One Tree Hill Season 2

One Tree Hill Season 2 takes off where Season 1 left off.  After a series of interactions that help the brothers actually become brothers, Season 2 leads them off in different directions.  Central to the overall theme of the shows is the Scott family- father Dan, Nathan – the legitimate son, Lucas – the illegitimate son and Mrs. Scott who has a very minor role overall.

Similar to soap operas there is no single unifying story lines but several short story arcs that make it difficult to follow if you are not a regular viewer.  Thanks to this Season 2 DVD set you can catch up on everything.  You can rent One Tree Hill Season 2 before buying.  The main theme for Season 2 seems to be Dan Scott’s drive to destroy everything in his family.  He is extremely jealous and the writer’s have come perilously close to making him into a symbol for evil with no redeeming qualities.

In One Tree Hill Season 2 Dan’s evil genius machinations are designed to get adults to watch the show as well as the target audience of teens and twenty somethings.  The three main plots Dan tries to execute are to destroy his son Nathan’s new marriage to Haley (Lucas’ best friend from Season 1), schemes to destroy Lucas’ relationship with his mother and he even hires an actress to fake a relationship with his own brother Keith, just to see him suffer.  There are many instances where Dan’s theatrics really deserve at least an eye roll or even a groan from the audience.

The teen side this year actually is more compelling even for adults.  The teens actually act more like real people than just actors playing a part.  The writers do not employ cheap tricks to hook the audience.  Brooke, the prototypical dumb cheerleader from Season 1 goes through a series of respectable steps to prove she really is not a dumb slut cheerleader.

This is a true ensemble show and the writing portrays that. No one character is given more time or lines than another and the writer’s lack of ability to actually grasp the nuances of teen speak or real world business speak actually causes the dialogue to break down and become cumbersome and distracting to the plot lines.

Additional features on One Tree Hill Season 2 discs including the deleted scenes are mostly unremarkable.  The deleted scenes, while plentiful, are not very funny and are irrelevant.  The featurettes are also just a bunch of air rather than adding to the show’s legacy.  Rent before you buy at.

For more information follow One Tree Hill Season 2

One Tree Hill Season 1

One Tree Hill Season 1 is another one of those teen dramas that started with Beverly Hills 90210 that is another instance of the pretty people being on display.  The cast is predominantly white and there are too many instances of suggestions of promiscuity for younger kids to watch.  One Tree Hill Season 1 is the story of two half brothers (same father) who could not be any more different.  It is set at Tree Hill High School and the initial episodes revolve around basketball.

Other than sharing the same father, the two brothers, Lucas and Nathan have nothing in common other than basketball.  Nathan is the “good” son and star of the high school varsity team while Lucas stars on the playground with all of the resulting trash talking and posturing in street ball.  Nathan feels constant pressure from his dad to be the best no matter what the cost to himself or other people along the way.  He comes off as completely spoiled and you can see in his relationship to his girlfriend that it is all about his needs and his wishes being the driving force in the relationship.

Lucas is close to his mother and works at his uncle’s garage.  Knowing of his love for basketball, his uncle goes to the high school coach to give him a tryout.  The coach meets with Lucas and wants him to join the team.  This is delayed with several confrontations with Nathan but eventually Lucas joins the team.  The boys’ dad is upset and drives Nathan to do anything to assure his spot on the team to the point of arranging for the rest of the team to try to get Lucas to quit.

Through a series of episodes in One Tree Hill Season 1 where Lucas’ best friend Haley has to tutor Nathan so his grades will keep him eligible the hazing stops and Lucas and Haley are right as friends again.  The biggest problem in Nathan’s life is his father.  Even though Dan is both boys’ father and Nathan lives with him, Dan can not keep from criticizing and pushing him to do better.  He is never satisfied with Nathan’s accomplishments in any way.  Nathan’s mother returns to the picture to rein Dan in so that Nathan’s self confidence is not totally shattered.

As in all teen dramas there need to be at least four or five way relationships and so another cheerleader, Brooke, decides that Lucas will be a good catch and then Nathan’s old girlfriend, Peyton, also goes after Lucas so he has to make a choice.

For the rest of One Tree Hill Season 1 rent the DVD and spend a few nights with the remote from

Mad Men Season 1

Mad Men Season 1 made its debut on the AMC channel in 2007.  Mad Men Season 1 is a period piece set in 1960 at the Sterling Cooper advertising agency on New York City’s Madison Avenue.  The drama centers on Don Draper.  He is the agencies Creative Director and the show goes through the workings of the office and its personnel in conjunction with Don Draper and the changing social views of the 1960 era.

This was an age when women were still supposed to answer their husbands at the door with their apron on and dinner on the table.  Kids were not supposed to speak unless spoken to and the phrase “just wait until your dad gets home” was he last thing any child wanted to hear from their mother.

In its infant state the show has already garnered great critical acclaim for its historical accuracy, visual style and has a trophy case full of awards including three Golden Globes and six Emmys.

