Making an Impression: 'The Dana Carvey Show'

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WHEN HIS SHOW debuted during the 1996 presidential campaign, Dana Carvey described it in his opening monologue as being for "those sleepy little baby boomers who really want counterculture humor."

That's a tall order for any program: "Saturday Night Live," where characters like the Church Lady and Garth Algar made Carvey famous, had stopped being counter around 1980, and "The Dana Carvey Show" had the added disadvantage of airing during prime time, where the sketches were much more constricted.

To their credit, the cast tried hard to be provocative. In the notorious first sketch, Carvey plays Clinton announcing that he now has the ability to breastfeed children and suckle puppies and kittens. That sketch in particular, especially as the introduction to the show, generated considerable controversy that hurt rather than helped the show; the threat of cancelation loomed large over every subsequent skit.

Finally, ABC axed the show after just seven episodes. Its quick end was especially tragic because "The Dana Carvey Show" just starting to find its groove around the fifth or sixth episode.

At first, Carvey and his cohorts were too eager both to shock and to endear, which means they do neither. The star breaks into obvious impersonations (who doesn't do Carson and Kasem?) with so little prompting that it becomes a little embarrassing. A Gen X Rich Little, he takes one aspect of a persona and magnifies it until it becomes the entire impersonation. Remember Charles Grodin's show on CNBC? Carvey gets the cadence of the actor-turned-commentator's speech just right, but plays up his tendency for long pauses as if he were winding down and needed to be reset. It's lightly amusing once, then just annoying.

On the first disc of Shout! Factory's two-DVD set, almost every joke seems to bomb, and every sketch seems poorly paced. Most are too shrill ("Germans Who Say Nice Things") or run on for entirely too long ("Regis & Kathy Lee"). Others, inevitably, are dated (lots of O.J. Simpson jokes), while the political satire is toothless and mean-spirited as they lampoon such easy targets as Strom Thurmond and Bob Dole (They're old = hilarity!). Real laughs are few and far between, although Jan Hooks singing "I Evolved from Jesus" is a highlight.

The show's short life only amplifies these faults, making them seem endemic to the concept and the cast when in fact they were only rough spots in a fledgling production. As it progressed, "The Dana Carvey Show" grew wittier and more confident. As a result, this DVD backloads the best material on the second disc: sketches like "Skinheads from Maine," "Famous First Ladies as Dogs," and "Tom Brokaw Anticipates the Death of Gerald Ford" all make virtues of bizarre idea and sly pacing.

A cult favorite whose fans have been waiting for this DVD set for years, "The Dana Carvey Show" is perhaps most memorable for nurturing the careers of screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (who wrote "Being John Malkovich" and "Adaptation"), comedian Dave Chappelle, and future "Daily Show" correspondents Stephen Colbert and Steve Carell, who make the "Waiters Who Are Nauseated by Food" much funnier than it sounds.

With such a promising cast just finding their voices, who knows what "The Dana Carvey Show" might have become with even seven more episodes? Perhaps truly countercultural.

» Watch entire episodes from the show on Hulu.

Written by Express contributor Stephen M. Deusner
Photo courtesy Shout! Factory