Myself, I only discovered The Jamie Kennedy Experiment recently and entirely on accident. Being a Buffy/Angel geek, I had seen the WB promos for the show and it registered zero interest on my part. A prank show with a C-rate Gen-X actor best known for being the loudmouth horror cinema fanboy in the Scream movies? Uh, no thanks. Sure, I'm a sucker for classic Candid Camera (the bit with Buster Keaton in a restaurant losing his toupee in the soup always busts me up) and blooper shows, but it takes a lot to get me roped into a tv show. Glancing at the The Jamie Kennedy Experiment just didn't grab me.

Then, I channel surfed one night and landed on a The Jamie Kennedy Experiment episode (not from this first season) with a set-up involving Jeff Goldblum launching a line of men's fragrances and a test group. The joke was, turns out his fragrance has a bad side effect of causing a sever burning sensation when it comes into contact with the human body. That hooked me, and now I've casually caught some episodes and found it to be a pretty solid twenty-two minutes of entertainment. It is no Simpsons, Monty Python, or Mr Show but I find it better than a sitcom or a more celeb worshipping, ego driven, and obnoxious prank show like MTV's Punk'd.

This first season has seventeen episodes. The show has evolved a little and changed since these early episodes. They abandoned a studio audience format, but today the show still strikes for a little bit too much of a hipster TRL feel. Also, there is even one skit that doesn't feature Jamie at all and involves seeing a guys reaction to a pretty girl he's hitting on at a bar suddenly burping, picking her nose, and farting. It is actually a good gag, but I haven't seen them try out any like this in the episodes I've seen since. The basic premise is Jamie in various makeups, from British dance choreographers, to an overly amorous elderly restaurateur, to a Oprahlike talk show host. There is also his white rapper character, Brad "B-Rad" Gluckman, that he made a movie about. I heard the movie was mediocre, but as a skit, usually involving some unsuspecting person thinking B-Rad is moving in with them, it is pretty darn funny. As he says to one father about his hard life growing up in the hood of Malibu, "Man, my parents kicked me out when I was twenty-six." and "It be hard when you be waitin' in line at Star-bizz-ucks."

While this first season does have some shakiness, like a repeated massage table gag and a few weak bits, for a show finding its ground, it does okay. There a few really great skits, even some that had me covering my eyes in embarrassment at the set-up. There is the skit where he plays a lonely guy who hires some migrant workers to pretend to be his friends for a video he is sending his family. It becomes oddly touching as the migrants fully fall into their roles as this pathetic losers friends, giving him fake gifts, reading testimonials to how great he is, and playing games with him. There is the poor guy who gets hired as an office temp and finds out his first job is firing a list of people, everyone from an old man to a wheelchair-bound woman. Most of the skits involve fake tv shows or jobs, putting Jamie in a role of host, boss, or some position of power making it easier to pull off the gags.

And then there are the skits that reveal a little too much about humanity. I'm thinking of a fake tv show pitch where a group of parents are shown a promo for a reality show called "Child Island". Jamie plays the producer and basically the promo turns into "Lord of the Flies". Even after saying he wants the kids in danger and medical attention will only be 45 minutes away, he still gets a few parents from the group to agree to sign up their kids on the show. And, then there is the first episode and the fake infomercial for the "Insta-Cooker." After a stunt audience member tries to use it and it blows up in his face, Jamie asks if he can get anyone to give a testimonial on how much they love the cooker. He gets silence. Then he offers $20, and the hands suddenly go up and all of these people give impassioned speeches on how great and safe the cooker is.

The DVD: Paramount.

A minor annoyance is that the episodes have an unfortunate commercial bumper left in, little "Next" teasers, giving a glimpse of what's to come on the show, that sans commercials end up hurting the seamlessness of the episodes.

Picture: Standard full-screen. Looks great. Appears to be a fine transfer. The studio segments obviously have a cleaner look than the hidden camera footage, but overall the disc is sharp and colorful with good detail, a match for anyone with digital cable.

Sound: Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround. Close-Captioned. Once again, for tv audio and considering the nature of the show, quite good. It should be pretty clear that the hidden camera/looseness of the gags means sometimes the recording will be less dynamic than your typical tv show. But, overall as good a presentation as one can expect.

Extras: Episode/skit selection---4 Alternate Marks (38:03). Each skit is done three times with three different unsuspecting people (or "marks"). Here we see an assemblage of a few skits with different marks than the ones they chose for broadcast.--- Behind the Scenes Doc (19:00) Includes early stand up footage and behind the scenes/failed skits footage. Interviews with Jamie and the producers about how the show came together and how they execute the gags.--- Commentary by Jamie Kennedy. Kennedy gives commentary on a handful of the episodes. Probably worth a casual listen but unlikely to get a repeat. Kennedy suffers from the biggest pitfall of commentary, that is describing what is going onscreen, like he assumes the person hasn't seen the skit or cant figure it out with there own eyes. While he doest give some background info, there is a bit too much "This guy didn't know... See now they're doing..." obvious comments that can make it a yawner. In the future, to liven things up a little, they should have Kennedy and some of the writing/acting staff do commentary together.

Conclusion: A tad on the pricey side, but an interesting show saddled in a terrible time slot. It isn't a high pinnacle of comedic greatness, but it is definitely solid and worth checking out. The DVD offers viewers a chance to do so, and Paramount has done a fine job with the presentation.