Here is a little background on some of the lead characters.  Don Draper is the Creative Director for Sterling cooper.  His past has not been fleshed out, but has been successful.  His real name is Richard “Dick” Whitman and he assumed the Don Draper identity during the Korean War.  He is married to Elizabeth Draper and has two children.  He has a history of infidelity.

Peggy Olson was Don’s secretary but now is a copywriter with her own office.  Peter “Pete” Campbell is an ambitious account executive who wants to get ahead any way he can.  Campbell tries to blackmail Draper with details from his real past.  Joan Holloway is the office manager and head of the secretarial pool who has an affair with Roger Sterling – see below.

Roger Sterling founded the firm with Bertram Cooper and is a good friend of Don Draper.  In one episode there is a picture of Sterling in Cooper’s office as a child alongside Cooper as an adolescent.  Cooper refers to Sterling as “Peanut” thus cementing the long time friendship between the two.  There are a variety of supporting characters too numerous to mention in this review.

in Mad Men Season 1 Many themes shown may offend some modern day viewers, but the show is being historically accurate in depicting smoking in offices, homes and in every day life in several scenes.  Sexism is rampant in the episodes and it seems that business only has room for the middle class young white men.  Talking about smoking being bad for your health is dismissed regularly and mainstream advertising downplays the “new” Volkswagen Beetle’s “Think Small” campaign that sold millions of bugs in the United States.

Mad Men Season 1 is available for rent.

Pushing Daisies Season 1

Pushing Daisies Season 1 is another one of those critically acclaimed series that end up getting cancelled due to lack of viewers.  This series achieved almost cult status similar to others that have had write in campaigns to keep them on the air.  The nice thing is that now that everything can be digitally recorded you can buy a whole season at a time and watch your favorite episodes at your leisure.  When I was a kid the campy Batman series starring Burt Ward as Robin and Adam West as Batman was my favorite.  I tuned in at the same “Bat” time and same “Bat” channel every week for three years until it was cancelled.

Pushing Daisies Season 1 is one of those series that can not be fit into a particular box.  Labels like medical drama, soap or crime drama can not begin to describe Pushing Daisies.  It manages to fit into all three categories depending on what part of a particular episode you are watching.  The series starts with a boy named Ned who has a particular power to resurrect people from the dead.  There are a few conditions with this process.  The person who has been brought back to life will die permanently if touched by Ned again and if the person brought back to life is alive for more than a minute another person very near by will meet their untimely demise.

These conditions are discovered when Ned resurrects his mother which causes the father of his girlfriend Charlotte to pass away and then Ned kills his mom when she kisses him goodnight.  Ned has various jobs while growing up including running a pie shop called the Pie Hole.  But at night Ned becomes part of a crime fighting duo.  He teams up with Emerson Cod, a private detective.  Ned uses his special gift to wake up murder victims to find out who killed them.  They use that information to collect reward money.

The partnership is moving along well and is very profitable until one of he victims happens to be an adult Charlotte.  Ned can not resist reviving her and yet he can never physically interact with her or she will die again.  The entire series is very upbeat and visually colorful.  Due to the supernatural flair of Ned’s gift the show can become rather surreal at times.  The writers bring everything back into focus with a nice character moment.  Pushing Daisies Season 1 tries very hard to be quirky and succeeds but shows a great deal of heart in many episodes as well.

You can view Pushing Daisies Season 1 on DVD and turn off the episode recap if you just want to watch the shows.  Rent the Pushing Daisies Season 1 here.

24 Season 6

24 Season 6 is a series that I am not sure that I really understand.  The premise is that each season is broken up into episodes that are only an hour’s worth of relative time to the characters in the show.  24 Season 6 for 24 begins at six am about twenty months after the end of Season 5.  The show is set up without the use of dates so that the viewer is always in a state of “perpetual” now as the shows producers like to say.

Jack Bauer – played by Kiefer Sutherland, is the main character as usual.  A little background from Season 5 is necessary to set the stage for 24 Season 6.  In the several weeks prior to the start of Season 6 the United States has been the target of numerous suicide bombings along the East Coast.  A man named Abu Fayed offers information as to the location of the mastermind behind the attacks, a man named Hamri Al-Assad, in exchange for Jack Bauer, with whom Fayed has a grudge against.  After negotiating Jack’s release from the Chinese, having been illegally detained at the end of Season 5, the President allows Jack to be taken by Fayed.

While under torture from Fayed, jack learns that Al-Assad is actually trying to stop the attacks and Fayed is the true ring leader.  Fayed’s ultimate goal is to detonate a series of nuclear bombs on United States soil.  Jack and the CTU with Assad’s help after Jack saves him from an air strike will attempt to recover all of the remaining nuclear devices after the first one is detonated.

