Poopie! and Poopie II! luckily aren't Best Brains Inc. toilet cams, but rather lengthy outtakes videos that the company had sold on video while the series was on the air. How are the outtakes? Like most outtakes, amusement value depends on the viewer's taste in screw-ups, but it's fun to see our favorite comics flubbing their lines and acting like they're one of us, even though they've ascended to godhood in our eyes.
The first Poopie! spans seasons 2 through 6. Cleverly they introduce the idea to us by showing gaffs from the filming of the fifth season intro, so we hear the theme music playing to ease us into the MST mood while everything is just going to shit. From then on we get a series of puppeteering problems: Servo falls apart, Crow loses his eyes, and Gypsy has jaw malfunctions. We follow that up with a series of flubbed lines in Deep 13, as Frank gets a constant case of the giggles (including a repeatedly botched line from Hellcats). After that it seems to intermix varieties of goof types, occasionally going on a series. Trace has a pretty solid streak where he has trouble pronouncing invention types and trying not to crack up at Frank. The reel runs on for about thirty-one minutes, down to Trace ruining a perfectly good take of "Livin' in Deep 13."
Highlights for me: During the famous "Waffles!" sketch from Viking Women and the Sea Serpent, Joel messes with the crew by messing up a foolproof skit and just saying "Pancakes!" Trace and Frank cracking up the crew during the Chinderwear Invention Exchange is pretty fun too.
Poopie II! is really just more of the same, except it spans seasons 7 and 8, so we get an odd mish-mash of two different eras. It's jarring to switch from Bill and Mary Jo back to Trace every now and again, but it's good to see more outtake material. Unlike the first reel, there seems to not be much interest in grouping similar scenes together but just thrust us through onset shenanigans. Sometimes there will be a take they mess up multiple times (Servo's boat fell off a lot during the portage sketch), though a lot of the material is just random goofs. I ultimately think with this reel there was less material to mine from too, as the previous tape took from five seasons of goofs, while Poopie II! only has two to work with, and one of those seasons was abbreviated. While I'd hesitate to say this is "bad" blooper material (if there is such a thing), it's just that memorable bloopers are far less here. That and there seems to be a lot of material that sets up what the scene is supposed to be before the actual blooper takes place, which seems like filler if nothing else.
Highlights: I quite like Bill breaking the chains in the Roman dungeon. The closing bits are pretty good, with Servo's trucker butt and the Sodium song gaff. Also: "TOO MANY ADVERBS!"
If you're a blooper enthusiast and love the show, then the Poopie! reels are probably must-watches. Personally, I like behind the scenes footage from the show in any form (I liked the raw material in the Volume 3 set quite a bit), so these reels are a lot of fun for me. You can't really go wrong with Poopie! It's just a shame we don't have reels with seasons 1, 9, 10, 11, and 12 to match, but maybe this is something for the folks at Shout to revive?
The DVD
Initially Poopie! and Poopie II! were sold exclusively through Best Brains' own video program, though Rhino Home Video received the rights to release their own tape in stores and include it as an extra on the "Manos" The Hands of Fate DVD. Poopie II!, for the longest time, was more of a rarity, as it was only sold in full through Best Brains, while a fifteen minute portion of it was released on the Teen-Age Strangler disc of Volume 10 and 10.2 (Shout's re-release contains the same edit) before finally being released in full on Shout Factory's exclusive bonus disc with Volume XXXIX, which also included the original Poopie! and the on television ad for purchasing the tape during the 1995 Turkey Day Marathon, Poopie Parade of Values.
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