Second seasons of television series aren’t always the greatest things to partake in. Most often you’ll see one of your favorite shows fall into a sophomore slump and your only hope is that it somehow gets out of it by its junior year. That is, if it even makes it to a third season. Well if you’re not in the know then I would guess one wouldn’t expect all that much from an animated series entitled Freakazoid!, but it oddly delivered a stellar first season that would call for a long run on television. A crazy haired superhero that did off the wall things in a cartoon both children and adults could enjoy. Kind of makes you wonder why it got a complete overhaul when season two came around.
The premise of the show seems overly simple as we have our hero by the name of Dexter Douglas that gained a superhero persona after being sucked into the internet and going through a few changes in order to become Freakazoid. He has immense powers and does whatever he can to help the police battle villains. That is if he can keep his mind on his work and doesn’t just randomly break into song or do some other sort of whacky antic. He’s your basic run of the mill hidden true identity superhero that is just trying to do the world a lot of good while also bringing tons of freakiness into it as well.
I enjoyed the hell out of season one of Freakazoid! because it reminded me of all the other Warner Bros. cartoons that had come out at one point or another like Tiny Toons, Pinky and the Brain, and Animaniacs just to name a few. Freakazoid would do his thing in a cartoon short for a little bit and then other characters would appear and have their time to perform. Great stuff and it kept the monotony from piling up. Season two changed the format for the show and would make each episode entirely about Freakazoid giving us normal twenty-two minute episodes. That’s not to say it is entirely a bad thing, but he isn’t a character that is good in long tales but better suited for short seven to ten minute stories.
Even though the format may have been changed and some of our favorite characters from the first season are seen a bit less, there’s still plenty of laughs to be had and some great stories involving the big haired freak. I just honestly wish they would have left well enough alone because the success of the series should have told the creators that what they had was working. Sadly this would be the last season of Freakazoid! and one has to wonder whether or not the change in format is what ultimately caused its downfall.
Episodes
Disc One:
Dexter’s Date
The Freakazoid
Mission: Freakazoid
Virtual Freak
Hero Boy
A Matter Of Love
Disc Two:
Statuesque
Island Of Dr. Mystico
Two Against Freak
Freak-a-Panel / Tomb Of Invisibo
Normadeus
The episodes are shown in 1.33:1 Full Screen format and everything looks decent but the age of the series is showing big time here and it doesn’t look as if they made much improvement to it, if any at all.
The episodes are heard in Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound and this is a bit better then the video quality, but nothing much more then what we got when watching the series as it originally ran.
A Full Season’s Worth Of Commentaries (In Five Minutes Or Less) – Some of the cast and crew simply sit down and go over their favorite scenes from the series. Honestly nothing much of interest here and it would have been nice to actually have full commentary tracks for a couple episodes. (5:37)
Richard Stone Original Bonjour Lobey Demo Tape
Libeslied Fur Normadeus – This behind the scenes look at the series has more of the cast and crew discussing their time spent making it. It really is a fun backstage view of everything that went into Freakazoid! and just how much fun everyone had making it come to life. (21:00)
So maybe it isn’t as good as the first season, but the second season of Freakazoid! is still enjoyable and brings lots of laughs. I must regret to inform you though that it is a series that didn’t make it out of its sophomore slump therefore making this DVD set the last of the Freakazoid! we’ll ever see unless it jumps to Blu-ray. Some pretty good episodes are interspersed with some others that are rather lackluster and mixed together with special features that fail to impress. Yet I still can’t help but recommend picking up your own copy because it’s still a show that is much more entertaining not even in its prime then half the cartoons on the air today. Dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun…Freak-A Me Freak-A You!
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Warner Home Video presents Freakazoid!: Season 2. Created by: Steven Spielberg, Bruce Timm, & Paul Dini. Starring (voices): Paul Rugg, Joe Leahy, Tress MacNeille, Edward Asner, Frank Welker. Running time: 232 minutes on 2 discs. Rating: Unrated. Released on DVD: April 21, 2009. Available at Amazon.com
