Saturday Night Live: The Best of Saturday TV Funhouse (2006)

TV. Saturday Night Live: TV Funhouse is as twisted and inventive as Family Guy but edgier -- as only Saturday Night Live and Robert Smigel can be -- and hosted by the Ambiguously Gay Duo cartoon characters (special thanks to Stephen Colbert). I confess AGD seems weak to me after the initial gag line "What is everyone looking at?" wears thin. Admittedly, it's a tenuous plot line at best, so it's only a fun picnic to those who brought their own potato salad. Putting AGD vignettes between the many cartoon episodes esp. interacting with the comedy crew was OK. This DVD is chock full of 24 zany episodes with transitions plus 20 or so additional sketches as extras. There's no room to list much less capsulize them all. My favorites include the Abu Dhabi Kids show Saddam and Osama (with a commercial for Rocks!); GE: Sexual Harassment and You (where the only determinant between what is and is not harassment is the confidence and attractiveness of the male); Bill Clinton's "that woman" national address (yuck!); Michael Jackson (nasty!); Inside the Disney Vault (ewww!); The Narrator That Ruined Christmas (Burl Ives's Snowman loses his cool after 9/11); Jesus Christ (tussles with televangelists but loves Linus reciting the Nativity); Divertor (combines forces with the President, Nancy Grace, and the fearmongering Fox News); Find the Black People in the Knicks Game (blip!); Christmastime for the Jews (great claymation and vocals); Sen. John McCain (introduces Pres. Bush after much self-torture); and Shazzang! (a genie with, um, father issues). Fun with Real Audio extras include the animated mashups Perot/King, State of the Union, Snyder/Parton, Casablanca, and more. Further cartoon extras include Titey (Titanic turned Disneyfied pap), Ray of Light (Disney remakes adding football's Ray Lewis), Heteroy (an antigay evangelist and his buds), Globetrotters Christmas (the boys shoot hoops with Joseph and Baby Jesus), Religetables (a VeggieTales spoof concerning religious strife and scandals), All-New Adventures of Mr. T, Passion of the Dumpty, Santa and the States (a Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer spoof where Santa sides with the "liberal elite"), Wheaty (the Lassie-dubbed wheaten terrier), Bees (unaired: Bush and posse call bees terrorists and "liberate" [decimate] a beehive ["not for the honey"]), and Conspiracy Theory Rock (a Schoolhouse Rock spoof). AGD gets 1.5 stars but the whole disc 4 stars.