Business As Usual

Whatever footage those omnipresent cameras caught of the medical and substance abuse travails that landed the Osbournes in the tabloids and the gossip columns must have wound up on the cutting room floor. Instead, these 10 episodes that concluded the Emmy-nominated season 2 amp the Osbournes' hysterical dysfunctions to 11. The internecine warfare between siblings Jack and Kelly goes Fallujah in "What a Boy Wants" and "Fists of Fury," an episode that, according to one website, features 135 bleeped obscenities, which must be a series benchmark. But in time-honored, reassuring sitcom convention, family ties are reinforced by episode's end. When the dust has settled in "Fists," Jack and Kelly bond in the kitchen over Easy Mac. Nothing unites the fractious Osbournes like obnoxious neighbors, but in "Tennis Racket," not even Jack's drumming or Ozzy's stereo blasts can stop their incessant tennis-playing neighbors. Jack enjoys something of a breakout half season. He turns 17 and goes Medieval (Times) in "What a Boy Wants." He hooks up with Kurt Cobain's sister in "A Little Ditty About Jack and Brianne" (which also features the surreal sight of a panty-clad Courtney Love reciting Shakespeare!). Another snapshot for the Osbourne family album is Ozzy and Jack disrupting a fishing trip by lobbing firecrackers at birds in "Angler Management." Throughout, Ozzy is his delightful, addled self. In "Run Ozzy Run," his new car's voice-recognition system can't understand him (for viewers with the same problem, this DVD includes the helpful Ozzy Translator). In "What a Boy Wants," a dentist administers the "Ozzy level" of nitrous oxide, with debilitating results. The season ends with a Dallas-esque mind-bleep of Bobby-in-the-shower proportions that calls the reality of the series in question. How brilliant to give the Osbournes the last laugh on us. --Donald Liebenson

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