Year:  2009, 2010
Genre:  Kids, Comedy, TV series
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Miranda Cosgrove, Nathan Kress, Jennette McCurdy, Jerry Trainor
Director:  Steve Hoefer
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     I know.  I couldn’t believe it either.  A complete season of iCarly?  Ridiculous.  I have reviewed, in the past couple of years, iCarly Season 1 Volume 1, iCarly Season 1 Volume 2, iCarly Season 2 Volume 1, iCarly Season 2 Volume 2, and iCarly Season 2 Volume 3.  I have also reviewed a number of iCarly DVD specials, and crossover series like VicTorious.  Two seasons, five volumes.  With additional DVDs popping up all the time.

     And now, out of nowhere, comes August 30th and Paramount Home Entertainment’s release of iCarly: The Complete Third Season.  What?  No volume one and two?  Or three and four?  Just one release – they managed to fit a complete season on just two DVDs?  Colour me stunned.

     Now – what I really should talk about here is whether the complete third season, shocker that it is, is actually worth picking up.  Once again, I would suggest that you do so only if you have kids who are into iCarly.  A 40-year-old single man with iCarly DVDs on his shelf next to his Planet Of The Apes box set could be seen as…vaguely creepy. 

      But if you DO have kids who want this, you might be pleasantly surprised.  I would say it’s worth it solely for the Jack Black cameo appearance at “WebiCon”, a nerdy gathering of web sites and web shows and webby webbersons that I guess is like ComiCon, or a Star Trek convention.  Jack Black and Spencer challenge each other for…some kind of title…something to do with a “‘stume”?  Really, they are fighting for the title of Biggest Nerd Alive.  And it makes me laugh.  And the video above is the only one I could find of the epic showdown, sorry for the quality.  This set might be worth it for that moment alone.

Year:  2011
Genre:  Comedy, Stand-up
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Godfrey
Run time:  70 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     I like Godfrey.  I watched his new stand-up DVD, Black By Accident, out August 30th from Paramount Home Entertainment, and I felt my self liking him.  He’s very likeable, pleasant, and seems terrifically friendly.  That doesn’t mean, necessarily, that I liked his stand-up special.

     Godfrey has some decent material, and a great delivery most of the time.  I also like his voices – he does a perfect Denzel Washington, a great Schwarzenegger, a pretty good Obama.  But I have a huge problem with one voice he does.  It’s the generic “woman” voice that he puts on whenever he wants to speak in the voice of his girlfriend, or any other woman ever.  And it’s the most obnoxious, awful voice imaginable.

     Apparently, to Godfrey, every woman alive sounds like a whiny four year old with the sniffles.  And, like a whiny four-year-old, she repeats everything she says forty times.  It’s cold in here…is it cold in here…it’s cold in here…it’s COLD in here…and so on and so forth until I want to rip my ears off.  Or, in what would be perhaps a more constructive and mature reaction, to hit “skip” on the DVD remote.

     The real problem with Godfrey’s special is that this obnoxious, awful and cringe-inducing “woman” voice takes up a VERY LARGE PORTION of the show.  So for every five minutes I was laughing, I was wincing for the next five.  As I said, some of it WAS good, and I’m glad I saw it.  But now that I have seen it, and I know that voice is a very large part of it, I will never watch it again.

Years:  2010, 2011
Genre:  TV series, Drama
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Shenae Grimes, AnnaLynne McCord, Jessica Stroup, Tristan Wilds, Ryan Eggold, Michael Steger, Lori Loughlin, Matt Lanter, Jessica Lowndes, Gillian Zinser   
Eye candy:  Lowndes, Grimes, McCord, Stroup, Loughlin, Sara Foster Creators:  Rob Thomas, Gabe Sachs, Jeff Judah
Run time:  15 hours, 5 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     90210 continues to be a flashy, shiny, overproduced show about “high school” kids who attend a “high school” and strive to have as little substance and realism as possible in their every day lives.  The show continues to focus on hot babes who spend as much time in underwear and bikinis as possible, and have a lot more sex than most of the high school kids I knew when I was once a high school kid.  Then again, I was a high school kid at the age of 14, not 27.

