The Weird Al Show
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Acidpickle
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Well today I made a list for my dad to pick up some stuff for me after he was done work. On the list was: Scary Movie 4, The Simpsons: Season 8, and The Weird Al Show. My dad came back with Scary Movie 4 and The Simpsons, but no Weird Al. I was happy for my other purchases, but I still wanted Weird Al. My Question is, where in Canada can you pick up The Weird Al Show DVD? I am going into the city on Friday and I would like to know where I can buy it from.
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Weirdalover
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Cold Heartless review of the dvd.
Todays lesson: Weird Al should stick to what he does best song parodies, music videos, and DVD commentaries and avoid trying to come up with original stories in other mediums.
Weird Al Yankovics song parodies are often ingenious, his music videos are frequently brilliant, but his feature film, UHF, was disappointing, and his childrens TV show, The Weird Al Show, is just an utter mess.
For The Weird Al Show, Al played a dimwitted version of himself, living in a wacky, subterranean playhouse twenty miles below the surface of the Earth. His sole roommate was a character familiar to many of his fans: Harvey the Wonder Hamster, an absolutely ordinary hamster whose only distinguishing characteristic is that he has his own theme song.
Recurring characters on the show included Als next-door neighbor, the Hooded Avenger (Brian Haley), Bobby the Inquisitive Boy (Gary LeRoi Gray), Madame Judy the Psychic (Judy Tenuta), Val Brentwood, Gal Spy (Paula Jai Parker) and the very easy-on-the-eyes Cousin Corky (Danielle Weeks), who fortunately gets lots of extra screen time in later episodes.
The short-lived Weird Al Show lasted just 13 episodes on CBSs Saturday morning lineup in 1997 and 98.
First off, what initially bugs me about this endeavor is that its a show geared specifically for little kids. To me, Weird Al is at his best when he sprinkles his offerings with a bit of a bite, stuff that probably will go over the heads of most kids but that he still couldnt get away with putting in a kids show. Take for example some of my favorite lyrics from his song One More Minute:
...Im stranded all alone
at the gas station of love
and I have to use
the self-service pump.
See what I mean? Genius, but itd never fly on a kids show. Instead of ideally getting a weekly version of Als infrequent Al TV specials that run on MTV (and which would be great to get someday on DVD), The Weird Al Show is more like a Pee Wees Playhouse for the intellectually inept.
The other thing that bugs me about the show is that it really, really, really dumbs down its content to the point where each episode begins with a title card that reads Todays lesson is... and an announcer reads it aloud.
This educational lesson is nearly always some kind of obvious behavioral advice such as, you should try to understand people who are different from you, or its important to acknowledge your mistakes, learn from them, and try to do better next time, which then gets beaten into the viewer over and over with all the subtlety of repeated punches to the groin.
Many of the episodes do a highly dubious job of successfully illustrating said lesson to boot, such as the episode that states, the best way to work out a problem with a bully is through peaceful communication. Here, Al repeatedly tries to peacefully communicate with a bully only to antagonize said bully further. Ultimately, Al decides to quit his show and just leave when suddenly the bully has a dramatic change of heart and they become friends.
A great disadvantage of this whole lesson concept for each show is that it almost always falls on Al himself to be the one who has to learn each episodes incredibly obvious lesson. This translates into Al having to act like a complete jerk or moron for a majority of each episode, which leaves his TV personality very unappealing. Its hard to want to keep going back to Als subterranean playhouse week after week if the owner is coming across as a stupid dick 90% of the time.
Its not just the lessons that get dumbed way down, its the jokes, too. In one episode, Al promises his friends he can get John Tesh to appear when he lies and says the two of them are good friends. After ultimately admitting to his friends that he lied, Al doesnt notice when Tesh arrives on set anyway. To make damn certain the audience gets the joke, the name John Tesh! appears on screen with a clip of him shown earlier in the program. Ugh.
But the episodes arent a total loss. Occasionally an honestly funny nugget of material manages to squeeze through, but you really have to look. At some point in almost every episode, Al sits down to watch a few minutes of TV.
