THE BEST RED VS. BLUE DVD EVER. OF ALL TIME.

Ah, the clip show: Both a way to introduce new people to something and to make something "new" by re-releasing older material.  The 100-plus episode webseries Red Vs. Blue tackles this challenge with The Best Red Vs. Blue DVD Ever.  Of All Time by having the cast present their "best of" moments by hosting an awards show.  In some ways, this is as juvenile as the series -- and just as funny.

Red Vs. Blue has nothing to do with politics.  Instead, it's all created by folks in the Halo videogame, as the Red Team and Blue team are stuck together in Blood Gulch Canyon; the Blue Team controls Blood Gulch Outpost Alpha, while the Red Team occupies Blood Gulch Outpost Number One.  In theory, the two sides should be trying to kill each other and take the other's outpost.  In practice, that virtually never happens.   Instead, the members joke, bicker, blow stuff up, hurt themselves, and occasinally fight everyone but each other.

The cast includes: Sarge (Matt Hullum), a tough-as-nails dtill seregant who never gets around to attaxking the enemy; Grif (Geoff Lazer Ramsey), a fairly intelligent soldier in yellow armor ("It's not yellow.  It's gold") who's too lazy to do anything useful; Donut (Dan Godwin), stuck in pink armor; Tucker (Jason Saldana), always ready to follow anything vaguely sexually suggesting with "Bow chicka bow wow"; and Caboose (Joel Heyman), a compete idiot.  ("I don't want to be dead!  I want to be alive!  Or a cowboy.")  There's also freelancer Texas "Tex" Alison (Kathleen Zuelch), a kick-ass fighter who can outshine everyone else (and who tends to hit Grif in the nuts), and the Meta, a nigh-unstoppable creature.  And don't forget Andy the Bomb and Sheila the Tank!

 

The Best Red Vs. Blue... has almost the whole cast at an Oscars-type show, giving awards for everything from funniest lines ("You will fear my laser face!") to best action scenes to best episodes from each season.  The full-length episodes and scenes stretch the dvd out to over two hours, but it shows a surprisingly exciting side to the series at times.  Of course it's hard to take a series about men in futuristic armor and heavily armed bickering and falling (not to mention calling each other "you cockbiting fucktard!"), but The Best Red Vs. Blue... is filled with laugh-out-loud moments -- and a good overview of the series (if you don't mind spoilers).  It's a very entertaining clip show/award show.

 

Shotgun!

 

Overall grade: B+

Reviewed by James Lynch

 

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