Seth Green

Season 3 DVD Brings Robot Chicken Home to Nerds

Robot Chicken is a consummate nerd comedy show.

It’s created largely by the same stop-motion techniques that gave birth to the original King Kong, Sinbad’s Cyclops, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms and the Gorgon from Clash of the Titans. The effective level of humor shoots somewhere above Larry, The Cable Guy, but below Henri Bergson. And, it revels in parodies of popular culture — especially genre material (see the clip, right).

Created by Seth Green and Matthew Senreich, the Adult Swim hit tossed its third season to DVD shelves this week with a two-disc set of stream of consciousness parodies. A descendant of Seth MacFarlane’s Family Guy in tone and style, the show’s structure uses rapid-fire, one-off bits usually built around a longer sketch. An episode is like a crazy uncle who needs to borrow $5. He stops by, makes you laugh, and gets out of your house in about 10 minutes.

The Season Three set includes appearances by He-Man, GI Joe, Dracula, Soundwave and Kool-Aid Man (Oh, yeah!) as a zombie surviving a nuclear holocaust. The show’s sci-fi and horror-friendly content offers an unusual menu of fanboy-friendly voice talent, including MacFarlane, Joss Whedon, Stan Lee, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Billy Dee Williams, Malcolm McDowell and Kelly Hu.

The set also boasts a solid set of special features, including episode commentaries on all 20 episodes, deleted scenes and (this reporter’s favorite) a faux gag reel.