Gilmore Girls: The Complete Fourth Season (Digipack) (2003) Review

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(More customer reviews)There was much talk and debate over Gilmore Girls' fourth season. Some thought it was great and that it was one of their best seasons. Others thought that it had a lot of good stuff, but had problems and was, quite easily, it's weakest season. I can't say that it's a bad season, because it's not. The second half contains some truly great episodes, but season four was a disjointed disappointment. The show went through a transition this year, and shows that go through a certain 'growing up' phase do have some problems. They usually don't go through it unscathed. Season four of GG is no exception. Rory leaves home and Stars Hollow and goes off to live in her dorm at Yale. This leaves a new, and awkward, dynamic between mother and daughter and the show. The relationship between the two was a major factor of the series, and the fact that they spoke to one another on cell phones more than anything else it seemed was also a component that didn't add to the season. They added in the character of Jason 'Digger' Stiles, and most people didn't really like him or warm up to him. This was not actor Chris Eigelman's fault, as he was good. The only actor who could match Lauren Graham's rapid speak and quick wit. Lorelei also had new developments in her life. She and Sookie were getting serious about opening their own inn, and in the meantime, take on careers as caterers. It seemed that the writers had a hard time settling into their new set ups and situations, and it left the show disjointed, misguided, and just not the same show. This was mostly during the first half of the season, although there were some highlights. "Chicken Or Beef" was a classic GG episode dealing with Rory running into ex Dean, who invites her to his upcoming wedding. "The Festival Of Living Art" was another notable episode, with the town becoming living pieces of art in the town square. But there were more misfires and duds than great eps. "An Affair To Remember" had Rory spending the entire episode looking for a place to study. This was a problem with Rory. There was this big new change in her world, and the writers didn't seem to exploit it much. Rory was lost for a good portion of the season, and it seemed they couldn't figure anything good to do with her. Thankfully, once the second half kicks in, the show regains it's footing and the writers seemed to have finally gotten a hold of what the show wa doing this season. The second half really kicked into gear, and it's what saved the season. This is why I gave it four stars. Jess returns, and not for the good, in "A Family Matter", and the season had one of it's best episodes with "A Clang In The Clamor", a classic GG episode with a wonderful Luke/Lorelei moment in the old church. "Tick..Tick..Tick..Boom" and "Afterboom" was a tremendous two parter. A true season highlight. Lorelei and Sookie's new inn, The Dragonfly, is coming into shape towards the end of the season, and it appears to be a great new place. "Luke Can See Her Face" is a great episode. It's a pivotal ep in the L/L movement, when Luke finally realizes that Lorelei is the one. The season finale, "Raincoats And Recipes", is the type of stuff season finales are made off. Pitch perfect. An episode that changes everything in the Gilmores' world, and promises great stuff to come. And come it did in the show's magnificent fifth season. Season four was not bad. It had problems and flaws, and is easily it's 'least' season, but it overcame them in the second half. Ther performances were still up to snuff, and Lauren Graham continues to be one of the top best actresses on TV. She has "Emmy" written all over her, and continues to be denied that honor. Yes, moving out and moving away can be awkward and things are just different. Maybe that was the writers' point, but it was obvious that it's hard, different, and awkward to write as well. Season 4 started off with a whimper, but it sure ended with a major bang.

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Boola boola! Rory starts her first year at Yale. Moola moola! Lorelai finally opens the Dragonfly Inn, although it takes her last dime (and a loan from Luke). The Gilmore girls return for another scintillating, snappy-patter year of Gilmore Girls. Welcome, Gilmore groupies, to the fourth season of the series acclaimed for its agile balance of life and laughter. Oh yes, and love. Lorelai has a romantic fling with her father's new, younger partner, but ends the year with the guy every fan has known was right for her all along. For Rory, Cupid seems to be on sabbatical -- then Dean and Jess re-enter her life. Sookie gets a Davey, Lane gets a life, Kirk gets a girlfriend(!) and you get a 22-episode vacation in Stars Hollow, plus DVD Extras and a mint on the pillow. DVD Features:Additional ScenesChallenges:Stars Hollow Interactive Triva GameOther:Who Wants To Get Together - a montage of the season's best hook-ups. Goodies & Gossip - Fun Factios appear on screen throughout the Girls in Bikinis, Boys Doin' the Twist episode.

