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Released by: Shout! Factory
Released on: 11/11/2008
Director: Various
Cast: Timothy Stack, Jaime Bergman, Roland Kickinger, Kimberly Oja, Leila Arcieri
Year: 2001
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The Series:
Years ago in 2003, Fox released the first season and a half of the three seasons worth of material that made up the entirety of the Howard Stern produced Baywatch parody, Son Of The Beach. Five years later, Shout! Factory picks up the slack and finishes off the series with Volume 2, featuring the last twenty-one of the show's episodes.
For those who haven't seen the series, it follows the exploits of a dopey lifeguard named Notch Johnson (played by Timothy Stack) who is the man in charge of a lifeguard brigade called SPF-30 who operate on the beaches of Malibu Adjacent. His team is comprised of a dim but well meaning Schwarzenegger look-a-like named Chip Rommel (Roland Kickinger), a dumb blonde with a killer body named B.J. Cummings (Jaime Bergman), a foxy black chick named Jamaica St. Croix (Leila Arcieri) and the smartest of the group, Kimberlee Clark (Kimberly Oja), who sometimes shares a strange sort of sexual tension with Notch. They report to Mayor Anita Massengil (Lisa Banes), who generally exploits everyone she can, including her gay son, Kody (Jason Hopkins), who wants Notch's job so that he can fill the team with hunky dudes.
The episodes contained herein are:
Disc One:
It's a Nude, Nude, Nude, Nude World / It's Showtime At The Apollo 13! / The Island Of Dr. Merlot / The Sexorcist / Grand Prix / Area 69 / Booger Nights
Disc Two:
Penetration Island / Saturday Night Queefers / In The Line Of Booty / The Days Of The Condom / Witness For The Prostitution / The Gay Team / You Only Come Once
Disc Three:
Hamm Stroker's Suck My Blood / Godfather Knows Best / Empty The Dragon / The Long Hot Johnson / Taco Lips Now / Jailhouse Notch / Bad News, Mr. Johnson
The first half of this material holds up very well. There are some clever scripts that skewer all manner of movies, television shows and social stereotypes and political correctness is thrown out the window. As the series draws to a close, however, some of that cleverness that made the earlier material so fun goes with it and the series isn't so much funny as it is just dumb. That said, the good outweighs the bad here and it's nice to have the complete series now on DVD.
What works about the show? Aside from the copious amount of T&A on display in each and every episode, there are a lot of oddball casting choices to look for. Guest appearances from the likes of Gilbert Gottfried, George Takai, Hank The Angry Dwarf, Gary Delabonte, RuPaul, Adam Carolla, Lee Majors, Jason Alexander, Allen Thicke, and Jon Lovitz. While this might be a serious case of novelty casting, it's still fun to see some of the more obscure celebrities pop up in the series as it progresses. Aside from that, the regular cast members do a good job in their respective parts, particularly Timothy Stack who somehow manages to keep a straight face or give a dopey grin to the camera regardless of how asinine a situation he may find himself in. The movie parody bits that show up in episodes like The Sexorcist and Saturday Night Queefer are amusing as are rips on The Matrix and The A-Team.
While the series wasn't able to maintain its momentum through the later episodes, Son Of The Beach still got two out of three seasons right, and the last one wasn't terrible - it just had a lot to live up to.
Video/Audio/Extras:
While the 1.33.1 fullframe transfers aren't reference quality, they don't look bad. There is some grain and softness to the interlaced image that doesn't help things much but the colors look alright and for a low budget television series that is starting to show it's age a bit, the presentation is perfectly acceptable.
The English language Dolby Digital 2.0 is likewise perfectly acceptable. Dialogue is always easy to understand and there aren't any problems with hiss or distortion. Everything is well balanced and properly mixed, but there are a couple of scenes that sound a tad on the flat side. Overall though, the episodes sound fine.
First up are the commentary tracks from David Morgasen, Timothy Stack and James R. Stein, provided for the following episodes:
-It's A Nude, Nude, Nude, Nude
-It's Showtime At The Apollo 13!
-Saturday Night Queefer
-In The Line Of Booty
-The Gay Team
-You Only Come Once
-The Long, Hot Johnson
-Bad News, Mr. Johnson
The early commentaries are more humorous and funny than the later ones, which tend to be a little more serious as the participants begin to discuss the demise of the show and its cancellation. That said, there's a lot of good humor throughout these tracks as well as some interesting stories and trivia about the series and its history.
On Disc One we get behind the scenes featurettes for the Grand Prix and Island Of Dr. Merlot episodes that run about seventeen minutes in total. These are fun as they give us a look at what it was like on set while the series was still in production. Disc Two has some footage from the pilot table read where we get a chance to see various people trying to figure out how to portray various characters. Some original Son Of The Beach promo spots are also included. Disc Three contains some amusing Cast Audition footage where we get a chance to see five actors and actresses strut their stuff in order to hopefully land the part.
Aside from that, each disc also includes new in-character introductions from Stack as Notch Johnson, sexy highlights (just an assembly of footage showing of scantily clad ladies) and promo spots for other Shout! Factory releases. Animated menus and chapter selection are also included. You can watch each episode individually or through a 'play all' feature.
The Final Word:
This later batch of episodes isn't quite as funny as the first season of the series but there are still plenty of raunchy laughs to be found in Son Of The Beach Volume 2 thanks to some clever pop culture parody and plenty of crass humor delivered in an appropriately deadpan manner by Stack and company. Shout! Factory's set looks and sounds alright and there's a nice selection of extra material here as well that will certainly appeal to the show's cult following.