‘Maya and Marty’: Rudolph and Short’s Curiously Awful Variety Show

Let me begin by saying I like Maya Rudolph and Martin Short a lot. They’re both versatile, charming performers, and as such, could have been ideal headliners for a variety show. Rudolph is a regal comic presence with a rich voice she can use for clever impersonations, or as a straightforward instrument of pleasure. Short is one of the most gifted improvisers and sketch performers television has seen, as anyone knows who ever saw him as a guest on David Letterman’s Late Show, or, further back, on SCTV. Unfortunately, Maya and Marty, which premiered on Tuesday night, is not the variety show that displays their gifts to any great advantage.

Maya and Marty proved to be a cross between Saturday Night Live and old-fashioned variety shows such as The Sonny and Cher Show and The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. The SNL connection was due to Lorne Michaels’s presence as producer, and the location of the taping — an NBC studio in 30 Rockefeller Plaza whose layout resembled the one where SNL is broadcast. And like Sonny and Cher or Tom and Dick Smothers, Maya and Marty came out at the start of the show, referred to themselves as “a comedy duo,” and made a few jovial welcoming jokes.

After a mildly amusing opening taped piece featuring Tom Hanks as a duplicitous astronaut, the hour went downhill fast. A parody of the NBC hit Little Big Shots featured Kenan Thompson as Steve Harvey, with Short and Jimmy Fallon as a couple of giggling rascals, “the Sizzle Twins.” Thompson got by with just pulling faces, but Short was obscured by an over-enthusiastic Fallon (when isn’t he?), whose mugging over-shadowed his partner here. A bit later, Short pulled out one of his best creations, the waspishly fussy Jiminy Glick, to interview Larry David, but the bit had no punchlines. David laughed too hard, and there are few things more apt to strangle my own chuckles than watching someone on-camera guffaw excessively.

The worst sketch was the one that had the most promise, a parody of the classic children’s book, Margaret Wise Brown’s Goodnight Moon. Short, in rabbit ears, intoned the book’s sonorous syllables designed to lull a child to sleep. (The child was played by Miley Cyrus, who earlier had made a loud racket hoofing her way through oldies such as Lieber and Stoller’s “I’m a Woman.”) Rudolph interrupted the tranquil scene as a drunk woman calling out for various absent friends and generally making a scene. The punchlines had no wit, no connection to Brown’s book — it was very badly written, and most of the humor was simply vulgar. Who thought it would be funny to have Rudolph’s character urinate out of camera-range?

It’s amazing that people as intelligent as Rudolph, Smart, and Michaels didn’t realize immediately that doing a mere variation on SNL would fall flat. Perhaps NBC, fresh off the flop of Neil Patrick Harris’s Best Time Ever, pushed the show toward its more successful franchise. No matter: Maya and Marty ought to have really committed to the old-school variety show format, freshening it with their talent and some good writing. After Tuesday’s debut, I doubt many viewers will be likely to give it a second chance to prove itself further.

Maya and Marty airs Tuesday nights at 10 p.m. on NBC.