DVD Review: Rick and Steve Complete 2nd Season
Logo, Paramount Home Video Releases Happiest Gay Couple DVD
Mar 2, 2009 Dominic von Riedemann
Q. Allan Brocka's stop-motion show Rick & Steve: The Happiest Gay Couple in the World has been making noise on the LGBT-focused Logo network for 2 years now.
Now Paramount Home Video has brought Rick and Steve: The Complete Second Season onto DVD and guess what? It's genuinely funny R-rated humour. Unlike many shows, which think the word 'gag' means only one thing, Rick & Steve actually create characters the viewer will care about, which makes the comedy even funnier.
What's Rick & Steve About?
Responsible, intelligent Rick (Will Matthews) lives in the fictional gay ghetto of West Lahunga Beach with his husband, vain Steve (Peter Paige), and regularly interact with their friends: lipstick lesbian Kirsten (Emily Brooke Hands) and her bulldyke wife Dana (Taylor M. Dooley), May-December couple Evan (Wilson Cruz) and Chuck (Alan Cumming) plus suicidal fag-hag Condi (Margaret Cho). They battle to maintain stable relationships while dealing with child-rearing, LGBT politics, "lesbian bed death," worries about living clichés, body image, the temptation to sleep with other people, and simply growing old.
While helping Kirsten and Dana raise their potentially telekinetic daughter Dixie (Rick and Steve aren't sure which one of them is the father), they also have to deal with gay nazis in San Francisco, lesbian street gangs, tabloid celebrities, and making their way through a revisionist Wizard of Oz.
The DVD has multiple warnings saying this show is "not for children." Very much so: Rick & Steve is strictly R-rated fare, with jokes about sex, STDs, HIV, various bodily functions and racism funneling through the mix. Rick and Steve also do what most gay (and straight) couples do: have sex. While the stop-motion characters don't get naked and graphic (a la Team America: World Police) even the notion of Rick and Steve touching plastic heads will be enough to freak out prudish types.
Their loss. The characters are well-crafted and easy to relate to, which makes the comedy that much more potent. There's also no little amount of imagination on display: whether it's Lance Bass reciting a Da Vinci Code-style history of how heterosexuals took over the world or spoofing the community's desire not become cliché, Rick and Steve fearlessly take shots at the sacred cows of gay life.
The stop-motion animation – by Toronto's Cuppa Coffee Studios – pays tribute to Brocka' initial use of Lego pieces (before the toy company threatened to sue) by using toy-like figurines as the main characters.
DVD Extras
There's a fair bit on here, including interviews with members of the cast including Paige, Cho and blogger Perez Hilton, who voiced himself in the episode "Labor Days." The featurette "Making the (Rock) Band" shows the props makers designing and building the Rock Band props for one episode. There are also 7 bonus Rick & Steve shorts, which are intermittently funny.
The sub-heading "More Gay Crap" features bits from RuPaul's Drag Race (a reality show where drag queens compete to see who's the best), some standup comedy from Margaret Cho and an episode of Alien Boot Camp (not funny).
The Final Analysis
Rick & Steve pass the first (and most important) test of any comedy: it's funny. While in no way is this show intended for children, open-minded adults and South Park fans will definitely enjoy the R-rated humour in this DVD. It's rude, crude, lewd but not at the expense of genuine laughs.
It gets a 7/10.
scene from Rick and Steve
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