Chappelle's Show Season Two DVD Review

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After a solid first season DVD and the new incentive of DVD participation, I was expecting a lot more out of Chappelle’s Show: Season Two. Alot of the other bonus footage is too long and needed to be edited down.

The extra stand-up footage has a lot of funny bits like the Star Search bit, but half of it is Dave Chappelle making fun of the directors giving him instructions. Maybe you had to be there, and maybe it is cool to see Chappelle being as irreverent about his own show as he is towards his subject matter, but it felt like inconsequential trims. Yeah, you have to do your intros to your skits. It’s not that funny when you talk about the voice giving you instructions.

The hour plus of outtakes and deleted scenes, all crammed together, also feels like too much. They should have put a short reel of flubbed lines, and a short compilation of extended footage from skits and a third compilation of the actual unused skits. As they stand, it’s just like wading through tapes of raw footage.

There are some funny one-liners and some amusing goofs, but you’re not going to sit through more than an hour of footage. You can select only the skits you’re interested in, and I’d recommend Negrodamus for more Paul Moody, but if you’re curious like I am, you’ll want to see it all and it’ll be slow.

It’s great to have extra Charlie Murphy stories, but man, they need to be edited. Just watching him tell stories in front of a green screen does not have much impact without cutting to Chappelle playing the characters from the story. And Murphy is a good storyteller. It’s just hard to hear 20 minutes of story.

Even the Rick James interview, which is priceless in light of his recent death, is too long and raw. It’s nice to hear James smack talk Charlie Murphy, but it needs to have some context.

Of course the episodes of Chappelle’s Show are worth the price of the DVD, but I could not recommend watching all these extras.