The New ‘Saturday Night Live’ Looks Ready for ER

Does anyone know the Heimlich maneuver?

If ever there was a clear metaphor for a TV institution with a clogged windpipe it was NBC’s famed, once hip-and-robust “Saturday Night Live” picking Mariel Hemingway as guest host to open its 21st season. Hemingway plays by far the dullest character on “Central Park West,” a trashy new CBS series that itself is gasping for air in the ratings, raising grave concerns about its life expectancy.

Hoping to stem its hemorrhaging popularity, an advertised new and improved “Saturday Night Live” arrived Saturday with Hemingway, a spate of newcomers replacing most veterans in the ensemble cast, fresh writing talent and a fat target to ridicule in the just-ended O.J. Simpson murder trial. But. . . .

Sorry!

Although “Saturday Night Live” was inconsistent even in its heyday, its long straightaways were broken, at least, by jolting hairpin curves that usually rewarded your patience. Saturday’s show, though, sent a lullaby across the airwaves. So tediously serene and unfunny that late-nighters could have watched it in Los Angeles and heard a pin drop in Peoria, the show was less hip than hip replacement, looking so old and fatigued that it underwhelmed even its studio audience, if tepid laughter is an accurate measure.

Only SNL’s durable “Weekend Update” had any sustaining nastiness or bile to it, with returning anchor Norm MacDonald at one point reporting former Los Angeles Detective Mark Fuhrman’s “response” to Simpson defense attorney Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. equating him to Adolf Hitler: “After all the things he’s said about me during this trial, it’s a little late to start sucking up now.”

MacDonald also joined with newcomer Nancy Walls in delivering a dose of “head-shaking news,” mocking attempts by local news anchors to get on the good side of viewers by pretending to commiserate when reporting tragedies.

Otherwise, Saturday’s show was a disappointing, uninspired effort consisting mostly of the bad, the really bad and the ugly. (This may not include the show’s exciting final sketch, something about a “chicken lady,” during which your reviewer dozed off).

-- The Bad . An opening “O.J. Today” newscast drove into the ground a promising idea that found “Cochran” trying to win over African American jurors in his final argument by addressing them in tribal earrings and even having his white defense colleagues wear African dress.

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Meanwhile, Hemingway’s first assignment was to march backstage to introduce viewers to new cast members, all the while grabbing and smooching with every female she could reach, a heavy-handed, repetitive sendup of a controversial “Roseanne” episode in which she played a lesbian who planted a wet one on Roseanne’s lips. Talk about living in the past, this was a tacit admission by the show that Hemingway was known to most viewers primarily for her role in a sitcom episode that originally aired in March, 1994.

Finally, another Hemingway bit titled “Leg Up” and hosted by red-costumed hoofers “Ann Miller” and “Debbie Reynolds” went nowhere after beginning slowly.

-- The Really Bad . Returnee David Spade tediously aimed most of his minimalist “Spade in America” commentary at the notorious Unabomber, but also took a shot at the entertainer formerly known as Prince, who was originally booked for the premiere but reportedly withdrew. Spade called him “the artist formerly booked on this show but [who] flaked on us.” As it turned out, the entertainer formerly known as Prince probably made the right decision in distancing himself from the show formerly known as funny.

-- The Ugly . A sketch spoofing Ted Koppel, Colin Powell and Sen. Robert Dole was breathtakingly deadly, as was another about a man having a conversation with a neighbor while shouting at his kids to “Get off the shed!,” and another with Hemingway as someone unable to terminate phone conversations with a chatty friend.

Homelier, still, was a spoof of the Arts & Entertainment Network’s “Biography” series that chronicled Hemingway being cast in “Central Park West.” Hitting the double jackpot, the sketch was not only numbing but, as a bonus, was based on a series that no one (in TV terms) knows about.

The new and improved “Saturday Night Live.” Head-shaking TV.

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LATE NIGHT DUDES II. Late night is getting to be a traffic jam again. Already airing partially opposite “Saturday Night Live” on KCOP-TV Channel 13 is the unevenly successful “Night Stand With Dick Dietrick,” featuring Timothy Stack in an hour that spoofs talk shows a la “Ricki Lake” and “Jerry Springer” by trying to emulate them.

Dietrick (Stack) at the top of his show: “Tonight, a hard-hitting look at one of the most explosive, controversial topics facing society. That Topic? Dating.”

Dietrick making a pitch for guests: “Do you like it when your mom takes a bath with you? Give us a call.”

Operating mostly from a studio audience, Stack succeeds at times in amusingly recreating the glib phoniness of his targets (Although capturing the full, facile insincerity of, say, Springer, may be beyond any actor). Where the weekly “Night Stand” stumbles, though, is on the stage. Its “guests” (Saturday night’s included actors playing a man, his wife and her lesbian lover) can never match the actual sub-culture UFOs who emerge on these talk shows. “Night Stand” is in the impossible position of having to parody a parody. It just doesn’t work.

Finally, a preliminary report on “The Stephanie Miller Show,” a syndicated weeknight series on Channel 13 that features a former radio show host whose premiere included a guest shot by life of the party Heidi Fleiss and whose most appreciative audience, so far, appears to be herself.

The early line on Miller: Lively, can’t interview but doesn’t care to, loves her own jokes, better than Chevy Chase.