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Heh Heh! This is Cool! Beavis and Butt-Head: The Complete Collection on DVD
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Submitted by Dennis Russo on Mon, 02/27/2017 - 07:58
I have sometimes wondered to myself: Am I the only person in existence that still has a Beavis and Butt-Head “Final Word”” still in original package? I don’t know. But what I do know is that now, finally, the world of Beavis and Butt-Head is available in a comprehensive 12 DVD set that includes every season, the music videos, a collector’s edition of the movie “Beavis and Butt-Head Do America," the original un-cut short “Frog Baseball,” and a plethora of other extras that includes everything from VMA appearances, a Thanksgiving Special with Kurt Loder, the 95’96’ Butt-Bowls, the MTV 20th Anniversary Special, a 2011 Comicon Panel featuring Mike Judge and moderator Johnny Knoxville, and seemingly countless promos, montages and more.
Airing originally from March 1993 thru November of 1997, Beavis and Butt-Head changed the way I looked at cartoons forever. I don’t know why, but on more than one level I could actually relate to them! I admit I lived in t-shirts in those days, and most had names of either heavy metal or other rock band names on them. And I had a couple of friends that I hung out with all the time, and all we did was watch rock videos..
The discs here do justice to the boys, and what's nice is that all of the episodes (hand picked by Mike Judge, by the way) are short so you go from one to another quickly, being able to view several every hour!
This is not a set that you would care if it was crystal sharp or not. In fact, for some reason, I wished I was watching it on a cathode ray tube TV again as the “shakiness” that is part of their drawing seems more pronounced in high def.
One thing that is different from the show is that the music videos are separate. If my aging memory serves me correctly, the music videos were interspersed within the half-hour show between the episodes, which gave a nice break in the show. I likened them to miniature versions of MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000 episodes, using instead music videos (back when bands made music videos) to pick apart. And what’s even more funny is that they were so right in what they said about them! Seeing them here brought back a flood of memories as I remembered these bands, most of which I have not given a thought to for over 20 years, I don’t mind that they are separated here, but it is just different.
One thing I never noticed before until now was how much a recurring foible to the boys, Mr. Anderson, looks and sounds like another of Mike Judge's iconic characters, Hank Hill from KING OF THE HILL, which started airing the same year the Beavis and Butt-Head ended. Although Hank appears to be a little taller and leaner, their voices are identical.
This set brought me down memory lane and helped me realize just how much the boy’s affected not only my speech but my thought patterns as well! There is a recreational game here in the Midwest called “Cornhole,” and all that keeps running through my head whenever I hear it called that is, “Heh-heh... he said 'cornhole.'” Which in turn instantly reminds me of Beavis when he pulls his t-shirt neck hole up to the top of his head and called himself “The Great Cornholio.”
There is just too much in this set to list here, but rest assured if you are a B and B fan (as I admittedly am) there is nothing to disappoint here, and everything to make you glad you bought it. I mean--are you ready for this?--there are over 1041 minutes of Beavis and Butt-Head in this set! That’s over 17 hours!
Now, with that, I will say don’t try and binge watch it, because one thing I noticed was that after watching the jitteriness of the cartoon and all the heh-heh’s, I found myself a bit jittery, as well as eye weary. But if you own the set, what’s the rush? Sit back and enjoy a little bit each night.
Mike Judge broke the mold with these boys. The things he they got them into both on purpose and by happenstance, and the people they irritated on a regular basis, from their nerdy “Winger” t-shirt wearing neighbor Stewart, the on-the-edge-of-a-nervous breakdown Highland High school Principle Mr. McVicker, and the tree-hugger teacher Mr. Van Driessen, to the drill sergeant-like Gym Coach Bradley Buzzcut and Daria ("Diarrhea...heh-heh") Morgendorffer, the cast of characters became the stuff of TV legend!
If you have kids that have never seen them, but have heard of them and are old enough to “get it” ( I can’t believe that parental warning on the box; there is worse shown and said on network TV these days, so you be the judge, not the box) and you don’t mind the dated-ness of some of the music references, this set would be great fun for the whole family to watch. And who knows, maybe they’ll come back for a third go at it--but maybe on a channel that is more relevant these days than MTV.
So, in my best Beavis voice, I will say in closing: ”Heh-Heh. This is cool. You have to get this, otherwise you’re a dumb-ass. Dumb-ass. Heh-heh-heh!”
Grade:
5.0 / 5.0
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