Nurse Jackie – Season Three + Weeds –
Season Seven (Showtime/Lionsgate Blu-ray) + The Borgias – The First Season (Showtime/Paramount/CBS
Blu-ray) + Borgia: Faith and Fear –
Season One (Lionsgate DVD, all 2011)
Nurse Jackie: Season Three
Picture:
B+
Sound: B+
Extras: C
Episodes:
B-
Weeds: Season Seven
Picture:
A-
Sound: B+
Extras: B
Episodes:
B+
The Borgias: The First Season
Picture:
A-
Sound: B+
Extras:
C-
Episodes:
B+
Borgia: Faith and Fear
Picture:
B-
Sound: B-
Extras: C
Episodes:
B
Nurse Jackie: Season Three
Nurse Jackie has a promising concept and in
turn has a sizable following, but being a man of medicine and science the
series just didn’t sit right with me. As
I have forgiven the shortcomings of series like House as they take many medical liberties; Nurse Jackie just seemed to be too much. Jackie got into and out of situations too
easy and whereas Edie Falco is a great actress, her character just makes me
dislike her more and more with each passing moment.
At the
end of Season Two Jackie’s pill
popping behavior finally was revealed as both her husband and friend discovered
what she had fought so hard for two seasons to hide. She was cornered and confronted about her
illicit behaviors and audiences anxiously awaited to see how the cards would fall.
Well,
whereas her friends may have thought one little intervention would heal all
wounds, they couldn’t be more wrong. In Season Three we see Jackie turn from a
great liar to a masterful one as she stops at nothing to get what she wants.
SHOWTIME
has almost perfected creating series with main characters that are oddly
likeable, even with many their many character flaws. Jackie still cheats on her husband, is
addicted to pills, and manages to cast her judgment on others; yet audiences
root for her anyway. This odd dynamic is
something that has made SHOWTIME series so memorable over the past decade.
The Third Season focuses on Jackie
protecting her squeaky clean image and explaining her addictive behaviors. Jackie’s best friend Dr O’Hara (Eve Best) and
Jackie’s husband (Dominic Fumosa) are out to make sense of Jackie’s strange and
surprising exploits, helping their loved one at all costs. But as this season focuses heavily on Jackie
and her husband we see their marriage quickly unravel, with quite an odd end.
The
series, as previously mentioned, seems too conveniently packaged at times and
makes it unbelievable and distracting. I
think the series is perfectly cast and a talented troupe for sure, but the
direction of the series (like the characters themselves) is quite flawed.
Nurse Jackie: Season Three extras include Cast and Crew
Commentaries, “Inside Akalitus”
Featurette, “Jackie’s Guys” Featurette,
and Gag Reel. All are nice but nothing
overwhelming great, all being short and not divulging enough information.
Weeds: Season Seven
As you
can imagine after seven seasons there is quite a bit of back story to the
series Weeds. For that reason, much of what I say will not
make sense and concurrently (for long time fans) I will keep spoilers to a minimum.
We have
the series change drastically over the past seven seasons, but as Season Seven kicks off we have the
Botwin’s getting back to their weed dealing ways. After their many travels, highs and lows the
family looked to find their stride again heading off to Denmark, but as Season Six ended we had Nancy Botwin
(Mary Louise Parker) heading off to jail instead. Unexpectedly, Season Seven picks up three years after the end of Season Six; there’s no explosive save
for Nancy, she
simply sat in jail and Season Seven
starts with her release. Nancy starts life again at a halfway house in New York, but not before
long the troubled matriarch reunites with her old ways and her misguided
family. Nancy
has some hurdles along the way (as if she hasn’t had enough already) as she
battles to ascend the New York
weed chain and regain custody of her son from her sister Jill (Jennifer Jason
Lee).
This
season has a ton of subplots that work better than some previous seasons and
get the series back on track; but they concurrently can seem unbalanced and
unfinished as they come to an end. I
like the whole cast, but the writers (somewhat like Nurse Jackie) have managed to get me to hate Mary Louise Parker’s
Nancy Botwin. She is unrelenting as she
dives right back into the world of crime, seemingly learned nothing from her
three years in prison as she continues to feel entitled and above the law. Her
narcissistic ways are truly off putting and though I think she is crucial to
the series I can’t stand her.
I think
this series has a lot to offer and even as it has floundered for seasons now, I
think it can make a great come back.
Extras on
this Blu-ray are some of the most extensive of those on the sets reviewed here
and include Cast and Crew Commentaries, “Guru
Andy’s Tricks of the Trade,” “Puff
Puff Pass” Q&A with Justin Kirk and Kevin Nealon, “Growing Up in the Weeds with Alexander Gould,” Gag Reel, Deleted
Scenes, and Multi-Screen Comparison. All
are wonderful in their own way, having fun with the series while divulging some
interesting series info.
The Borgias: Season One
With so
many great historical drama series on television it is becoming increasingly
hard to keep up; thank God for TV on Blu-ray.
The Borgias: Season One has
arrived on Blu-ray as it chronicles the life of one of the most notorious
families in history.
