Unfortunately, Rhino has taken to releasing the show in four episode "best of" DVDs rather than in full-season sets (which would only take three to complete) and the releases have been slow as molasses in coming, but regardless, having the show back is worth both the wait and annoyingly short disc lengths.

Volume one contained possibly the all-time classic episode, "Handsome Boy Modeling School," but volume two is more consistently entertaining. "Zoo Animals on Wheels" is a surreally stupid episode where Chris joins the cast of a locally produced musical that imagines what the world would be like if all zoo animals wore rollerskates and sang drippy songs. This obvious jab at Disney is coupled with the almost disgracefully snide repartee between Chris and Sharon (the very funny Robin Riker) his best friend's wife and on-stage costar. The musical is completely hilarious as are Chris' backstage breakdown and his weird stab at hitting on Sharon. Truly a classic.

"Married" finds Chris wooing a supermodel, marrying her, fighting with her, breaking up with her, and getting divorced, all during the course of one day. In this episode Chris once again pursues a big dream only to have it prove what a loser he is in the end. But it also points out one of the funniest things about the show. For all his failures Chris actually succeeds at nearly everything along the way. (After all, he does get to marry his dream woman.) His ability to gain it all and then throw it away time and time again makes his failures that much more pathetic.

"The Big City" (a personal favorite) finds Chris journeying to a modified New York on his quest to see the world. After a con artist slips him a mickey, Chris awakens to find his wallet gone. Quickly dubbed "Walletboy" by an opportunistic journalist, Chris becomes a symbol of innocence and victimhood for the cruel, jaded world. The episode contains bizarre and terrific period throwbacks: Everything in the Big City, from the clothes to the cars to the giant pseudo-deco gates at the entrance come out of a hard-boiled gum-snapping private dick flick. To top it off the episode's liberal use of rear-screen projection is just plain genius.

Finally, "Neptune 2000" reaches heretofore unknown levels of parental involvement as Chris and his dad build a submarine that he ordered from a comic book twenty years earlier. It's a disaster, of course, leading to some very funny interactions between Chris and Bob Elliott. Locked in the sub and running out of air, father and son have a final opportunity to bond while waiting to die.

The notion of releasing the show in short, mixed discs like this (at incredibly long intervals, I might add) is unattractive. Like all TV shows, this is one that would be best dealt with a season at a time. Still, fans of the show should enjoy all four of the snotty, hilarious episodes here (unlike volume one which featured the unwatchable "Spewey and Me"). Elliott's antics are so off-putting that he enters an entirely new realm of reality. There are virtually no sincere moments in any Get a Life episode (with some of "Neptune 2000" almost striving for an emotional connection, but not quite), something that smarmy fans of the series relish with sarcastic glee.

VIDEO:
The video on this release is not really up to snuff. While it's doubtful that the show was particularly highly budgeted, the flaws in the video here lie with the compression done for the DVD. Even on a lackluster television the gumminess of compression is visible. Supposedly an earlier pressing of this disc was recalled for some outrageous compression artifacting and nothing here is unwatchable but the tinge of poor compression is visible. The picture is full-frame, as it was originally broadcast.

AUDIO:
The Dolby Digital stereo audio is fine if undistinguished. The voices are clear and the show basically sounds like it did when it was first broadcast.

EXTRAS:
A very funny and ridiculously in-depth interview with the show creator David Mirkin is included. This is one way to find out way more information about the quirky show than you'd ever expect. Mirkin is an appropriately jittery fellow for having come up with such a strange show and seems like a perfect off-screen foil for Elliott's on-screen loser. Especially funny are his recollections of Fox's reaction to the show. They hated the idea, then they hated the scripts, then they hated the show. How did it ever get on the air?

There's also an alternate audio track which provides the show without the laugh track. It moves more slowly but hearing the occasional crew laughter makes it seem even weirder (if that's possible). A nice addition.

Bios and filmographies are also included.

FINAL THOUGHTS:
Get a Life may have cult appeal (I don't mean that only cult members can enjoy it, although they certainly can) but there's a whole generation of Jackass fans who can stand to be exposed to a pioneer in the theater of the weird. Chris Elliott and his cohorts created something so exceptionally obnoxious that sometimes it seems amazing that it was ever even produced, let alone aired on a national network. TV may one day see a show as weird as Get a Life again but these episodes will always play as the strange, provocative, absurd little works of art that they are.