The Dana Carvey Show
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The Dana Carvey Show was a half-hour sketch comedy television show that aired on the U.S. television network ABC during the 1996 season. Dana Carvey was the host and principal player on the show as well as its head writer.
The show's cast included: Dana Carvey, Steve Carell, Bill Chott, Stephen Colbert, Elon Gold, Chris McKinney, Heather Morgan, Peggy Shay, Robert Smigel, and James Stephens. The writing team also included many future talents, such as Charlie Kaufman, Louis C.K., Dino Stamatopoulos, Spike Feresten, Colbert, Carell, and Smigel.
[edit] Content
The show's humor varied between crude and sophisticated. On its premiere after the family-friendly Home Improvement, the first sketch featured Carvey as President Bill Clinton, showing what a compassionate person he was by having a human baby (which was a doll), several puppies (real ones) and a kitten (also real) suckle milk from his multiple prosthetic nipples. Carvey recreated some of the characters that he developed on Saturday Night Live and parodied the news of the day, as well as the media, politics, commercialism, and other sketch comedy shows. One particularly memorable sketch, "Skinheads From Maine," involved a pair of white power skinheads dressed in plaid, sitting on a porch, whittling, and conversing about their racist beliefs in a thick mock Maine accent.
Additional post-produced bumper material was often featured between sketches. One such example, Discovery Channel After Dark, featured an edited montage of wild animals mating, and performing other actions that would be considered obscene if shown being done by their human counterparts. It was a parody of adult-based, late-night cable programming.
An animated sketch that first appeared on the show, "The Ambiguously Gay Duo," featuring the voices of Colbert and Carell, would become well known on SNL after Carvey's show was cancelled. Additionally, a sketch used in the unaired eighth episode about Tom Brokaw prerecording the announcement of Gerald Ford's death was used verbatim when Carvey hosted Saturday Night Live on October 26, 1996.
[edit] History
When The Dana Carvey Show first appeared, it was greeted with above average reviews and a lukewarm response from the audience. Despite the fact that ABC only aired seven episodes of the series, it has maintained a small but loyal following.
The first six episodes that aired were officially titled based on the presenting sponsor of the show:
- "The Taco Bell Dana Carvey Show"
- "The Mug Root Beer Dana Carvey Show"
- "The Mountain Dew Dana Carvey Show"
- "The Diet Mug Root Beer Dana Carvey Show"
- "The Dana Carvey Show (Sponsored by Pepsi)"
- "The Szechuan Dynasty Dana Carvey Show"
This was an homage to the classic television shows that Dana Carvey grew up watching, wherein a variety show would have a single sponsor whose advertising and promotion were integrated with the show.
The show was videotaped at the CBS Broadcast Center on West 57th Street in New York City. As an inside joke to the fact that an ABC television show was being recorded at a rival network, each show's opening announcement stated, "from the ABC Broadcast Center in New York, it's The ________ Dana Carvey Show!" The blank was where the sponsor's name is heard as a man stands at the top of a ladder outside of the Broadcast Center placing the ABC logo over the CBS Eye logo. Dana would then begin the show surrounded by dancers wearing (for example) gigantic Mug Root Beer soda can costumes.
Each of the first five sponsors were products of PepsiCo, Inc.. The sixth sponsor was a famous Manhattan-area Chinese restaurant chain. The final episode had no presenting sponsor.
Due to the controversial content and declining ratings, the show was cancelled after seven episodes. No plans for a potential DVD release have been made.
As of March 2008, though no DVD release has been announced, Netflix has the entire series posted for instant viewing. Only Netflix members can access the show to watch.
In addition, all episodes (including an eighth unaired by ABC) are available on iTunes, Joost and also on Hulu.