     For some reason, this show wants to insist on following a strict chronological progression – it presumably started in the sophomore year of most of the stars, and now they are in senior year.  Shenae Grimes is 21.  AnnaLynne McCord and Jessica Stroup are both 24.  Jessica Lowndes is 22, Gillian Zinser is 25, and the dead-sexy Lori Loughlin is 47.  Every one of them is too old, and too hot, to be a plausible high school student.

     So why bother?  Why bother pretending that the school years are progressing in synch with the seasons of the show?  Next year, they will still be too old and too hot to be plausible first-year college students.  Maybe ten years from now, when they are 30-somethings making their way up corporate ladders and dealing with the fact that they are too old for the pop-star-and-modelling businesses, it won’t matter.  Until then, I long for the (relative) realism of Degrassi.

     I hate to down on a show just because it has a bunch of hot babes.  Hot babes should be great for a show, and make me want to watch.  But when a 25-year-old hottie is playing a 16-year-old hottie, there’s something vaguely creepy about ogling her on television.  And since that’s about the only thing I can get out of 90210, I have to give the thumbs-down to the third season, which hits DVD August 30th from Paramount Home Entertainment.

Year:  1986
Genre:  Blu-Ray, Romance, Action, Drama
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Tom Cruise, Kelly McGillis, Anthony Edwards, Tom Skerritt, Meg Ryan, Val Kilmer, Michael Ironside
Notable bit parts: Clarence Gilyard Jr, Tim Robbins
Director:  Tony Scott
Run time:  110 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     Top Gun is a movie that, more than most, foreshadows the rest of the 80s, much of the 90s, and even a bit of the new millenium’s cinematic landscape.  For example – Tom Cruise played a cocky prodigy with daddy issues, a role that he would come to define in the next 20 years – A Few Good Men, The Firm, Days of Thunder. 

     Also, it’s hard for me to see Tim Robbins in his tiny, itty-bitty walk-on role here without thinking of the time he and Tom Cruise shared the screen in the recent War of the Worlds (an encounter that turned out very differently for Robbins). 

     Then there’s Tom Skerritt, who I love.  At the end of Top Gun, you’ll remember, Skerritt tells Cruise “I’ll fly with you”.  But then he doesn’t.  And Cruise goes out alone.  And Skerritt disappears from the film, much as he disappeared from public consciousness over the past 20 years.  I miss remembering who Tom Skerritt is.

     Meg Ryan shows up briefly as Goose’s wife, all pretty and perky.  This foreshadows her pretty perkiness in every movie since then.  But when Goose is killed, she disappears.  No sad scene where she cries over her dead husband.  I suspect that this is because when Meg Ryan cried on set, her face swelled up and she was no longer photogenic.  Just like it has in real life of late.

     Then there’s Anthony Edwards, who went on to a very successful run on the TV show ER, and Kelly McGillis who really wasn’t that good an actress in this film, and was super-hot only in a dated, 80s sort of way.  She was recently in town here in Ottawa stripping down in the stage presentation of The Graduate.  Nice to see she’s still getting work.

     That brings me to Val Kilmer, who of late has apparently been willing to work for food, showing up in movies like Columbus Day, The Traveler and The Chaos Experiment.  I think the downward arc of his career can be explained by the volleyball scene in Top Gun, where he shows his well-defined abs.  Now, when he shows up in movies, he’s a pudgy chunker.  I think that as his abs went, so went his career.  Like Meg Ryan’s lips – the chubbier they are, the less we want to see them on screen.

     I love Top Gun.  Love the fighter planes and the over-the-top cockiness of the whole thing.  I also love the cheesiness and the sappy romance, because it continues to make me laugh.  Watch Top Gun again, and try to count the number of times Kenny Loggins’ “Danger Zone” plays.  Or Berlin’s “Take My Breath Away”.  Any time someone does something macho, it’s Loggins.  Every time someone does something romantic, it’s Berlin.  The movie could have been half an hour shorter if Tony Scott hadn’t insisted on including montages of shirtless men playing volleyball to the strains of “Danger Zone”.