The
Borgias were a remarkable, legendary family who in 15th Century Italy rose to
power; and a corrupt rise at that. The
patriarch Rodrigo Borgia (Jeremy Irons) becomes the head of the papacy and uses
every dirty, sordid trick to get there.
At the height of the Italian Renaissance Rodrigo Borgia was committing
every sin in the book while concurrently judging the masses to obtain and
maintain power and wealth for his family.
The Borgias is incredible all around; from the
huge set/costume designs to the epic cast and storylines the series is
unforgettable. SHOWTIME is a juggernaut
in TV programming and in recent time they have done no wrong; even the series
that make mistakes (see above) are still out of this world. With brilliant, original concepts series like
The Borgias have huge celebrities
and great talent flocking to be part of them.
In the case of The Borgias we
have the stunningly talented Jeremy Irons as power hungry Rodrigo Borgia, who
employs his son Cesare (Francois Arnaud) as Cardinal and younger son Juan
(David Oaks) Vatican City’s
Military Advisor securing that his family holds all the cards. But not all are so happy with the Borgias
holding onto the power and fellow Cardinal Giuliano Della Rovere (Colm Feore)
has set out to dethrone Borgia as Pope.
The entire season is an eloquently orchestrated game of chess as Rovere
and Borgia battle it out. The power
struggle and lying, cheating, stealing, and deception make the series amazingly
addictive and I can’t wait to see more.
Like many
SHOWTIME releases not many extras are offered up, as is the case here. Extras
here include the Pilot episode “House of Lies,” an episode of Dexter: Season Six and two episodes of
the series of Episodes. If viewers use BD Live a few other extras
include Casting of Cesare, two
episodes of Gigolos, and two
episodes of Californication: Season Four.
Borgia: Faith and Fear – Season
One
So you
may be thinking “wait, didn’t he just review this?” Well, yes and no. Whereas the source material is the same
(focusing on the 15th Century Borgias) the execution is completely
different. The series was created in Germany and France
and premiered on the BBC, later arriving in America exclusively on Netflix; so
it is no surprise that many don’t realize this series even exists.
The
series still uses the mythos and facts of the Borgias emphasizing the sex,
lies, corruption, and power struggles that made the family so infamous. The big difference I see in Borgia: Faith and Fear is the focus of
the series on the individuals and gruesome details, rather than the people and
subplots like SHOWTIMES The Borgias does.
Of the
two I feel The Borgias is the better
series; both are excellent, but SHOWTIME’S series has an edge that I can’t
describe, outside of saying it flows better.
Borgia: Fear and Faith feels
more like a miniseries (like we often get in Europe)
than an actual continuing series (though it is labeled as such). Borgia:
Fear and Faith takes chunks of Rodrigo’s life and focuses on those periods
and makes larger leaps than that of The
Borgias. The best parts of Borgia is
when the writers focus on the more political aspects of Rodrigo’s rise to
power, something that The Borgias just
does better.
This DVD
is slightly weak in the technical area.
The video is a 1.78 X 1 Widescreen that has nice colors and bold blacks,
but lacks the pop of Blu-ray and fails to have inky enough blacks to frame the
series adequately. Often times the
darker scenes had me squinting to see what was going on and clarity was
lost. The sound is a Dolby Digital
Surround that like the picture wasn’t bad, but certainly not great. I felt the sound was weak at times and didn’t
fully utilize the speaker range.
The only
extra featured here is “The Making of
Borgia: Fear and Faith,” which is slightly informative but not very
entertaining. I was hoping for more audio commentaries or historical
documentaries, but instead we get a short, moderately useful “making of.”
Technical Features
The
technical features on Nurse Jackie, Weeds, and The Borgias are very similar and though filmed differently present
very closely on Blu-ray as they are SHOWTIME series. Each series is presented in a 1.78 X 1 AVC
Encoded MPEG-4, 1080p image that is very well done. The picture on each is crisp, clean, and
clear with bright colors and framing blacks.
Nurse Jackie’s and Weeds’ have very similar presentations
to their previous releases with brightly displayed colors, solid contrast,
crisp detail and bold black levels. The
sound is a superbly presented English 7.1 DTS-HD Master Audio presentations
that give off a pleasant audio experience.
Whereas both series remain heavily dialogue driven, they still manage to
use the full speaker range and offer solid ambient noise with crisp, clear
dialogue. The Borgias (given to us by Paramount)
is the nicest of the three Blu-ray series presented here with a 1.78 X 1
widescreen that never falls flat as the detail, texture, and colors leap from
the screen. The series is bold without
noise or any distracting features; a truly great look here. The sound on The Borgias is different than the others in its 5.1 Lossless Dolby
TrueHD track and does surprisingly well.
The series (like the others) is highly dialogue driven, but does manage
to utilize the surrounds. The ambient
noise is presented nicely in the surrounds and we are often treated to a well
balanced mix exemplified by the walking and running through echoing hallways. All series did an excellent job here on
Blu-ray.
- Michael P. Dougherty II
