This Sucks, Huh-Huh

Those of you considering buying the new Beavis and Butt-Head Collection should be warned that five of the cartoons are apparently cut (the missing footage was intact on previous DVDs released through Time-Life). More detail in the Amazon customer reviews.

The best part of the set is the bonus disc, with the eleven music videos that they were able to clear for DVD release -- the videos, as everyone seems to agree, were the best part -- promos, and a pretty good talking-heads documentary with Mike Judge, director Yvette Kaplan, and others. Oddly enough, this doesn't seem to have the original Beavis and Butt-Head short, "Frog Baseball," just as the new Office Space DVD doesn't have the animated shorts where the Milton character first appeared. More rights issues, maybe?

Beavis and Butt-Head are so much a part of their time and place that no DVD collection can really do them justice, anyway; you had to be there, back when it was unusual to do such a politically-incorrect show (today, of course, anti-PC is so common that being against political correctness is in itself the new political correctness), back when it seemed so crazy and subversive for MTV to do a show mocking its own target audience as brain-dead losers. Now, Beavis and Butt-Head cartoons are still funny, but they seem more like descendants of the cartoon shorts of the '50s and '60s, mini-adventures where the heroes get involved in a wacky situation and make a mess of everything. They're like Yogi and Boo-Boo for the MTV generation.