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The O.C.: The Complete Second Season (2003) Review

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(More customer reviews)The O.C. Season 2 is just as good as the first season. I like the fact that the show is not just about kids in high school, but also their parents and family and how they all interact. The cast is really good and believable enough to either make you love them or hate them. The show is very emotional at times and it is very addicting. I think what scared me away before I ever saw an episode was that I figured The O.C. was just another show about rich kids in California like Beverly Hills 90210 and/or Melrose place. The show is so much more than those other shows and has just the right amount of drama mixed in with just the right amount of heart. I highly recommend The O.C. for anyone who likes must see TV. This Complete Second season of The O.C. will be released on August 23rd, 2005 just in time for the premiere of season 3 in the Fall. This 7-DVD set will contain all 24 episodes from the second season, and a disc full of bonus material, too. The great news is that unlike season 1 season 2 will be in Widescreen. There will be an English Dolby Surround audio track, along with English, French and Spanish subtitles.
Here's a list of the bonus material you'll find on this:
The Wet and Wilde Kisses - outtakes from the "Rainy Day Women" episode
Beachy Couture: How O.C. Fashion Is Made
The O.C.: Obsessed Completely Retrospective TV Special
Gag and Goofs from Seasons 1 and 2
Extended cut of "The Rainy Day Women"
Commentary on "The Chrismukkah That Almost Wasn't" and "The Rainy Day Women" by Cast and Crew


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Hook up with what's coming down as the Core Four romances of Ryan-and-Marissa and Seth-and-Summer may (or may not) go from very over to very on, Sandy and Kirsten face choices that could trainwreck their 20-year marriage, felon (and Ryan's brother) Trey gives Newport living a try, Julie's lurid past comes back to haunt her, and other new hunks and hotties become part of the coastal scene. Live. Laugh. Lie. Cheat. Grow. Share. Connive. Love. In California's beach paradise, they do everything under the sun.DVD Features:Audio Commentary:Commentary on The Chrismukkah That Almost Wasn't Documentary:Beachy Couture: How O.C. Fashion Is MadeGag Reel:From Seasons One and TwoTV Special:The O.C.: Obsessed Completely Retrospective TV Special

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Veronica Mars - The Complete First Two Seasons (2004) Review

