Anyone who has talked to me since The Boondocks first aired on Adult Swim knows that I was no fan of it. I watched the pilot episode after hearing good things about it and aside from a few moments, I didn’t find it all that funny or entertaining. There were times I thought the show had gone just a bit too far in terms of language and general tone and I never watched the show again.
Then the review copy for the show on DVD arrived. I hadn’t even thought of reviewing the set, but I decided to go ahead and give the discs a spin anyway. The first episode was the same as I remembered it, but this time I kept watching. By the end of the first disc and its myriad of special features, I began appreciating it just a little bit more. I began understanding the show and the characters. While I still don’t believe the show is as funny as everyone has been claiming, it certainly has its fair share of laugh-out-loud moments, though I found a few episodes on the final disc of the set to be rather poignant.
While “A Date With the Health Inspector,” “The Story of Gangstalicious,” “A Huey Freeman Christmas,” “The Real” and “The Block is Hot” deliver copious amounts of humor, “Wingmen” and “The Passion of Reverend Ruckus” dish out a rather heavy helping of drama. Those two episodes transformed the show, for me, from merely a crude and crass comedy into something from which you could really get emotion. That’s not to say those two episodes didn’t have a fair amount of humor, but I feel, in those two episodes especially, the show really hit a perfect balance between comedy and drama.
The DVD set definitely changed my opinion of the show and I’m glad I opted to sit down and give it another chance. As I said before, the show is still not flat-out amazing, but it certainly has a lot of heart and effort being put into it. If you were like me, try renting a disc or two and see if your opinion of it changes, as there really are quite a few good episodes in the set.
Hopefully the shows second season can premiere with stories as strong as the first seasons last half.
The DVD
Presented for the first time anywhere uncut and uncensored, the show arrives on DVD in a three disc DVD set. A slipcase houses three thin-pak cases, with each containing double sided inserts and information on what episodes are featured on each disc.
On the technical aspect of the set, the lack of subtitles will no doubt disappoint some (just French for the Canadians this time, I’m afraid). The audio is in a crystal clear Dolby Digital Stereo mix and video is 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen. The video transfer has a few issues, mainly just interlacing on frames and some aliasing—nothing major and unfortunately altogether common for animation releases. Despite that, the gorgeous animation shines through it all, notably during “A Huey Freeman Christmasn” and “Riley Wuz Here” episodes where there are many more vibrant colors than usual.
The first disc is loaded down with content. Commentaries on “The Garden Party” and “The Trial of Robert Kelly” come in both audio and video format. Each are the same commentaries, but the video commentary will (very occasionally) show the commentators recording. As with most video commentaries I’ve watched it seems a waste of disc space, especially when you have the same commentary track as audio. Still, fans will no doubt enjoy seeing the crew behind the show, however brief those moments are.
As a whole, the crew commentaries are informative in spots, but mostly contain the crew making jokes and goofing around; informational bits come from creator Aaron McGruder and voice caster/director Andrea Romano. In addition to the crew commentaries, there are two “Uncle Ruckus” commentaries on the set, which are hilarious to listen to. Anyone who enjoys his character on the show will love listening to him ramble for twenty-two minutes and it’d be interesting to find out if Gary Anthony Williams (the voice of Ruckus) had a script or just winged it the whole way through…
The behind-the-scenes featurette has a decent runtime and covers the inception of the show, its airing and the slight controversy it caused. McGruder is shown exclusively in this, with a few other clips of the cast and crew recording lines or doing table reads.
Three deleted scenes, animatics with voice-only audio, unaired promos and printable storyboards finish off the features for the rest of the first disc. The deleted scenes are entertaining and the unaired promos are cool, though it would’ve been nice if they threw on the ones that did air as well. Printable storyboards are a neat extra, though I don’t know how many people are actually going to use the print-outs to tack up the walls around their room or computer space.
Previews are the only other “features” left (and they’re always the most useless), with the second disc containing three other commentaries and the third containing zero special features. There is enough on the first disc to satisfy the casual watcher such as myself, though the die-hard fans may want a bit more behind-the-scenes footage.
Overall the set is pretty well-rounded. The special features are pleasing and the uncensored (and I do mean uncensored, male genitalia included) episodes are a special feature in and of themselves, as hearing Charlie Murphy and Samuel L. Jackson go off on a tangent is always entertaining.
The Boondocks – The Complete First Season arrives on DVD July 25th.
