Some jokes take years to hear

I've been a fan of SCTV since it first aired as a syndicated show back in '77 but only last night was I rewatching the Russian Television episode from the NBC years and I caught a "joke" that I am still not sure was intended as a joke.

Bobby Bittman was doing a production of Julius Caesar and in the scene where Brutus was about to kill Caesar Bittman calls him "Bluto".

In fact he calls him that a couple of times.

I know, not exactly belly laughs but think about it this way.

In the old Popeye cartoons Popeye's nemesis was named Brutus but later when the cartoons moved to a different animation studio the name was changed to Bluto.

So somewhere in all that Eugene Levy thought Bittman would probably know more about Popeye than Shakespeare (which he probably did or does).

In true SCTV fashion though the majority of the audience probably never even paid any mind to the entire name "mistake".

Was the show too smart for it's own audience? I think so.

Or at least the majority of American tv watchers