“Yo, new ‘Chappelle Show’ tonight.” There’s a phrase you can commonly hear every Wednesday around campus since the start of the second season of the smash hit show.”Still Dave, Still Dangerous,” is the advertising slogan being used all over television and in magazines,and it rings true. The show, a mix of Dave’s live stand-up and video-taped sketches starring himself, being aired Wednesday nights at 10:30 on Comedy Central.
The show has also taken some heat for being controversial. Using some sketches that are racially charged and frequently involve the use of racial slurs, people of different ethnic backgrounds find the show to be offensive and vulgar. However, since such accusations, Chappelle has stressed that the show is not intended to be taken in that matter, but rather, it pokes fun at the trivial differences between races in today’s society. A lot of the sketches involve stereotyping, but none of it is meant to be interpreted literally.
Some sketches from the show, both the debut season and the one currently running, include Samuel L. Jackson Beer, a hysterical spoof of the Samuel Adams Beer commercials. Another popular one is Dave’s ver-sions of R.Kelly’s “Ignition” music video and its remix, where Chappelle mocks R. Kelly for having a fetish for defecating on people. Sure, a lot of this can be seen as “toilet humor” but we are college students. Most of us aren’t looking for the sophisticated humor of shows like NBC’s “Frasier.”
Don’t take the show as being simple-minded though. Dave’s sketches and stand-up are laugh-out-loud funny, but afterwards, when you look at what he’s doing, you realize he’s relaying a message. That message is how stupid the tension between people of different races really is. Chappelle has recently said in one of the episodes of the new season, “We are all human; we are people all the same.” After hearing something like that, it really makes you stop and think and take a look at the big picture.
Chappelle himself began his career early, at the age of 14, in his hometown of Washington, D.C. He’s well-known for his HBO one-hour stand-up comedy special “Killing them Softly,” which launched him into mainstream. Over the course of his career, he’s appeared in such movies as “Robin Hood: Men In Tights,” “The Nutty Professor,” “Con Air,” and what proves to be his most well-known role, starring in “Half Baked” with fellow comedian Jim Breuer, who just did a show here at WCU last semester.
“Chappelle Show” has had such success that for all of you fanatics out there, the first season of the show is already now available uncensored on DVD. The box set includes all 12 episodes from the original season, completely uncensored and unblurred, a 30 minute deleted scene and gag reel, and a 20 minute featurette and audio commentary. However, the DVD does not include all of the musical acts that had appeared on the show. All in all, it still promises to be a clutch edition to one’s DVD collection.
If you haven’t seen an episode of the show yet and you love to laugh, then you need to make sure that you are parked on your couch in front of your television Wednesday night at 10:30. However, if you are easily offended and don’t really have the ability to sit back and laugh at yourself, which not all people do, then maybe this show isn’t for you. But I have yet to meet a person here at school who has seen the show and not saw one sketch that made them laugh so hard that they cried.