Blue Mountain State: Season One Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		2.5

Blue Mountain State: Season One Blu-ray Movie Review

Lewd, rude, crude and skewed to the 18-34 male demographic.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman September 30, 2010

Demographics can be a bitch. You young-‘uns will feel it first when you pass out of that vaunted 18-34 category, especially as you look around at your “married with children” lives and wonder where your carefree youth went. Been there, done that. My eldest son, who in just a few years will enter that prized 18-34 class, as well as his little brother whom I perhaps desperately still think of as a child despite his incipient teendom, have already informed me I am permanently ensconced in the "geezer" demographic. Cable television networks cater of course to various age and sex groupings, building their niche audiences by catering to certain clientele, for better or worse. The testosterone-fueled Spike network works its magic with males probably from precocious adolescent age through those in their late 20s or early 30s, depending on how arrested their development turns out to be. Therefore, if you’re not in that demographic, Blue Mountain State will probably strike you as being as lame brained as your typical college football player. And considering the largely vacuous intellects of the players depicted in this sort of Porky’s-lite series, even that analogy may be charitable. Blue Mountain State makes no bones about being dunderheaded; it in fact celebrates stupidity like a drunken fool at a frat house kegger. If you’re a fan of lewd, crude humor, semi-naked girls and the sort of pseudo-machismo that enshrines athleticism and sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, Blue Mountain State, which follows the misadventures of a fictional state college football team, may well be “must see tv” for you. If you’re out of Spike TV’s preferred demographic, my hunch is you’ll want to be cruising over to ESPN to take in some real football instead.

The players of Blue Mountain State.

This small scale, football-centric Animal House follows the exploits of two incoming freshmen to Blue Mountain State, including Alex Moran (Darin Brooks, Days of Our Lives), second string quarterback and the average Joe (Montana?) “everyman” of the series. Craig Shilo (Sam Jones III) was the top draft pick, a standout high school player who has a good shot at a professional NFL career down the line, or at least his monetarily motivated girlfriend Denise (Gabrielle Dennis) thinks. Backing up this odd couple of new players is Alex’s lifelong buddy and roommate, the nerdy Sam Cacciatore (series co-creator Chris Romano, billed in the show as Romanski), who becomes the team’s mascot; the team’s weirdly childlike and quite possibly closeted gay Captain, Thad Castle (Alan Ritchson); and the team’s blustering Coach Daniels (Ed Marinaro, himself a real life former college player of some note), who is fond of such quasi-philosophical questions as, “Where do you come from?” (Answer: “From your father’s balls. Go home and think about that. You came from your father’s balls.”)

Blue Mountain State is a party hearty series that frankly sets the bar pretty low and then dares to lower it even more. When an entire episode is built around a portable sex toy everyone calls the “pocket pussy,” with the de rigeur sitcom standby of the “second story” being about syphilis, you have some idea of the stuff out of which the writers of the series attempt to craft some humor. It’s perhaps the understatement of the millennium that Blue Mountain State is not exactly highbrow entertainment, but if you set your standards to “Bluto” level, there are at least intermittent laughs to be had here.

While Alex is the obvious straight man around which the rest of the insane characters flock, Brooks’ low key deadpan style plays well and gives the show at least a relatively normal focus. Jones does some very good work as Shilo, especially as his sexual frustration grows when Denise refuses to give him sex until they’re married. (Denise’s own bisexual proclivities provide a few laughs in some episodes). The best bits here are by Ritchson as Castle, a really peculiar character who seems to embody everyone’s worst fears about butt-slapping linebackers. Full of himself and also ridiculously insecure, Castle manages to deliver some of the series’ most pointed, if juvenile, humor. Also slightly elevating the series is Marinaro, who manages to be both frightening and funny, like most coaches. While Romanski is probably closer to the bulk of Spike TV’s viewership than even the network would like to admit, his nerdy antics as Sam sometime fall flat, appearing to make the show more desperate for cheap laughs than it probably needs to be.

The series does make some passing attempts to invest its characters with a little (sometimes very little) real humanity. The ongoing struggle between Craig and Denise is handled first with humor and then with more than a little anger, making the conflict at least semi-realistic feeling. One of the better episodes has Alex confronting his own insecurities when a series of events leads to him being the starting quarterback at an important game. It’s one of the few times this series actually stops to think (in relative terms) about the lifestyle it’s portraying and the consequences of being a chill party dude all the time.

This is a show that provides mindless entertainment for a younger male audience which is probably just as interested in seeing the scantily clad cheerleaders as they are in anything approaching character arcs or even coherent storylines. The nice part about having an undiscriminating audience is that you don’t have to try very hard or provide very much to please them. The hard part comes when someone outside that demographic peeks their head in and starts to ask if there’s any real humor inside. Maybe Blue Mountain State should have left a sock on the doorknob.

Blue Mountain State: Season One Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Blue Mountain State looks excellent, at least by television standards, on this AVC encoded, full 1080p Blu-ray in 1.78:1. While the imagery is generally very sharp, and colors are robust and well saturated, the contrast of several episodes seems to be just slightly off, giving a somewhat washed out appearance that robs individual moments of some fine detail. Other than that, though, this is a nice looking series, with some occasional great filmic moments, as in the sweeping crane shot that introduces the football team and Coach Daniels in the premiere episode. Footage on the "campus" also looks really good, with abundant greens in the grass and the Ivy League buildings offering sharp detail in their patterned brickwork. Quite a bit of this series takes place in darker, party locations like dorm rooms and strip clubs, and black levels and shadow detail are generally excellent here, though again, I personally would have preferred stronger contrast in these segments.

Blue Mountain State: Season One Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

While Blue Mountain State is given a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix, I was frankly surprised (even a little shocked) to hear just the edge of distortion on some of the ubiquitous head banging rock cues utilized throughout the series. It's a relatively minor and quickly passing phenomenon, but that odd "buzz" in the low end was alarming and the first time I've ever heard anything like it in a contemporarily recorded lossless surround track. Aside from that anomaly, this is a really good, though not extremely immersive, track, with clear and precise dialogue, and lots of good sound effects, especially in the crowded party scenes (which are plentiful). The practice and game segments do finally erupt in some at least decent surround activity, which help to give the series a little bit of lifelike sonic ambience for those of us (and we know who we are) who never set foot on a football field (at least as a player).

Blue Mountain State: Season One Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Three fairly standard supplements are included on the second disc of this two disc set. Outtakes/Deleted Scenes (HD; 10:35) features some cutting up and blown lines. Locker Room Rewind (HD; 26:43) will probably be of most interest to fans of the series, as all of the principal cast sit in director's chairs and engage in a PIP commentary over snippets from various episodes. Making the Squad (HD 1080i; 4:47) is a fairly lame faux interview between Sammy and his cheerleader sister, Mary Jo.

Blue Mountain State: Season One Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Blue Mountain State is near perfect fodder for Spike TV, which caters to beer guzzling guys who don't want to think too hard while they gaze trance-like at their televisions. For anyone else, there are sporadic laughs here, but probably not enough to keep the bulk of you coming back for appointment television.