The Maya Rudolph Show

The hour moved swiftly and had its share of belly laughs. At its core, The Maya Rudolph Show played like an extended SNL episode (with appropriately saccharine Muppet Show undertones) that did its best to highlight Rudolph’s range.

The result was a TV special that felt every bit as dated, but also every bit as joyous, as those variety series, when the likes of Dinah Shore and Julie Andrews and Judy Garland and the Jacksons would serve up entertainment comfort food in the ’60s and ’70s. Rudolph, though, peppers the format with the necessary spice and quirky flavoring that, throwback as it is, keeps that comfort food from feeling stale.

The show was pleasant without being particularly funny or memorable, odd without being urgent or edgy, scattershot without taking any big swings.

The Maya Rudolph Show has all the makings of a perfectly cromulent variety series, but it's not fully hatched yet, nor is it clear that variety is a format that makes sense on American TV in 2014.

There was one funny sketch and it killed: Rudolph and the inevitable Fred Armisen play parents of Kristen Bell who is coming home to to announce her engagement to her boyfriend, Andy Samberg. Mom and dad make a their living recording their voices to GPS systems and speak like 21st century Coneheads. It killed, but the rest of the show was, if not dead on arrival, kinda painful.