The long arm of the law is here, but it's on fire, as you'll notice as watching the opening credits on the third season of RENO 911!

I not only decided to play catch-up with this Comedy Central show as it prepares to launch a sixth run of new episodes, but I focused on the two season installments which were, surprisingly, not reviewed up until this point. The feeling was that it had to be done. As a comedy fan of recent vintage, it's hard to ignore the work of the team behind RENO 911!, a few of whom were founding members of The State, a comedy troupe which had their own MTV sketch program for a spell. Movies such as Wet Hot American Summer, Balls of Fury and Role Models have been some of the more noticeable offshoots of this union. Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant had even penned the scripts for a couple of other high-concept studio pictures involving taxi drivers and unlikely daddies which, in retrospect, are perhaps better left ignored.

RENO 911! premiered in 2003 as yet another sketch comedy endeavor, only this time framed within the context of a parody of COPS. A film crew tracks down the days in the lives of seven officers working at the Reno Sheriff's Department, capturing every bust, tagging along on the rides and also gauging the workplace ethics back at the department. However, this particular seven is not that magnificent, as they seem to be a random assembly of odd, disparate personalities. The head policeman, Lt. Jim Dangle (Lennon), is a flamingly effeminate case known for going on patrol in a pair of "baguette beige" short shorts and riding around on two-wheelers. Working alongside him are Deputy Travis Jr. (Garant), the son of cheap white trash who joined the force instead of the juvenile corrections facility; Deputy Jones (Cedric Yarbrough), the chocolate-flavored center of the Reno Sheriff's Department; Deputy Raineesha Williams (Niecy Nash), the sassy single black mama with the smile as wide as her behind; the intolerant, volatile Mexican American Deputy James Garcia (Carlos Alazraqui), who actually gets along okay with Jones; Deputy Clementine Johnson (Wendi McLendon-Covey), a chesty blonde who could be seen as the precinct bicycle herself; and Deputy Trudy Wiegel (Kerry Kenney-Silver), a mentally unbalanced lady officer who is the cause of much awkward grief amongst herself and co-workers.

These officers are unified by a code of dishonor, often bungling every call that comes their way and falling prey to the slings and arrows (preferably the ones shot from a crossbow) of outrageous misfortune. As season two concluded, a department investigation into the covered-up killing of a man dressed in a milkshake costume resulted in the entire team ending up on the wrong side of the prison gate. Episode 3.1, "Released from Prison," goes behind the cell to show us the incarcerated deputies as they struggle to survive the humiliation and hostility of their jail sentence. Naturally, much of the antagonism comes from within, be it Dangle doing stretching exercises in a cramped cell alongside Garcia and Jones or Wiegel making an off-handed racist remark after attempting to sing the white harmony vocals on Williams' rendition of "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot." Travis Jr. even announces that he's starting his first novel: Stephen King's Christine.

The officers are pardoned after it is revealed that the D.A. who imprisoned them is linked in a series of prostitute murders, and thus pursue respective new lives fresh out of the penitentiary. Jones and Garcia manage to quench their thirst for authority by becoming mall security officers, shaking down skaters and engaging in high-speed chases with littering old men. Travis Jr. operates the tilt-a-whirl at the county fair, Clemmy lives out her dream of becoming a Steely Dan groupie, Williams becomes a realtor, Dangle auditions for American Idol with a banjo on his knee, and Wiegel operates a bed-and-breakfast which also doubles as a slave labor camp for the elderly. By the end of the episode 2.2, their paths cross once again only to result in their reluctant reinstating as law enforcers.

Although the next episode develops an entire storyline out of selecting one out of three promising recruits for the department (there‘s a hunky karate expert and an attractive, cat-like woman to draw sexist lines between the team), the seven performers who make up the core cast of the series continue to develop their characters by virtue of their collective improvisational comedy skills. What's refreshing about many of the set's thirteen episodes is that they manage to take familiar situations and moments of broad, politically incorrect comedy and give them a surprising amount of warped personality and crack timing.

Episode 3.4 achieves this by having the Reno Sheriff's Department inviting the host of a public access kiddie program, Reading Ron (Brian Unger), into their routine daily duties. In being forced to sanitize their typically morbid and vulgar activities for a younger audience, they wind up causing more harm their good and send the rehabilitated coke addict and TV personality into a suicidal tailspin. In addition to Ron's descent, there's a subplot involving Dangle, Wiegel and Jones quarantined for a SARS outbreak, with one memorable moment mid-episode wherein these two stories mesh in a bizarrely clever fashion. It is when Travis Jr. accidentally kills one of Wiegel's cats in a failed attempt to help Ron get something usable for the show. The next time we see the three holed-up hypochondriacs, Dangle puts on a record to lighten the mood, only it sounds like the agonized screams of dead felines coming back to haunt them.

A handful of other equally colorful supporting suspects play well off the main characters, among them Zach Gilafianakis as crossbow enthusiast Frisbee, Andy Daly as a mild-mannered homeowner, Jon Ross Bowie & Jamie Denby as bickering parents on the pageant circuit who routinely report their daughter missing, Jack Plotnick as the carny/sex offender Steve Marmella, and DeRay Davis as Junior the Third, a bum/talk show host who reports a cart-jacking. The main standout is Keegan-Michael Key of MADtv as the "Theoretical Criminal," a perp who engages the team members in hypothetical scenarios regarding crimes he might have been involved in. Jeff Foxworthy does the voice of "Fast Eddie" McLintock, the meth runner and recidivist speeder who outwits the deputies in an episode equal parts Road Runner and Smokey & the Bandit (there's also a cast member from Heroes who has a bit part during an interrogation room scene). And series favorites Chief Carl, Gary the Klansman (Chris Tallman) and Terry Bernardino (Nick Swardson), the lisping, roller-skating male prostitute, come back to disturb the peace, as well.