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(More customer reviews)Warning: Some spoilers
You need to know this show. By any standard it stands as one of the best shows on television and as one of the most innovative since HILL STREET BLUES inaugurated the era of Quality TV in the 1980s. Creator Rob Thomas and the rest of the production team have created something not quite like any show that has come before.
The uniqueness of VERONICA MARS is not widely appreciated, even by its fans. In trying to describe the show to others, fans inevitably resort to comparisons, something I have been guilty of myself. Most often, people refer to BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, in that both shows feature a diminutive blond in a high school setting doing heroic deeds. No doubt BUFFY is the major influence on the show. Two actors who played major roles on BUFFY--Charisma Carpenter who played Cordelia and Alyson Hannigan who played Willow--have recurring roles on the show, and BUFFY creator Joss Whedon himself both appeared in a cameo and supplied the most praise-worthy review of VERONICA yet in his ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY review of the Season One DVD: "Best. Show. Ever." And after its first season, Salon.com gave their award for the best show on TV ignored by the Emmys to VERONICA MARS, an award called The Buffy, named for the greatest show ever persistently ignored by the Emmys. Nonetheless there are some major differences between BUFFY and VERONICA MARS. First, like most shows on the WB, BUFFY was overwhelmingly white and comfortably middle class. VERONICA, on the other hand, was set in Neptune, California, which is, as Veronica says at the beginning of Season One, "a town without a middle class." If you attend Neptune High, your parents are either millionaires or work for millionaires. This gives the show a social and class tension fairly unusual for television, though that tension isn't exploited as often as it could be. Furthermore, Neptune High is ethnically diverse. The wealthy kids are almost all white, while the poor include some whites, a lot of Hispanics, and a lot of blacks.
A second major difference in the two shows is in the two leads. Buffy is a super-empowered chosen one, given by magical powers strength and power to fight and kill vampires and demons and her task is essentially a violent one. Veronica, on the other hand, has no powers, is in no way a "chosen one," has no hand-to-hand combat skills, and apart from her trusty taser, has no weapons skills. If one looks at other great female heroines in the history of TV--Emma Peel, Wonderwoman, the Bionic Woman, Pepper Anderson, Dana Scully, Buffy Summers, Xena, Max Guevera, Sydney Bristow, and Aeryn Sun--Veronica stands out in her relative inability to kick butt. Even Dana Scully (whose lack of hand to hand skills were wonderfully parodied in a fantasy sequence in which suddenly she did) was very good with a gun. Instead, Veronica is street smart in a way that none of these others--not even Pepper Anderson or Max--are. She is brainy both in a bookish way and a practical way. She is constantly out thinking her rivals. One of the complaints that many gender studies people make about characters like Buffy and Xena (though I think they are wrong) is that their resorting to violence actually makes them artificial men, undertaking a masculine solution to problems (some even call them transvestites). Regardless of the merits of that kind of position (which I think are minimal at best), Veronica is immune to that critique. The closest she comes to gunplay in two seasons is removing the bullets from a bad guy's gun.
Other parallels are equally unhelpful. She is sometimes compared to Nancy Drew, but other than the fact that both investigate mysteries and eschew violence, it is hard to see other parallels. Nancy Drew has more in common with the comfortable parlous mysteries of Agatha Christie, while Veronica is more spiritually akin to a Raymond Chandler or the psychological messiness of a Ross MacDonald.
But I can understand why the show is compared to BUFFY. Like that show, VERONICA MARS is a character-driven long narrative arc series, that flips from humor, to intrigue, to heartbreaking drama with ease. Like BUFFY, VERONICA MARS is not afraid to go for the hurt, killing or damaging characters, delving into emotionally painful moments, and violating your expectations. And like Buffy, Veronica can make bad choices. What you love about Veronica, however, is that no matter how life flattens her, she just gets up and reasserts herself. Her resilience is my favorite part of her character.
Anyone who hasn't seen VERONICA MARS should definitely get this two-season set. The writing on these two seasons is amazingly consistent and there is wonderful carry over from Season One to Season Two. In fact, there is a sense in which the conflicts in Season One are not fully resolved until the final episode of Season Two.
The spoiler paragraph:
Season Three will represent a major change for the show. Veronica will be attending nearby Hearst College where presumably she will at least be joined by Wallace and probably by Mac (NAPOLEON DYNAMITE's Tina Majorino, who is rumored to be a permanent cast member next year). Will Veronica and Logan find true (or at least epic) love? And just what was in the briefcase (Enrico Colantoni has revealed that what was actually in the briefcase as they shot was a batch of his favorite cookies that the cast surprised him with, but obviously that isn't what was "really" in the briefcase)? Time will tell. The one bit of nervousness I have about Season Three is that the show has been renewed for 22-episodes but with only an initial 13-episode order. This isn't very unusual. Most seasons, for instance, ANGEL operated under this arrangement. Usually the network will make a mid-season announcement that the additional 9 episodes have been picked up. Hopefully they will have not just a full third season, but a fourth and fifth for what is in my opinion one of the truly great shows on television. I've argued with friends for the past few years that on many levels--especially character development and extended narrative--television is vastly superior to movies these days. VERONICA MARS is exhibit A.

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Studio: Warner Home VideoRelease Date: 12/12/2006

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Veronica Mars - The Complete First Three Seasons (2004) Review

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(More customer reviews)This is not a special collector's edition like the ones recently put out for Stargate SG-1 or the X-Files. This is only a bundle of the show's three season DVD sets. As it is you will pay about forty dollars more for these three seasons in a bundle than you would if you just bought the three seasons separately.
I hate to compare this show to Buffy, but it does merit comparisons in several ways - the snappy dialogue, a teenage girl as resourceful heroine, an overall season-long story arc, plus each individual episode has a mystery to be solved that is pretty much stand-alone. The final comparison is that Veronica Mars, like Buffy, seemed to lose something once Veronica went to college. Buffy had three great seasons before this happened, Veronica Mars only two. Since Veronica Mars didn't have the sizeable ardent core fan base and surrounding mythology that Buffy had when it went through its troubled college transitional season, and ratings were quite bad during its third season, the show was cancelled. However, if you liked the first two seasons of Veronica Mars you should enjoy the third, and it is worth owning. Just buy the seasons separately, not like this.

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Item Name: Veronica Mars - The Complete First Three Seasons; Studio:Warner Home Video

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