May 9, 200

Apparently, comedy is a lot like drugs, porn, and any other addiction. The more you watch and the more you listen the more tolerance you build up and the more extreme the comedy needs to be to make you laugh. But at what point does the comedy turn into something more perverse and downright twisted? Comedy Central’s animated series, South Park, has come close to crossing that ambiguous line on more than one occasion, but at the end of the day, South Park uses irreverent humor to make some sort of social commentary or at least poke fun at pop culture.

Drawn Together is an entirely different matter. Drawn Together is an animated version of The Surreal Life where you pack a bunch of social icons into a large house equipped with hundreds of cameras and watch them interact Big Brother style. Our guests include iconic archetypes from the world of animation such as: "Captain Hero," a not-so-moral do-gooder reminiscent of the Saturday morning TV super heroes of the 70's; "Clara," a 20-year-old sweet and naive fairy-tale princess; "Toot Braunstein," a black-and-white pudgy heart throb from the 20's; "Foxxy Love," a sexy mystery-solving musician; "Spanky Ham," a foul-mouthed Internet download pig; "Ling-Ling," an adorable Asian trading card mini-monster; "Wooldoor-Sockbat," a wacky Saturday morning whatchamacallit; and "Xandir," a strong young gay video game warrior.

The character designs and even their origins stray very little from their source inspiration. It’s a wonder the series hasn’t been sued by now, although this very fact is mentioned in the first 30 seconds of the third season opener as Toot shreds a stack of copyright infringement letters. By the third season I was expecting the writers would be running out of ideas. In fact, I was surprised there was even going to be a third season, but I guess there is no limit to the world of humor when animation is involved.

Drawn Together is so “over the top”, vile, vulgar, and despicable that after viewing all 14 “uncensored” episodes I had to wonder how they could even fill a 20-minute timeslot, especially when each of the shows on the DVD have been extended to include all-new raw footage. Matt and Trey have been trying to shock me for nearly a decade. Drawn Together did it in just a few episodes. Congratulations!

Before you start to think I’m going to be bashing the series let me clarify that I totally enjoyed this latest (and final) season of Drawn Together. Perhaps South Park has jaded me to some degree, and Drawn Together is the “shock humor” I need to make me laugh. And yes, you will be shocked. Let us browse the content of the new episodes in this uncensored box set:

We start off tame enough with a Greek family moving into the house next door. Captain Hero mistakenly believes the house is a fraternity, which he promptly pledges. Meanwhile, Ling-Ling’s suicidal father moves into the house and falls in love with Toot, gets married, becomes an astronaut, shoots Toot into space and falls in love with George Takei (Sulu). Of course the best part of this episode is the cast making favorable comments about Jon Stewart every time a Daily Show plug appears at the bottom of the screen.

The second episode is one of my favorites of the season. Wooldoor has a kids’ show that promotes “tolerance”, which is destined to turn the entire world gay. A terminator from the “gay future” comes back to kill Wooldoor, but Captain Hero has other plans for this macho machine.

The third episode, like most, deals with multiple plot threads. One story deals with a spelling bee that pits the Drawn Together house against the Peanuts gang, and explores some inner demons that Foxxy must overcome. Meanwhile, Captain Hero and Clara develop a torrid relationship based solely on grisly car crashes.

Episode 4 starts to get really twisted when we learn that Captain Hero has donated some sperm that was purchased and used by his single sister to conceive a giant mutant baby. Sparking some fatherly instincts, Hero tries to teach his son to service air conditioners, meanwhile back at the house, Clara is enjoying the attention she’s receiving for taking care of a sick Wooldoor…so much in fact that she decides to “keep him sick”.

Episode 5 was one of the more humorous of the bunch. After Foxxy catches her grandson, Ray Ray, stealing their TV she hides him in the walls of the house and takes the rap. While Foxxy goes to court Ray Ray falls in love with Toot and starts granting her the wishes she writes about in her diary.

Episode 6 and 8 originally aired as a two-part cliffhanger and dealt with Clara preaching about the Rapture to her roommates until they got so fed up they all went to the mall without her. Through a set of comical setups Clara believes her roommates were taken to heaven and she was left behind. She signs her soul over to the devil (or UPS guy in this case) and goes on a sinning spree. Meanwhile, the rest of the housemates get trapped when Xandir crams the van into a compact parking space. Insanity and cannibalism rear their ugly head as Foxxy heads inside the mall for help where she is captured by a Hot Topic employee who is running his own little animated version of Hostel in the backroom. This is truly one of the sickest episodes of the season.

Episode 7 has Ling-Ling posing as a chicken in Mexico and becoming the new champion of cockfighting. Then we come to my favorite episode of the season, actually my favorite episode of the entire season. The ninth installment features the entire cast as babies, and when mom and dad go out and the baby sitter accidentally dies the babies must unite to hide the body, fool her visiting boyfriend, and do it all without Captain Tattletale…err…Hero, finding out. The best part of this episode is we get to learn what life-altering events took place to turn the cast into the twisted individuals they are today.

