Robot Chicken Season Three

After butchering the show’s staff in the madcap finale last season, how could the depraved creative team of Seth Green and Mat Senreich maintain Robot Chicken’s all-important continuity for a new season? Zombies! Of course! Just toss those flesh-eating staffers under contract after the requisite "Thriller” parody and keep ’em satiated with fresh brains. If decapitating animated action figure versions of your friends and co-workers doesn’t appeal to your questionably repressed, laughing id, this isn’t the show for you. In fact, you better be prepared to bust a gut at a whole lot of comically malicious violence, repeated masturbation and faux-misogyny gags mixed with the glut of nostalgic and contemporary pop culture lampooning. Classic characters like the Humping Robot return to spread their twisted ticks in new locales, and the ThunderCats, Smurfs, Skeletor and Beastman all receive quality screen time as well. Some season highlights include a Star Wars dinner table hostage scene and Law and Order: KFC, where all the characters are chickens and only cluck to get the story’s point across. Often this type of ridiculous but slightly subtler humour is Robot Chicken’s most effective play but sometimes a gummy bear getting caught in a bear trap and chewing off its own leg to escape just hits the spot. There are special features galore spread across the season’s two discs, including a delightful explanation/breakdown of Seth Green’s original audio track for the aforementioned Law and Order chicken sketch. "Chicken Nuggets” is an in-episode feature that allows the viewer to click a chicken icon to get a few words from Seth and Matt on the particular scene you’re watching. The "Gag Reel” could’ve been funnier but the visual effects comparison showing scenes pre and post VFX is pretty cool. There are a shit-load of "Deleted Animatics” and "Deleted Scenes,” the former being mostly storyboards with audio and the latter being mostly completed scenes just lacking a few final touches. An amusing "Studio Tour” with Seth Green reveals the staff’s unhealthy obsession with Nerf weaponry and "Video Blogs” shows a lot of interesting behind-the-scenes pitching of story concepts, recordings voice performances and such. But the commentary tracks are the real gold mine. Every episode has at least one commentary populated by the staff, hearty amounts of laughter and a stellar array of guests including Mark Hamill, Billy Dee Williams, Stan Lee and Kristen Chenoweth. Guess who among them Seth Green professes his love to first?