Son of the Beach - Volume 2

Son of the Beach is probably my biggest guilty pleasure. It's stupid, cheesy, offensive, poorly acted, full of corny sexual innuendos and bad special effects - basically of low quality all around, yet I get a big kick out of it anyway. In order to properly appreciate this show, one must understand it on a satirical level: Son of the Beach is a parody/satire of Baywatch, a show which, while I've never seen it, I'm assuming shares all of the qualities I listed above yet is supposed to be a drama. It was probably begging to be made fun of.

Volume 2 consists of the second half of season two (which contained mostly strong episodes) and all of the third and final season, where some very unfortunate changes were made. First, Mayor Massengil was booted from the show because for some reason the network wanted to fire Lisa Banes, and Porcelain Bidet (Amy Weber) was added as a new lifeguard. Huge mistake. Porcelain was a one-note character: a spoiled, selfish gold-digger, and as with Jenna from 30 Rock, I just don't find that type of self-centered character to be funny. Mayor Massengil was a lot funnier and provided a lot of great (yet silly) storylines revolving around her rivalry with Notch in the first two seasons. Problem number two was that in the third season, they started using their money to improve the show's special effects. Normally that would be a good thing, but not on this show because I always found the cheesy low-budgetness to be part of the overall joke, and making things look better subtracts from that. My third problem with season 3, although a minor one, is that they changed Professor Milosovic's laugh and for the life of me I can't fathom why. The professor, a Stephen Hawking-like wheelchair-bound scientist, is easily my favourite character because of his hilarious computer voice and admittedly offensive jokes about his paralysis. His laugh was also one of the best parts because it was a robotic "Ha. Ha. Ha.", but in season 3 they suddenly decided to speed it up and make it sound more human. Lame. And in general the season 3 episodes just weren't as funny as the season 2 episodes in this collection, which I got a LOT of laughs out of.

Best episode: The one that was probably the funniest to me was the season 2 episode "It's Showtime at the Apollo 13!", where Jamaica becomes the first black lifeguard in space and Notch has to go undercover as a high school student to save her when the mission goes haywire due to a teenage hacker. Yes, I know it's a ridiculous plot - the lifeguards on this show often act as policemen, investigating crimes, going undercover, and making arrests - but that's part of the show's ongoing joke.