Boss: Season One Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		1.5
Overall		3.5

Boss: Season One Blu-ray Movie Review

Citizen Kane.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman July 23, 2012

Chicago politics are not for the faint of heart. In fact, even covering Chicago politics is not for the faint of heart, as my wife can attest. She was recruited from the close-by but smaller market of Milwaukee to work as a news anchor and reporter at two of Chicago’s biggest radio stations, WMAQ and WXRT, and she still bears the battle scars of covering City Hall to this day, decades after her tenure in the Windy City. The natural Midwestern tendency toward affability and just general niceness had to be left at the doorstep, as it were, as my wife was told by her news directors that Chicago politics was a contact sport, and that included the reporters covering the action. That down and dirty element is front and center in Boss, the newish Starz outing starring Kelsey Grammer as fictional Chicago mayor Tom Kane, a no holds barred, old style politico who, as the series opens, finds out he’s suffering from a debilitating degenerative neuromuscular disease that sounds awfully like Lou Gehrig’s, but instead bears the name Lewy bodies. The setup is a none too subtle allegory that examines how a ruthless city manager who is used to having a firm grasp— in both the figurative and literal senses of that term—must come to terms with the fact that he’s slowly losing his actual ability to even make a fist, let alone threaten someone with a barrage of well chosen words. Grammer has sought somewhat unsuccessfully to find a new role to help him escape his seemingly inescapable association with one Dr. Frasier Crane, and after a couple of false starts, he may in fact have finally done it. Tom Kane is a fascinating, if often outright disturbing, character, one whom Grammer embodies with a boldness and vicious energy that makes Boss really compelling a lot of the time, even if it’s also uncommonly surly and unsettling.

Dr. Frasier Crane’s catch phrase was “I’m listening”, and while it certainly can’t be mere coincidence that Boss’ premiere episode is entitled “Listen”, it’s a command issued here ironically, for Mayor Tom Kane doesn’t so much listen as he does dictate, expecting those around him to do the listening. In fact in a very real way, Kane’s catch phrase could be, “I’m not listening”. Kane’s single minded pursuit of power is never really discussed in Boss, it’s simply a fundamental understood principle, alive in every word and action that emanates from the Mayor’s being. Kane’s desperation after learning of his debilitating disease seems to barely put a dent in his ruthlessness, and in fact may have even increased it, since he knows, if not quite yet believes, his days as Mayor are numbered and he’d better get as much done as possible in whatever time he has left.

Boss piles on the melodrama in several ways, however, not confining the trauma simply to Kane’s medical condition. His family life is a wreck, with a distant wife and a daughter who has battled substance abuse and from whom he is estranged, and though there are several brilliant little moments scattered throughout Boss’s first season for the trio of actors portraying these roles (Connie Nielsen is Kane’s wife Meredith and Hannah Ware portrays their daughter, Emma), it sometimes feels like too much, giving the series a soap operatic flair rather than the Shakespearian tragic edge it so obviously wants to achieve.

The series is at its best when it depicts the down and dirty world of Chicago politics, including things as apparently banal as garbage hauling, which Kane utilizes in the opening episodes to his advantage when an archeological find is discovered next to O’Hare. It’s this kind of “small ball” backroom politicking that really sets the series apart, more so than the overly dramatic family dynamics or even the medical aspect, which at times seems ported over from a very special episode of House. The series also teeters uneasily at times between really florid melodrama and really rather odd attempts at humor (at least, I’m guessing it’s humor), as in a recurring character who “loses” his ears after a run in with the Mayor, and who then shows up with the weirdest prosthetic headpiece you’ve ever seen.

As it stands, Boss is more than anything a showcase for Grammer, who completely erases the memory of Frasier Crane, no mean feat. Grammer is a glowering, menacing presence here, but he also shows some remarkable vulnerability, including moments alone when he has to come to terms with his disease, and, late in the season, during an effective moment with Kane’s daughter. But the monolithic presence of Grammer, and of the character of Tom Kane, is a two edged sword: it’s undeniably compelling, but it also points up the paucity of much that surrounds this Boss.

Boss: Season One Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Boss: Season One is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. As cinematographer Kasper Tuxen discusses in some detail in his commentary on the series' premiere episode, this show is shot quite a bit in as natural light as possible (something insisted on by premiere episode director Gus Van Sant, and obviously adhered to for the rest of the season). That means that a lot of this series is visually as dark as its subject matter, with a niggling loss of shadow detail the result. The series tends to favor extreme close-ups, which helps to reveal abundant fine object detail. Color is accurate looking, if awfully cool most of the time, and the image is sharp as a tack in more brightly lit scenes. Contrast can be a bit low in interior sequences (at least to my liking), but generally this is a very clear looking high definition presentation given the natural lighting that was utilized for much of it.

Boss: Season One Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Boss: Season One features a somewhat unlikely lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 mix (yes, 7.1), which may seem like a bit of overkill considering the series' penchant for dialogue driven scenes. But there's really excellently consistent surround activity here, albeit not to the level that most audiophiles are going to wonder why the two extra channels have come into play. Ambien environmental noise regularly dots the side and rear channels, as do snippets of dialogue in some larger crowd scenes. Fidelity is excellent, with dialogue, effects and a somewhat droning score all prioritized well and sounding great. Dynamic range gets an occasional work out when Kane loses his cool and plays to the figurative second balcony.

Boss: Season One Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Listen - Audio Commentary with Creator Farhad Safinia and Cinematographer Kasper Tuxen. Tuxen talks about getting director Gus Van Sant up to speed shooting on video, something he had never done before. Safinia also gives repeated to kudos to Grammer, who, kind of like his character, seems to have a controlling interest in the product. Tuxen is just a bit soft spoken at times and is therefore a bit hard to make out, but this is an interesting commentary that provides a lot of background information on the technical aspects of the production.


• Choose - Audio Commentary with Creator Farhad Safinia and Executive Producer Richard Levine. The two start out by joking about the "previously on Boss" prologue, which Levine likens to cramming Shakespeare's oeuvre into 60 seconds of recaps. This is more of a play by play commentary that deals with where the series is as the first season wraps up. Levine and Safinia seem to be in a somewhat more lighthearted mood in this commentary than Safinia and Tuxen are in the first one.


• The Mayor and His Maker (HD; 16:40) is a sit down with Grammer and Safinia, intercut with brief moments from the series. They discuss how they met and how their shared love for Shakespearian tragedy gave birth to Boss.

Boss: Season One Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

There's one overarching and compelling reason to watch Boss, and that reason is Kelsey Grammer. Grammer, who made being an effete snob about as cool as it possibly could be with his years on Cheers and Frasier, is magnificent as Tom Kane, a vicious and ruthless man who has run smack dab into a problem he can't control or bully into submission. The rest of the series works in fits and starts, but it would be a lot more involving if it concentrated more on the politics of Chicago and less on the soap operatic trials of the Kane family and the interoffice intrigue between various Kane underlings. The series hasn't been a ratings blockbuster, but Starz had enough faith in the enterprise to greenlight a second season before the first season had barely gotten off the ground. It will be interesting to see where this show goes, especially after some unexpected events late in the first season. This Blu-ray doesn't have a glut of supplements, but its video and audio are very strong, and for Grammer alone, Boss comes Recommended.