8/21/2009

The State of Disappointment from MTV

The State is the best show to ever air on MTV. It was a half-hour sketch comedy show formed by a troupe of very talented young comics. It ran on MTV in the mid-1990s and was like the Generation X version of Monty Python's Flying Circus. The State--specifically the first two seasons--was a hilarious, fresh, hip, and innovative show. The show had a strong and devoted cult following, and it was filled with 90s pop culture and music, making The State an important snapshot of Generation X culture during that period.

When DVD releases of television shows started to come into vogue, fans of The State began begging for a DVD box set of The State episodes. Years passed, and there seemed to be no hope the show would ever come out on DVD. Finally, after years of delay, The State: The Complete Series was released on DVD by MTV on July 14, 2009. That is when the disillusionment began to set in.

Apparently to save money on royalties, MTV chose to remove or obscure nearly all of the music and pop culture images from the classic comedy pieces. With The State, this was an incredibly tricky situation, because some of the sketches were centered around particular pieces of music and/or pop culture images. In many sketches, the actors actually spoke dialog over music and delivered lines standing right next to images of celebrities.

Rather than pay royalties, MTV actually chose to blur many images which might require payment of fees. For example, the "Cindy Crawford" sketch centers around the famous model. The original sketch displays photos of Cindy Crawford. On the DVD, these photos are just blurred out. Similar situations exist throughout the DVD set. They even blurred out Yoda in the "Dixon: Jedi Talent Agency" sketch for goodness sake. (As a surprising side note, the most famous Disney characters [Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Daisy Duck, et al.] are visible on Billy's comforter in the "Boogey Man" sketches. There must be some good reason why MTV did not blur them out. If not, maybe those notorious lawyers at Disney will file a lawsuit.)

Making matters far worse, MTV re-recorded the audio tracks for many sketches. They replaced the music with bland imitations of the originals and brought the actors back to record their lines--many years later. Even though MTV used the original actors to record the audio, something is just off in many of the sketches. The vocal inflections and comedic timing are off, and many of the funniest lines just fall flat now. It is as if the humor has been neutered, and its spirit is gone, giving the sketches a manufactured feel. The most egregious example of this is seen in the "$240 Worth of Pudding" sketch. In the original sketch, Barry and Le Von romance a large mound of pudding while Marvin Gaye's "Sexual Healing" plays in the background. Of course, to remove the song for the DVD release, all of the dialog had to be re-recorded and dubbed. The new music and dialog, just does not work. What was once the funniest sketch from The State, is now just moderately amusing.

If MTV had altered just a couple of sketches for legal reasons, this release would not have been so bad, but they have made changes to many sketches, and many of the altered sketches were some of the best ones. What MTV has released is a mutilated rendition of what was originally a great show. This DVD release taints some great memories that should have been left alone. MTV should have either spent the extra money to fund a proper DVD release of The State episodes in their original form or just not released the collection at all. How much could it really have cost MTV to display photos of celebrities like Cindy Crawford and Andrew Shue? How much could it have cost to play songs from Marvin Gaye, Black Sabbath, The Breeders, The Smashing Pumpkins, etc.? Certainly, the fans would not have minded paying more for a collection that maintained the integrity of the original show.

This DVD release in unfair to the loyal fans of The State, because the collection is substantially inferior to the original material. This release is unfair to the new first-time viewers, because they are seeing an inferior recreation of something that used to be special. Even though the cast of The State is partially to blame for participating in this release, it is unfair to them, because this collection tarnishes their reputations as artists. With this DVD release, everybody loses except maybe MTV. At least MTV gets to cash in with this cheap chop-job on what was originally a wonderful, creative, and hilarious show. What a shame.