DVD Review: Robot Chicken Season 1

Robot Chicken was the brainchild of Seth Green (Oz from Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Dr. Evil’s kid from Austin Powers), and is a mostly claymation parody on basically everything. This show particularly toys with 1980s cartoons, including the Smurfs, Transformers, Voltron, Speed Racer, Thundercats and He-Man. The show is random and is designed for people with A.D.D. showing a mix of super-short clips, and longer little ‘skits’. The first few episodes are pretty funny, including skits like:

- The Fat One, where Joey the fat guy from N-Sync avenges the death of the other N-Sync members and enters a karate tournament… guided by Mr. Miyagi, Joey prevails over Storm Shadow from G.I.Joe, among others.

- The a skit about Cobra Commander, Mumra (From Thundercats), Skeletor from He-Man and someone else (can’t remember) being stuck in traffic in a car

- a Cannonball Run-style race that includes Batman & Robin, The Dukes of Hazard, SpeedRacer and CHIPs

- the breakdance battle between Voltron and the badguys…

- Darth Vader talking to Luke Skywalker at the end of Empire Strikes Back telling him that he’s his father, Leia’s his sister, the force is based on some things called Mitocliterons or whatever they are from Episode 1, and that he made C3P0.

- Beavis & Butthead join the Teen Titans

- The Surreal Life meets Lord of the Rings

Green also brings in all his buddies to provide voices, like all the guys from That 70’s Show, Macaulay Culkin, Sarah Michelle Gellar (Buffy) and the cast of Scooby Doo, Burt Reynolds, among many many others. Unfortunately, the show gets really really crappy as the season goes on, and at times is quite unwatchable. Still, most of the first season of Robot Chicken is overall pretty entertaining if you’re really bored or drunk… I just got bored and tired of it (4/10).