Digging through their vaults, HBO unearthed a comedy series they ran in 1994 called Snaps and decided to release it on DVD.  Why they thought this disc would sell is another matter.  Very obscure (it's not listed on TV.com, and the IMDB has almost no information on the show) and without much following, HBO made the further mistake of only putting out two half hour shows with minimal extras on this $20 MSRP DVD.   As for the show itself, it's a bit dated and really doesn't deliver in the laughs department.  There are a few good lines, but for every joke that works, viewers have to sit through a lot that don't.

Snaps is an unlikely pairing of game show and stand up comedy.  The show features two teams of comics who compete against each other by 'snapping' or insulting the other with "Yo mama" jokes.  Each three member team gets a few rounds of insults in before the 'elimination' round.  In this final battle, any joke that doesn't make the mark gets the comedian ejected from the game.  The team with the last member still standing wins.

While this show may have worked well in 1994 (though I doubt it due to the obscure nature of the show), today it plays like a series of blond jokes; dated and not too funny.  The comedians were all new to me (with the exception of Tracy Morgan, from Saturday Night Live who appears in the first episode) and that's not really surprising.  The lines are delivered in a very slow fashion that robs them of a lot of their humor: "Yo mama's so big (pause) yeah, your mama's soooo big (pause again) when she comes down the Soul Train aisle, (pause) she's on two channels."

The show is definitely R rated, and best of the best jokes are a bit raunchy.  There's nothing wrong with that, but the lack of quality lines really does make the show dull.  For every "Yo mama used to work at the sperm bank, but she got fired for drinking on the job." there are half a dozen jokes that are just dumb.   "You're mama's so black she can go to a funeral buck naked." just doesn't cut it.

The stereo mix is fine for this type of show.  There jokes are easy to hear and there aren't any audio defects worth noting.

Video:

The full frame image is okay but not outstanding.  It's a little grainy and not as crisp as it could be, but it is adequate for this show.

Extras:

The only extra is a three minute parody of Masterpiece Theater that introduces the concept of snapping.

Final Thoughts:

This show just didn't work for me.  There were a few good lines, but only a couple of laughs on the whole disc.  There's not a lot of value either, with only two half hour shows on the $20 disc.  I can't see many people enjoying this, and I'm a little but surprised that HBO released it.  Skip it.