Puppets Who Kill: The Best of Season 3 and 4

Given that it has been about four years since the second season came out on DVD, and since Puppets Who Kill was cancelled, the assumption was that the final two seasons would disappear into late night syndication obscurity without the option of home DVD viewership. While that remains true for the majority of the episodes, this "best of" box set offers up six of the 13 episodes from each season – most of which feature recognizable Canadian celebrities like Colin Fox, Gordon Pinsent, Kari Matchett, Fab Filippo and Peter Outerbridge. Resultantly, it's a bit disappointing, since they're not even listed in order of original airing on the menus, but it's still fun to see Dan (Dan Redican) and his halfway house full of murdering, fornicating puppets desecrate dead bodies and have sex with dying "Make a Wish" patients. With excess profanity, murder and the occasional sex scene between puppets and humans (usually doggie-style), this is no doubt for an adult audience amused by a pitch-black, cynical worldview. Entire episodes are dedicated to Bill, the ventriloquist puppet, trying to repress his murderous rage, or the misanthropic Rocko digging up dead bodies to retrieve ten-dollar garden shears. No taboo is too uncouth for this gang, which could easily stray off into unwatchable nastiness if not for the occasional display of heart and the grounding force of the moral Dan. It's true that the series often relies on shock value to compensate for a lack of laughs, but the occasionally incisive observations about human nature and social modes of authority, such as Corrections Canada, help to compensate, offering up something clever amidst the seedy chaos. They even reference The Manchurian Candidate, Shakespeare and The Maltese Falcon, which is far beyond most Comedy Network original programming. The box set includes a couple of commentary tracks with the series creators that detail the production and writing intentions. For example, on the "Buttons the Dresser" episode, they discuss filming on location at the Music Hall on the Danforth while expanding upon the Shakespearean references while Colin Fox tries to get Buttons the bear to have sex with him.