TVSquad

This installment of Sketch Comedy Saturday is less about you pining for new episodes of Saturday Night Live and more about me having an excuse to use this old image of Stephen Colbert with a puppy. It makes me sick, it's so adorable. Unfortunately, The Dana Carvey Show wasn't just twenty-some minutes of Mr. Colbert nonchalantly holding baby animals, but it was still a pretty funny program.

I had forgotten how very funny The Dana Carvey Show was until several months ago when I decided to watch a bunch of episodes online. It may sound cliched to say, but I think this was an underrated show, ahead of its time, and would probably survive for a few more seasons today on Comedy Central or FX or FOX. I can picture that.

We won't get a revival, of course, but we now have a great DVD set (in stores today) to keep forever. All of the episodes are here (including one that didn't even make it to ABC), and a couple of good extras.

Sometimes it takes a few years to realize how funny a show was. I think that's what happened with The Dana Carvey Show.

It was on ABC for a very short time back in 1996, and even though a lot of people found it funny, a lot more people found it odd. Now the show is finally coming to DVD. Shout! Factory is releasing a two-DVD set on May 12 that will not only have all of the episodes uncut, the set will also include a bonus episode of the show that never aired.

I often compare this show to The Ben Stiller Show, and though I loved both shows, I think The Dana Carvey Show was tighter and put their ideas across in a better way. Not too many sketches from this show went on and on to ruin the joke. But that would be a good DVD to have: the best moments from each!

After the jump, a little piece of what you'll see on the DVDs (yup, that's Steve Carell and Stephen Colbert). AOL Video has more episodes.

For those who haven't seen them, NBC has posted a set of hilarious videos involving Triumph the Insult Comic Dog appearing at the San Diego Comic-Con. Triumph creator Robert Smigel was at the event to plug the DVD of his short-lived Comedy Central series TV Funhouse, so it should come as no surprise that the puppet dog he created would show up as well.

Despite Triumph's insults against the nerd community, it should be known that Robert Smigel is a bigger nerd than anybody attending the convention. This is useful as he can at least insult fellow conventioneers with knowledge. This must make his insults sting all the more.

I had the pleasure of seeing Triumph live at a comedy concert. However, once you've been to one of his live shows, you can tell that his television appearances are heavily edited to make sure only his best bits appear. Despite this, Triumph remains hilarious to watch in any medium.

Videos are after the jump.

(Check out part two of this four-part report)

Saturday

This should have felt like the home stretch. I should have felt like the end of it all was near. But a glance at the day's schedule reminded me I was going to be running around like a madman all day, trying to make some of the most popular panels of the weekend.

Saturday was a schedule that Rich and I had been contemplating since the schedule was released. The problem: With only two people, how would we get me from the extremely popular Lost panel in Hall H, all the way over to the other extremely popular Dollhouse panel, while Rich covered The Office? It simply wasn't possible. So, we made the decision that Rich would sit in Ballroom 20 after covering Futurama and The Simpsons, right through the oddly-placed Dean Koontz panel, and save my seat for Dollhouse. The Office would have to suffer.

If there is one thing I learned during the Comedy Central TV Funhouse panel on Thursday night, it's this: they are not good with computers. For most of the evening panelist Robert Smigel and moderator Bob Odenkirk spent their time fiddling around with the Mac laptop provided to them so they could show clips from the TV Funhouse DVD that was released on Tuesday. After they got that squared away they spent several more minutes setting up an iChat so Funhouse host Doug Dale could join in the conversation. They even needed to ask a member of the audience for their Mac Powerbook in order to set the session up. Obviously, you don't want these guys on your technical support team.

Despite the technical difficulties, the TV Funhouse panel was the highlight of my Thursday at Comic-Con.

Another giveaway today! This time we've got five copies of Comedy Central's TV Funhouse on DVD for five lucky, random commenters. The DVD is already available in stores.

To enter, leave a comment below before 5:00PM Eastern, Friday, July 25 simply telling us why you'd like to own this series. As always, we'll randomly choose five winners amongst the eligible entries. Some other details:
Click here for complete Official Rules.

(S01E7) Originally aired on April 30, 1996.

It's easy to forget just how funny this show was. It's not just that it had a bunch of funny material and a talented cast (including Steve Carell, Stephen Colbert, and Robert Smigel), it's that the batting average for each show was damn good. There's more funny stuff in each 30 minutes of a Dana Carvey Show episode than in 90 minutes of Saturday Night Live or even SCTV. No dead moments to sit through. I'm not sure why this show was so short-lived (other than the fact that the first episode featured Carvey as President Clinton, suckling a bunch of cats on his teats). And ratings, ratings, blah, blah, blah.

It was actually kinda hard to pick a standout episode since so many episodes have a lot of great stuff. But I think the video after the jump has some classic moments.