     And now, with Paramount’s Blu-Ray release of Top Gun August 30th, you can get this 80s classic in the format it deserves – hope you have surround sound too!  Those fighter jets are meant to dogfight in HD and they are meant to leave the flight deck in surround sound.  So work it out!

Year:  2011
Genre:  Documentary
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Featuring:   Justin Bieber, Usher, Snoop Dogg, Jaden Smith, Miley Cyrus   
Director:  John M. Chu
Run time:  115 minutes
DVD distributor:  First Run Features

     I know what’s coming.  And I’m fully prepared to take the flak that I am sure I will take for actually recommending the Justin Bieber documentary Never Say Never.  The Ultimate Collector’s Edition of the Director’s Fan Cut of the Justin Bieber Film (a run-on-title if there ever was one) comes out August 23rd from Paramount Home Entertainment.  and it’s interesting.

     Now, I first of all want to state that in no way is this an endorsement of Justin Bieber’s music.  Were this a concert film, I would be rating it on a more Jersey Shore-ish level.  But it is NOT a concert film.  It’s a documentary about a subject that I actually find fascinating – how, exactly, did Justin Bieber – Justin Bieber! become one of the biggest superstars in the world?  Straight from youtube to Superstar without the machinery of Nickelodeon or Disney guiding the rise to fame?  How is this possible?  And WHY do little girls LIKE this?

     I didn’t get answers to all of this.  I still don’t know why little girls like this, only that they do.  And I truly still don’t understand the appeal of the music itself.  But I do understand the skyrocketing fame, at least a little more than before.  Three things – one, he had a team of people who believed strongly in him and forced the issue (Usher was one of them).  And two, he worked really really hard.  And three, he is the ultimate Social Media Entity.  It was perfectly normal and reasonable for him to put everything he did on youtube.  He’s been tweeting (presumably) since he could type.

     That, I think, is the real story here.  The triumph of social networking and social media over the conventional methods of becoming a musical star.  (Or even the less-conventional, more recent methods, which involve getting a TV show where you sing, then becoming a singer with a TV show.)

     That journey is what I find amazing.  And that’s what this movie provides.  There are other interesting moments – I was, actually, moved a couple of times.  Sometimes even positively.  When you see a young girl get invited up on stage to be serenaded and presented with flowers by Justin Bieber, it’s tempting to roll your eyes.  And I did.  I wouldn’t be crying, shaking, whatever.  I wouldn’t even be interested.

     But think about this in a different way, for a second.  My favourite band is The Who.  If I were at a Who concert, and Pete Townshend called me up on stage to sing with him on “My Generation”, I might go a little weak at the knees as well.  And whether you understand it viscerally or not, watching these girls tremble and weep over such a contrived, lame set-piece is still somehow very affecting.

     One thing I learned about Justin Bieber is that he can actually play music.  He’s a pretty darn good drummer, and plays guitar as well.  Another interesting thing about this documentary is how that ability is used by the Bieber camp.  It’s a novelty.  He gets behind the drum kit, because it’s just another cool, novel thing they can throw into his live show – check it out, he can play music too!

     Now, you think about that for a moment, and it’s infuriating.  The ability to play music is just a gimmick for people who perform music for a living?  But you think about it, and you realize that for little girls today, it IS.  Imagine if you found out that Britney Spears was an accomplished oboe player.  Or that the chick from Pussycat Dolls grew up studying the works of Chopin at the dining room piano.  Would you be shocked?  Actually, you would.  I think.  I would be.

     Now I realize, as I said earlier, that I’m going to take flak.  I will be mocked and receive snarky emails from people who have never seen this film.  Not that I recommend you run out and watch it.  It’s interesting from a music-insider perspective, and not much more.  That just happens to be something in which I am interested.

