Who is Frank Caliendo and My Two Cents on His Stand-Up Act

I am sitting at home on Friday night and I see Frank Caliendo's stand up act (not his new show) is on TV. I decide to tune in watch and all and all I was satisfied. I have seen some of his impressions on Fox NFL Sunday and was somewhat impressed but I wanted to tune in to see why TBS was pressing this guy like drunk guy to girl on the dance floor. Let's start with who this guy is.

He was born in Chicago in 1974 and he is probably most famous for being on MadTV and has made an number of appearances on Letterman, Conan O'Brien, The View and Howard Stern to name a few.

As far as the actually stand up act, let's start with the negatives. To the masses, some would not understand some of his impressions. Being a sports fan I get the John Madden, Charles Barkley (which is right on) and Al Michaels impressions but my wife would not have a clue. I think for the long run this will hurt him and may lead his new show being short lived. Next, is he is way to repetitive. He goes back to the well way to often (especially with the Madden bit and his love of Brett Favre) and although his George Bush is good, it is a bit much. I thought that he was actually losing the crowd towards the end (myself included) because of this. Lastly, in my opinion comedians need to be bit more controversial to reach the upper echelon. Maybe this was due to the fact that this was aired on TBS, but it was a little to "family friendly" for me for starting at 10pm Eastern Time. I would like to see him when this is not the case to see what some of his other material is to see if he opens up the flood gates some.

Positives; There are many. He is very, very talented and you can tell that he works at his craft which I respect. Everybody and their dad thinks that they can impersonate Adam Sandler but he does a great job. His DeNiro, Robin Williams, Al Pacino impressions are tight and I particularly liked Yoda. He is very different than many of his cohorts in the comedy industry. The Blue Collar Comedy routine has lost it's luster (mostly because of the bad movies and shows that some of them have done) and although I am all for bad language, so comedians take it way, way to far. He has a good face for TV and most of the "average" guys out there can relate to him because he seems like the guy you sit next to at the bar and shoot the breeze with while watching the game. Being a fan of Seinfeld, his impressions of Jerry and Kramer were well done and he actually got into Michael Richards breakdown on stage some time back which I thought was tastefully done and could have been a bit distasteful if not done right.

I was a bit on the fence with watching his show but after watching his act, I am going to tune in. Not because TBS advertises his show like every four seconds (which was the reason why I was not going to watch because I dislike having anything shoved down my throat) but because he has talent. We will see if he sticks or not or if it could be a step back for him.