Okay, I thought, this is the reason to watch this show as it was the random parody sketches peppered throughout Als movie UHF, such as the Conan the Librarian and Rauls Wild Kingdom sketches, that provided the films best and funniest moments. Yet, sadly, while there are some great, brief parody commercial and TV show sketches thrown in here such as Pirate Day Care and French Prince of Bel-Air as the episodes get higher in number, the parodies become more belabored and less inspired.
The frequent exercise workout, news anchor, and got milk? parodies get old fast while drifting farther from the target material with each passing permutation.
The Fatman cartoons, another reoccurring feature of the show, are hardly even worth writing about. While the animation style is quite eye-catching, the writing is sub-par at best. Each installment finds Fatman (a purposefully lame superhero inspired by Als Fat music video) up against a new super villain with some kind of evil plot involving food that ultimately Fatman will eat.
Harvey the Wonder Hamster is Fatmans sidekick and here he not only talks but is obviously the brains of the duo. After the first cartoon, where Fatman proves himself to be utterly incompetent and Harvey must do all the work to save the city, this one-gag cartoon had already worn out its welcome for me.
As disappointed as I was in Als movie UHF, I must point out that the films DVD commentary is phenomenal easily one of the five best DVD commentaries Ive ever listened to. Highly informative, refreshingly candid, and hysterically funny, it far surpasses the actual movie for sheer entertainment value multiple times over.
Thankfully, the DVD commentary for The Weird Al Show follows the tradition and is just as fantastic and enjoyable as the movie commentary. Listening to each episodes commentary (and, yes, theres a commentary by Al, director Peyton Reed, and producer Thomas F. Frank on all 13 episodes) nearly makes watching the show itself worth it. In fact, its in listening to the commentaries that we learn just why the show is the mess it is.
Apparently, when CBS was interested in buying a Saturday morning kids show starring Yankovic, the FCC had just recently mandated that the networks must show three hours of educational programming each Saturday morning.
Eager not to let CBSs interest in his show go away, Al told the executives that his show was indeed educational, thus the lessons had to be incorporated into each episode. But to make sure it would appear as though The Weird Al Show was indeed educational, CBS ordered the extreme lack of subtlety evident in the final integration of each lesson.
Combine this with Als off-kilter sense of humor (which often, as I pointed out earlier, is best enjoyed by adults) and super-cutesy, fluffy kids content and youre left with what Al himself dubs in one of its commentaries, a show for nobody.
Its hard for me to recommend The Weird Al Show to anyone but the most fanatical Weird Al fans out there. Heck, even Al himself, along with the others responsible for the show, admit it makes them wince.
The plot lines are stupid (even for a kids show), the numerous guest stars are wasted, and the whole endeavor reeks of compromise after dirty compromise. If you positively worship Al, unabashedly love his movie UHF, and positively salivate at the thought of buying anything associated with him, then go ahead and pick up The Weird Al Show on DVD.
For the rest of Als fan base, youre better off just waiting until next month for his new CD, Straight Outta Lynwood, to satisfy your Weird Al craving. Anyone who isnt already a Weird Al admirer should absolutely avoid this DVD set. It wont be making any new fans.
Todays lesson: Weird Al should stick to what he does best song parodies, music videos, and DVD commentaries and avoid trying to come up with original stories in other mediums.
Weird Al Yankovics song parodies are often ingenious, his music videos are frequently brilliant, but his feature film, UHF, was disappointing, and his childrens TV show, The Weird Al Show, is just an utter mess.
For The Weird Al Show, Al played a dimwitted version of himself, living in a wacky, subterranean playhouse twenty miles below the surface of the Earth. His sole roommate was a character familiar to many of his fans: Harvey the Wonder Hamster, an absolutely ordinary hamster whose only distinguishing characteristic is that he has his own theme song.
Recurring characters on the show included Als next-door neighbor, the Hooded Avenger (Brian Haley), Bobby the Inquisitive Boy (Gary LeRoi Gray), Madame Judy the Psychic (Judy Tenuta), Val Brentwood, Gal Spy (Paula Jai Parker) and the very easy-on-the-eyes Cousin Corky (Danielle Weeks), who fortunately gets lots of extra screen time in later episodes.
The short-lived Weird Al Show lasted just 13 episodes on CBSs Saturday morning lineup in 1997 and 98.