     The Ultimate blah blah blah Edition blah blah of the Director’s blah blah Justin Bieber comes with a little heart-shaped Justin Bieber pendant, a soft velvetty box, and a second disc of bonus features that are more directly targeted at little girls than is the movie itself.  And all I’m saying is this – if you have to buy it for your daughter (and you may well have to do that) you could do worse than sitting down to watch it with her.

Years:  2010, 2011
Genre:  TV series, Crime, Drama
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  LL Cool J, Chris O’Donnell, Linda Hunt, Peter Cambor, Daniela Rush, Adam Jamal Craig, Barrett Foa
Creator:  Shane Brennan
Run time:  17 hours, 25 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment
Related reviews:  NCIS Season Seven, NCIS Season Eight, NCIS: LA Season One

     The connection between NCIS and NCIS: LA extends, it seems to me, only as far as the acronym with which they are both named.  The NCIS gang investigate crimes, find the guilty parties, and arrest the wife or the husband or the co-worker or the disgruntled coffee shop employee responsible for the murder.

     In NCIS: LA, it is never an angry wife, or a jilted lover, or a slightly loopy Dairy Queen manager who ends up being the murderer.  It is always a terrorist.  (Or, on the rare occasion it is not directly a terrorist, it’s a massive governmental, CIA-assisted conspiracy that is tangentially related to some terrorists.)

     NCIS seems to be concerned with accumulating evidence, examining DNA and fingerprints and tracking cell phone calls and updating databases.  There is a forensic component, and an investigative component, and the cases rarely boil down to actual gunfire and car chases.

     On the LA version, though, I’m not sure ANY forensics are ever done, I think it is ALL car chases and gunfights.  In every episode, someone goes undercover to investigate a terror cell.  There are apparently an awful lot of those in LA.  And it ends with a gunfight, a close call for an NCIS team member, and an explosion. 

     Actually, none of the episodes end with an explosion.  The CASE ends with an explosion or a gun battle, but the EPISODE ends with nine minutes of banter between LL Cool J and Chris O’Donnell.  Or between Hetty and someone.  Or between two other characters.  Just as long as there is banter.  That is what matters.

     There is also a lot of back story.  Everyone is badass, with a Navy Seal past or a Special Ops past or some kind of lethal-killing-murder training.  The funniest character in this vein is Hetty, the diminutive (under 5 feet) boss of the outfit, who can apparently scale mountains with the greatest of ease, kill you nine times before you hit the floor, and is constantly name-dropping all kinds of presidents and generals and clandestine figures.  I remember Oliver North used to say that to me…

     The thing is – yes, it’s silly.  It’s immeasurably silly and cheesy.  It looks bright, and shiny, and slick as hell and that can be very irritating also.  But I like it.  I like laughing at the cheesiest moments (LL Cool J is reminiscing about the time he was buried alive as a Navy SEAL – it’s emotional!), and rolling my eyes at the most ludicrous scenarios (terrorists have infiltrated a cruise ship offshore at a big Gala Event where they plan to assassinate some dignitaries!  Again!) 

     And I love it.  And once I start watching, I can’t stop watching it.  And just like the first season, I watched the entire second season in days.  The second season, which comes out August 23rd from Paramount Home Entertainment.  That one.

Years:  2010, 2011
Genre:  TV series, Crime, Drama
Country:  United States
Language:  English, French
Starring:  Mark Harmon, Michael Weatherly, Pauley Perrette, Sean Murray, David McCallum, Brian Dietzen, Cote De Pablo, Rocky Carroll
Creator:  Donald P. Bellisario, Don McGill
Run time:  16 hours, 49 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     There’s nothing new to say about NCIS, now putting its eighth season on DVD, August 23rd from Paramount Home Entertainment.  DiNozzo and Ziva have the same old relationship, full of sexual tension and bragadoccio.  McGee and Abby have the same old relationship too, full of sexual tension and nerdy-scientist competitive banter.  Gibbs still scares people without ever being scary, Ducky still rambles on about non-sequitor stories, and the rest of the cast is still…around, doing stuff.

