This time of year there is little new to watch on television. It’s mostly Christmas movies, Christmas specials, and you know…repeats of those Christmas specials. There are some great ones…and some truly, truly terrible ones.

There is no Christmas special – in all of history – quite as terrible, though, as the “Star Wars Holiday Special”. You can find the special in its entirety on YouTube…but I doubt you’ll make it all the way through it (without drinking). So I present to you this video (above) which has about 5 minutes of the special, which should give you an idea of just how bad it is…and my friends…it is bad.

Good luck.

You know, it’s amazing what some people can put together if they have enough archive footage and free time. This amazingly edited video combines footage from Star Trek and Star Wars to make a brilliant mash-up.

During the holiday season when all we have to watch are Christmas specials and repeats, sometimes it’s nice to be able to turn to YouTube for entertainment.

This parody video by Rick Kelvington that edits together the new “Star Trek” movie trailer into an opening credits sequence from “Smallville” pretty much sums up everything that’s wrong with the J.J. Abrams relaunch (from what we’ve seen so far, anyway).

The video is hilariously spot on, and I thought I’d share it here. It’s my way of laughing instead of crying.

There are few television programs that have gone down in history as quite as bad as “The Chevy Chase Show”. After Johnny Carson left the airwaves in the early 90s, every network seemed to think that the time was right for their network to take the top spot in late night.

As a result many people that shouldn’t have had late night talk shows, got late night talk shows. Chevy Chase was one of those individuals.

“The Chevy Chase Show” premiered on September 7, 1993 – and was off the air by October 1st. That’s right the show managed to get itself cancelled after only 4 weeks on the air. It actually ended up running for 5 weeks, but 4 weeks in, network executives pulled the plug.

I will always and forever be a fan of Chevy Chase…but even I couldn’t sit through this horrible show. It is truly, TV that I wish I could forget.

Still, every now and again a segment of his will make its way online and we’ll see the old Dave we all know and love. Stephen Pratt is some goofball from the show “The Hills”. I don’t know why this show exists or how moron ended up on David Letterman, but he’s there…and Dave just can’t stand him. He tries to hide it, but after the guy reveals that he faked interest in one of the girls on the show to get on it himself, Dave just can’t stand it…and just laughs in his face. Good stuff.

With the shear number of hours of television that are needed to be filled with holiday themed content this time of year, you would think that something as awesome sounding as a “Star Wars” holiday special would be on every year.

You’d think Star Wars fans all over the world would be able to pop in bright, crisp, DVDs of the special to spread the holiday cheer with their kids.

But you can’t do any of that? Do you know why? Because the “Star Wars Holiday Special” is exceptionally bad…and if you’ve never seen it…well, my friend, you are in for a treat because as our Christmas present to you (and if you don’t celebrate Christmas – that’s ok – we’d still like to give you a gift) we present the complete “Star Wars Holiday Special”.

Part 1 of 10

Part 2 of 10

Part 3 of 10

Part 4 of 10

Part 5 of 10

Part 6 of 10

Part 7 0f 10

Part 8 of 10

Part 9 of 10

Part 10 of 10

Happy Holidays from TV Jab.

Dan Whitney is Larry the Cable Guy. You may not believe it first, but take a good look – that’s him. He’s nervous as hell, and this must have been his first time on television. His pants are up to his belly button and there isn’t a hint of that “Git-R-Done” accent that makes him popular all over the middle of America.

The question is – who is the character? Is Dan playing a character in this video, trying to fit into the mainstream comedy scene at the time, or is Larry the character that Dan plays to bring in the paychecks.

Either way, you’ll see him on television every other weekend from now until the end of time. Because people LOVE those Blue Collar movies.

This week Futurama returned from the cancellation hell that those idiots at Fox threw it into. The show has gained a huge following on Adult Swim since the cancellation, and is returning as a series of direct to DVD movies, and more episodes on Comedy Central in 2008.

“Bender’s Big Score” is their first feature length DVD…so…how does it stand up?