First off, what initially bugs me about this endeavor is that its a show geared specifically for little kids. To me, Weird Al is at his best when he sprinkles his offerings with a bit of a bite, stuff that probably will go over the heads of most kids but that he still couldnt get away with putting in a kids show. Take for example some of my favorite lyrics from his song One More Minute:
...Im stranded all alone
at the gas station of love
and I have to use
the self-service pump.
See what I mean? Genius, but itd never fly on a kids show. Instead of ideally getting a weekly version of Als infrequent Al TV specials that run on MTV (and which would be great to get someday on DVD), The Weird Al Show is more like a Pee Wees Playhouse for the intellectually inept.
The other thing that bugs me about the show is that it really, really, really dumbs down its content to the point where each episode begins with a title card that reads Todays lesson is... and an announcer reads it aloud.
This educational lesson is nearly always some kind of obvious behavioral advice such as, you should try to understand people who are different from you, or its important to acknowledge your mistakes, learn from them, and try to do better next time, which then gets beaten into the viewer over and over with all the subtlety of repeated punches to the groin.
Many of the episodes do a highly dubious job of successfully illustrating said lesson to boot, such as the episode that states, the best way to work out a problem with a bully is through peaceful communication. Here, Al repeatedly tries to peacefully communicate with a bully only to antagonize said bully further. Ultimately, Al decides to quit his show and just leave when suddenly the bully has a dramatic change of heart and they become friends.
A great disadvantage of this whole lesson concept for each show is that it almost always falls on Al himself to be the one who has to learn each episodes incredibly obvious lesson. This translates into Al having to act like a complete jerk or moron for a majority of each episode, which leaves his TV personality very unappealing. Its hard to want to keep going back to Als subterranean playhouse week after week if the owner is coming across as a stupid dick 90% of the time.
Its not just the lessons that get dumbed way down, its the jokes, too. In one episode, Al promises his friends he can get John Tesh to appear when he lies and says the two of them are good friends. After ultimately admitting to his friends that he lied, Al doesnt notice when Tesh arrives on set anyway. To make damn certain the audience gets the joke, the name John Tesh! appears on screen with a clip of him shown earlier in the program. Ugh.
But the episodes arent a total loss. Occasionally an honestly funny nugget of material manages to squeeze through, but you really have to look. At some point in almost every episode, Al sits down to watch a few minutes of TV.
Okay, I thought, this is the reason to watch this show as it was the random parody sketches peppered throughout Als movie UHF, such as the Conan the Librarian and Rauls Wild Kingdom sketches, that provided the films best and funniest moments. Yet, sadly, while there are some great, brief parody commercial and TV show sketches thrown in here such as Pirate Day Care and French Prince of Bel-Air as the episodes get higher in number, the parodies become more belabored and less inspired.
The frequent exercise workout, news anchor, and got milk? parodies get old fast while drifting farther from the target material with each passing permutation.
The Fatman cartoons, another reoccurring feature of the show, are hardly even worth writing about. While the animation style is quite eye-catching, the writing is sub-par at best. Each installment finds Fatman (a purposefully lame superhero inspired by Als Fat music video) up against a new super villain with some kind of evil plot involving food that ultimately Fatman will eat.
Harvey the Wonder Hamster is Fatmans sidekick and here he not only talks but is obviously the brains of the duo. After the first cartoon, where Fatman proves himself to be utterly incompetent and Harvey must do all the work to save the city, this one-gag cartoon had already worn out its welcome for me.
As disappointed as I was in Als movie UHF, I must point out that the films DVD commentary is phenomenal easily one of the five best DVD commentaries Ive ever listened to. Highly informative, refreshingly candid, and hysterically funny, it far surpasses the actual movie for sheer entertainment value multiple times over.
Thankfully, the DVD commentary for The Weird Al Show follows the tradition and is just as fantastic and enjoyable as the movie commentary. Listening to each episodes commentary (and, yes, theres a commentary by Al, director Peyton Reed, and producer Thomas F. Frank on all 13 episodes) nearly makes watching the show itself worth it. In fact, its in listening to the commentaries that we learn just why the show is the mess it is.
Apparently, when CBS was interested in buying a Saturday morning kids show starring Yankovic, the FCC had just recently mandated that the networks must show three hours of educational programming each Saturday morning.