     Actually, I think there is one difference.  As NCIS has matured lo these past eight years, it HAS slowed down a bit.  Not in the writing or the look or the direction of the show, which is as gleamingly polished as ever.  Rather, it takes them longer and longer to end each season now.  It used to be one cliffhanger episode, followed by a season opener to resolve it the next year.  Then it was two-part episodes to close out the season.  This year, it takes them FIVE episodes just to set up the cliffhanger!  You’re getting old, NCIS.

     At least, in some ways, it isn’t NCIS: LA.  These guys still deal with cases that involve murder, and investigation, and catching a bad guy and moving on.  NCIS: LA, with the exception of the occasional reference to “director Vance”, has virtually nothing to do with the original NCIS.  Except for the acronym.  And I realize that I am giving both the same rating here.  I get that.  That is because NCIS: LA is crack, while NCIS is beer.  Neither one is particularly good for you, but a taste of either will leave you wanting more.  And the original NCIS is a little less harmful to your brain.

Year:  2010
Genre:  TV series, Cartoon, Kids
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Voices:  David Hornsby, Nika Futterman, Jamie Kennedy, Wyatt Cenac, Jeff Bennett
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     Fanboy And Chum Chum: Brain Freeze, the new DVD out August 16th from Paramount Home Entertainment, is aptly titled.  As advertised, it did not take long for my brain to freeze while watching this frenetic insipid nonsense.  I object to Fanboy and Chum Chum the way I object to action movies shot by music video directors.  Jump cuts, flashy colours and sudden extreme closeups don’t make things more exciting.  They make them more confusing.  And why you would do this in a cartoon, I can’t imagine.

     Brain Freeze appears to be a collection of Fanboy and Chum Chum episodes centred around a theme.  That theme here is the Slurpee-like beverage called a Frostee Freeze that is sold at the local Frosty Mart.  Well, that was either the theme of this collection, or it’s the theme of the whole show.  I have never watched this show before, and I would really hate to think that every single episode was all about a drink.  That would make me sad.

     There’s an episode on the DVD that is a parody of The Hangover.  No kid watching this show will have seen The Hangover.  I assume.  Or hope.  And no adult who has seen The Hangover would want to watch Fanboy And Chum Chum.  I assume.  Or hope.

Years:  2010
Genre:  TV series, Crime, Drama
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Michael C. Hall, Jennifer Carpenter, Desmond Harrington, Lauren Velez, David Zayas, James Remar
Guest stars:  Julia Stiles, Peter Weller, Jonny Lee Miller 
Creator:  James Manos Jr.
Run time:  10 hours, 32 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     There was no topping Season Four of Dexter, which was one of the greatest seasons of any TV show I’ve ever seen.  No new guest star could compete with John Lithgow’s Trinity Killer.  That guy was the creepiest, scariest, most cold-blooded foil for Dexter yet, and finished the season with one of the most shocking moments in recent television history.

     That being said, Season Five comes pretty darn close.  And Julia Stiles, whom I have disliked for years, has completely turned me around.  All she had to do was stalk and kill some rapists and murderers, and I am now 100% in her camp.  I am a Julia Stiles fan!  She’s no John Lithgow…but then, who is?

     In Season Five, on DVD August 16th from Paramount Home Entertainment, our favourite serial killer Dexter gets a new partner in homicide when he rescues Lumen (Stiles) from the clutches of a ring of rapist-torturer-murderers.  They form an uneasy alliance as she becomes more and more determined to hunt down the men responsible for her abduction and torture.  The relationship between Lumen and Dexter is as sweet and awkward as it is murderous and vengeful, and comes to a bittersweet conclusion at the end of the season which is actually very touching.

     That, I think, is one of the reasons Dexter remains one of the best shows on TV.  Every season is compelling, once you watch one episode yuo have to watch the rest – but every season ends.  Sure, there may be a little carry over – how will Dexter deal with the death of such-and-such?  How will he feel about being a father?  But that’s it.  No annoying cliffhangers, no nine-season story arc.  Just one great season at a time.  And Season Five IS a great season.

