Kennel cover

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STUDIO: New Video NYC
MSRP: $29.95
RATED: NR
RUNNING TIME: 3 hours, 52 minutes
SPECIAL FEATURES:
• Breed Judging Videos
• Group Winner Interviews
• Backstage Tour
• Grooming Featurette
• Angel on a Leash featurette
• Featurette on Vivi
• Junior Showmanship Highlights

The Pitch

"It's Rollerball meets Best In Show!"

The Humans

Shit, I don't know. Some guys talk on microphones. Let's see: Lester Holt, David Frei, and Debbye Turner offer commentary on and coverage of the event. All I really know is that someone sounds like Tom Servo, and I kept getting disappointed when he didn't say anything funny.

The Nutshell

More than a century ago, a strange animal was found deep in the jungles of Borneo. This quadrupedal creature stood eight feet tall, had red eyes, a coat as matted and black as a blood clot, and summoned a noise from its throat that made two men piss themselves and each other. A mere photograph of this thing drove Howard Philips Lovecraft to his lover, Dementia.

Now, some hundred-and-thirty-odd years later, clever humans have reduced this fearsome beast into, variously, poodles, Chihuahuas, and 163 other watered bloodlines.

When the moon is full, you can hear their tiny lungs trying to coax a howl that was written into their DNA, but achieving nothing more than the weak chuff of a baby's brush with SIDS.

Some of these breeds are, apparently, better than others. As you'll soon find out...


Wooo. Wooooooooo.

The Lowdown

Two discs. Three hours and fifty-two minutes. Dogs. On a purely observational level, I have to say it's probably great that this release brings you the entirety of the televised show. This ain't no highlights reel. Of course, the whole shebang only lasted a couple of nights, rather than the months of regular season games that we usually get compressed into ninety minutes on sports-related discs.

Without any trace of sarcasm, I can say that I learned an awful lot from my time spent with these dogs, their handlers, and the hosts of the show. Every breed that gets its turn in front of the red-faced judge draws out some interesting factoid about when it was first recognized as a breed, where it originated, or what the fuck is up with its fur. (Seriously; some of these pups have dreads that would put the population of my backwater county to shame.)

The DVDs are broken up into sections for each breed, as well as allowing for the additional judging segments that tie the whole show together. I particularly recommend the "Toy" section, because there's a representative from a certain breed which looks like a mop. I mean entirely like a mop. The leash makes the handle and everything. Here:


See?

I'm so ignorant. Think of me as Ahab stabbing out against that which he does not understand, but certainly hates; only instead of a whale, I'm poking at a puppy; and instead of a wooden leg, I have a prosthetic penis.

If you missed the show when it originally aired on the USA network, these discs are probably great possessions for a fan. I couldn't gather much of an impetus lock my attention to, though, and I don't think that's entirely because I'm a complete canine-behavior novitiate. There didn't seem to be any real competition, none of that human drama that compels an audience to keep watching. Dogs are judged, asked to trundle off, and more dogs appear. I'm sure that the secret lives of kennel masters are something you could write a soap opera about, but there really exists nothing to command the interest of a viewer with no prior investment. That makes me honestly curious about the audience for these competitions; do they watch because they get to see the finest examples of applied eugenics? Do they get a thrill from the competitive aspects beyond what I can see?

Well, I can't discredit a hobby for being impenetrable to my glazed-over eyes. It's just one happy bundle of esoterica.


"You remind me of the babe."

The Package

There are a few bonuses listed, but nothing particularly noteworthy. The featurettes all are short assemblages of clips that terminate without much warning, including backstage footage, examples of the grooming, special "Angel on a Leash" award segment (which title makes me think of, um, something else), a dog-centric feature on "Vivi", clips from group judging, highlights from the junior league, and interviews with some of the winners.

The audio and video quality are relatively poor, having been transferred from what was broadcast on basic cable. Additionally, the direction seems off in places, cutting away from whatever "action" is present to take frequent tours of other dogs. These combined production values don't make for the smoothest viewing imaginable.

It is what it is.

7 out of 10