The Season can be broken down in the following way.  Episodes 1-4 deal with the release of Jack by the Chinese through the intervention of President Wayne Palmer who asks Jack to give himself to Fayed in exchange for the target information on Al-Assad.  Bauer is torture, finds about the true plot, escapes and foils the attempt to eliminate Assad and then has to kill Curtis Manning to keep Assad alive following the detonation of a nuclear device in Valencia, California just north of Los Angeles.

Episodes 5-11 deal with Jack finding out that his father and his brother Graem are involved in the plot as well.  Jack gets a lead to former President Charles Logan who tells him his Russian contact can help him get a line on the bombs.  The Russian, Gredenko, actually supplied Fayed with the bombs and planned to send drones to help attack the United States.  President Warren refuses to attack the responsible countries and has Assad make a peace plea to the world and Deputy Chief of Staff Reed Pollock, who considers himself to be a true patriot, plans to assassinate the President.  Chief of Staff Tom Lennox tries to stop the attack but is unsuccessful and the bomb kills Assad and critically injures President Warren.

For the rest of the 24 Season Six episodes you can borrow them from 24 season 6

The Wire Season 1

The Wire Season 1 was released on DVD by HBO Home Video on October 12, 2004.  It is now available at  The Wire Season 1 .  The Wire is a realistic and compelling saga centered on a big drug investigation in the lower income projects of Baltimore.  The lives of the detectives and the drug dealers are gone over in depth and show both the hardships and the successes.  The shows how the lines between good and evil in the undercover world of narcotics can easily get blurred.

There are two story lines that start the season.  The first involves Detective Jimmy McNulty, played by Dominic West, who is increasingly disillusioned by the courts inability to prosecute and convict anyone in the Barksdale drug network.  He contacts a federal judge and is able to get an investigation started into this drug network running through the housing projects in Baltimore.  The story continues through the initial set up and all of the technological aspects of an undercover operation.  All of the various legislative and judicial institutions involved are examined that either help or hinder the investigations including the District Attorney, defense lawyers, judges, police, informants and others.

The other story line looks at the reality of being in a drug network on the wrong side of the law.  It looks at all the players from teenage and younger street dealers all the way to the head of the organization, Avon Barksdale.  The show makes no excuses for these characters and shows them as they really would be on the street.  A story within the story is the rise of Avon’s nephew D’Angelo as he learns his way in the organization and gets more responsibility.  D’Angelo is the main target of Detective McNulty’s investigation this season.

The Wire Season 1 strives to make sure that all the characters are fully developed and that no one is a stereotypical character.  All of the investigative narcotics officers are have full story lines and backgrounds from the gay female detective Greggs (Sonja Sohn) to the two very brutal competitive detectives with a penchant for violence to the quiet older detective who has a lot more going on than everyone thinks.

The Wire paints a very complicated picture of both sides of the war on drugs.  It is a realistic (meaning violent) show that touches on themes that people do not want to realize.  The war on drugs can never be won and because of this governments are diverting funds into areas that can show definite results.  Check out The Wire Season 1

Californication Season 2

Fans of the Californication series will be pleased to note that season two is now available for rent on DVD available at Californication Season 2 .  Starring David Duchovny of X-Files fame, the series on Showtime has added a new character Daisy, an angel faced porn actress.  Daisy, as portrayed by Carla Gallo adds a great deal of bathroom humor and can definitely hold her own with both of her male co-stars Evan Handler and the before mentioned David Duchovny.

In playing against type, Carla Gallo, an Ivy League educated actress, has portrayed a variety of women of the night for director Judd Apatow in The 40 Year Old Virgin and his series Undeclared.  Here are some more synopses of the various characters in Californication Season 2.

Hank Moody is the star of the series.  Played by David Duchovny Hank is a famed author (novelist) who relocates to Los Angeles once his critically acclaimed book was optioned for a movie.  It was turned into a horrible romantic comedy and it created writer’s block.  His best friend (who is his agent) is working with him to get his writing career going again.  Hank is also trying to raise his pre-teen daughter while still holding a candle for his ex-girlfriend Karen.  He is caught up in the California scene of alcohol, drugs and women and he does not apologize for any of his behavior while still trying to get things right.

Karen – the ex-girlfriend – is the mother or Hank Moody’s pre-teen daughter.  She was very happy with Hank in New York while he was a struggling author but now she is disgusted with the debauchery she sees in his lifestyle in Los Angeles.

Complicating matters is Mia, the author of a one night stand with Hank after meeting in a bookstore.  How could he know that the hot babe from the bookstore is actually the daughter of Karen’s ex-boyfriend.  While Hank is hiding their one night relationship from Karen, Mia is promoting the manuscript she stole from Hank and is peddling it as her own.  Wouldn’t you know that it would become a hit and Mia loves the wonderful trappings of fame.  Will Karen find out and will anyone discover the real author of the hit book?

Becca is Hank and Karen’s daughter who has seen more than most thirteen year old’s should see.  She has been through her parent’s break up and see her father’s career go into the tubes.  If you want more details you will have to watch it yourself.  Rent the DVD at Californication Season 2