Year:  2011
Genre:  TV series, Comedy, Drama
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Billie Piper, Iddo Goldberg, Cherie Lunghi
Creator:  Lucy Prebble
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     There’s an old joke I once heard.  It involved hiring a high-priced hooker, then when she got to your house asking her to trim your hedge and clean your bathroom.  The idea was that it might spark a philisophical discussion between you and the hooker as to what was more degrading, and what truly constituted prostitution.  Maybe it wasn’t a joke, so much as it was one of those philosophical unanswerable questions, like trees in the forest and chickens and eggs. 

     I was thinking about it, though, while watching the final season of Secret Diary of a Call Girl.  See, Belle/Hannah has created this super successful book about her exciting wonderful life as a hooker.  And she goes to New York to see the production they’re making of her book.  And she is shocked – shocked! to discover that they are making it about sex!

     I wonder if this is how the real woman behind the blog that is behind this TV series felt when watching the TV series.  I doubt it – it isn’t THAT much about sex, after all.  No, I expect that her character feels more like Joe Ezterhasz after he was paid millions for the screenplay to Showgirls.  Well, not exactly, because she leaves the money behind.

     I won’t say much more about the final season, on DVD August 9th from Paramount Home Entertainment.  The actual ending was a genuine surprise for me – (and vaguely creepy also), but the series never truly made sense to me either.  I like Billie Piper, and I like a good unsettling ending.  But I can’t love this show, which is a little too much like Sex And The City and not nearly enough like Band of Brothers for my taste.

Year:  1985
Genre:  Blu-Ray, Comedy, Romance
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:   John Cusack, David Ogden Stiers, Kim Darby, Diane Franklin, Amanda Wyss, Curtis Armstrong
Eye candy:  Wyss, Franklin
Director:  Savage Steve Holland
Run time:  97 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     Few movies scream 80s at the top of their lungs quite so much as Better Off Dead, which is being given the Blu-Ray upgrade by Paramount Home Entertainment on August 2nd.  It’s not just the fact that it stars a young John Cusack, although that certainly does yell “80s” at the top of its lungs.  It’s so much more.

     There’s the crazy parents.  A mother (Kim Darby) who makes disgusting meals no one likes.  Haha!  One meal even crawls across the table!  Hilarious!  A father who wages a battle with the local paper boy to defend his garage door windows.  That same paper boy and his demented, murderous quest to collect two dollars.  The fast-food job with the giant foam pig hat.  Eighties!

     There’s more.  The blond girl Cusack is obsessed with (Amanda Wyss), could be the Hottest Girl Ever only in an 80s movie.  The blond, bullying ski-team captain she takes up with comes straight out of every 80s film – think the “bad guy” in Revenge of the Nerds, or any other movie of its ilk.  And John Cusack’s suicide “attempts” exist for comedic reasons alone and are in no way treated as an actual cry for help.

     There are other details – the hot foreign exchange student / love interest.  The big fat creepy nerd.  The unshaven drug-obsessed loser.  And so on.  But nothing stamps Better Off Dead as EIGHTIES as much as the Big Ski Race Finale.  Only teen movies of the 80s (and their softcore porn counterparts) closed out with a climactic ski race down a death-defying track that has crippled Olympians.

     I just don’t find 80s movies that interesting, funny, or cool.  Better Off Dead is no exception, and despite the Blu-Ray release I feel it’s likely this one will remain a relic of that decade.  I will say, I do understand how some children of the time might have a soft spot for this one, but a John Hughes film this is not.

