DVD Review - The Weird Al Show - The Complete Series
August 27, 2006
"Weird Al" Yankovic and Saturday Morning Kids Show should have gone together like peanut butter and milk chocolate. However, for a number of reasons, The Weird Al Show only lasted 13 episodes before being yanked from the airwaves.
But nearly 10 years later, the show is finally out on an official DVD release.
Has the show aged like fine wine, or did the network do the right thing in pulling the pug?
Spoiler-Free Synopsis:
"Weird Al" Yankovic plays "Weird Al" Yankovic, at least a more annoying, man-child, version of himself.
In the show he is an inventor that lives deep under the earth in a cave with his best friend in the world, Harvey the Wonder Hamster and every week an adventure, and an educational lesson, seem to find their way to his cave.
Other main characters include:
The next section contains spoilers, click here to skip to the Special Features section.
Movie Review
Before I get into the actual review, I need to mention something.
When I watched the DVD for the first time I wrote a lot of notes about my initial reactions.
Then I watched all 13 episodes again with the audio commentary on and each and every point I wanted to make was covered in the commentary tracks, sometimes using nearly the exact phrase I wrote.
("Anything educational on this show is purely accidental" vs. "Most of the education on this show is accidental.")
I bring this up for two reasons: One, my sense of humor meshes very well with the creators of this show and this explains why I enjoyed the show as much as I did (at least with the commentary tracks).
Two, it made this review very difficult to write as all my best lines were taken.
On to the show... Essentially, The Weird Al Show is a variety show for kids complete with guest stars, recurring bits, and even music acts.
Since the plot generally takes a back seat to these, it is easier to merely state what worked and what didn't.
What worked:
What didn't work:
While most of the times the episodes were uneven, some did stand out and worked as a whole, not just as a collection of bits.
This including The Competition, featuring Val Brentwood showing off her dark side (there were some audio and video issues on that episode, unrelated to the censoring of the song, but that wasn't enough to stop it from being my favorite episode).
Also, The Talent Show and Al Plays Hooky were good (both focusing on Cousin Corky more than Weird Al).
Strangely, the shows were shown out of production order, both when they were originally aired and on this DVD.
And for the most part, they generally get better as the series goes on.
Perhaps if they had gone with more of the stronger episode earlier, and actually promoted the show, the show's ratings would have been good enough for the show to survive.
Special Features:
Audio Commentary tracks
Fatman Storyboards - With Commentary
Show Theme Karaoke
Image Galleries
The Big Three
All TV on DVD releases have to deal with the big three: Subtitles, Proper Chapter Placement, and the Play All Button.
This set misses all three.
There are no subtitles, which is a real shame since I like to listen to the audio commentary while reading the subtitles.
The better the audio commentary tracks are, the more important this feature becomes.
As for chapter placements, they use the commercial breaks.
While that makes sense, they should also have one after the opening credits so you don't have to listen to them over and over again as that song slowly threatens your very sanity. ...
Moving on.
It does have a play all button, but you can't use that with the audio commentary tracks, so it only gets partial credit for that.
In fact, if you use play all and then change the language track to the audio commentary, it will turn it off at the end of each episode.
Frustrating.
Conclusion:
If the 3-disc set for The Weird Al Show merely contained all 13 episodes, I couldn't recommend it for anything more than a rental.
And even that might be a tad generous.
There was a serious amount of creative differences between the filmmakers and the studio (the former being creative and the latter not).
The studio's insistence on spelling out today's lesson in such a ham-fisted way, and then repeating it throughout the show over and over and over again killed much of the entertainment value the show had.
Sure, the cast and crew worked hard to make it work and there were glimpses of brilliance seen in the show (the aforementioned Fred Huggins, for example), but these were beaten into submission by the 'educational' lesson.
Overall the show didn't work as a kids show, as an educational show, or even as just plain entertainment.
However, watching the show with the audio commentary on is a whole other experience.
The three participants bring a wealth of information about the show and how it was created, the level of studio interference, etc.
More importantly, it gives the show a much more adult edge.
(Although there were some glimpses of this in the show itself, like the brief mention of mud wrestling between Brad Pitt and Cindy Crawford.
How did they get away with that?)
I don't think I've seen a DVD set before that had its special features raise the value of the show to such a degree.
It lifts this 3-disc set from a half-heart rental, to a solid buy for most people, and a must have to all "Weird Al" fans.
Peace out!
All 13 episodes have an audio commentary track with Weird Al, Thomas F. Frank, and Payton Reed.
Sometimes they are joined by guests like Judy Tenuda, Emo Philips, and Danielle Weeks.
The tone of the tracks range from heavy sarcasm to outright misery.
Okay, that's not entirely true, but this is not a fluff piece praising the show and everyone involved.
They complain a lot about the copious amounts of studio interference and how that adversely affected the end product.
As "Weird Al" stated, the audio commentaries were more like therapy sessions than audio commentary tracks.
The best part of the audio commentaries is that they knew their audience.
While the network wanted a show for 2 to 11-year olds, these three knew that it would be mostly adults buying the DVD set.
This meant the conversation was a little more on the mature side and certainly non-"kid friendly" topics were brought up, like drinking games.
(You really want to get hammered, take a shot every time someone says, 'Uvula.')
These are some of the best audio commentary tracks I have ever listened to, and I've listen to a lot of them.
All six Fatman episodes are presented in Storyboard form with or without commentary.
I know what you are thinking.
You're thinking, "But there were only five episodes of Fatman ever made!"
This is true, but a sixth episode was storyboarded, and even had the voice tracks laid down.
Unfortunately, the voice tracks were lost after the show was cancelled.
The commentary tracks are not done by Weird Al and the others, but by the animation crew.
These are not as entertaining as the other commentary tracks, but there are some good information given here, some funny stories, and they all end on the same lame joke.
You can listen to the theme song and sing-a-long.
There are two versions, one with the vocals and one without.
Because of improper chapter placements (more on that later), I had to listen to the theme song about three dozen times.
I never want to hear it again as it has become the background music in my nightmares.
I'm not joking about that.
Each disc has an image gallery on subject like the evolution of Fatman, the evolution of the set design, and a series of publicity shots.
Submitted by: C.S.Strowbridge
Filed under: Video Review