7.6 | / 10 |
Users | 4.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.9 |
Everyone's favorite pot-selling soccer mom and hemptress, Nancy Botwin, returns in the complete Sixth season of the hit series 'Weeds'.
Starring: Mary-Louise Parker, Alexander Gould, Justin Kirk, Kevin Nealon, Hunter ParrishCrime | 100% |
Dark humor | 72% |
Comedy | 54% |
Drama | 9% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.78:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1
English, English SDH, Spanish
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Two-disc set (2 BDs)
Region A, C (B untested)
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.5 | |
Extras | 3.0 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
Have you heard of something called “Desperate Housewives Syndrome”? Well don’t feel like you’ve suddenly lost track of your pop culture compass, because I just made up the term. “Desperate Housewives Syndrome” is that propensity of some television series to set up an intriguing premise and then either vary too far from it or, conversely, to shoehorn so many foreign elements into the concept that the overall enterprise becomes diluted and unfocused. The first season of ABC’s dark comedy was bracing, acerbically original and often very, very funny. But once the central mystery of that first season was more or less tied up in the final episode of that year, the series started a long, slow drift away from its setup, to the point where it now exists largely as a parody of itself. Like Desperate Housewives, Weeds started its life as a rather pungent satire on suburban life, as, well, desperate housewife Nancy Botwin (Mary-Louise Parker), suddenly widowed and without an easy source of income to support herself and her two young sons, took to dealing marijuana to help ends meet. Weeds was in fact (initially at least) quite similar in tone to that first season of Desperate Housewives, with a subtly anarchic sense of humor that managed to upend all sorts of bourgeoisie stereotypes, casting them in a sort of postmodern, dryly humorous way. Also like Desperate Housewives, Weeds often took off on tangents of melancholy and even melodrama, some of which were not entirely successful or even in keeping with the show’s overall winking ambience. Now as we enter the sixth season of the show on Blu-ray, there are lingering questions about whether the show may have outlived its premise. We still have wonderfully funny bits enacted by an ace group of performers, chief among them Parker herself, but as the Botwin family enters its own self-designed “witness protection program,” some viewers may be getting the munchies for something more substantial than this show wants to offer.
Weeds Season Six is presented on Blu-ray with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. This series moves along like a travelogue at times (though as the commentaries reveal, most of it was done in Los Angeles with some special effects help in post production), and as such we get at least some nice actual real life establishing shots of various locales, as well as more of a geographic sweep than some of the previous seasons. Overall this Blu-ray looks really good, with a suitably filmic texture, excellent color and saturation, and a really pleasing amount of fine detail. What hobbles the image from time to time is some minor artifacting, which includes everything from shimmer on such things as closeknit sweaters to transitory aliasing on some geometric structures like skyscrapers. Overall, though, this is a great looking show, with spot on contrast, black levels and a generally sharp and well detailed image.
Does a series like Weeds really need a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 mix? Well, probably not, but who's going to complain, especially when it wasn't so long ago that even BD releases of series (including Weeds) didn't offer any lossless audio options. While surrounds tend to be utilized mostly for the ubiquitous source cues which play under the bulk of the series, there's really some surprisingly fine attention paid to crafting a believable soundscape, especially as this series is on the road. While things go as expected in terms of effects like traffic panning directionally, there are nicely subtle touches at times, like the ambient noise in the background when the Botwins stop at a gas station, or guest sounds when they're employed at a Seattle hotel. Fidelity here is practically perfect in every way, with excellent dynamic range. Dialogue is clearly presented, though tends to be anchored toward the front channels most of the time.
Weeds Season Six has a stash of good supplements spread across two Blu-rays:
Weeds isn't exactly primo stuff some of the time, but it's still surprisingly potent as it treads through its sixth season. If you can get past the patently ridiculous trials and tribulations Nancy and crew endure, there are some incredibly good performances here, and some occasionally very, very sharp writing. The seventh season will probably tell the tale as to whether Weeds has jumped the shark (and/or spliff), but though this season meanders too much for its own good, there's still enough of the good stuff here to keep the series Recommeded.
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