Drawn Together – Season Two
Uncensored and Extended Edition
Creators: Dave Jeser and Matthew Silverstein
Comedy Central

This is the true life story of eight cartoon characters picked to live in a house and have their lives recorded. Find out what happens when they stop acting nice and start acting real. There’s Clara, the racist, homophobic anti-semantic princess; Foxxy Love, the mystery-solving musician; the manly superhero Captain Hero; Ling Ling, the cute but deadly Asian anime animal; Xandir, the video game adventurer; Spanky Ham, the Internet download sensation; and Toots, the black and white 1920’s sex symbol.

Picking up right where the cliffhanger season one episode ended, season two continues to laugh in the face of political correctness, skirts the line of copyright infringement with each scene, and swings for the fences to offend all who dare to tune in. And like any good second season or sequel, creators Dave Jeser and Matthew Silverstein, along with an army of psychotic writers, push everything harder and faster this time around. If any punches were pulled during the first season, they certainly don’t seem to be pulling any this time around, especially with the freedom of the DVD format and those two glorious words “not rated.”

Our eight protagonists, as well as a few secondary characters, provide gratuitous nudity, AIDS jokes, obscene language, forced sexual situations, homosexual taunting, abortion jokes, allusions to the Holocaust, and tear into Lost, The Shawshank Redemption, Strawberry Shortcake, and Speedy Gonzales — and that is just the first episode! Yes, like contemporaries South Park and Family Guy, the gang here goes from 0-60 in a blink of an eye with button-pushing hot topics, entertainment references, and just the most jaw-dropping bottom-of-the-barrel one-liners you can imagine.

Being cartoons, they get away with a helluva lot more than any live-action show could hope for. The only thing that keeps the show from getting boycotted by, well just about everyone, is that the show has almost (dare I say it) an innocence to it. And like other brilliant social comedians such as Sacha Baron Cohen, Stephen Colbert, and Ann Coulter, it goes so over the top that it shows just how ludicrous what the characters are thinking. I’m sure having a few Jews on the creative team gets them a lot slack too. That being said, Drawn Together should still be avoided by those with thin skin, women who are pregnant or plan to get pregnant, people with liver problems, and the elderly. Side effects may include seizures, abdominal pain, loss of sleep, and a desire to be on a reality television show.

Season Two of Drawn Together comes completely uncensored, with all the swear words unbleeped and the gratuitous nudity without mosaic blocking. I never saw these episodes when they aired, so I’m not sure if any additional material has been added that had to be removed for television broadcast. The two-disc set includes all fourteen episodes, which are housed in two digipack cases in a sturdy slipcase with a lenticular cover.

Audio commentary with the creators and several of the voiceover actors are included on “Clum Babies,” “Super Nanny,” “Terms Of Endearment,” and “A Very Special Drawn Together After School Special.” They are a hoot to listen to, but only for sheer entertainment, as there is not much in-depth talk. Instead you just get everyone goofing off and telling quirky stories, with just a few gems of information. There are several solo interviews spread across the two discs. These segments include the creators, as well as the voice actors for Captain Hero, Ling Ling, Foxxy Love, Clara, Toot, Wooldoor, and Xandir. They are well worth watching and provide the inside look lacking in the commentaries, as you get a peek at how the show is created and how the characters come to life through these gifted voice talents. Plus, getting to put faces to the voices is always fun. Surprisingly missing though is Adam Corrola, the voice of Spanky Ham and perhaps the most well-known voice on the crew.

Also included on Disc One is a karaoke sing-a-long for six of the musical numbers that pop up throughout the season. While they are fun for the lyrics and a few jokes that may have been overlooked, serious karaoke fans may be a bit bothered by the sound mixing and the completely unprofessional manner at which the “bouncing ball” keeps time. But if you are a serious karaoke fan, you should be at the local watering hole right now croaking out Tiffany tunes and crooning Poison ballads. Stop reading please.