"Excuse me. Everyone, I have a brief announcement to make. Jesus was black, Ronald Reagan was the devil, and the government is lying about 9/11. Thank you for your time, and good night." - Huey Freeman (Regina King) during a dream in which he makes white people riot
The Boondocks: The Complete First Season DVD Review
By Jude Clement
Critics can sometimes lead you astray. When The Boondocks premiered on Cartoon Network's "Adult Swim" in fall 2005, I avoided it because of a fairly damning review in a national magazine. Well, that and the fact that it played well past my bedtime (I'm old - cut me some slack). Upon watching The Boondocks: The Complete First Season, I was surprised to discover that the series is often hysterically funny. Yep, critics can be wrong. Except for those on tvdvdreviews.com - we get everything right.
Created by Aaron McGruder and based on his popular comic strip, The Boondocks follows two brothers - Huey Freeman (Regina King), whose revolutionary zeal often leads him to fight the (white) power, and Riley Freeman (also voiced by King), a pint-sized gangsta wannabe - as they adjust to life in suburban Woodcrest. The brothers grew up in Chicago's rough-and-tumble South Side, but when their grandfather, Robert "Granddad" Freeman (John Witherspoon), becomes their legal guardian, he decides to move the family to the calm, quiet 'burbs. But will the 'burbs stay calm and quiet with Huey and Riley around?
The family meets a variety of people in their new neighborhood. Uncle Ruckus (Gary Anthony Williams) is a pop-eyed eccentric who hates all fellow blacks and claims to have "ritiligo," a skin disorder that unfortunately makes him darker than he actually is. Ed Wuncler (The Mary Tyler Moore Show's Edward Asner) is a borderline evil businessman who owns half of Woodcrest and is scheming to get his hands on the other half. Tom DuBois (Cedric Yarbrough) is a black assistant district attorney who is married to a white woman. Jazmine (Gabby Soliel) is their perky, horse-loving daughter.
With its liberal use of epithets (including the TV equivalent of the nuclear bomb, the "n-word") and satiric plotlines, The Boondocks will probably be most often compared to South Park. But where South Park goes for easy targets, McGruder's scripts dare to take on the hot button issues of race and race relations. Nothing is taboo or sacrosanct. Idiotic behavior by blacks and whites is lampooned, someone points out how ridiculous everyone is acting, and then they go about their lives, completely unchanged.
In many ways, The Boondocks is closer to old Peanuts specials than to South Park. Okay, so we never saw full-frontal male nudity in any of the Charlie Brown specials, but bear with me. Like the classic Peanuts cartoons, much of The Boondocks features a jazzy, piano-based musical score (with a little hip hop thrown in for good measure). Like Peanuts, characters sometimes impart little life lessons. Unlike Peanuts, the life lessons are either completely wrong or are ignored by everyone else.
The most direct tribute to Peanuts occurs in "A Huey Freeman Christmas," a funny, daffy take on A Charlie Brown Christmas. A well-meaning (but soft-headed) teacher recruits Huey to direct the school's Christmas pageant. He even grants him total creative control. When Huey walks into a rehearsal to discover his youthful cast dancing madly about, he fires them and recruits Denzel Washington and Angela Bassett to star in the show. He even hires Quincy Jones to co-produce what he now calls "The Adventures of Black Jesus." In the meantime, Riley wages war on the mall Santa, complaining that he always forgets to visit the ghetto. He even writes Santa a taunting letter in a sequence that expertly parodies Sally's letter to the guy in the red suit. In this episode, the musical connection is even more overt than usual, with "O Christmas Tree," "Jingle Bells," and other holiday favorites performed by a lone piano as in the original Christmas special. Granddad even watches something that sounds an awful lot like A Charlie Brown Christmas on TV, but when he's moved to tears by Linus' "true meaning of Christmas" speech, Huey proclaims that "Christmas is a pagan holiday, and Jesus probably hates you for celebrating it." He goes on to explain "the entire history of Christmas," but after a few seconds, all Granddad hears is the "wah-wah" sound usually reserved for the voice of adults in the world of Peanuts. For her part, Jazmine says that the true meaning of Christmas is that "Santa died for our gifts and rose from the dead and moved to the North Pole and because of that, every year Santa comes down to forgive us our sins and give us eternal presents." This episode is a pitch-perfect look at consumerism, religion, and the use of small children as shields against pellet gun fire.
The series takes on another sacred cow in "Return of the King," its Martin Luther King Day episode. Huey imagines what it would have been like if King hadn't died in 1968 but instead had fallen into a 32 year coma. He wakes up to a world in which he's barely relevant and becomes labeled a terrorist sympathizer when, in the aftermath of 9/11, he talks of God's exhortation that we "turn the other cheek." Soon, he's an outcast. In 2005, he finds himself in Woodcrest signing copies of this autobiography for readers who never show up. He seems to be beaten, but thanks to Huey, he's soon speaking out about the inanity of BET, Soul Plane, and black culture in general. There are many funny things about this episode, but it is also quite sad and poignant.
Almost every episode is funny, but several are standouts. In "The Trial of Robert Kelly," the city goes crazy when R&B star R. Kelly is put on trial for giving a minor a golden shower. In "Guess Hoe's Coming to Dinner," Granddad dates a hot young woman who he doesn't realize is a prostitute. In "The Story of Ganstalicious," Riley's favorite rapper is wounded in a shootout, leading Riley to a shocking discovery. In "The Itis," Granddad opens a soul food restaurant that specializes in "The Luther," a one pound burger and five strips of bacon nestled between two donuts.
Guest voices include Charlie Murphy (Chappelle's Show), Adam West (Batman), Cree Summer (A Different World), Miguel Sandoval (Medium), Samuel L. Jackson (Snakes on a Plane), Sway, Mos Def, Judge Reinhold, and John C. McGinley (Scrubs).
The episodes included here are uncut and uncensored. Presumably, some of the more colorful language was bleeped during the series' TV run and some of the male nudity was digitally hidden. It's all on display here, though, so if you're easily offended, rent something else.
The fifteen episodes that make up The Complete First Season are divided onto three discs. The discs are housed in three slim, clear plastic keepcases. The fronts of the cases are decorated with drawings of the characters: Huey on disc one, Riley on disc two, and Granddad on disc three. The interiors of the cases include rough sketches of the characters which spill over onto the actual discs. The backs of the cases include titles and brief synopses for each episode. The keepcases slide into a cardboard outer sleeve.
The eye-catching comic strip-themed DVD menus are simple and easy to navigate. Viewers can play all of the disc's episodes or choose an individual one. The episodes are divided into chapters, but there are no scene selection menus.
