Son of the Beach: Volume 1 (2000-2001) – DVD

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"With Sex You Get Eggroll", "Silence of the Clams", "In the G-Hetto", "Love, Native-American Style", "Two Thongs Don't Make a Right", "Fanny and the Professor", "Eat My Muffin", "Miso Honei", "South of Her Border", "Day of the Jackass", "A Star is Boned," "Attack of the Cocktopuss", "Mario Putzo's The Last Dong", "B.J. Blue Hawaii", "From Russia with Johnson", "Remember Her Titans", "Rod Strikes Back", "Queefer Madness", "Light My Firebush", "Chip's a Goy", "A Tale of Two Johnsons"

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Attention all 13-year-old boys: your time has come. It is decreed that all of you must buy, watch and perhaps even memorize the handsome 3-disc set "Son of the Beach: Volume 1". You heard me, buster: it is incumbent upon you to own twenty-one solid episodes of some of the most puerile, asinine, and questionable TV ever produced by man or beast. You may not know that this is your civic duty, but I assure you, it is: you, and only you, are ideally suited to its unique blend of jiggle-visuals, toilet humour, smutty double-entendres and crude ethnic stereotyping.

How to describe the experience of "Son of the Beach"? It is, first and foremost, a parody of the already-parodic "Baywatch" series, featuring all of its, um, visual interest minus the persistent nuisance of semi-coherent narratives. (The fact that we're looking to "Baywatch" as a coherence exemplar tells you all you need to know.) Its chief protagonist, Notch Johnson (Timothy Stack), is the ever-flabby but inexplicably virile head lifeguard at Malibu Adjacent; Notch is, of course, lovable and triumphant in his physical imperfection in ways that never would (and never do) apply to unattractive women. Lucky for you, my pubescent charges, those are in short supply, as under him works both doltish blonde bombshell B.J. Cummings (Jaime Bergman) and jive-talking black stereotype Jamaica St. Croix (Leila Arcieri). A ripped Schwarzenegger aspirant named Chip Rommel (Roland Kickinger) is thrown in for balance, and the more humanly-proportioned Kimberlee Clark (Kim Oja) rounds out the cast as the voice of reason in a world gone increasingly mad. That voice, I must add, is very, very quiet.

But this should not concern you, my adolescent friend, as sanity in television is not your highest priority. (We all know that that coveted position belongs to leering at half-clad women.) Somewhat beneath that is abjuring anything that is not a straight white 13-year-old boy who lives in the suburbs, and in that department "Son of the Beach" excels. In their selfless efforts to keep Malibu Adjacent honest, Notch and the gang must repel and/or defend a variety of grotesque stereotypes calculated for maximum "offense." Inner-city blacks fixing basketball tournaments, Native Americans torn apart by casino operators, Italian gangsters opening protection rackets, Cambodian importers of nubile sex slaves, and a lesbian who runs a fast-food outfit called "The Fish Taco" all come in for hilarious mockery, which is naturally all-in-fun and performed, according to the commentary, by "good sports."

Of course, no 13-year-old boy can live without fear of a maternal wet blanket spoiling his vulgar good times. The producers of "Son of the Beach" have sensed this, and countered with a misogynist caricature to serve as revenge. Thus Mayor Anita Massengil (Lisa Baines) is on hand to be a) repressive, b) meddlesome and c) sexually frustrated. For reasons that are never adequately explained, she yearns for the day that she can fire Notch (or at least replace him with a robot), and she's always getting friendly (if not getting it on) with various power-brokers who threaten the delicate social balance of Malibu Adjacent. But they sure know how to fix her wagon, providing her with a son named Kody (Jason Hopkins) who, as a cruel gay stereotype, is sure to embarrass her with his lasciviousness. Isn't it good to know that cable television is capable of righting such wrongs against the nascent adolescent populace?