Year:  2011
Genre:  TV series, Comedy, Drama
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Toni Collette, John Corbett, Toni Collette, Brie Larson, Toni Collette, Keir Gilchrist, Toni Collette, Rosemarie DeWitt, Toni Collette, Patton Oswalt, Pamela Reed, Fred Ward, Hayley McFarland, Eddie Izzard, Keir O’Donnell
Eye candy:  Collette, Larson, Collette, DeWitt, Collette
Creator:  Diablo Cody
Producers:  Steven Spielberg, Alexa Junge
Run time:  5 hours 32 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     This is a plea.  A totally self-serving, utterly useless plea that I am placing into a bottle that is this blog and releasing to the roaring current out into the ocean that is the internet.  But for those of you who happen to pick this message up, do me one small favour.  Stop watching United States of Tara.  Right now, and forever.  I know, I know, Toni Collette and her lunatic alter-egos are entertaining!  Yes, Rosemarie DeWitt is attractive and the daughter is hot and the son is interesting and new people like Eddie Izzard are adding great new twists to the show.  But stop, and stop now.  I’ll explain…

     I have really loved the first two seasons of The United States of Tara, but at a certain point, it had to run its course. And that point for me was very early in the third season. I was really looking forward to season three, because I was really excited to find out what was going on with Toni Collette and her many bonkers personalities. What crazy childhood trauma brought on her lunacy, and where she was going to go from here?

     But right away in the third season, I realized something that I suppose I had known all along. I realized that United States of Tara is a television show. And it exists, primarily, to generate ratings and thereby continue to be a television show. And solving the mystery of Tara’s multiple personality insanity would put an end to the show. And the money it generates. I know, this is pretty obvious. Maybe to everyone except me. But the third season, out August 2^nd from Paramount Home Entertainment, showed me that throughout the run of the show, I had been far more interested in the mystery than I had in the characters.

     I didn’t care about the daughter’s (Brie Larson) mean angry flight attendant mentor. I didn’t care about the son’s (Keir Gilchrist) film career or the husband (John Corbett) selling his business. And I especially didn’t care about Tara’s sister (DeWitt) and her man (Patton Oswalt) and her baby. Iguess that I did care a little about Izzard, Tara’s new psych professor.

     All of it is just window dressing to the central story, which is of course Tara and her demons and her personalities and her childhood trauma. THAT interests me. But I’ll never find out the answer as long as the show remains profitable and they can make more shows. So there’s the dilemma. The more people watch the show, the less likely it is they will ever get closure. So that’s what I ask of you. Please stop watching United States of Tara. I need you to help bring down the ratings so that I can get some closure!

Years:  2008
Genre:  TV series, Crime, Drama
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Michael C. Hall, Julie Benz, Jennifer Carpenter, Desmond Harrington, Lauren Velez, David Zayas, James Remar
Guest stars:  Jimmy Smits, Valerie Cruz, David Ramsey
Creator:  James Manos Jr.
Run time:  10 hours, 32 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     Paramount Home Entertainment is re-releasing Seasons Three and Four of Dexter on DVD August 2nd.  The reason for this is that they have added French dubbing.  It’s a lot better on Dexter than it was on say, the NCIS DVDs I watched.  Not that I spent a lot of time with the French soundtrack, but I always like to see if, when translated into another language, it remains the same show.  In this case, it does.  The guy doing Dexter’s voice is very good, and adequately creepy.

     The third season, overall, is the weakest season of Dexter so far.  Oh, it’s still good.  In some cases very good.  The two climactic episodes are some of the most pulse-pounding of the show.  But otherwise, the spark seems to be missing from this season.  That spark returns in Season Four with John Lithgow as the Trinity Killer, but Jimmy Smits is just an awkward fit in Season Three as an assistant DA who forms an uneasy alliance with Dexter in tracking down and killing the bad guys. 

     Thankfully, Dexter picked back up in a big way in Season Four and Five, and it was a momentary lapse into middling territory for an otherwise superior TV show.  Paramount is releasing Season Four with French dubbing at the same time – click here for a review of season four.

