Dana Carvey Show on DVD - out today!

[BillBrasky]

"The Dana Carvey Show- The Complete Series" will be released on DVD today, Tuesday, May 12th. First airing on the ABC network back in 1996, "The Dana Carvey Show" featured early performances by currently beloved comedy stars Steve Carell and Stephen Colbert, as well as a writing staff that included SNL's Robert Smigel, "30 Rock"'s Robert Carlock, "Mr. Show" cast member/writer and "Moral Orel" creator Dino Stamatopolous, "Adaptation" screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, and comedian Louis C.K. The DVD will be a two-disc set containing all 7 episodes that aired on ABC, as well as an unaired eighth episode. Extras include deleted scenes and new interviews with Dana Carvey and Robert Smigel. For more info, check out Shout Factory's website.

[frogmann]

Dana Carvey Speaks! - ArtsBeat Blog - NYTimes.com

[BillBrasky]

I watched some of the DVD last night. I never really watched the episodes when they were put on Hulu, so this was my first time watching the show in a while. I remembered a few of the sketches, like Carell and Carvey as the stupid pranksters, and the "Skinheads from Maine", but I had forgotten some of the more bizarre stand-alone sketches. The interview on the DVD with Carvey and Smigel is well worth watching, as they pinpoint who wrote some of the more obscure sketches- Dino wrote a hilarious sketch called "Grandma the Clown", featuring an 80-year old woman in clown makeup trying to perform for a bunch of bored kids, which I had completely forgotten about. Louis CK collaborated with cast member Heather Morgan on a piece called "Presidential Wives as Dogs", which is weird but funny. One of Charlie Kaufman's sketches was a commercial for a service that pairs up crazy homeless people, so that they don't look like they're talking to themselves; that way, they'll look like they're having a conversation with each other. This is a funny premise, but I feel like I've heard it before or seen it before in another context; this was 1996, though, so maybe at the time it hadn't been done before.

The show isn't all great, there are some celebrity parodies and political humor that are a little dated, but most of it holds up surprisingly well. I noticed in the end credits Bob Odenkirk and Jon Glaser are credited with writing sketches too, although I'm not sure which sketches were their work.