Bad decisions can get great results

There’s not much to enjoy about a sick day, once you tire of, “How many times can I cough today?” So you enjoy the one effortless thing you can do lying down — catch up on TV.

A quick scan through my streaming apps took me to “Too Funny to Fail,” a documentary about the eight-episode run of “The Dana Carvey Show.” The documentary, and Carvey’s show, are exclusively on Hulu.

I first thought, “Well, this won’t drive up the subscriber base.” When it first aired, I watched a few episodes, found it funny and got a little disappointed when it got canceled.

Thanks to DVD years later, I got to see it in full. It was like a comedy time capsule. Wait, that guy was Steve Carell? Wait, that other guy was Stephen Colbert? Whoa, that’s Louis C.K.

My favorite routine was, by far, the practical jokers, with Carell and Carvey playing two guys who pay for things, peel out of the parking lot before receiving their merchandise and laugh hysterically as they think they fooled somebody. Carell’s over-the-top laughter seals it.

The documentary did give me some insight I, and definitely everybody involved, should have seen coming. “The Dana Carvey Show” was fantastic, and some of its bits still kill. But plenty of people made mistakes.

ABC thought it was getting Church Lady skits and clean comedy the whole family could enjoy, while Carvey had enlisted “nerd pirates who were going to blow up the system.”

Carvey’s people saw the lead-in opportunity of TV’s No. 1 show, “Home Improvement.” But they’d never watched, “Home Improvement,” and realized too late this audience wouldn’t appreciate their show. The size of the audience they were displeasing only hastened the show’s demise.

The eighth episode never aired, as ABC decided to put up an episode of “Coach.” Bill Hader said he thought he’d programmed his VCR wrong, and sat down begrudgingly because it was 1996 and he had no other TV options.

You might have seen part of that eighth episode later on “Saturday Night Live,” when Carvey hosted. The premise was Tom Brokaw breaking news events that hadn’t happened so he wouldn’t have to interrupt his vacation if they did happen. The humor was in the absurd ways the crew imagined President Gerald Ford had died, and Brokaw’s, “Come on, that’s NOT going to happen,” reactions to each one as it came up on the teleprompter.

I watched the documentary, and saw how many careers it had actually launched. A skit from the program landed Carell and Colbert their Comedy Central jobs. Without Carvey’s show, they probably quit the business, and we have a different lead on “The Office” and different host of “The Late Show.”

It was comforting to watch the documentary, and see how even bad decisions can create great results. “The Dana Carvey Show” was good television doomed by poor decisions.

But that’s happened before, and it will happen again. Speaking of which, there’s a new season of “Designated Survivor.” I’m going to enjoy this one before its inevitable cancellation.

Kevin Wilson is managing editor of The Eastern New Mexico News. Contact him at: [email protected]