But not everything is traffic violations, noise complaints and mysterious bags full of "delicious, piping hot Arby's," as several of the RENO 911! team step up to the front in several episodes. Jones, for instance, has a brush with local fame singing on a High Sierra Carpeting jingle ("...And the installation is fre-eeeee!") only to wind up heartbroken and defeated. Dangle gets a visit from a young man named Kane who claims to be his son, thus providing him a chance for some ambiguously gay bonding. Garcia both learns the supernatural power of Liberace's piano and falls in love behind the backs of his co-workers, whereas Clemmy and Williams learn the harsh truth about Hollywood as they secure William Peterson's trailer when CSI comes to shoot in Reno. Trudy Wiegel's ill-fated love affair with soon-to-be-executed "Truckee River Killer" Craig Pullin (Kyle Dunnigan) provides a thread by means of their conjugal visits, culminating in a last-minute wedding proposal that becomes a comedy of errors leading up to the inevitable cliffhangers involving a possible stay of execution as well as Dangle and Garcia's fight for survival after a blizzard isolates them in their squad car.

The third season does little with "rookie" officer Deputy Kimball, who becomes the winner by default at the end of the third episode. Mary Birdsong is a game comic performer (she memorably appeared in season two as the masseuse who brutalized Travis Jr.) who comes off strong as early as her induction speech ("I may be wooden on the outside, but it's more like pudding on the inside") and sounds irresistibly like Holly Hunter from Raising Arizona, but the arc of her character is that she ends up sacrificing whatever competence she possesses to wind up a natural part of the team. That, and her co-workers suspect she's a lesbian. The later seasons as well as the Reno 911! Miami movie allowed for Birdsong to make a more lasting impact with her character than anything in these thirteen episodes. For an example of Kimball's finest half-hour, see "Christian Singles Mixer" in the next season DVD package.

The thirteen episodes spread across this two-DVD package include the following:

"Released from Prison"
"Revenge of Mike Powers"
"Cop School"
"SARS Outbreak"
"Fastest Criminal in Reno"
"The Prefect of Wanganui"
"...And the Installation Is Free"
"Clemmy Marries a Dead Guy"
"Garcia's Secret Girlfriend"
"Dangle's Son"
"CSI: Reno"
"Naked Stake-Out"
"Wiegel and Craig Get Married"

The episodes are all presented in the original full-frame video presentation as broadcast on TV, with all of the strong language uncensored. Detail and color saturation are striking given the nature of the program, although a lot of the night-time sequences are appropriately dark and, pardon the adjective, realistic-looking. Edge enhancement or potential source flaws were not evident. The digital transfer is near-flawless, a description that I don't even think would even apply to any presentation of COPS on DVD. The Dolby Stereo 2.0 mix is fairly standard, although all of the center channel-oriented dialogue and music cues come across with sharp presence and clarity. Subtitles and captions for the thirteen episodes come solely in English.

Audio commentaries and extended scenes are spread across the DVDs, with disc one including a particularly sublime 22-minute collection of outtakes from Dangle and Wiegel's crime scene recreation. Lennon and Kenney-Silver make a fine comic team, and the odd scenarios they imagine never fail to amuse. The second disc presents a longer collection of raw materials from both the Junior the Third cart-jacking call as well as the security patrol from the "CSI: Reno" episode, clocking in at nearly 30 minutes. There are some fine unused riffs, but they feel a bit more like deleted scenes than the previous reel, which could've been issued as an episode in itself. The main value of these outtakes is a chance to understand just how daunting it must be to cut these down for broadcast.

The five yak tracks break down amongst the following episodes and participants:

"Fastest Criminal in Reno" - director Michael Patrick Jann and Mrs. Kenney-Silver.
"The Prefect of Wanganui" - Kenney-Silver and Mary Birdsong.
"...And the Installation Is Free" - Cedric Yarbrough and Carlos Alazraqui.
"Dangle's Son" - Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant.
"Wiegel and Craig Get Married" - director Brad Abrams and Mrs. Niecy Nash.

The alternate audio tracks are a mix of dry-humored quirky humor and production details, often mixed with just the right amount of goofy humor, tangential side discussions and playful head-to-head amity. Among the many insights spawned from these discussions: Carlos Alazraqui is such a huge Steve Miller fan that he often posed legal hurdles in some occasions just humming a tune; Kenney-Silver knows Birdsong's e-mail address and admires her posterior as much as many other strange fans; and whenever you start to goof around in a new pair of boots, as Lennon does, you can expect a famous comic actor to deliver a response. Lennon and Ben Garant's sole pairing is perhaps the best of the five tracks, as we learn how an earlier premise inspired by David Lynch had to be scrapped two days in advance and required an old stand-by story idea to save the shooting.

The second disc also includes a trio of Comedy Central Quickies (one of which includes a popular RENO 911! guest star/stand-up comic/comic book geek) and several TV spots which double as commercials for non-existent RENO 911! action figures. On the first DVD are a quartet of forced previews as well as a special message from Lt. Dangle and Travis Jr. regarding an upcoming feature film project. In the tradition of previous RENO 911! season sets, there's one hidden menu feature on each of the two DVDs. If you can find the right pair of shades to highlight, you'll find in-character audio commentary on a specific episode from seven of the show's stars (you could cheat, but how much fun is that?). The one track on disc two is an absolute howler.

Program grade on average: 4/5.
Video: 4/5.
Audio: 3.5/5.
Extras: 4/5.
Final: 4/5.

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Good for a Rainy Day
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age