Duckman: Seasons Three and Four

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Product Description Duckman isn't your average suave, sophisticated private eye. In fact, he's rude, ignorant, slovenly, and hasn't had a date in years! With the help of his infinitely more capable sidekick, Cornfed, Duckman manages to solve enough cases to cover his alimony payments and cable TV bills. Duckman is a cult-favorite animated sitcom from the mid 1990's starring Jason Alexander (Seinfeld) as a crude private detective living with his family in the wake of his wife's death. .com The long national nightmare is over: All four seasons of are all at last available on DVD. Duckman has not been seen since its cancellation over a decade ago. These third and fourth season episodes represent "the grail," akin to Duckman's own quest for "a heavily sedated Cindy Crawford." In lesser hands, Duckman, based on Everett Peck's underground comic, would have been the same old same old animated series about a wisecracking duck detective, his pig partner and his wacky family. But Duckman (Jason Alexander) is anything but lovable and enchanting. Ruled by his basest instincts, he is prone to "wildly inappropriate schemes" (such as a baseball team comprised of supermodels) and always falls for "perfectly timed jokes at my expense." Forget about the traditional nuclear family: his is more like a nuclear accident (his twin sons share one body and co-joined heads). "There's no such thing as a perfect family," his dread sister-in-law (Nancy Travis) proclaims. "It's the imperfections that make a family interesting." By this standard, Duckman's family, with their "delicately balanced dysfunctions," was certainly one of television's most fascinating, and funniest, clans. Family Guy devotees, especially, will find this series a kindred subversive spirit with its non sequitur gags, surreal nonsense, and pop culture references so arcane that even Seth McFarlane might scratch his head. In one episode, Duckman's partner, Cornfed Pig, references Stanford White and Harry Thaw, two players in a scandalous turn of the century murder case immortalized in the film The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing, and derisively remarks to the camera, "They're called books, kids. Try reading one." Duckman is distinguished by writing so smart and sharp that one can easily forgive the inevitable "captain's log" bathroom joke in a Star Trek parody episode. Anyone baffled by Charles Kaufman's latest film, for instance, may find it enlightening to hear, apropos of nothing, that "'synecdoche' is the figure of speech by which the name of a material is substituted for the actual thing it makes." Duckman, the voice of violence, greed, and pornography, and Cornbred, the Jack Webbed voice of reason, are a great comedy team, as witness the episode presented as a vintage Paramount two-reeler, and features a priceless cameo by none other than Homer Simpson. Other stellar guest stars include Bebe Neuwirth as a femme fatale in "Noir Gang," Tim Curry as Duckman's nemesis, King Chicken, and Kim Cattrall as a ravishing lunatic in "The Tami Show." "The One with Lisa Kudrow in a Small Role," features Lisa Kudrow in, um, a small role. Uncompromising, unrepentant, and still not ready for prime time, Duckman's legacy as ahead of its time and one of a kind is secure. --Donald Liebenson