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Do IT this week: Layering
Returning CBS show good but can be better. Other TV favorites out
By Rich Heldenfels
Beacon Journal popular culture writer
Published on Sunday, Sep 20, 2009
The Mentalist was a bright spot for CBS in its first season, and the network is hoping for more big things in the second. It has moved the show to 10 p.m. Thursdays to create a major crime-busting bloc of The Mentalist and, leading into it, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.
And, with its second season starting Thursday, The Mentalist: The Complete First Season (Warner Home Video, 23 episodes, six discs, $59.98) arrives on DVD two days earlier. In addition to some entertaining extras, the set illustrates both the show's virtues and its flaws.
The Mentalist stars Simon Baker as Patrick Jane, a man whose observational skills suggest some psychic power — and make him useful to police investigations. But Jane is also damaged — by the death of his wife and child and his fixation on finding Red John, the serial killer responsible. He can be brutally direct in dealing with people who evade and lie. (The series and Fox's Lie to Me, whose first season is also on DVD, are more than a little similar.) And, as the first season ended, whatever success Jane had was diminished by his unfinished quest for Red John.
The show has a compelling personality in Jane, well performed by Baker, an actor who's not afraid to be unlikable. The rest of the cast — which includes Robin Tunney and Tim Kang — also knows what it's doing. And the show has some very cool moments, such as the way the first-season finale used a skywriter to demonstrate Red John's presence.
On the other hand, the plotting and direction are at times less sure-handed. Again, in that first-season finish, one character chomped his gum so hard that he marked himself as suspicious to viewers long before the people in the show caught on. The Mentalist is OK entertainment but not yet great.
As for the DVD, there's a funny blooper reel (marked as ''surveillance video''), a good making-of segment and an even better piece called Cracking the Crystal Ball: Mentalist vs. Psychic. It looks at some of the people doing in real life the same things as the show's fictional folks.
With the new TV season now arriving in a big way, Tuesday's DVD shelves will include several other sets of returning shows, among them Ghost Whisperer: The Fourth Season; Ugly Betty: The Complete Third Season; 30 Rock: Season 3; and Castle: The Complete First Season. There are also a couple of series wrap-ups: Brotherhood: The Final Season and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles: The Complete Second Season, which proved to be the last for that series on Fox.
Fans of SpongeBob SquarePants have loyally purchased some or all of the packages of the animated series' episodes. But if you have been waiting, there is one big honkin' set hitting stores on Tuesday. SpongeBob Squarepants: The First 100 Episodes (Nickelodeon, $99.99) includes 14 discs (2,296 minutes, says Nick) covering the first five seasons of the show, and promises content not included in the previous DVD releases. Among the new stuff are a documentary about the series and a music video.
The death of Patrick Swayze on Monday has led to retrospectives, TV replays of his movies and magazine cover stories such as Entertainment Weekly's, which summed him up as ''dancer, heartthrob, tough guy, loving husband, icon, fighter.'' It could have added ''DVD mainstay,'' since so many of his movies — good and bad — have been released.
Dirty Dancing, for one, has been repackaged several times. You can also find Ghost, Red Dawn, Point Break, Road House and To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar. The first (and only) season of his last TV series, The Beast, is also available, as is a box set of the three North and South miniseries (Swayze is in the first two). His much-revisited Saturday Night Live sketch of a Chippendales audition with the late Chris Farley can be found on Saturday Night Live: The Best of Chris Farley.
And you may not have to spend a fortune; for example, I have seen copies of Road House, Point Break and To Wong Foo for sale from online retailers for less than $10, and The Best of Chris Farley for around $5.
Down the DVD road: Fans of Vega$, the detective series starring Toronto, Ohio, native Robert Urich, will finally get some of it on DVD when the first 11 episodes are released in a First Season, Volume One, set on Oct. 20.
A remastered version of My Fair Lady is coming on Oct. 6. . . . The second season of the original British version of Life on Mars is coming Nov. 24. (The American version's single season hits DVD on Sept. 29.) . . . Remastered box sets of cult faves Fawlty Towers and Blackadder are due on Oct. 20. . . . The Katherine Heigl-Gerard Butler comedy The Ugly Truth is on DVD and Blu-ray on Nov. 10.
Rich Heldenfels writes about popular culture for the Beacon Journal, in the HeldenFiles Online blog at http://heldenfels.ohio.com, on Facebook and on Twitter. He can be reached at 330-996-3582 and rheldenfels@thebeaconjournal.com.
The Mentalist was a bright spot for CBS in its first season, and the network is hoping for more big things in the second. It has moved the show to 10 p.m. Thursdays to create a major crime-busting bloc of The Mentalist and, leading into it, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.
Get the full article here.
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