage natural resources that strictly prohibits the killing of wild animals.

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Learning to grin and bear it?

Dorje reasons that if MCAP temporarily relaxed the regulation, villagers could band together to cull the more hostile bears. He informed us that MCAP officials will hear nothing of that option, yet their solutions, such as solar-powered electric fencing, haven’t worked.

Dorje is reflective about the options he faces as young people leave the village, leaving older folk to battle the bears alone.

“At first, I felt that we should kill the bear. But the other side of my heart says, perhaps I did bad deeds in my past life, which is why the bear bit me. The bear came to eat corn, not to attack me. Killing it would just be another sinful act, creating a new cycle of cause and effect. So, why get angry about it?”

It remains to be seen how Nubri’s residents will respond to the mounting threats bears pose to their lives and livelihoods. But one thing is clear: For those who remain behind, the outmigration of younger residents is making the perils more imminent and the solutions more challenging.

Dolma Choekyi Lama and Tsering Tinley made significant contributions to this article. Both are research team members on the author’s project on population in an age of migration.

Geoff Childs, Professor of Sociocultural Anthropology, Washington University in St. Louis

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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How City Hall Quietly Undermined LA’s Own Height Limits

The Knowledge Series | STM Daily News

For more than half a century, Los Angeles enforced one of the strictest building height limits in the United States. Beginning in 1905, most buildings were capped at 150 feet, shaping a city that grew outward rather than upward.

The goal was clear: avoid the congestion, shadows, and fire dangers associated with dense Eastern cities. Los Angeles sold itself as open, sunlit, and horizontal — a place where growth spread across land, not into the sky.

And yet, in 1928, Los Angeles City Hall rose to 454 feet, towering over the city like a contradiction in concrete.

It wasn’t built to spark a commercial skyscraper boom.
But it ended up proving that Los Angeles could safely build one.

A Rule Designed to Prevent a Manhattan-Style City

The original height restriction was rooted in early 20th-century fears:

• Limited firefighting capabilities
• Concerns over blocked sunlight and airflow
• Anxiety about congestion and overcrowding
• A strong desire not to resemble New York or Chicago

Los Angeles wanted prosperity — just not vertical density.

The height cap reinforced a development model where:

• Office districts stayed low-rise
• Growth moved outward
• Automobiles became essential
• Downtown never consolidated into a dense core

This philosophy held firm even as other American cities raced upward.

Why City Hall Was Never Meant to Change the Rules

City Hall was intentionally exempt from the height limit because the law applied primarily to private commercial buildings, not civic monuments.

But city leaders were explicit about one thing:
City Hall was not a precedent.

It was designed to:

• Serve as a symbolic seat of government
• Stand alone as a civic landmark
• Represent stability, authority, and modern governance
• Avoid competing with private office buildings

In effect, Los Angeles wanted a skyline icon — without a skyline.

Innovation Hidden in Plain Sight

What made City Hall truly significant wasn’t just its height — it was how it was built.

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At a time when seismic science was still developing, City Hall incorporated advanced structural ideas for its era:

• A steel-frame skeleton designed for flexibility
• Reinforced concrete shear walls for lateral strength
• A tapered tower to reduce wind and seismic stress
• Thick structural cores that distributed force instead of resisting it rigidly

These choices weren’t about aesthetics — they were about survival.

The Earthquake That Changed the Conversation

In 1933, the Long Beach earthquake struck Southern California, causing widespread damage and reshaping building codes statewide.

Los Angeles City Hall survived with minimal structural damage.

This moment quietly reshaped the debate:

• A tall building had endured a major earthquake
• Structural engineering had proven effective
• Height alone was no longer the enemy — poor design was

City Hall didn’t just survive — it validated a new approach to vertical construction in seismic regions.

Proof Without Permission

Despite this success, Los Angeles did not rush to repeal its height limits.

Cultural resistance to density remained strong, and developers continued to build outward rather than upward. But the technical argument had already been settled.

City Hall stood as living proof that:

• High-rise buildings could be engineered safely in Los Angeles
• Earthquakes were a challenge, not a barrier
• Fire, structural, and seismic risks could be managed

The height restriction was no longer about safety — it was about philosophy.

The Ironic Legacy

When Los Angeles finally lifted its height limit in 1957, the city did not suddenly erupt into skyscrapers. The habit of building outward was already deeply entrenched.

The result:

• A skyline that arrived decades late
• Uneven density across the region
• Multiple business centers instead of one core
• Housing and transit challenges baked into the city’s growth pattern

City Hall never triggered a skyscraper boom — but it quietly made one possible.

Why This Still Matters

Today, Los Angeles continues to wrestle with:

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• Housing shortages
• Transit-oriented development debates
• Height and zoning battles near rail corridors
• Resistance to density in a growing city

These debates didn’t begin recently.

They trace back to a single contradiction: a city that banned tall buildings — while proving they could be built safely all along.

Los Angeles City Hall wasn’t just a monument.
It was a test case — and it passed.

Further Reading & Sources

• Los Angeles Department of City Planning – History of Urban Planning in LA
• Los Angeles Conservancy – History & Architecture of LA City Hall
• Water and Power Associates – Early Los Angeles Buildings & Height Limits
• USGS – How Buildings Are Designed to Withstand Earthquakes
• Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety – Building Code History

More from The Knowledge Series on STM Daily News