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Mr. Show - The Complete Third Season
Warner Bros. // Unrated // August 26, 2003
List Price: $34.98 [Buy now and save at Amazon]
"The people of the future will watch this...and remember a time when people named Bob and David wore crazy outfits and brought us all to the verge of laughter. That's right, and sometimes they made us all think, and that's when the ratings took a nosedive. So, if you want to remember the comedy of the '90s tomorrow, today..." -- Bob Odenkirk and David Cross, selectively edited with those ellipsis things, "Oh, You Men"
I could write an introduction to Mr. Show for the uninitiated, but I've already done it once, and I'll assume anyone reading about its third season has at least some passing familiarity with HBO's half-hour sketch comedy series, which ran from '95 to '98, garnering immense critical acclaim and a monstrous cult following, but not the appreciation it really deserved. Viewers have another chance to discover...or rediscover, as the case may be...Mr. Show with this two-disc set from HBO Home Video, which collects the series' third season. Its ten episodes include:
| Disc One | Disc Two | |
Heaven's Chimney (9/12/97)
| Goin' on a Holiday (10/31/97)
| |
Peanut Butter, Eggs and Dice (9/19/97)
| Bush is a Pussy (11/7/97)
| |
Oh, You Men (10/3/97)
| It's a No-Brainer (11/14/97)
| |
Flat-Top Tony and The Purple Canoes (10/10/97)
| A White Man Set Them Free (11/28/97)
| |
Please Don't Kill Me (10/24/97)
| The Return of the Curse of the Creature's Ghost (12/5/97)
|
Even the best material falls flat in incapable hands, but Mr. Show has a talented group of performers, headed by the ubiquitous and sub-titular Bob and David. Other players and guest-stars include Tom Kenny (the voice of Spongebob Squarepants), Jill Talley (The Ladies Man), Brian Ennis (Jack Frost; no, I mean the one with the rapist, serial killer snowman), Brian Posehn, Sarah Silverman, Laura Kightlinger, and Jon Stewart. Though there are a few recurring characters -- Senator Tankerbell and Ronnie Dobbs from the first set return, to name a couple -- there's no rehashed schtick. It's not like Saturday Night Live where the same characters and their same stale gags are transposed to an incrementally different setting week after week. Rather than seeming like a random collection of sketches, each segment somehow segues into the next, and no matter how different the first bit and the last may seem, they always find some way to come full-circle. Though I enjoyed HBO's previous Mr. Show release quite a bit, the humor was little inconsistent in some of the earlier episodes. This third season of Mr. Show has the same momentum and effectiveness as the best moments from the first two seasons, only spread across nearly the entirety of its four hours and change. There's a lot to like about this season, which takes everything that brought its earlier seasons such acclaim and greatly improves upon it. This is a series that seems as if it'll hold up well to repeat viewings -- even some of the sketches I'd seen several times before still had me rolling -- and it's also one that benefits greatly from being watched with a group of friends. As was the case with the previous set, HBO Home Video is releasing the third season of Mr. Show on DVD with audio commentaries for each and every episode, along with an extra 'best of' episode and a number of other extras.
Video: The third season of Mr. Show is presented in its original full-frame aspect ratio. The majority of the series was shot on video, and the quality seems to depend on the camera being used at any particular time. The image goes from being crisp to soft and noisy, with both colors and clarity varying from shot to shot. This almost certainly dates back to the way Mr. Show was taped, given that the duller moments occurred intermittently but consistently. A variety of film formats were used in some of the pre-recorded segments. The internal consistency in the filmed snippets is higher than the video segments, which would also seem to support the idea that the noiser bits of video date back to the original taping. This DVD set probably doesn't look much better than it did on HBO a few years back, but that's about all I'd really go in expecting from a TV-on-DVD release.
Audio: Mr. Show includes a set of Dolby Digital 2.0 surround tracks (192Kbps), which don't differ all that much from what I'd expect to hear from an airing on cable. Some material takes advantage of the matrixed surrounds, such as a rollercoaster ad and a horde of screaming girls in the Fad 3 sketch, but for the most part, the rears are reserved for music and crowd noise. Dialogue, obviously the focus of the audio, infrequently came across as a little hot, but there were no issues with intelligibility or anything that would otherwise impair the mix. No major complaints or concerns.
Mr. Show is closed captioned for the hearing impaired, and no dubs or subtitles have been included.
Supplements: All ten episodes of the third season of Mr. Show feature audio commentaries with Bob, David, and...yeah, a lot of other people I was too lazy to tally. Each of the tracks seemed to have somewhere around five to eight people chatting. The first couple of commentaries sound kind of drunken, noisy, and only semi-coherent, with the participants constantly tripping over one another and laughing hysterically. Things quickly settle down somewhat from there, and the small army of commentators point out various flaws in sketches, poke fun at the series' non-existent production values, provide new voiceovers for skits, and talk about the inspiration behind some bits. Among the topics of discussion are wig-pin-induced memory loss, their favorite mentally-challenged movies ("You have to see The Other Sister!"), getting stoned while scoring "Druggachusettes", driving to a party with a comedian who's convinced he's a werewolf, crashing the set of Whose Line Is It Anyway?, and one sketch inspiring a Blink 182 hit. "Bob and David at the 1997 U.S. Comedy Arts Festival" is...aptly titled, begining with four minutes of promos in which Bob and David discuss Aspen's environmental awareness, as well as offering a detailed glimpse into the deceptively simple act of skiing onto a television frame. Alongside the pair of spots is four and a half minutes or so of on-stage footage, noting how hecklers benefit society at large. "Druggachusettes: The Instrumental Score by Evan Schletter" runs just under four minutes in length, removing the dialogue in the Krofft-insired sketch and amping up the music and sound effects, making it even trippier than before. Also included are eight original TV spots, which average a little over thirty seconds a pop. The promos, "Bite Out of Herpes", "Bob vs. David", "Balance", "Backwards", "Elephant", "Secret Superstar", "Calendar", and "Chalkboard", feature mostly original material, including a spoof of HBO's boxing promos and a couple of jabs at their Monday-at-midnight timeslot.
The extras on disc two begin with "Fantastic Newness", an infomercial-themed collection of sketches from Mr. Show's first season, concluding with a preview of clips from season two. Rounding out the extras is "Bob and David - Where Are They Now?", which catches up with the show's stars without resorting to a dull filmography or anything approximating reality.
The third season of Mr. Show features a set of static 4x3 menus. The episodes haven't been divided into individual chapters, so to get a particular sketch, viewers'll have to resort to fast-forwarding. Also, Mr. Show doesn't have a "Play All" option, requiring wading through slow-loading menus to access each episode. Like the previous release, this two-disc set comes packaged in a slipcase-draped digipak, and the exterior of the digipak rattles off a list of episodes and sketches on each DVD. Snuck into the set are inserts plugging the book "Mr. Show: What Happened?" and New Line's upcoming release of Run Ronnie Run!.
Conclusion: I could gush endlessly over how much I love Mr. Show. This set is destined to be spun in my DVD player endlessly, and the quality of the material and the presence of commentaries for every episode lends itself to repeat viewings. Quite possibly the best sketch comedy available on DVD, the third season of Mr. Show is very Highly Recommended.
Related Links: BobAndDavid.com is updated regularly with the latest on Bob, David, and their various projects, including Mr. Show. DVD Talk also currently has a pair of reviews for the previous release compiling the first and second seasons.
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