'Super Dave’s
Spike-Tacular,' dumb
Proving again that spoofs of bad TV can be bad TV
By Tom Conroy
Nov 13, 2009
A production like “Super Dave’s Spike-Tacular” is somewhat critic-proof. Since it’s a spoof of bad television, its lame jokes and slow moments can be excused as parody.
That said, there are quite a few lame jokes and slow moments.
A four-part special premiering on Saturday, Nov. 14, at 11 p.m. on Spike and running on Tuesdays at 9 p.m. after that, the “Spike-Tacular” features Super Dave Osborne, the bumbling stunt man character created and played by Bob Einstein, a longtime TV writer and performer who is otherwise best known either for playing Marty Funkhouser on HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm” or for being Albert Brooks’ brother in real life.
There’s something endearing about a showbiz veteran who keeps working the same routine despite modest success. Viewers who find Super Dave’s deadpan cluelessness funny may be entertained. Those who find it monotonous will probably change the channel quickly.
In the premiere, Super Dave follows his usual procedure by spending a lot of time talking about the amazing stunt he’s about to perform, in this case trying to break a NASCAR speed record on a track mined with explosives.
He says that if he wins the prize money for succeeding, he will donate it to the underprivileged kids at his favorite golf course.
Super Dave’s chief sidekick is an Asian stereotype named Fuji (Hahn Cho). If viewers find the character offensive, the parody excuse works again.
In an unrelated segment, Super Dave helps the “television personality” Jillian Barberie escape from the horde of paparazzi following her. Perhaps part of the joke is that the show couldn’t book a celebrity who actually would be chased by paparazzi.
As usually happens in Super Dave’s TV appearances, things have a way of blowing up in his face before any actual stunting occurs.
As comedy, this is oddly reminiscent of the kind of sketches that local kids’-TV hosts used to do back when there were local kids’-TV hosts. But just when it seems that the show is aiming for the 10-and-under crowd, parents are warned to send their children to bed so that Super Dave can tell an old-fashioned dirty joke.
Dads may enjoy a segment in which Super Dave refuses a Spike executive’s request to insert gratuitous shots of scantily clad women into the program, which, of course, includes some of those gratuitous shots. But these days, even dads know how to find more titillating material elsewhere.
And pretty much everyone knows somewhere to find funnier material than this.
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