Say it ain't so Dennis

I TiVo'ed Dennis Miller's new show on CNBC Monday night.  Watching it today and boy, it's awful.  I chuckled a few times, but for the most part it bombed.

My friends know I've been a fan of Dennis Miller ever since memorizing lines from his first comedy album; The Off-White Album.  I saw him in concert, in Tampa, 1992 and ten years later in Seattle.  In between, I've followed his short lived late night talk show stint, bought albums, DVD's, books and books on tape.  His long running show on HBO was one of the first in a series of high quaility original programming that has defined HBO of late.  I even liked his brand of wit as the color commenter on Monday Night Football.

After watching his latest HBO special last year; The Raw Feed, I saw him shifting to the right, with a mean-spiritedness of some jokes.  His trademark wit takes a back seat to vengence-fueled rage against the enemy.  Then I heard he was cracking jokes at Republican fund raisers and riding on Air Force One.  That lead to a commentary role on FOX's Hannity & Colmes show and now his own show on CNBC every night.

But wait, this isn't “Weekend Update“.  It's hard to be original in yet another weeknight political talk show, but I'm giving him credit for having a chimp as a occasional side kick, a la Mr. Muggs with Dave Garroway on the Today Show in mid-1950s.  Future shows will also have a “magic word“ just like “You Bet Your Life“ with Groucho Marx.  He's doing the show without an audience, with just the production crew yucking it up just like Tom Synder on the “Tomorrow Show“.

Scary sounding is a future gimmick where he'll split screen two people with opposing views, and move the split to give more room to the person he agrees with.

Sadly, the first show was quite a disappointment for me.  The first half hour was taken up with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.  The first few minutes we learn that Dennis worked for the Govinator during the election and how Dennis loves Arnolds style.  While all the talk of Proposition this and California's budget woes dragged on, I was madly fast forwarding to something more interesting.  I can't imagine that much of the East Coast audience bothered to stick with conversation.  Speaking of “stick”, Miller knowingly joked that an assistant forcably removed one from his ass during the commerical break after the interview.

Not much was funny, nor particularly insightful.  The opening monologue was stiff, with several jokes bombing completely.  Miller's material usually goes over half the audenice's head, but when you're riffing with a few stage directors and union organized camera people, “tough room” has a new meaning.

“Varisty” is the panel segment, where three talking heads offer their views - just like Bill Maher's “Real Time”, which replaced Miller's HBO series.  Except in Dennis' version, it was three against one.  The lone voice of the left was feminist author Naomi Wolf, who was immediately poked by Miller, remarking that they did the stage with “earth tones”, a reference to Wolf's consulting to Al Gore during the 2000 election.  I'd never heard her speak before, and wasn't familar with her writings, but after presenting herself very well in the face of 3 guys advocating war, I was highly impressed.

To summerize, Miller's insight on right-wing politics is nothing new, and in this new daily format, his humor lacks the honed run-on sentences of off-the-wall pop culture anologies that made his trademark rants so cutting.  But this version is as dull as a tool made by those freaky apes at the beginning of 2001.

That's just my opinion, I could be wrong.