TBS is such a mixed bag of comedy. I’ve become a huge fan of “My Boys” after scoring a review copy of the Season 1 set and blowing through it in about two days, and I’m excited at the prospect of “10 Items or Less” getting a DVD release so I can finally get in on that show from the ground up. But “The Bill Engvall Show” is a little too pedestrian for my tastes (I think Engvall’s a great stand-up, and Tim Meadows never fails to make me laugh, but even his stuff on the show rarely earns more than a light chuckle from me), and to each their own, but if I never see another episode of “House of Payne,” it’ll be too soon. (Reviewing the first DVD release of the show was quite enough of that particular Tyler Perry production for me, thanks.)

Somewhere in the middle of these shows lies “Frank TV.”

I’ve always been a huge fan of impressionists. I mean, I can’t tell you how excited I’d get as a kid when I’d hear that Rich Little was going to be making an appearance on this show or that. Frank Caliendo definitely falls into the tradition of the greats, make no mistake, but despite all the love the guy has received for his spot-on impression of John Madden, he earned a major, major backlash as a result of the absolutely ceaseless promos for “Frank TV” that aired during the baseball playoffs last year.

So how is he going to handle the advertising blitz this time around?

“I’ve actually asked them to tone it up, just to make people angrier.”

In truth, Caliendo didn’t know anything about the constant promoting of his program…though he has already apologized in advance for the fact that it’s almost certainly going to happen again. “It was the weirdest thing in the world,” he said, “because I actually had called over to Steve Koonin and Michael Wright, and I said, ‘What’s happening?’ And they’re, like, ‘It’s working. People are talking about it.’ The thing that you probably don’t know is that — and this is their belief in the show — we had not shot a single sketch before those things aired. So the baseball playoffs were going on with all those promos, they believed in the show and thought it was going to work, but we hadn’t put (together) anything other than a pilot.”

I’d be providing an inaccurate summary of the panel’s events if I didn’t mention that Caliendo was flailing like mad as he tried to get an audience full of TV critics to laugh at his rather slapdash material; there were funny bits, certainly, but his hyperactive tendency to bounce from impression to impression was reminiscent of one of Robin Williams’ more frenetic talk-show appearances…and that ain’t a good thing.

Still, the clips from the new season of “Frank TV” revealed a key change to the show, namely the addition of regular cast members. At last, Caliendo won’t have to play every single character by himself!

“It’s really great for me with the other actors on the show now,” he said, “because Mike McRae does an amazing Harrison Ford, Freddy Lockhart does Obama, (and) it’s just great to interact with people. We’re doing this Al Gore sketch called ‘Al’s House of Gorrors,’ and it’s Al Gore on Halloween, and he’s just giving away a bunch of environmentally friendly things, and the kids hate it. But we were just going back and forth, Mike McRae and I, and we were just trying to scare each other with stupid little things. And we were laughing a ton. It’s something that, when I was shooting the show last year by myself, I don’t really like me, so if I was doing something, it would be like, ‘Ahhh, get on with it’.’ But now I get to interact with people, and they’re making me laugh. And it’s just a whole new level of fun.”

There’s not much point in my detailing the funniest parts of Caliendo’s conversation, just because, well, half the humor is in the impressions he does, and God knows that doesn’t translate into the written word, but he made some funny comments about how he prefers obscure impressions which, unfortunately, don’t tend to lend themselves to full-length sketches.

“We have a guy who plays Rip Torn,” said Caliendo, “but you can’t do a whole Rip Torn sketch. Who is going to get it? If Rip Torn says ‘I’m going to kick your ass‘ in the middle of a sketch, it kills, but you try to do a whole sketch, it doesn’t work. Jeff Goldblum is a great one, but how long can you sustain a little fat Jeff Goldblum impression? Goldblum will commit to something a hundred percent, and then he does a complete 180. That’s his whole thing. It’s a great quick little beat, but how are you going to do a two-and-a-half-minute sketch on it? So we do little things. Like, Phil
Gilford is the announcer character that I play, and we throw to quick other bits, just to get an extra laugh right before commercial. That’s where we get our obscure ones. I don’t know what’s going to land in the final product, but Mike McRae did a Sam Waterston, which was just hilarious.”

Now, see, *I* would laugh at a Sam Waterson impression. But, then, I’d probably laugh at a full-length Rip Torn impression, too.

In the end, Caliendo got quite a few laughs out of his audience of critics…though, perhaps predictably, he got it by poking fun at George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

“I’ve never performed for President Bush,” began Caliendo, “but I did the correspondence dinner with Dick Cheney right after he shot the guy in the face. No, it’s true. Originally, the President was supposed to be there, but then he had a little Cancunification he had to do, the only time a summit’s ever been in Cancun. But then I realized it’s probably good that he wasn’t there because he didn’t know I was going to be doing this stuff. I looked over to Cheney halfway through… (Impersonates Cheney) “I can’t stand this guy, Dick. Pull!” And I did do that joke for Cheney. He almost fell off the chair, he was laughing so hard. He looked like the Penguin from ‘Batman.'”

And at that moment, we learned unequivocally that all it takes to win over a room full of TV critics is a well-done Burgess Meredith impression.