Eager not to let CBSs interest in his show go away, Al told the executives that his show was indeed educational, thus the lessons had to be incorporated into each episode. But to make sure it would appear as though The Weird Al Show was indeed educational, CBS ordered the extreme lack of subtlety evident in the final integration of each lesson.
Combine this with Als off-kilter sense of humor (which often, as I pointed out earlier, is best enjoyed by adults) and super-cutesy, fluffy kids content and youre left with what Al himself dubs in one of its commentaries, a show for nobody.
Its hard for me to recommend The Weird Al Show to anyone but the most fanatical Weird Al fans out there. Heck, even Al himself, along with the others responsible for the show, admit it makes them wince.
The plot lines are stupid (even for a kids show), the numerous guest stars are wasted, and the whole endeavor reeks of compromise after dirty compromise. If you positively worship Al, unabashedly love his movie UHF, and positively salivate at the thought of buying anything associated with him, then go ahead and pick up The Weird Al Show on DVD.
For the rest of Als fan base, youre better off just waiting until next month for his new CD, Straight Outta Lynwood, to satisfy your Weird Al craving. Anyone who isnt already a Weird Al admirer should absolutely avoid this DVD set. It wont be making any new fans.
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Orthography Enthusiast
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Well, it's not a favorable review, but it probably lines up fairly well with Al's own view of the show, and ascribes the same reasons for its hit-or-missness that Al has done (in the past, I mean; I tried to get it today at two places and failed, so I haven't heard the commentary and I'm going to order it at the Mothership tonight).
OTOH, there are clearly lots of things about Al's musical and video work that the guy likes just fine, and he put in a heads-up for SOL. So that's a good thing.
OTOH, there are clearly lots of things about Al's musical and video work that the guy likes just fine, and he put in a heads-up for SOL. So that's a good thing.
"Weird Al" has a charisma that's all his own. The awkward, the misshapen, the socially inept flock to his banner.
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MarsBar
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That happened to me yesterday (except I got Inuyasha The Movie 4). I`m starting to worry you can`t get TWAS in Canada. It`s nowhere in Ontario. I finally decided I`ll wait until SOL is released and order them both on amazon.ca to get free shipping.Acidpickle @ Aug 16 2006, 12:53 AM wrote: Well today I made a list for my dad to pick up some stuff for me after he was done work. On the list was: Scary Movie 4, The Simpsons: Season 8, and The Weird Al Show. My dad came back with Scary Movie 4 and The Simpsons, but no Weird Al. I was happy for my other purchases, but I still wanted Weird Al. My Question is, where in Canada can you pick up The Weird Al Show DVD? I am going into the city on Friday and I would like to know where I can buy it from.
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Themagic#27
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Kevbo1987
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That review is rough, but a lot of it is fairly accurate. The show had many shortcomings due to the unreasonable demands of CBS. They succeeded in turning it into something it was never supposed to be, and they comprimised Al's humor. However, I enjoy the show far more than that reviewer. I think that review failed to mention many of the positive aspects of the show. Despite all of its shortcomings, it is still a funny and enjoyable show.
Oh by the way, I've cracked the code.
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TheMeccaOfAlbinoPoodles
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I might be picking this up early next week along with Simpsons Season 8. (Birthday + Friday = very yes) I hope the stores have them in by then.
PS: My local Circuit City is horribly understaffed- I was picking up some DVD+Rs the other day and the one register was closed. This other woman was at Customer Service (the only open register) for about 10 minutes with no assistiance (people were getting an air conditioner, god forbid I couldn't get a $5 pack of DVDRs) and the situation wasn't handled until my mom and I came onto the now-forming line.
I get my DVDs at Wal-Mart and Best Buy (best place for reliability, they had like 15 copies of the Pee-Wee's Playhouse sets).
PS: My local Circuit City is horribly understaffed- I was picking up some DVD+Rs the other day and the one register was closed. This other woman was at Customer Service (the only open register) for about 10 minutes with no assistiance (people were getting an air conditioner, god forbid I couldn't get a $5 pack of DVDRs) and the situation wasn't handled until my mom and I came onto the now-forming line.
I get my DVDs at Wal-Mart and Best Buy (best place for reliability, they had like 15 copies of the Pee-Wee's Playhouse sets).
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