Product Description
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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.
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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) procls. "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 Para two-reeler, and features a
priceless cameo by none other than Homer Simpson. Other stellar
guest stars include Bebe Neuwirth as a femme ale 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