By Deb Sperling

Incessant bleeping got you down? Missing out on vital plot development in the form of colorful adjectives cut out by network censorship? Well, let confusion reign no more. That’s right… the Brady Bunch on Crack is back. The Osbournes - The Second Season, features ten more episodes of [BLEEP]ed up Osbourne antics – that’s almost five whole hours of incomprehensible Ozzy-speak. With, of course, the option of watching the episodes censored or uncensored.

If the media hasn’t thrown it in your face enough yet, The Osbournes is the hysterical MTV “reality” series that follows The Osbourne family – rocker Ozzy, his wife Sharon, their kids, Jack and Kelly (the illusive sister Amy chose not to be filmed for either of the seasons), and their various aids, live-ins, friends, and house-guests.

Though “reality” TV is far less suspenseful without that constant MTV voice-over drone urging you to “find out what happens next week,” The Osbournes still retains an addictive quality. And no, I’m not talking about Ozzy’s notorious habits. The Osbournes – The Second Season, is kind of like watching home videos, if, all of a sudden, you woke up covered in crucifixes and holding a winning lottery ticket. Beyond the glamorous Los Angeles lifestyle and the catacomb-esque motif, The Obsournes are just like you (and all the other sitcom families. I say sitcom because “reality show” seems too demeaning – and because being ridiculously rich and famous, and having something like half the nation’s teenagers watching you from their living rooms, isn’t really all that realistic.)

The second season delves deeper into the lives of everyone’s favorite Royal Family of Darkness. The first episode, “What Goes Up” kicks off the season with, among other laughs, a hilarious display of Jack’s various methods for entertaining himself – from squirting innocent passersby with a hose, to playing video games in a gas mask and helmet, to mumbling something about spider-monkeys tripping on acid. The episode also follows Kelly’s newfound career as teen pop icon…excuse me, “professional singer.”

The light-hearted pranks, silly conversations, and glamorous celebrity lifestyle, however, give way to a slightly disturbing ending. Sharon Osbourne, alone, speaks to the camera for a minute or two, saying that everything in her life right now is just too good, and isn’t going to last.

In the second episode, “Must Come Down,” Sharon receives some upsetting news, which the family must deal with throughout most of the second season. However, spirits remain high, as Sharon jokes with a doctor “You just want me to take my top off, don’t you?”

Other highlights include Kelly and Jack’s various malodorous companions, a house full of very poorly trained canines, and an eventful birthday (Episode 9 – “Viva Ozz-Vegas”) – which features one of Kelly’s friends taking a topless dive off a dinner table in the private room of a classy casino restaurant. The season also features Mandy Moore in one or two episodes, and a whole slew of celebrities in the season finale (“My Big Fat Jewish Wedding”). And my personal favorite Osbournes moment? “I’m gonna shove this banana up your @$$!!!”

DVD Special Features:

The two-disc DVD set is worth owning for the deleted scenes alone, which are too hilarious to be ruined for you. This is with the exception of a few which simply don’t make any sense. The Osbournes – The Second Season DVD set also features an often much needed Ozzy Translator, which is only marginally accurate. It’s kind of like watching a poorly subtitled Kung Fu movie, where the character speaks for long enough that you just know you can’t be reading an accurate translation. If you care (which you most likely don’t if you’re reading this particular website with any degree of proficiency), there are also French subtitles. The DVD also features optional audio commentaries by the Osbourne family on each episode, though they often don’t seem to have much to say.

Both disks feature games – one with DVD-Rom material, and the other with games designed to be played with your remote (although these can also be managed with a computer keyboard if you’re able to figure out which keys to use.) The DVD-Rom comes with the game “Crazy Training”, which claims to rank your potential as a future member of the Osbourne family. “Crazy Training” heaves a number of games at you in fairly random sequence as you watch one of the episodes. Often, one game is replaced by another before it has really begun, since the games are designed to correspond with the scenes as they occur. The games range from dodging traffic with your keyboard as the Osbournes drive on-screen, to helping Jack find his “true-love”, Natalie Portman, at the end of a maze. I’m sure “Crazy Training” is great if you’re a big on caffeine or amphetamines, or haven’t taken your Ritalin this morning, but otherwise, it’s mostly just noisy, frustrating, and confusing. Not to mention, the graphics can @%#$ themselves.

The second disk features the remote control games: “Name That Dookie 2: Dookie’s revenge,” which is too disgusting to deserve a description; and “What the $%#@ Did He Say?” – a multiple-choice trivia game which lets you attempt to decipher some of the unintelligible Ozzy-speak on your own. Sadly, this is one of the shorter games of the three, yet probably the most entertaining.

Though the games are somewhat disappointing, and “reality” TV isn’t quite the same without the weekly suspense or anticipatory commercial breaks, The Osbournes – The Second Season definitely has more than it’s fair share of memorable moments. It’s perfect for the sarcastic, hair-dying, rebellious teenager in every one of us (and I’m not just saying that because I’m one of them.), but if five hours of The Brady Bunch meets Jerry Springer meets The Addams Family isn’t really your thing, it’s worth a rental just for an episode or two and a sampling of the deleted scenes.