DVD Review: Beavis & Butt-head, the Mike Judge Collection, Volume 1

As inane and idiotic as admittedly likely all involved in their creation would attest that these characters were, the other thing even their worse critics would have trouble denying was that they struck a most definite & resounding chord with some segment(s) of society, as well as laid a groundwork for some of the most dominating trends in not only animation but series and feature entertainment for the young adult and old child market overall.

Now that you’ve made it through that monster sentence, soak up the knowledge that, yes, Beavis and Butt-head were pioneers of a sort, blazing a trail of stupidity, showing that you didn’t necessarily need cute characters, or animals practicing random violence, or to cover up the tracks of what you were trying to get across to the masses vis a vis some secret code to the youngsters, you could just shoot straight at the gut and parody with devilishly accurate acumen a certain segment of society and make that segment especially as well as many others laugh their asses off, not only at themselves, but at society’s reaction to them, and at the blinders that the world puts on thinking that there’s just no way that the marginalized can be really that far out on the margin yet sitting right in our own living rooms.

Hmmm. Not sure what I meant by that either. Something about how as dated as it seems now, there was just nothing like the original huh-huhers at the time, and honestly there ain’t to this day, but there are damn sure a wide array of quality diverse children, grandchildren, and bastard step children. Adult swim, in my eye, directly evolves from MTV’s fairly gutsy at the time call to put these two morons on our tv screens. It’s odd, furthermore, to think that as much as we complain nowadays about corporate censorship and big brother watching what we're doing in the republican age (and not that I’m saying this is a bad thing, hey, let’s keep the red markers at bay by all means), when you consider the hubbub that Beavis & Butthead sniffing paint thinner in their backyard drummed up, it seems like we’ve got it easy now by comparison. And no this is not a scientific analysis.

Anyway, enough pontification. The package comes with 3 DVD’s, the first 2 being the best (according to Mike Judge) of the cartoons from the early years. Gems include the classic cornholio (tee-pee for my bunghole) episode, as well as Beavis and Butt-head getting demoted all the way down to kindergarten, wherein Butt-head makes the observation, “Hey Beavis, these chicks are flat.” I’m a sucker for the one where they get thrown in the trunk of their idol, Todd’s, car for a whole night and then thank their lucky stars they even got to hang out with the skuzzy loser. As for the third disc, it has a lot of extras, including a fairly interesting documentary behind the scenes type deal with interviews and clips and other etcetera. Disc 3 also has some videos on it, complete with our two heroes mercilessly ragging on them and/or praising them, the funniest having to be their evisceration of grim reaper. Ah, the unknown wisdom of the dumb.

Article Author: Berkeley Joe

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