Episode 10 has Ling-Ling removed from the house by Child Services and put into the foster care system where he ends up in the shack of Uncle Ben (the rice guy). Foxxy enters the foster care system to find and rescue Ling-Ling and ends up at Ben’s shack where it turns out he is her long lost Father. The hilarious side story in this episode deals with Captain Hero who finds out he can talk to his past self through his nipple ring (after it was struck by lightning). He pulls all sorts of cruel jokes on himself not realizing that this has all happened before and turned him into the loser he is today.

If any episode was ever going to generate a lawsuit it would be number 11, where Foxxy discovers she is such a slut because a long time ago she was raped by Fat Allen and his Gang. I’m sure Bill Cosby had his finger on the lawyer speed dial for this one. And when Foxxy loses her court case she goes on a Kill Bill-style killing spree to seek her own brand of justice. Meanwhile, Toot has been mistaken for a talking cow and whisked away to India where she is worshipped.

Episode 12 was another great story that dealt with all your favorite breakfast cereal characters. Wooldoor becomes the new Quackers mascot and starts living the good life with Hollywood-style parties until he gets addicted to Crunchberries. Episode 13 spans three story threads but the one of particular interest deals with Spanky Ham having a one-night stand with a spider (Rebecca Romijn) which spirals into a Fatal Attraction parody.

The season and the series wraps up with the 14th and final episode and an American Idol parody where all the houseguest must compete in a singing competition to stay in the house. You’ll hear a lot of classic songs from all three seasons, some with a new twist, and you’ll also get to see plenty of flashbacks from all your favorite Drawn Together moments.

Filmmaking: 7
Drawn Together has a fantastic premise that could have been taken a lot further than it ultimately went. You could substitute characters into the house each year and keep this concept going until the end of TV, but creators, writers and executive producers, Matt Silverstein and Dave Jeser took the low road when it came to humor, and while that works for a season or two (or even three), you really need something more if you want to last as long as The Simpsons or South Park.

Graphics: 8
When I watch these shows live on my HDTV they usually look like crap, mainly because I’m too lazy to force the TV into narrow letterbox so everything gets stretched and jagged. The DVD release looks a million times better than watching these shows live. The colors are vibrant and I love the character design. I also enjoy those gross close-up stills (usually of Toot) that pay homage to Ren and Stimpy inserts. I was also amazed at the skillful art design of all the licensed characters that were being hijacked for this season like the Peanuts Gang and Fat Albert…err…I mean Allen. That episode in particular was like watching a real episode of Fat Albert from the 70’s, just from the overall design and presentation style that mixed live action and animation.

Sound: 8
Despite only having heard of two of the cast members (Adam Carolla, Tara Strong), I have to compliment the entire cast of voice actors who create some unique and memorable characters. I can’t imagine trying to read some of these bizarre lines of dialogue into a studio microphone and keep a straight face. It’s also worth mentioning that season three comes with quite a bit of music, both original and parody. These are as hysterical and inappropriate as the rest of the show. The DVD is mixed in Dolby Digital 2.0 so you can hear all the cursing, belches, and farts in pristine clarity.

Value: 8
Aside from more than 5 hours of animated hilarity this DVD packs in some commentary on four of the episodes, so if you were wondering to yourself, “What were these twisted guys thinking?” now you can find out. Most of the chatter is fluff but the final commentary is actually quite revealing.

There is also a Karaoke Sing-Along, which would have been a whole lot better if it had included the entire song and not just the chorus. Each of these songs features new (and often disturbing) animation as well as equally disturbing lyrics. You can choose to sing along or sing alone. The rest of the bonus material is simply Comedy Central PR fluff; an excerpt from South Park and another from The Sarah Silverman Show, some Drawn Together character montages and some trailers for other Comedy Central DVD’s.

$20 isn’t a bad price, especially since this is the final season and you know you want to complete that collection. I would have enjoyed more commentary for the other episodes and more insightful commentary on the ones they did talk about.

Overall: 8.3
I have never laughed as hard as I have laughed these past six or so hours, while at the same time being shocked, yet oddly I was never offended. That’s not to say that Drawn Together Season Three won’t be offending plenty of people, but they were probably already offended when the shows aired on TV and won’t be buying this box set anyway.

Kudos to the cast and creators for creating one of the most memorable, twisted, demented pieces of animation in the history of cartoons. It was a great ride while it lasted and one that I will look forward to enjoying with occasional future viewings. If you love sick and perverse parodies that thumb their noses to copyright infringement lawsuits then you definitely want to check out Drawn Together Season Three – Uncensored.