Seth Green

Whenever someone asks me what I think about Robot Chicken, I’m hesitant to answer. It really isn’t a well written show by any means, and it relies mostly on toilet humor and vulgar gross out sketches. Having said that, I absolutely love this show. I originally had low expectations as early reviews painted the show as not so hot; however, the first episode had me hooked. Being a collector of various action figures over the years, I find it hilarious to see so many toys from past and present used in these ways. Add the stop motion form of animation (perhaps my favorite kind of animation) and you’ve got a show that I could watch and re-watch for many, many years.

The new DVD set collects all twenty episodes from the Adult Swim ratings monster’s first season. While not everything in this season is flat-out hilarious, there are so many small sketches that pop up throughout this set that make it a must-own for fans of Robot Chicken or just Adult Swim in general. The sheer amount of guest voice work is hilarious, especially when you realize that’s really Burt Reynolds and the cast of the Scooby Doo movies playing in the mock sketches.

As previously mentioned, the stop-motion animation is just awesome to look at. While it isn’t anything near the quality of the Hollywood stop-motion films, it has that “homemade” movie feel to it that just adds to its charm. Some will say it looks sloppy, but in an age where home made fan videos are traded constantly over the internet, Robot Chicken is just like one big geek dream.

Robot Chicken is obviously not going to be for everyone. If you’re into lots of toilet humor, violence and toys just generally beating the crap out of each other then definitely check out the show. I consider it, like a lot of the Adult Swim shows I like, to be all “dumb humor”-humor for humors sake with absolutely no redeeming values. And yet, somehow, this dumb humor always manages to get me laughing and in the end that’s really all that matters.

The DVD

Arriving on DVD March 28th, Robot Chicken is presented in its original full frame aspect ratio and sporting a stereo Dolby track and is your standard fare from Warner Brothers. Video is nice, clear and free from any interlacing or horrible compression issues and it really just comes across as pristine as it can possibly get. Audio is the same, no distortion and all the gruesome violence and sound effects come through loud and clear along with Seth Green’s eight hundred character voices.

Packaging is the general two-tray digi-pak layout that Warner uses for most of their DVD cartoon releases (recently they switched to double layered digi-paks for the "DC Comics Classics" releases). Folding out, one of the flaps lists all of the episode names and special features and the rest just features art from the show. Art behind the discs shows images from each of the twenty episodes and the disc art itself is the various colored television test signal.

All of the DVDs’ various menus feature music over them. Sub-menus feature the show’s intro music, while the main menus are the end credit music. Immediately hearing the chicken clucking when the menu loads up gets you laughing from the get-go.

The amount of special features on this set is insane. Not only does every episode have a commentary, but there are deleted scenes, deleted animatics, a photo gallery, animation meetings (in which Seth Green acts out all the key bits of the sketch), alternative audio takes, wire comparisons, animatic to episode comparisons, Adult Swim bumps and promos, a behind the scenes featurette and finally the Sweet J Presents sketches from the Sony days, before the show became Robot Chicken. All total, this material adds up to over three hours of special features and will definitely take some time to go through. And when you’re done watching all the features displayed in front of you, head back to the first discs main menu where you can find an easter egg (a “Pee Reel”) that’s short, but highly amusing.

Without a doubt the key special feature to the release is the commentaries. They have their fair share of cool facts in them, but perhaps the best part is the outrageous number of guests they get in the commentaries. Sarah Michelle Gellar, Freddie Prinze Jr., Linda Cardellini, Macaulay Culkin, Mila Kunis, Rachel Leigh Cooke and, the biggest surprise for me, Mark Hamill. In addition to Seth Green on every commentary track, many of the writers and producers also come in to join him as well. The tracks are all very funny and lighthearted and while they offer some insight, there really isn’t too much knowledge in the tracks you can’t find elsewhere on the disc. They’re certainly fun to listen to, however (though don’t listen with any young ones around, while most “foul” language is bleeped, a few of the less pronounced S and F-bombs slip through the bleeper), even if they do run out of stuff to talk about halfway through the third episode (they recorded the commentaries out of episode order, so that’s why some tracks are livelier than others).

As always, there’s plenty of other material for the fans; all the promos, bumps, wire comparisons, animatics and deleted scenes are entertaining to watch, but the general viewer probably doesn’t care much about what was cut from the show and how it was made. The twelve minute “behind the scenes” featurette is a must watch-there’s some great stuff with Matthew Lillard in the recording booth and you get to see the various studios for Robot Chicken. I was especially amazed to see the number of animation areas set up for the show, all sanctioned off with black curtains.

There really are just a ton of cool bonus features on this set and the two-discs are definitely worth the price. Even after the near four hours of actual show to watch, the special features add a layer of depth to the show that you didn’t know was there. That layer, of course, is more poop