Years:  2006, 2007
Genre:  TV series, Crime, Drama
Country:  United States
Language:  English, French
Starring:  Mark Harmon, Michael Weatherly, Pauley Perrette, Sean Murray, David McCallum, Brian Dietzen, Cote De Pablo, Lauren Holly
Creator:  Donald P. Bellisario, Don McGill
Run time:  16 hours, 49 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     Season four of NCIS continues where Season Three left off – with an irritating run of shows that try really hard to put the main characters in personal danger.  A lot of shows do that when they run out of other ideas.  NCIS is still solid, thanks to the cast and characters, and there’s some good writing, but I just can’t stand the episodes where DiNozzo tries desperately to make time for his new girlfriend, or where McGee struggles with writers’ block after the huge success of his last novel.  Or where Gibbs awkwardly works things out with a new girlfriend, or DiNozzo does secret undercover work for the director, or Ducky and Gibbs get sour with each other over Gibbs’ attempt to retire.  And that’s most every episode in Season Four.

     The French dubbing that made these Paramount Home Entertainment re-releases necessary is still adequate, although every single character (except Abby) takes on a totally different persona thanks to the voices.  Wait – necessary?  No…I think that might have been the wrong word.  Convenient?  Plausible?  I don’t know.  Either way, it gave me a chance to watch the first four seasons for the first time.  And complain though I do, I DID watch them all.  Four full seasons over the course of my two-week vacation, every time I wasn’t watching the fifth season of Dexter or the third season of The United States of Tara, or the final season of Secret Diary of a Call Girl.  That’s what NCIS is good for.  A diversion between other entertainments – one that I keep returning to, no matter how much I complain!

Years:  2005, 2006
Genre:  TV series, Crime, Drama
Country:  United States
Language:  English, French
Starring:  Mark Harmon, Michael Weatherly, Sasha Alexander, Pauley Perrette, Sean Murray, David McCallum, Brian Dietzen, Cote De Pablo, Lauren Holly
Creator:  Donald P. Bellisario, Don McGill
Run time:  17 hours, 37 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     Season three is when NCIS started to go downhill for me – I guess someone, somewhere got the idea that Sasha Alexander was not hot enough, and they replaced Caitlin with Ziva (Cote De Pablo), I guess figuring she was hotter.  And just in case that wasn’t enough eye candy to make NCIS even more successful, they added Lauren Holly as the director of NCIS, and Gibbs’ on-again-off-again love interest. 

     My biggest problem is Ziva.  Mark Harmon as Gibbs is irritating enough.  The whole team lives in fear of Gibbs and his wrath and his badassery, but it never actually comes up.  Gibbs never actually does anything to justify this respectful fear.  And Ziva is the same.  She is a Mossad assassin, ostensibly, who has now been added to the team – she is now the Most Lethal NCIS Member, and she can kill you with a spoon or a fork or a garlic press as soon as look at you…except that she never does.  Whenever Ziva has to subdue some out-of-control suspect, or a soldier on PCP, the guy will come at her, everyone will run down the hall to help, and they will open the doors to find the bad guy subdued and bleeding on the floor.  It’s pretty rare that we get to see Ziva actually kicking any ass at all.  So it’s all just words.

     That means that the only thing the character of Ziva adds to the cast (aside from the admirable hotness of Cote De Pablo of course) is her awkward grasp of English.  She seems to exist solely to butcher common English sayings and have DiNozzo correct her.  She’ll say something like, “you can’t see the jungle for the ferns”, or “does a bear sit in the woods”, and then someone will have to correct her, and I guess it’s supposed to get a laugh.

     The thing is, these DVDs have been re-released by Paramount Home Entertainment (August 2nd) because they have added French dubbing.  That’s fine, except Ziva’s butchered colloquialisms don’t really translate into another language.  She’s the multi-lingual member of the team, the only one who speaks French, and she’s a totally useless character in that language.  Well, not entirely useless.  Her French dubbed voice makes her sound like a ten-year-old Justin Bieber fan.  And that really works here, because every time she talks, it’s either to say something charmingly inept, or to re-assert, yet again, her badass bonafides.  And sounding like a ten-year-old girl when she does is hilarious.  I think, in fact, I like Season Three better in French.  7/10 in French!