DVDs in Review #43 - Weeds: The Complete Second Season
You can find the review of The Complete First Season through that link there.
Starring:
Mary-Louise Parker as Nancy BotwinElizabeth Perkins as Celia Hodes
Hunter Parish as Silas Botwin
Kevin Nealon as Doug Wilson
Alexander Gould as Shane Botwin
Justin Kirk as Andy Botwin
Andy Milder as Dean Hodes
Romany Malco as Conrad Shepherd
Tonye Patano as Heylia James
The Show:
The second season of Weeds follows directly from the first season, Weeds has an exceptionally compressed storyline and this makes it very easy to follow. At the end of the previous season we were left with the shock reveal about Nancy's newest man alongside her decision to turn "corporate" with her business.
The second season picks up almost right after the finale of the first season, this means it's a very smooth watch from one season to the next. Conrad, Nancy and co step up their operation to the next level by becoming growers rather than just dealers. But this contains it's own risks, from the DEA, Armenians and other dealers. They're beginning to really tread on some important toes and not everyone is going to just let them expand without a fight.
On top of this Nancy is having problems with her sons and her brother-law Andy, who continue to act up or goof around respectively. Plus she has to continue with keeping up appearances around her friends and conceal her choice of career from her new man Pete.
The season runs ahead with a delicious mix of dark comedy, drama and intense moments before leading to a season finale that will have you immediately rushing off to watch the third season. It's a great show that deals with a very adult matter in a clever manner that's both serious and tongue in cheek at the same time.
The Other Stuff:
Packaging:As always I love to see good and efficient packaging and Weeds is up there in the better designed tiers. It's two slimline DVD cases inserted into a cardboard cover; now if I'm honest the job could be done a little better here as there are only 2 DVDs in the set, but that's a problem which is rectified (see the next season review when I do it) and the narrow profile of the show's box more than makes up for it. The cover is stylish and while there was a couple of stickers directly applied to my copy they came off without leaving any residue or damage to the dust jacket itself.
Each DVD case has individual artwork and the back of them lists the episodes and the special features in each, this makes it easy to locate whatever feature you're looking for or work out which episode you watched last. Of course with only twelve episodes at a runtime of just over three hours it's easy to watch the entire thing in one sitting.
Start up and Menus:
The start up for the disc features an unskippable warning and Lionsgate logo then adverts for 'The Lost Room', 'The Dresden Files' and 'Darclight'. Fortunately the adverts are all skippable and only present on the first disc.
The Menus for Weeds:Season Two are great, the resolution on them could be slightly better and the loop is very harsh. What I mean there is every menu has a short loop of animation and music, some of them handle the point where they reach the end of the track better than others by making sure that it matches up and loops well, but most just stop abruptly and then start from the beginning again. Weeds is one of the latter.
You have the ability to pick any of the episodes but not individual scenes from each one, the almighty "Play All Episodes" option is present both on the main menu and the episode menu (hooray!) and the transitions between each menu are very stylish, with a pull out to show the main menu as a picture frame then a zoom into another picture frame which contains the sub-menu.
The Menus are identical on both discs.
Extras:
We get a wealth of extras, including commentaries and other little items added for your enjoyment.
On the first disc there are:
Commentaries from writing and production staff on the episodes, Corn Snake, Cooking with Jesus and A.K.A. The Plant.
Trivia Tracks for Last Tango in Agrestic, Mrs. Botwin's Neighbourhood and Crush, Love, Panic
A MILF Gag Reel
Conrad's Grow Room
Huskeroos Commercials
The second disc has:
Commentaries on MILF Money, Bash, Yeah Like Tomatoes and Pittsburgh
Trivia Tracks for Must Find Toes, Mile Deep and a Foot Wide and Yeah Like Tomatoes.
Jammin' Nation Extended Montage
Slangin' 101
Little Boxes Montage
Tools of the Trade
Price:
Right now our winner is sendit.com who have the entire set for a meagre £10.89 right here. That's 3.5ppm, respectable and a great deal for anyone who enjoyed the first season.
Details:
Audio: Dolby Digital 5.1
Aspect Ratio: 16:9 Widescreen
Runtime: 319 mins (plus extras)
Languages: English
Subtitles: English
Rating: 18 (Contains drug-dealing theme, strong sex references and very strong language.)
The Final Word:
What's to say? If you enjoyed the first season of Weeds this one is a no brainer to watch, the price is ridiculously good right now and I'd recommend picking it up for anything under £15 without hesitation. It's funny, sexy light entertainment that's easy to watch and hard not to enjoy.
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