Celebrate the new season of South Park by watching the week’s big DVD release, South Park: The Complete Twelfth Season ($49.99). After Jon Stewart and Bill Maher, the South Park guys constitute the de facto third network news show of modern times – the crucial source of the real news about what’s going on in our increasingly bizarre culture. Forget Frontline documentaries, you need to see Matt and Trey’s cartoon take on reality, then hear their commentaries on DVD. This season nails the election, the Twilight Goth craze, High School Musical (which provoked a suicide threat by Cartman), and the sad calamity that was Indiana Jones, Spielberg’s and Lucas’ ultimate sellout. This is the first South Park to come out also on Blu-Ray. I love Blu-Ray, but could anything be crazier than fanboys buying the world’s most proudly crude animation on Blu-Ray? It’s worthy of a South Park satire.

If you like House’s bright mind, brash bad habits, and sarcasm and the smart suspense of psycho-killer psychodramas, you’ve got to get Cracker: The Complete Collection ($119.99), one of the best British cop shows ever made, and right up there with the best of the Yanks. It stars Robbie Coltrane (Hagrid from Harry Potter), who won three British Academy Award-equivalents, as the scotch-swilling, insult-flinging forensic psychologist Fitz Fitzgerald. The show won Best Drama twice. Kudos to Acorn Media, the great miners of gems from UK video archives.

Nowadays, Michael J. Fox symbolizes the ruthlessness of fate – it’s painful to watch him conceal his tremor-ridden hand on Spin City, even though he’s still great. But in the climactic Family Ties: The Fifth Season ($39.98), Fox was at the top of his skyrocket ascent. Thank God Matthew Broderick turned down the role of briefcase-toting conservative kid Alex P. Keaton – which he may have done because it was supposed to be a supporting role to the hippie parents, the stars of the sitcom. But Fox exploded in the role, perfectly capturing the innocent brio of the early Reagan era, before conservatism self-destructed, taking the world with it. The episode “A, My Name is Alex” is a tour de force wherein Alex confronts his entire life. Must-see TV, even now.

Woody Woodpecker had a sad life story, starting out as a madcap with integrity and gradually succumbing to network neutering until he became almost a personality-free zombie. Still, it’s nice to see 20 of his cartoons in Woody Woodpecker Favorites ($14.98). Though it’s been claimed that Woody’s producer, Walter Lantz, invented the character after a woodpecker tormented him on his honeymoon, this is bull. Mel Blanc, the ubiquitous voice genius of cartoons, told me that he invented that famous “Ha-ha-ha-HA-ha!” voice while testing the echo effects in his Portland, Oregon, high school.

It’s too bad Debra Messing’s post-fame series got cancelled, but The Starter Wife: Season 1 ($34.98) is an opportunity to relive just about the greatest show in USA Network history. Messing and costar Judy Davis are a lot better than the material, satirizing Hollywood folkways, but the material is perfectly agreeable. Just don’t think about Will & Grace and you’ll have a fine time. Other stabs from the past: Get Smart: Season Two ($24.98), featuring the Goldfinger parody, and the mild mid-90s mini-hit Caroline in the City: The Second Season ($39.98), starring Michael J. Fox’s Back to the Future fox, Lea Thompson, as a Midwest-bred cartoonist in Manhattan.

Recommend (0)

|  Comments (0)

|  Email

|  Share

Share  Facebook Digg del.icio.us