The Movie

I’m not even going to begin to recap the plot of the movie for you. I’ll hit a few highlights, but if you want to know the whole story, you’re going to have to buy the DVD.

The movie opens with a nice, stiff jab at Fox, then moves right into the plot. The gang all end up getting Spam after they give out their email addresses at a nude beach (you know, like you do). Also at the beach, they discover that Fry has a tattoo of Bender on his ass. The tattoo and the spammers lead to a time traveling adventure that covers thousands of years, and plays fan service to the audience like no money has ever done before.

All the major stuff is hit upon, including appearances by almost every character you can think of. Leela and Fry’s relationship (or lack there of) is a central focus of the film, and they even manage to work in a space opera styled battle with Solid Gold Death Stars at the climax of the film.

I’m not a hardcore Futurama fan. I’ve seen several episodes, and I’ll flip over to it when there’s nothing else on late at night, but I don’t have the show memorized, and I haven’t seen every episode. Even at my level of interest, I caught most of the in-show references, and even if I missed some – they weren’t distracting.

This is a really good space opera comedy, even by itself. It takes just about every cliche in the history of Sci-Fi, and somehow makes it all seem fresh and funny. The plot is a bit complicated at times (although it wraps up nicely at the end), and there is a secret about one of the characters that I figured out about half an hour before they revealed it – which was a slight negative. I wish it had taken longer to figure it out, so that the 15 minutes they spend explaining it wouldn’t have seemed so dragged out.

The only real negative I can say about it, is that it is clear where the movie will be broken up into episodes. They tried to hide it, but it’s very clear where those breaks will be, and that makes it feel like 3 episodes of a series at times. That can sometimes make it feel a bit dragged out – but, I was laughing the whole time, so I can’t complain too much.

8 out of 10

The Video

I watched this on my HD-DVD player which upscales the video to 1080i, and I have to say, the movie looks beautiful. The animation is not quite on par with the Simpson’s movie – but it looks very close. If there has been any reduction in budget on the show, it doesn’t show on screen. This thing looked great.

9 out of 10

The Extras

The DVD is filled with extras including the standard stuff like a commentary, deleted scenes (in storyboard format), the script, character designs and things like that. Where this goes the extra mile with features like a live reading of the Futurama comic books by the cast, an Al Gore specific special feature which a promo for an Inconvenient Truth feature Al and Bender, a Futurama math lecture, and even an episode of “Everybody Loves Hypnotoad”.

I’m a sucker for documentaries on DVDs – and I really wish this had one – but there is certainly a ton of stuff here to keep you entertained.

If you buy the DVD at Best Buy, you get an extra bonus disk as well that features some Animatics, and a preview of the next Futurama DVD – “The Beast with a Thousand Backs” – and it’s worth getting the bonus disk just for that preview. It’s in black and white and it’s mostly just animation roughs with the audio added – but it clearly shows that the next Futurama DVD is going to rock just as hard as this one did.

8 out of 10

The Packaging

The one thing I really don’t like about this is the packaging. I really hate the thinness of it, and the special effect cover. I imagine the packing (except of the special effect piece of plastic) is designed to be “greener”, which is fine…I just don’t love it.

Although the disk being a solid gold Death Star is pretty awesome.

7 out of 10

Final Thoughts

If you’re a fan of Futurama run – don’t walk – to you local store and buy this DVD. If you’ve never seen Futurama before, this probably isn’t the best place to start, go buy at least the first season on DVD first.

I really loved this DVD. Far more than most episodes of the show. It has everything that makes Futurama great in it, and I have very little negative to say. This is simply a MUST HAVE for any Futurama fan.

Final Score: 9 out of 10

Yup, the whole reason for the post is the joke in the Title. Apparently Rosie O’Donnell appeared on Nip/Tuck last night. This is her second appearance on the show, and her seems to like man-whores and getting hit with scaffolding lights. I don’t watch Nip/Tuck, so I can’t comment on the episode, but I really dislike Rosie, so I decided to make fun of her.

So there. Happy Thanksgiving.