Chappelle's Show - The Series Collection (2003) Review

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(More customer reviews)One thing nobody can deny is that in the short time the show has been around, Chappelle's Show made it's mark in pop culture.
In a nutshell, the first two seasons were absolutely hystical with a few sketches that weren't as funny as the others (your not going to hit a homerun every single time) that just left classic moments in TV & pop culture history to the point where it revived the music career of a legend in Rick James with one catchphrase (I'M RICK JAMES B....) & helped another actor in Wayne Brady break out of the sterotypical roles he's been typecasted in throughout his career ("Is Wayne Brady gonna have to choke a b....?"). Dave along with his cast like the always overlooked Charlie Murphy, legend Paul Mooney, and Donnell Rawlings just brought forth a bunch of situations that people don't normally find funny but just made you almost pee on yourself laughing. It's been years since the show started & so many memorable moments are still in my head like it was yesterday. It's the funniest show of this nature since "In Living Color" that pushed the boundries with it's spoofs of issues in recent news stories (R. Kelly....need I say more?), pop culture (Mad Real World) & issues we deal with daily like racism (Clayton Bigsby) & sterotypes (Trading Places)...and just having skits around to give us a good laugh (The Player Haters Ball & Tryone). The first two seasons were just comedic gold to me. The DVD extras with the deleted scenes/outtakes on both sets with alternative commentary along with the bonus standup, extra Charlie Murphy stories, and extended interviews from both Rick James & Charlie Murphy on disc two are an added & welcomed bonus.
I can't say the same for the third or "lost season" & I just couldn't believe that this is the same show that had me laughing, caught the attention of america, and everything else I mentioned earlier. These were "lost" episodes & honestly should have stayed lost because this season was awful. The only skits that had me laughing was the one about 2pac not being alive but having a song talking about everyone currently in that club & the one where everyone started charging Dave more money for things since they found out how much money he makes. They did show the controversal "pixie" sketch which I wasn't offended by because I couldn't get past how unfunny it was. The only thing that somewhat kept the shows watchable more than once is the audio commentary from Charlie, Donnell, and Niel (can't remember his last name right now).
In the end, season one & two are worth this set but season three will be seen as a huge disappointment so if you can get seasons one & two cheaper than this box set, I would do that. Otherwise, everything about the first two seasons heavily overshadow the "lost episodes" so I would recommend overall under those conditions.


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Chappelle's Show - Season 1 Uncensored (2003) Review

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(More customer reviews)I had caught snippets of Chappelle's Show here and there before, but I had never made a point of actually sitting down and watching a complete episode. Then a friend of mine told me about a hilarious skit featuring Dave Chappelle as a black white supremacist (he is blind and doesn't know he is actually a black man); if it was only half as funny as she said it was, I knew I had to see it for myself, so I soon bought myself a copy of Chappelle's Show Season One. Not only is the skit in question hilarious, it basically defines the type of humor Dave Chappelle brings to the comedy scene. I don't think the television viewing audience has ever seen anything like this before - certainly not to the extremes that Dave Chappelle takes it. When he jokes about the fact the show has not been cancelled yet, it actually rings with a bit of truth. Very few comedians could get away with this type of over-the-top humor.
To say that this is mature humor is something of an understatement. Adult language abounds, and all the bleeps you heard on television are now removed - thus, the Uncensored! tagline. You'll find a lot of jokes centered on human anatomy - especially female anatomy. Far beyond everything else, though, is a relentless comedic skewering of racism. Some would probably consider this a racist show, actually - the "n word" is used in abundance, and stereotypes of blacks, Asians, whites, and other races are exploited shamelessly. The whole point of the race-based comedy, though, is to show just how extreme and ridiculous racist thinking and behavior really is. Some people won't "get it," of course, and they will probably think Chappelle's Show is one of the most offensive things they have ever witnessed - and that's OK. The majority of viewers, I believe, will "get it" and will join me in an extended laugh-fest that lasts throughout all twelve episodes of Season One as well as the bonus materials included in this DVD offering.
Among the gut-bustingly funny stuff you will find in Chappelle's Show Season One are the antics of crack addict Tyrone Biggums (including a visit to a drug awareness day at an elementary school), Chappelle-ized scenes from hit films such as Roots and The Matrix, a news report detailing the profound aftereffects brought about by the paying of reparations for slavery, "Great Moments in Hookup History," a "Real World" episode featuring one really white guy living with five crazy African-Americans, a hard-hitting documentary detailing the racism of famous animal performers, a documentary covering great inner city gang wars of the 1980s, an interracial episode of Trading Spouses, numerous Chappelle-ized television ads, Ask a Black Dude features with comedian Paul Mooney, a hilarious look at the international Player Hater Ball, and of course a lot of crude jokes about drugs and bodily functions. The only bad thing about these episodes is the fact that they are sometimes rather short. Chappelle featured rap and hip-hop musical guests on each show, but those segments are not included on nine of the twelve episodes you get here (and it's only a half-hour show to begin with).
The comedy is a little uneven at times. A few skits never really catch fire and are thus forgettable, but the vast majority of the material here will have you rolling in the aisles. Even the kind of toilet humor that normally isn't that funny will have you in stitches because Chappelle just keeps going to the well so many times that he makes it funny despite itself.
Five of the episodes come with audio commentary by Dave Chappelle and the show's co-creator Neal Brennan (who is white, by the way), as does the extra 29-minute feature of bloopers and deleted scenes. I was actually a little disappointed by the audio commentary; it was informational but not as funny as I had expected. The bloopers and deleted scenes were also less than hilarious - but I realized long ago (thanks to Dick Clarke and Ed McMahon) that bloopers really aren't very funny much of the time. All these extras are just icing on the cake, though, as the twelve episodes of the show more than make this Season One collection worth the money. Heck, it's worth it for just the blind, black white supremacist feature by itself.

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No Description Available.Genre: TelevisionRating: NRRelease Date: 24-FEB-2004Media Type: DVD

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