Dave Chappelle come back, all is forgiven. Seriously, Frank Caliendo seems like a nice enough guy and he's certainly got some impression talents, but watching the first two episodes of his new basic cable sketch comedy series will only remind you how much you miss Comedy Central's Mr. C. The star of Frank TV broke through on Mad TV and on Fox Sports on Sunday mornings making fun of easy targets like Howie Long and doing impressions of people like George Bush, Al Pacino, and Jack Nicholson. You'd have to have not seen a single inning of postseason baseball on TBS to be caught completely unaware by Frank TV because the network played a commercial for the series every single break (that's no exaggeration...it actually created a significant enough backlash against the show sight unseen that Caliendo recently spoke about it on Howard Stern.) So, now that the commercials are finally exhausted, what about the show itself? Frank Caliendo can do some great impressions. And if critics were only allowed to say positive things, that would be the last sentence of this review.

What one learns almost immediately from watching Frank TV is that it doesn't matter how talented the people in front of the camera are if the writing just isn't that funny. Frank Caliendo does John Madden better than the football icon himself but watching Madden make a Turducken just isn't that funny. Caliendo nails Jack Nicholson, but watching the legendary actor lose his pants? Not funny. Almost every sketch on the first two episodes of Frank TV has a similar trajectory where the viewer smiles at the dead-on impression abilities of Caliendo and then realizes that there's nothing more to the sketch than that. Each episode has one sketch that goes a little beyond an impression with the first featuring a bit that compares the Bill Clinton Library to Vegas (complete with bar and replica of the Lincoln bedroom) and the second featuring a movie review show with Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino that's the funniest sketch so far. But each episode also features five or six sketches that feel incomplete, like they were based around an impression and that's where the writing stopped.

Far worse than even the sketches is the connective tissue that holds Frank TV together. Poor Mr. Caliendo has to mug in front of an audience, much like Chappelle did on his show, but he's clearly not as comfortable doing stand-up. So, he doesn't really. He brings up people from the audience to chat with him and basically just segues from sketch to sketch with variations on "Check it out." or "Here ya go." A sketch where we see a Seinfeld reunion circa 2027 with Caliendo playing all four major characters (+ Newman) requires no introduction. Maybe bring Caliendo on at the beginning to introduce the show, but throwing back to him between breaks feels desperate, like the writers can't even fill 22 minutes every week and Frank has to fill time.

As nice a guy as Caliendo seems, there's a reason there was never a show called Phil Hartman TV and no one's banging down Darrell Hammond's door to give him his own series. Impressionists need to blend into what they're doing, not become the sole focus. The biggest flaw of Frank TV is that Caliendo is basically the only cast member and too much rests on his shoulders. A large majority of the sketches feature no one else with Frank playing every role. That's too much pressure for one guy. Give him some co-stars. Give him some writers. Maybe Dave Chappelle is free.