Paramount Home Entertainment has released its fourth box set of episodes from Comedy Central's gleefully tasteless animated series South Park, and while this set will doubtless please fans, it doesn't offer much in the way of bonus goodies. South Park: The Complete Fourth Season features 17 episodes from the show's fourth cycle, all formatted in their original full-frame aspect ratio of 1.33:1; the transfers are sharp and clean, and it's nice to see the material without the all-too-familiar Comedy Central "watermark" in the lower right corner. The audio has been mastered in Dolby Digital Stereo, and the sound offers more punch than in its broadcast version. The episodes are in English, but feature no subtitles or alternate language options. The only notable bonus material on this collection are commentary tracks for each episode from series creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, but for this set Parker and Stone have opted to offer what they call "fun-size commentaries," which last no more than five minutes at the opening of each episode. While they do offer some interesting and often funny anecdotes along the way (particularly in dealing with the network's concerns about handicapped character Timmy, who made his debut in season four, and their unusual down-to-the-wire working methods), generally they stop talking just as they've started to hit their stride, making the commentaries more than a bit frustrating. The only other bonus items are three short bits culled from Comedy Central shows, though this set does include the rare episode "Pip," an oddball adaptation of Charles Dickens' Great Expectations that rarely pops up in reruns and will be unfamiliar to many fans. South Park: The Complete Fourth Season certainly offers up this material in well-polished form, but unfortunately doesn't offer much else for fans looking for something more.

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Since Futurama and The Simpsons were both created by cartoonist Matt Groening and share his frequently absurdist, often acerbic sense of humor, comparisons between the two series were inevitable, and while Futurama was often funnier than The Simpsons in the first two seasons it was on the air, it consistently lacked the emotional resonance of the earlier series -- it never seemed to engage the mind the same way it massaged the funny bone. Similarly, the second multi-DVD Futurama box set -- this one collecting the 19 episodes from the show's second season -- seems to be modeled on the superb packages Fox Home Entertainment created for the first two episodes of The Simpsons, but the results aren't quite as impressive. The material included on Futurama, Vol. 2 has been transferred to disc in its original full-frame aspect ratio of 1.33:1, the audio has been mastered in Dolby Digital Surround, and all the episodes look and sound terrific, with the images pin-sharp throughout and the sound crisp and cleanly defined. Along with the original English-language audio tracks, the discs include alternate dubbed versions in Spanish and French (also in Dolby Digital Surround), as well as optional subtitles in English, Spanish, and French. Like the Simpsons collections, Futurama, Vol. 2 is loaded with bonus material, but ironically this is where the set disappoints. Each episode here has an alternate commentary track, featuring Groening along with members of the show's writing staff, production team, and voice cast, but surprisingly often they don't have anything especially enlightening to say about the show, often getting bogged down in cryptic sci-fi references and inside jokes, and while fans might get a chuckle out of hearing them, their novelty wears out rather quickly. Deleted gags from most of the episodes are also included, though they tend to be brief and appear to have been scrapped for a good reason, and while the "animatic" for "Why Must I Be A Crustacean In Love?" is instructive for those interested in the show's production methods, it isn't especially entertaining on its own merits. Also, while the "international clips" are amusing enough, no one seems to have realized that while the versions in Italian and Portuguese are a novelty, the French and Spanish clips are redundant, since all 19 episodes can be viewed in those languages anyway. Also included is a gallery of production artwork and a key to the show's "alien alphabet," both of which are more interesting and useful than many of the set's more elaborate features. Fans of Futurama will certainly appreciate the care and technical skill that's gone into putting the show's second season on disc, but the additional bells and whistles ultimately don't add much value to the package.