In the late 90s, Saturday late night television came down to a choice: SNL on NBC, or MADtv on Fox. The latter, created by Fax Bahr and Adam Small featured a cast of young talented actors working with a low budget and without superstar guest appearances, although the show did feature a weekly celebrity guest. The sketches often contained offensive subjects and seemed, as many Fox programs even today, intended for a younger, edgier audience. I was a fan of the series for the first three or four seasons, although I haven’t watched any episodes in well over a decade.
That changed when I received the complete second season for review. The four disc set was created from the best available master copies available, but is really a no-frills release. Presentation quality is on par for what you would expect for a relatively low budget, late night show. The video is presented in a 1:33:1 format with stereo 2.0 audio. It gets the job done, and anyone looking to pick up this set likely isn’t concerned with the presentation quality anyway. For what it’s worth, the disc menus are laid out simply and effectively, displaying both the celebrity host and the original air date of the episode. Each episode also maintains the bumpers, i.e., the short clips before and after commercial breaks. This makes hearing the various “you are now watching Maaadddtttvvv” segments a little bit grating after a few episodes, but it’s nice that these bits are intact.
Perhaps the most glaring fault of this release is the complete lack of extra features. No commentaries, promos, and certainly no cast interviews, is a shame. As a way to distinguish itself from the new-normal of streaming services, on disc extra features would have been a huge plus to this release. Without it, combined with the straight-forward presentation, this is about as vanilla as a TV show on DVD release can get.
But that’s not to say this release is not without some significant worth, which given what I’ve said to this point, must lie within the content itself. There are actually a lot of good sketches in season two, thanks in large part to the talented cast. I’m not a movie or TV buff, but it’s surprising to me that actors like Brian Callen, Phil LaMarr, Artie Lange, David Herman, Debra Wilson, and the rest of the gang, didn’t go further in their careers. Their performances in season two are very good to great. Classic sketches with Phil LaMarr as the UBS Man have indeed held up over time, as well as Brian Callen as the annoying salesman in the “Incredible Findings” sketches. So while the series, this season included, has its fair share of forgettable sketches and guest hosts, there is a good amount of comedy to be enjoyed here, especially if you haven’t seen these episodes yet. As someone who had seen a lot of this season, the comedy wasn’t as impactful, but I had fun. And don’t forget the great Spy Vs Spy shorts — these violent, short animated pieces are clever and always added a neat extra dimension to each episode.
With that, let’s get to the summary…