Late-Night Mugging

By Richard Zoglin

SHOW: THE CHEVY CHASE SHOW

TIME: WEEKNIGHTS, 11 P.M. EDT, FOX

THE BOTTOM LINE: The newest entrant in the talk-show wars takes a giant pratfall.

He was always the longest shot in the late-night horse race. As a ; prospective talk-show host, Chevy Chase brought too little experience and too much ego. His competition was too entrenched, his audience too ill-defined, his comic sensibility too dated. Nothing short of a miracle, it seemed, could make him a hit.

The only miracle about The Chevy Chase Show is that the star was still showing his face on national TV by the end of the week. His Tuesday-night debut was the sort of disaster TV fans will recall for their grandchildren. Nervous and totally at sea, Chase tried everything, succeeded at nothing. He shot basketballs from the stage, fawned embarrassingly over guests (Goldie Hawn and Whoopi Goldberg), took pratfalls that fell flat and, in one desperate moment, boogalooed in the middle of the stage, pleading with the apathetic crowd, "Everybody, shake it!" He recycled old material shamelessly, not just from Saturday Night Live (caught in the midst of a phone call at the start of his nightly News Update) but even from The Groove Tube, the '60s comedy revue that gave him his first break (the camera lingering mercilessly on the anchorman when the newscast is over).

The show improved only slightly as the week wore on. Chase, ill-prepared with guests, had no questions that anyone could possibly want to know the answer to. (To Jason Priestly: "You are such a big star . . . has it changed you much, or are you pretty much the same guy you've been all your life?") His comedy bits were mostly gross-out juvenilia (a gerbil clogs up Tom Scott's saxophone).

Actually, The Chevy Chase Show might have found a niche. A tall, rubber- faced, middle-aged entertainer who likes to schmooze with Hollywood celebrities -- he just might have been the real heir to Johnny Carson's disfranchised audience, the people confused by Dave and disappointed by Jay. Trouble is, Chevy still wants to be hip, outrageous, the choice of a new generation. Somewhere, Pat Sajak is smiling.