HACK IN THE SADDLE CHAPPELLE OUTTAKES NOT UP TO SNUFF.

Byline: David Kronke Television Critic

News flash: Dave Chappelle didn't go crazy, after all. He was right to spurn the material he was shooting for the third season of his celebrated sketch-comedy series, ``Chappelle's Show,'' for which he signed an unprecedented $55-million contract.

Nonetheless, Comedy Central, in a particularly bad-faith move, has opted to air the material Chappelle, in a righteous crisis of confidence, walked away from.

``Someone had to do this,'' Charlie Murphy, one of the show's cast members, declares with a whiff of apology, explaining his choice to co-host ``The Lost Episodes.'' He and Donnell Rawlings laugh uproariously at their lame interstitial material; the studio audience has clearly been coaxed to approve of Chappelle's on-

screen antics; viewers will be forgiven for being somewhat more wary.

Just about every sketch presented tonight -- and others, glimpses of which were previously available -- is about Chappelle's newfound wealth and fame. None examines the more pointed issues Chappelle became acclaimed for examining, such as racism and other assorted ills confronting the African-American community.

Tonight, only one sketch, poking fun at the wealth of apparently still-fresh material emanating from the estate of slain rapper Tupac Shakur, is vaguely amusing. Others concern Chappelle using his fabulous cash flow to extract revenge on those who wronged him in the past and people exploiting his newfound wealth.

Such self-congratulatory material is scarcely palatable, yet comic Carlos Mencia's second-season premiere of ``Mind of Mencia'' is equally self-satisfied, with far less justification. Mencia prides himself on his ``wildly'' ``provocative'' ``politically incorrect'' sensibility, yet he drops every ostensible shocker of a punch line (which most comedians would deliver without a second thought) with a mock-naughty expression -- oops, he did it again.

Oops, indeed.

For a guy who makes fun of Latino stereotypes, Mencia certainly feels free to offer lazy jokes about every other ethnic group. Much of his material, in fact, is sub-literate, devolving into fragmented gibberish and sound effects rather than coherent sentences.

Which means that ``Reno 911!'' deserves a more clever and compatible lead-in, such as Comedy Central's latest success, ``Dog Bites Man,'' which is also a partially improvised sitcom. As the series' fourth season opens, the cops remain as clueless as ever -- they applaud Reno's ``automated suicide hotline,'' since working the actual phone lines was a major bummer.

As the season opens, lame prop comic Carrot Top resorts to the life of crime we always knew he was capable of. And Trudy (Kerri Kenney-Silver) is pregnant, but none of her colleagues is remotely interested, even when she announces she visited the local sperm bank:

``It's very clean. I got a great deal.''

She confides to Lt. Dangle (Thomas Lennon) that she first feared she had a cyst; he observes a pregnancy is much like a cyst, ``except that it will grow to resent you.''

David Kronke, [phone]

[e-mail]

CHAPPELLE'S SHOW: THE LOST EPISODES - Two stars

What: Padded presentations of the material Dave Chappelle shot before bolting his series, which would've been in its third season.

Where: Comedy Central.

When: 9, 9:30 and 11:30 tonight.

In a nutshell: Chappelle was rightly disappointed in his latest work.

MIND OF MENCIA - Two stars

What: Carlos Mencia makes more fun of ethnic stereotypes in his second-season premiere.

Where: Comedy Central.

When: 10 and midnight tonight.

In a nutshell: Carlos continues to want it both ways, employing stereotypes for laughs in order to puncture them.

RENO 911! - Three stars

What: The clueless cops of Reno's worst return for a fourth season.

Where: Comedy Central.

When: 10:30 and 12:30 a.m. tonight.

In a nutshell: Incompetence remains amusing.

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Photo:

While comedian Dave Chappelle is long gone from Comedy Central, the cable network is running the sketches he left behind, billing them as ``The Lost Episodes.''