The arsenio hall show dog pound

The arsenio hall show dog pound

The arsenio hall show dog pound, “Back is beautiful” is how Arsenio Hall framed his return to late- night television after a 19-year hiatus.

But actually, it wasn’t even pretty.

Monday’s premiere of the syndicated talk show “The Arsenio Hall Show” felt less like a reawakening than like a wake. It was an amnesiac’s trip though memory lane, a memorabilia clearance sale, a valedictory fresh start. Mr. Hall recruited grizzled veterans from his past: Paula Abdul, Chris Tucker and Snoop Dogg. But he gave viewers little hint of what he plans to do differently with a new show, a new generation of viewers and a radically changed late-night landscape.

That may come in the days and weeks ahead, but in this fickle age, many viewers click once, move on and never look back.

America still offers performers a second act, but a first impression can also be the last.

Mr. Hall, who at 57 looks maybe 19 months older than he did on his farewell show in 1994, still has energy, humor and an easy, winning manner. But he has to work harder to stand out.

In 1989, he was the only African-American hosting his own late-night talk show, and more than two decades later, Mr. Hall is no longer the only black talk host in late night (there’s also Tavis Smiley), and he’s no longer the only black entertainer at that time, either. (W. Kamau Bell’s show can be seen nightly on FXX.) And though Mr. Hall has said he will feature lots of rap musicians, both Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon already do.

“The Arsenio Hall Show” was a lot of fun back when it was a foil to the tightly scripted routines and studied spontaneity of “The Tonight Show.” (Mr. Hall eventually lost ground, and his show, to David Letterman on CBS and, beginning in 1993, Jon Stewart on MTV.) But he also made the history books, notably when Bill Clinton, then a presidential candidate, played the saxophone on his show in 1992.

Mr. Hall has many ways to move on, but on Monday, he kept looking backward. He opened with a skit about his chances: he was on a couch, seemingly telling an off-camera psychiatrist that if he worked really hard and told funny jokes, his new show had every reason to last. The camera pulled back to show Jay Leno drawl, “Yeah, good luck with that.”

Mr. Hall then did a routine about how times have changed, including whipping out a cellphone from the 1990s, which he called a “dumb phone” and which was as big as a boot.

He joked that, in his day, “Instagram” was a “cocaine delivery service.”

His pop-culture references were mostly old (he joked about Wesley Snipes’s tax problems), and even the newer ones were tired: he made fun of Kim Kardashian by pulling out her supposed pink tricycle from childhood, fitted with an oversize seat.

His old band, Posse, led by the drummer Rob DiMaggio, has new members, and he referred to it as Posse 2.0. The audience dutifully whooped it up like the old Dog Pound.

His first guest on the couch was Mr. Tucker, an old friend who didn’t perform a routine and didn’t try to be funny; he mainly talked at breakneck speed about how well he was doing. (Or, as he put it, “It’s great, it’s great, man, it’s great.”)

After performing in his usual listless style, Snoop Dogg, who has somehow become the Dean Martin of rap, grinned agreeably through a battery of jokes about his marijuana consumption.

First nights are rarely great, and even terrible starts are no indication of how a show will fare. Mr. Hall’s return to the screen was mostly a little sad. He is better than this and deserved a more convincing comeback.