The Dana Carvey Show

When googling the Dana Carvey there's a lot of articles about the demise of the Dana Carvey show was because of the controversial nature of the content, really? I missed the show the first time around and am watching it on Hulu now more than a decade after it's brief run and I've really enjoyed it.

The controversial aspect of the show was more likely the way it pokes fun at the nature of advertising and of real potential sponsors. There's a very "controversial" set of mountain dew that I don't think inspired the good folks at Mountain Dew to sponsor the show.

The show would open each episode with a show sponsor like "the Mug Root Beer Dana Carvey Show" reminding me of the old black and white Texaco Theatre show where singing Texaco gas attendants would introduce the show each night.

I've read that the "sponsors" of the show had nothing to do with the show and actually requested the Dana Carvey show stop listing them as sponsors.

Maybe I'm a sucker for classic television but I quite like the singing Mountain Dew can as a legitimate homage to television history... but I soon realized it was a satire of commercialism and advertising... oh, well.

The actual content of the show is fast paced, fun, and perhaps ahead of it's time. The pace and format of the show reminds me a lot of the brilliant season 1 of the Chapelle Show

If anyone else remembers the show, then you might remember that Dana made fun of the sponsors for the first 10 minutes of every show (at least that's my memory) Don't you remeber when, right after a mountain dew commercial, he made 3 minutes of mountain-dew-looks-like-p**s jokes? And as we all know from his movie Wayne's World, you don't make fun of the sponsors and get away with it. He had new sponsors every week, and pretty soon nobody would touch his show. Gee, what do you think happens next? Sponsors pay for the show. nobody pays to air the show, the show DOESN"T AIR. don't say that ABC is afraid of letting too much funny out, it's ABC. they needed funny (and they still do) more than [some clever analogy here].

This show is off the air because Dana Carvey expected it, wanted it, and wanted to have fun with it before it got pulled. He wouldn't have messed with the sponsors so much if he didn't want the show to be yanked, he did it anyways because it was insanely funny. That is comedic genius. Not "master of disguise."

Dana Carvey tries his hand at network primetime. He's able to use some of his SNL material despite being on a different network. This has the notable appearance of Steve Carell and Stephen Colbert as two of the main players. Along with Robert Smigel, this also has writing from Louis C.K., Bob Odenkirk, and Charlie Kaufman along with others. The best recurring bit is probably Carvey and Carell as stupid pranksters. The most notorious bit has to be its opening bit which can be considered as the bit that shut down the show. It's President Clinton feeding a baby, a dog, and a cat with his rows of tits. It's completely tasteless, shocking, ill-fitting for its place, and ahead of its time. That's the show. It's airing in the wrong place. Some of it is beyond the pale like beheading Princess Di. The First Lady of Dogs is a nothing sketch and can be taken in a really bad way. This pushed the envelope and the envelope pushed back.

Throughout time ever since the early 1970s, there have been numerous incredibly funny sketch comedy shows. Shows like Monty Python's Flying Circus, Kids in the Hall, SCTV, and Saturday Night Live were the pinnacle of comedy. Out of those shows that were mentioned above, only one of them is still on the air, and that is a sad state of affairs. Then, in 1996, a new show came out from former SNL favorite Dana Carvey. This was a wake up call from other, completely not funny shows that were on at the time. This show could have been a revitalization of comedy that was a change from a sitcom starring Jerry Seinfeld. Things didn't quite go as planned.

At first, the show was supported by many major corporations due to Dana Carvey's credentials. The first show changed that. It featured sketches that were incredibly funny, but they were a bit offensive. From this, numerous sponsors backed down from the show.

In the second episode, they toned down the sketches a little bit, but still people were still not satisfied with how funny the show was. I guess too many people felt threatened by this show. Having a show that is actually funny to be on primetime was too much of a shock after hit shows like Mad About You and Friends.

The third episode was pretty much the same style of humour, still incredibly funny, too funny to be on TV. By this time, people who liked shows that were not funny were too taken aback by this that they said "This has to stop!"

Why am I talking about each episode individually? Because that's it! That's as long as the show lasted! That's it! Throughout this decade they have tried to take funny shows off the air, and while they didn't succeed with Mystery Science Theater 3000, and they won't succeed again this time, they did succeed with the Dana Carvey show. This could have been the sketch comedy show of the future, but no, people would rather watch an unintelligibly unfunny show like Mad TV.

-Z. Merritt

I saw The Dana Carvey Show on TV and I knew immediatly it would be cancelled. It was too pointed and it was going to offend too many people to be on TV. I thought the show was extremely funny, and I also thought it was totally unleashed, unrestrained, in its point of view. It was very sharp, gritty, no-nonsense stuff, with plenty of sharp barbs and dead-on observations. It reminded me of the straight, uncensored political and social humor of Lenny Bruce, Mort Sahl, Don Rickles, and even the vulgar physical humor of Charley Callas, when those guys were really at the top of their form. I was so sorry that TV cannot put this kind of great humor on and keep it on. That says a lot about our TV and its limitations, and proves that our TV has not lived up to its potential. The Dana Carvey Show was not tolerable; and we are not as free a people as we think we are.

Dana Carvey is one of our best comics and his shows should not be muted. He is very insightful, and his humor can shake us to the core. Where is an open forum where he can let loose? Long gone, on Chestnut Street.