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STUDIO: Comedy Central
MSRP: $19.99
RATED: NOT RATED
RUNNING TIME: 180 Minutes
SPECIAL FEATURES:
– It’s essentially a disc comprised of special features
The Pitch
“What if we just threw together what amounts to a commercial for all of our shows, and sell it to potheads?”
“Would that work?”
“You know what the funniest thing in the entire world is to someone who’s high?”
“What?”
“The fact that they’re high.”
CHUD Exclusive: The first still image from Cocoon vs. Hollow Man coming this winter from Lions Gate!
The Humans
The casts of Viva Variety, Reno 911!, Chappelle’s Show, Sarah Silverman Program, Strangers With Candy, The Root of All Evil and many more
Understanding.
The Nutshell
A host of sketches, episodes and tidbits all (mostly) explicitly or tangentially dealing with the imbibing of illegal substances.
“What does Bristol Palin’s offspring taste like, Joe?”
“Ignorance…with a slight hint of moose.”
Touted as an ‘experiment’, Comedy Central’s Homegrown is nothing more than the cheapest of cheap cash grabs, throwing together clips and episodes of all the shows at their disposal and linking them weakly through drug use. This is nothing more than a slightly expanded edition of the Comedy Central Quickies they put on all of their DVD releases, offering a few full episodes of some of their flagship programs (Reno 911!, The Sarah Silverman Program), some choice sketches and then finally a small smattering of stuff that could actually be looked at as ‘experimental’ such as an episode of Bob Ross’ The Joy of Painting, a couple of the ’08 Animation Show program shorts and a few other things.
Episode 124 is infamous for the only instance of Bob Ross painting ‘little trees filled with regret and longing that only decades on this Earth could produce’.
For the most part, all of this material can be had in full-season box sets, with very few exceptions (Viva Variety completists will be heartened by the inclusion of two bits from that program on here), or actually found late at night on Comedy Central when the people who would watch this disc while high will actually be watching Comedy Central while high and having an experience whose cumulative difference is negligible. If the set would’ve gone further in the direction of actually exploring non-sequitor late night viewing as a guide to making this DVD, they would’ve had an entire DVD of creatively assembled bits and pieces that would’ve made for a nice viewing as a curiosity piece or as a background viewing for get-togethers, but what they have here is a poorly strewn together piece of advertising for other, better DVD’s. I’d rather just watch those, thank you.
You deserve much better than this disc, Paul. Much better.
In the disc’s defense, I really truly enjoyed the Sarah Silverman Program animated shorts composed by Channel 101 veteran Justin Roiland as they have a manic energy and sense of the absurd that eclipses most everything else in the set. Which isn’t to say the material is weak, it isn’t. It’s just readily available elsewhere and much more fun when taken in the context of the whole of each program’s seasons. Here it just operates as a cinematic cocktease, ‘if you like these jokes, waittillya see these other ones!’, and makes the entire experience feel like a craven exercise in wallet lightening.
One assumes the next cash-in ‘experiment’ is coming soon, something like Comedy Central’s “White people are all like this, (OTHER ETHNICITIES) are like this!” even though they’ve already released that in a couple of volumes. Avoid unless you hate the fuck out of your money.
The Package
The cover art displays a mushroom instead of the DIY apple shown here, which is quite a downgrade. The disc has varying degrees of clarity and sound quality depending on the source material, but none of it is reference quality. The disc is spread out into three sections: buds (full episodes), stems (sketches and bits), and seeds (the miscellany described above). Since it’s all just a mish-mash, there aren’t any special features to speak of. Unless you count eventually ending.
2.5 out of 10