Mad Season 1 Part 1

A TV show from the self-described "biggest producers of garbage on the planet"? On DVD? Yep.

MAD premiered on Cartoon Network last year to mixed reactions. The younger folk seem to like it well enough, the snooty late-teens and nostalgic twenty-somethings turn up their noses, and the older folk just scratch their heads and say "MAD magazine is still around? Huh." In a nutshell, I would dare to describe it as "Robot Chicken for a PG audience". Animated sketch comedy that parodies and mashes up every facet of pop culture that might be relevant to today's cartoon-watching crowd.

And in my opinion, it works. What we're presented with here is a high-octane stream of movie riffs, kids' cartoon parodies, Internet memes, gross-out jokes, and quirky little bumps between segments (some of which are produced by the legendary Sergio Aragones himself!). The mash-ups range from up-to-date (CSiCarly, Avaturd, I Love You Iron Man, etc) to cross-generational (2012 Dalmatians, Malcolm In The Middle-Earth, Grey's In Anime, etc), and cover dozens of sub-genres in between.

If you remember reading MAD magazine as a kid (and haven't been keeping up with what kids are reading and watching these days) you may be "too old" to get this show. Some things will still make you chuckle, but unless you're familiar with Hannah Montana, Twilight, and Justin freaking Bieber, you'll miss at least 50% of the jokes present here. Though you'll probably still enjoy the Spy vs Spy shorts. Classic stuff.

For a DVD release, this works well enough. Half of the show's first season (13 11-minute segments) is present, picture and audio are fine, but no special features. And interestingly enough, no advertisements. Still, I'm docking a star for releasing the season in two $eparate part$, and for the lack of special features - some interviews with the snarkastic writers would have been nice.

All in all though, pick this up if you're a fan of the show. If your kids are always trying to take a peek at your Robot Chicken DVDs even after you've told them not to, give them this to suck on. Who knows, it could work.

Don't get even, get MAD.

I've been a fan of MAD magazine since I can remember. Since the Seventies sometime, and I even still subscribe to the magazine. I have a young child in the house who loves to watch all of the latest shows for kids, and this show came on one day and caught my attention and from that day on I've been hooked.

Each episode is like an animated version of the magazine. You get the movie and TV show spoofs, the celebrity parodies, lampooned commercials, and other animated segments such as Spy vs Spy, Sergio Aragones clips, and Don Martin gags. It's all there and more in great 11 minute episodes. The voice talent cast is excellent as well and really adds a lot to the jokes being presented. In fact, some of the gags based on pop culture and celebrity icons that I am not very familar with are still hilarious just to hear the zany voices blather on!

If you are looking for some silly entertainment to lighten up your mood and give you some good hearty laughs then you'll be glad that you got MAD.

great magazine back in the day. they just celebrated 60 yrs!! i had no idea they still had the magazine. instead of reading the magazines, i got the dvd, it's great!!! a must for people that read the magazine