Even before impressionist Frank Caliendo's late-night comedy series, Frank TV, premieres at 11 tonight, some viewers are already sick of it.
That's because they were beaten over the head with a barrage of promos for the show during the baseball playoffs on TBS. Scarcely an inning went by in the National League playoffs without Caliendo popping up to pop off as John Madden or George W. Bush or Al Pacino, or one of his many other characters.
Be thankful if you limited postseason baseball viewing to the American League playoffs and the World Series on Fox.
Caliendo's overexposure is too bad, because by all accounts, he's a very likable guy. The 33-year-old Chicago native is a part-time resident of Avon Lake, Ohio, because his wife's family lives there. He's popular on the national comedy circuit (he appeared at Toledo's Stranahan Theater in late August) and has been a regular for years on MadTV and Fox NFL Sunday.
In Frank TV, Caliendo plays host in front of a studio audience, bantering with a "co-host" plucked from the crowd and introducing a series of pretaped sketches. The transitions between the studio portions and the sketches often seem awkward and forced, but Caliendo gets plenty of opportunities to demonstrate his considerable skill as an impressionist.
In the first episode alone, he gets to play Bill Clinton, Charles Barkley, Robin Williams, and the entire cast of Seinfeld as they'd look 20 years from now (Elaine doesn't age too well). Oh, and of course, there's Caliendo's signature character, John Madden, demonstrating how to create a "Turducken" (that's a chicken stuffed into a duck stuffed into a turkey) and gobble it down in a single sitting.
During Episode 2, Caliendo's characters include Jack Nicholson, Donald Trump, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, and Sean Connery, and with the help of wigs and costumes, he even manages to look a little like the people he's imitating. The best part of the episode, though, features Caliendo trying to teach his 3-year-old son how to impersonate President Bush.
The kid's a natural.
There's no questioning Caliendo's talent as an impressionist. His takes on Madden, Bush, Clinton, and Connery are all dead-on. But it becomes evident fairly quickly that his type of comedy seems to work much better in small doses than over a 30-minute stretch.
Maybe it's the constant shifting back and forth between the real Caliendo and his loopy characters, or maybe the comedic material just isn't all that strong. Whatever the reason, by the end of each episode, things have gotten a little tiresome.
Frank TV was supposed to have an initial run of eight half-hour episodes. Because of the Writers Guild of America strike, that's apparently been reduced to just four episodes.
But that's probably more than enough for most viewers to make up their minds about this program.
First Published November 20, 2007, 11:23 a.m.
