Seth Green

ROBOT CHICKEN: SEASON ONE DVD REVIEW

Review by Brian Tallerico

Show: A-
Look: B+
Sound: B+
Extras: A+
Overall: A

TV doesn’t get much weirder than Cartoon Network’s cult hit Robot Chicken. In fact, trying to explain it to people who’ve never seen it is a weird experience in itself, usually marked by smiles and nods like you need hospitalization - it’s a pop culture parody using mostly action figures and dolls (like Barbie and G.I. Joe) in stop-motion animation with some sketches being only a few seconds long. And it comes from the twisted mind of Seth Green (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Family Guy). Besides being completely original, Robot Chicken is one of those great shows, like Family Guy, that’s so quickly paced that if a joke doesn’t work for you and hits the floor, it’s roughly 1.5 seconds before another one’s being thrown at you. And nothing is safe. Robot Chicken is made for people with pop culture libraries in their heads who can go from jokes about American Idol to The Smurfs to Star Wars to Britney Spears and back again. In other words, it’s made for you.

Robot Chicken is so funny that the deleted scenes included in the MASSIVE extras section on the first season DVD are as hysterical as some of the more successful sitcoms on television (The Smurfs meets Se7en parody - featuring the line "Jesus Smurfing Christ" - is one of the funniest things I’ve seen in a long time and it didn’t even make the cut for the show). But the dozen deleted scenes are just the tip of the iceberg. On the first of the two discs, besides the deleted scenes, you’ll find almost two dozen deleted moments that never made it past the animatic stage, a photo gallery and some hysterical animation meetings (mostly Seth Green physically acting out what the puppets should do for the animators). Disc Two has behind-the-scenes footage, Wire Comparisons, Animatic to Episode Comparisons, Alternate Audio Takes, every promo for the show and Bumps. Oh, and if that’s not enough, every single sketch comes with audio commentary from the creators and a few of the guest stars (including Mark Hamill). It’s an almost overwhelming collection of special features, one of the most impressive we’ve ever seen for a TV DVD set.

Television comedy is often the same setup/joke format over and over again. Robot Chicken takes that format sticks it in a pop culture blender and goes absolutely crazy with it. Luckily, Warner Brothers, knowing the cult status of the hit show, went all out with the DVD, giving fans more extras than their twisted minds could’ve ever imagined. Hit play and zone out with the pure wonderful weirdness that is Robot Chicken.