So Far, Call It Anything but ‘Special’

The Roseanne anthem. . . .

Oh! say can you see, by the dawn’s early light,

What so proudly she hailed on Saturday late-night?)

Here are the multiple choices:

(1) Any judgment is premature.

(2) The first show was not typical, and there’s time to retrench and vastly improve the series during its six-week trial.

(3) The first show was adored by the multitudes as a big belly laugh.

None of the above can be discounted. Yet here is an even better choice concerning the debut of “Saturday Night Special,” the Roseanne-conceived, Roseanne-guided, Roseanne- gassed- and- revved- up- and- driven- over- a- cliff vehicle of mostly sketch comedy that for now has supplanted “Mad TV” at 11 p.m. on Fox:

(4) So far, so bad.

Much of it so bad, in fact, that the vivid “C” word Roseanne frequently uses to savage NBC’s geriatric “Saturday Night Live” also applies to her own series (executive produced by her, Sandy Gallin and Joel Gallen) that she vowed would be a late-night renegade: “Crap.”

“Love it or hate it,” she said about the hour’s brand of humor as she introduced it Saturday night, “I guarantee it has never been done before on television.” The way Roseanne singing the National Anthem had never been done on television.

There was, of course, a bow to the MTV crowd. That meant a faster pace than the glacial “Saturday Night Live,” plus music from Bush and Melissa Etheridge (introduced by “Party of Five” star Scott Wolf and Sharon Stone, respectively).

And credit “Saturday Night Special” with taking some chances, if not quite pushing the envelope, with at least licking it. Its edgiest material came in a couple of animated segments and in another about a police detective, with all of the characters being bouncy puppets with visible strings. Yet even these bold efforts yielded no payoffs.

Moreover, viewers had to wait almost an hour for the show’s only genuinely funny bit, and a fleeting one at that. As the ending credits rolled on the right side of the screen, Eric Idle was on the left side playing Fox chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch, personally giving cast members their paychecks (“Roseanne, very good show. . . . A little bit extra in there for you”).

Elsewhere, though, the comedy ranged from flat to flat-out awful.

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In the latter category was the hour’s only topical piece, a sketch with Warren Hutcherson as O.J. Simpson being the analyst beside a blond female anchor on Court TV coverage of the trial of the Unabomber. Simpson: “They have no case!” Even worse was a spoof of Barbara Walters’ latest pre-Oscars special with gussied-up Bob Rubin as Walters interviewing a raspy Roseanne as Demi Moore giving the host a lesson in stripping. It was heavy-handed, indulgent and oh so very long, obliterating the show’s own stated law of brevity.

Roseanne has said she’s aiming her show at the 11-to-25 crowd. That would be the 11-year-olds watching television 11 to midnight.

It was not always easy identifying which bits were directed at which age groups Saturday. Perhaps 11-year-olds were the target of the female mud wrestling, joined belatedly by a male in a blond wig. Or the belabored sketch with a desperate female leaving phone messages for a guy she’d gone out with (“The only reason I laid there like a dead fish, I didn’t want you to think I was a slut.”). Or Dr. Zira, the “Planet of the Apes” prim, chimp-costumed radio therapist giving counsel on masturbation after being told by a caller: “My boyfriend would rather watch me play with myself than have sex with me.”

All of which affirms that funny sketch comedy is one of TV’s most endangered species. Fox’s “In Living Color” got it right some of the time, as did earlier incarnations of “Saturday Night Live” and two offbeat, occasionally wonderful Fox series that aired in 1992-93, “The Ben Stiller Show” and “The Edge.” And glints of genius at times break through the thick banality encrusting ABC newcomer, “The Dana Carvey Show.”

Once upon a time on CBS, “The Carol Burnett Show” was a stage for sketch comedy deluxe with Burnett, Harvey Korman, Vicki Lawrence and Tim Conway. And Sid Caesar, Imogene Coca, Carl Reiner and Howard Morris stood tall as auteurs of sketch comedy on NBC’s “Your Show of Shows” in the early 1950s, even as toddling TV itself was still crawling.

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Nowhere on TV, however, has there been sketch comedy the equal of the syndicated and NBC versions of “SCTV,” the supreme TV parody of TV, one of those extremely rare meshings of brilliant comedy writing and performing (most memorably Joe Flaherty, Andrea Martin, John Candy, Eugene Levy, Rick Moranis, Catherine O’Hara, Dave Thomas and Martin Short) whose efforts soared off the hilarity scale perhaps 90% of the time.

It should be noted that as glorious as it was, “SCTV” never achieved broad commercial success. Comedy tastes are very subjective, and perhaps it’s the likes of “Saturday Night Special” that will touch the minds, hearts and funny bones of the 11-to-25-year-olds sought by Roseanne, who seems driven to get in touch with her inner child after such epic success as a funny stand-up comic and heading her own grand ABC sitcom, “Roseanne.”

Yet one persons’s skills do not necessarily straddle comedy forms and venues, and a sketch artist Roseanne isn’t. As much as anything, the premiere of “Saturday Night Special” suffered from too much of her, from an early skit with her as a drill instructor boisterously chewing out her writers to her overcooked Demi. She’ll show up only occasionally in future episodes, but no doubt still screeching the same song.

O’er the airwaves of the free and the home of the brave.