After hosting a contest about Dana Carvey’s resemblance to a women’s studies teacher, I figured I should watch  his new HBO comedy special, Squatting Monkeys Tell No Lies. I mean, what if I’d been busting on the guy, and his new material was really funny? Like, better than “Chopping Broccoli?” Then I’d feel like a jerk.

The good news is, I don’t feel like a jerk. The bad news is, I have now watched Squatting Monkeys Tell No Lies.

For those who know my partner Andrew, you might appreciate the fact that he bailed after five minutes. The man has seen every episode of Top Design, but he couldn’t last one monologue with Garth.

Here’s my summation of the horror…

Basically, Carvey’s undoing is the desire to please. I can understand his desperation, since the last time he appeared before a nationwide audience, it was in one of the worst-reviewed movies of the decade.  

But he’s supposed to be a professional. Professionals should know that shamelessly pausing for laughs after every half-assed impression of George H.W. Bush (yes, he’s still pulling it out) only makes an audience turn on you. Professionals should know that adding more and more and more goofy movements to your performance is not even effective at a child’s birthday party.

There was a time when Carvey employed his mannerisms in controlled little bursts, like when The Church Lady screwed up her face at just the right moment or Garth made his nervous laugh for a fraction of a second. That stuff was awesome, but now Carvey never pulls back. It’s exhausting.

Of course, if his material were edgy and smart, ol’ Dana could hop like a rabbit and it would be okay. But while he’s giving his audience the Carvey-isms he thinks they crave, he’s also pandering to their prejudices.

At the start of the special, filmed in Santa Rosa, CA, he notes that the crowd is mostly fortysomething white people who take yoga and eat organic food. “But we’re pretty cool,” he says. That’s the first warning sign: He’s aligning himself with his audience’s habits instead of critiquing them.

I mean, there are plenty of things you can mock about educated white folks, but Carvey spends the entire special mocking things that supposedly upset them. Indian doctors with funny last names? Carvey’s got a bit about it, with wacky accents. Kids listening to loud, scary music and having sex too soon? Carvey whine about it for a week, and he never acknowledges that older people said the same thing about his generation when they were disco freaks. 

The show’s title, by the way, comes from this monologue about a religion so crazy it would make even Scientologists skeptical. Because making fun of Scientology is really edgy. Carvey’s jokes about the Cruise-heads are so stale that it’s impossible to laugh at them out of surprise: If you laugh, it’s probably because the jokes are confirming what you already believe.

Of course, that’s exactly what D.C. is doing: He’s telling his fans what they want to hear, and he’s accepting their cheap, easy laughter as a reward. Comedians like Chris Rock and Judy Gold may mock other groups (white people and Jewish/straight people, respectively) but they also turn their comedy on themselves. They force their audiences to reexamine their own identities, which asks them to reconsider other people, too.

I think Andrew had the right idea. If I had turned off the TV after the first five minutes, I could have kept my memory of The Church Lady unsullied.