‘Regular Show: Season One’ DVD Review
Stars: J.G Quintel, William Salyers, Sam Marin, Mark Hamill, Roger Craig Smith, Janie Haddad Tompkins | Created by J.G Quintel
In my review of The Amazing World of Gumball: Season 1 I spoke about how, as a kid I adored two cartoons in particular – Beavis and Butthead and Ren & Stimpy. I also said that Gumball was, at it’s core, very similar to Ren & Stimpy… Well consider Regular Show to be this generations Beavis and Butthead. Featuring the same ridiculous situations, the same ridiculous humour; and even two best friends who LAUGH like Mike Judge’s irreverent duo. All Regular Show is missing is the social commentary and crude toilet humour.
That’s not to say there still isn’t something a little subversive about the series, far from it. Like it’s stable-mates, The Amazing World of Gumball and Adventure Time, Regular Show has just enough “adult” content to make it very much a literal family-friendly show! The kids like the characters, the friendship and the wackiness; and the adults can appreciate references to the likes of Karate Kid and to characters giving each other “some sugar”. References that will undoubtedly fly over the head of the younger members of the audience but make it fun for us grown-ups – which may be why the series is marketed more at adults these days than kids!
Regular Show follows a blue jay, Mordecai, and a raccoon, Rigby, who both work as groundskeepers at a local park. The pair of oddballs:
…try to deal with their mundane jobs as they entertain themselves and work as little as possible. They regularly skip work, to the delight of some colleagues and the annoyance of others. This leads the pair on surreal and extreme adventures, meeting a host of colourful characters along the way, including Mordecai’s love interest a red breasted Robin named Margaret and a yeti named Skips.
It’s odd watching both Gumball and Regular Show back to back. The absurdity of the former actually detracts from the latter. I’m sure a lot of the jokes in this show would have had more of an impact if it wasn’t for the fact that some had already appeared in Gumball. For instance, bizarrely both shows have, as part of their first seasons, a “badass karate” episode. A secret obsession for the writers and show runners at Cartoon Network perhaps? Or maybe, like their older audience, they just miss the days of EVERYTHING revolving around karate? There’s still plenty of laughs to be had, don’t get me wrong. It’s just that I preferred the utter absurdity of Gumball a little more.
Warner Bros. have, it seems, made something of a botch-up when it comes to the Regular Show: Season One DVD release. Advertised as featuring all 12 episodes from the first season, as well as ‘Ello Guv’nor, the first episode of the shows second season, the DVD arrives with only eleven of the first season’s twelve episodes! Sadly missing from this release is episode 12 of the the series, Mordecai and the Rigby’s; not only that, the show appears to be out of original, i.e. US, airing order (if the listing at epguides.com is to be believe), although that’s not so much of a sticking point, given that the show doesn’t reference previous events that often.
Don’t let either of those facts put you off buying this release though – it’s bad enough we’ve had to wait four years for an official UK release, if sales are bad for this first DVD release I doubt we’ll see more!
Regular Show: Season One is out now from Warner Bros.