So rejoice, o boy in thy pubescence, as the completion of your DVD library has drawn nigh. As the season of action figures passes you, the season of T&A dawns, and so the "Son of the Beach" collection looms high on your Christmas list. But for how many Christmases? Be forewarned that your enjoyment of this crap is not long for this world. As the seasons pass and you get longer in the tooth, you will eventually hunger for more redemptive appeals to the libido and more refined approaches to humour. But that is far, far in the future; for now, you are 13, and will be adequately sated by the inanity and brutality of this fine program. Though ten bucks says you hock it by age 16.

THE DVD
Normally, the fullscreen DVD transfer(s) of "Son of the Beach" would be cause for disappointment: so many episodes are crammed onto so few discs that the picture is littered with pixels and the definition is a sorry sight indeed. Fortunately for you, you are a 13-year-old boy, and are thus half-blind from masturbation, anyway, making the niceties of picture quality somewhat moot. You should, however, be thrilled to know that every awful joke will reach your ears with clarity, even if the Dolby Surround soundtracks lack as much lustre as the lines they render. Of course, you'll probably want to mute the sound the majority of the time, as it distracts from the grace and poetry of Jaime Bergman's form.

THE COMMENTARIES

Someone had the big brainwave that the sophistication of "Son of the Beach" might tax the minds of the pubescent boys watching. Thus, many of the episodes feature commentaries, mostly by creators Timothy Stack, James R. Stein, and David Morgasen, with various directors, cast members and guest stars also weighing in on their contributions. Scintillating comments such as "It was really cold that day," and, "It was raining that day" mark a fact-and-analysis-packed set of yakkers that show you the determined minds that make the "Son" rise. They also revel in their naughtiness: one participant crows with glee that they managed to offend a Native American rights website, which shows you just how selfless they are in delivering quality entertainment for the pre-PC masses.

For those who must know, the commentaries appear on…

DISC ONE: "With Sex You Get Eggroll" and "Silence of the Clams"

DISC TWO: "South of Her Border"; "Day of the Jackass"; "Attack of the Cocktopuss"; and "Mario Putzo's The Last Dong"

DISC THREE: "B.J. Blue Hawaii"; "Light My Firebush"; and "Chip's a Goy"

Be sure to take notes, assuming you can still hold a pencil straight.

THE EXTRAS

You're a busy 13-year-old boy on the go. You don't have time for labour-intensive efforts like rifling through your father's closet in search of dirty magazines–you need your stroke material NOW. The producers of the "Son of the Beach" feel your pain, and have thus gone that extra mile to compile unmotivated cheesecake from within the episodes and beyond. Some are "too hot for TV," but not, I trust, too hot for you.

DISC ONE: Admittedly, there is some inane promotional blather to tolerate. After a menu introduction featuring Notch at his most welcoming, we have an unremarkable 5-minute outtakes reel that doesn't show anything more hilarious than actors fluffing their lines; a behind-the-scenes featurette that offers as much information as can be imparted in three minutes (which is to say, almost none); and a TV spot that only the most hardcore viewer will care to access. But things get racier when we turn to…

DISC TWO: There's another introduction, yadda yadda yadda, and a 7-minute featurette wherein actors waste their time recalling favourite scenes, but one is compelled to check out the 6-minute "Montage Highlights." (For "Beach" virgins: every episode features a cheesy fantasia in which the female members of the cast cavort in lingerie under the flimsiest of pretexts. Don't fight it.) There are also a couple of all-new montages ("Baby Oil" and "Psychedelic") that have exactly nothing to do with the show proper yet still provide an excellent definition of the word "gratuitous." Even better is the 2-minute "Crew of "Son of the Beach"," who are, predictably, hot girls in bikinis. This leads inevitably to…

DISC THREE: Here the only extra beyond another hosted menu introduction is also the pièce de résistance: another wholly unmotivated montage inclusion entitled "Makeup Artists." Hot girls! Putting on make-up! Please towel off before replacing the disc, as stray bodily fluids cause havoc with DVD players.

23 mins./episodes; NR; 1.33:1; English Dolby Surround, Spanish Dolby Surround; CC; English, Spanish subtitles; 3 DVD-9s; Region One; Fox