(S33E01) "All-But-Certain-To-Be Next President" (Cold Open): This was a funny piece, but it didn't pack the punch I would have expected for a season premiere open. Oh! Hi, Darrell Hammond. Still here, huh? No, it's not a problem, man. It's just that you've been crashing here for a while and, well, you haven't really been doing much to contribute. And we've kind of been wondering when you'd be moving out -- Yeah, I guess your Bill Clinton voice is still pretty funny and I guess it'll come in handy some time in the near future. Okay, I suppose it's okay if you stay for a little while longer. Just try not to creep out the younger folks, okay?

With the announcer not cutting in until about halfway through the cast, it must have sucked to have such a slip-up this early in the episode. Was that even Don Pardo doing the voices for the cast intro? At first, it sounded like someone doing an impression of him.

No, not the TV Funhouse from Saturday Night Live (that's already on DVD, a best of). I'm talking about the short-lived Comedy Central series that that Robert Smigel did in 2000-2001. Paramount has announced that the DVD is coming in December.

If you've never seen the show, it was truly one of the more bizarre TV shows we've ever seen on television. It took the form of a kids shows hosted by Doug Dale and his "Anipals," really crass, creepy puppets. Each show had a "theme," such as "Western Day" or "Christmas Day" or "Astronaut Day."

Welcome to the post-YouTube world of television programming. Brookers got a development deal with Carson Daly. One half of Ask a Ninja signed with United Talent Agency, and now, Jack Black and friends are bringing viewer-produced comedy shorts along with their own original material to VH1.

Called The Department of Acceptable Media, the program is based on a live event that Jack Black, along with Dan Harmon and Rob Schrab, have hosted in Hollywood since 2003. At the live event, five-minute "pilots" by aspiring filmmakers are screened and the audience votes on their favorites. The televised program will work in the same way - viewers will vote online at www.acceptable.tv - for their favorite shorts. The winning "pilots" will get to produce a second episode. The losers will be canceled.

The funny man behind Triumph the Insult Comic Dog is creating an animated series for Fox. The series is called Animals and it's described as "a parody of suburban life using the animal kingdom." Smigel will write the series with Greg Cohen, writer for King of the Hill and Late Night with Conan O'Brien. It's being produced by Adam Sandler's company, Happy Madison (the two remain close from their days on SNL and Sandler regularly casts Smigel in his movies). Animals is meant to round out Fox's Sunday night animation block, which already includes The Simpsons, Family Guy, King of the Hill, and American Dad. It's about damn time somebody gives him his own series.

Smigel also pens the "TV Funhouse" cartoons for Saturday Night Live... including The Ambiguously Gay Duo and The Ex-Presidents. The Reuters article about the new series doesn't mention whether he'll continue as Triumph or for SNL.

I was a big fan of Robert Smigel's TV Funhouse, which lasted for only one season on Comedy Central, though I have to admit I thought some of the animated segments were funny more in theory than in execution. One of my favorite segments from the show featured Bob Odenkirk as the host of a program on the extent of human knowledge and how much we actually know, or don't know. It's typical Odenkirk in that it's incredibly funny and makes you wonder just what part of your brain you need to whack with a hammer in order see the world the way he does. Scott Adsit, a fellow cast member on Mr. Show, makes an appearance as a scientist. More clips from the series and some full episodes can be found here. Enjoy Bobby after the jump:

During an introductory speech for Robert Smigel given by cartoon historian Jerry Beck at the San Diego Comic Con, the world's only insult comic dog, Triumph, popped up and went on a hilarious tirade about Beck's boring speech and the innumerable nerds who were in attendance. This is footage shot by someone who was actually there, so there's a lot of swearing and you also get to see Robert Smigel actually doing the voice and manipulating the puppet. Of course, they don't try very hard to hide that when he does his shtick on Conan, but Smigel is in the middle of a crowd and really has nowhere to hide. Beck actually posted the video on his Cartoon Brew site, but I stuck it after the jump for your viewing pleasure. My favorite part is when he tells a rather rotund attendee he must love the "Fantastic Four food groups." Click on and enjoy.

UPDATE: The video is no longer available, apparently.

There are no plans for a collaboration involving Ren and Stimpy creator John Kricfalusi and Robert Smigel of TV Funhouse and Triumph the Insult Comic Dog fame, but John K wrote on his blog recently about an encounter with Smigel at Comic-Con in which Smigel expressed his love for John K's "George Liquor" character, and K asked if Smigel would be interested in writing some episodes for a straight-to-video release. This was just two gents chatting, so it means nothing, but what do my fellow animation fans think of a collaboration between these two fellas? I think they have a similar sense of humor, and under the right circumstances they could probably come up with something pretty cool.