CSI: NY – The Eighth Season/CSI: Miami – The Final Season
(aka Season Ten)/CSI – The Twelfth Season (all 2011 –
2012/CBS DVDs)/Hawaii Five-O: The Second
Season (2011 – 2012/CBS Blu-rays)/Rawhide
– The Fifth Season, Volume One + Volume
Two (1962 – 1963/CBS DVDs)/Wallander
3 (2012/BBC DVDs)
Picture: C+/C+/C+/B-/C+/C+/C Sound: C+/B-/B-/B/C+/C+/C+ Extras: C/C+/C+/C+/C-/C-/D Episodes: C/C+/C+/C+/B-/B-/B-
Some TV
shows are doing well enough that the season just keep on coming. Here are six of them in their latest round of
releases…
We have
covered many, if not all of the various CSI season in both Blu-ray and DVD
formats. If you are unfamiliar with any
of the shows or want alternative coverage, try this ever-expanding link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/new/viewer.cgi?search=csi
So here
we have three CSI series, one of which is wrapping up while it is ahead,
relatively speaking. My least favorite
is CSI: NY – The Eighth Season which
is the weakest of all the franchise, has not improved and is not the one
ending. Though Gary Sinise is not bad,
this is just a tired, played out spin-off with limited excitement to offer and though
it at least makes New York City
look better than Blue Bloods, the
teleplays are very formulaic and the 18 hour-long shows here are adequate at
best. For fans only, how much longer can
this one go on?
CSI: Miami – The Final Season (aka Season Ten) is the one ending, vindicating David Caruso’s career
and while they were at least more exciting than the other spin-off. We get the last 19 hour-long shows in this
set and everyone squeezed everything out of this version as they could, so
thank you all for not letting this get worse.
The teleplays are a but better, but not by much.
CSI – The Twelfth Season is the first time I get to see
Ted Danson in action in a more serious role and he actually pulls it off to my
surprise taking over the lead detective/investigator role. Thanks to him, this show has a few more years
in it, but like the spin-offs, they seem like endless Love Boat seasons, but CBS needs the hits so they’ll be around a
few more years. We get 22 hour-long
shows and the scripts are at least playable and the cast has some energy here,
so that helps, but it is almost like they are in a contest with Law & Order for the Perry Mason
Endurance Prize for which show can stay on TV the longest. All three are generally boring, but at least
they are not the usual outright stupid TV the networks keep giving us.
With the
rumor of Scott Caan leaving dead, Hawaii
Five-O: The Second Season shows CBS has successfully revived the older hit
series that also ran long beyond the years it should have. Alex O’Loughlin is back as McGarrett and Wo
Fat has arisen, but the show (with the origins restart out of the way) is
finally up to some kind of speed and if you missed the debut season, try this
link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/11185/Hawaii+Five-O+%E2%80%93+The+Fi
Another
plus is that Terry O’Quinn has joined the cast and that can only help
matters. I still don’t think the show
looks as good as the best of the early seasons, but it is no worse than any of
the CSIs and we’ll see if they can get better.
You get 23 hour-long episodes over 5 Blu-rays.
Extras
for these four sets include select audio commentary tracks on select episodes,
Deleted Scenes, Gag Reels on all but regular CSI and four making of featurettes a piece, though regular CSI has six and Five-O adds the Touch Of
Death NCIS: Los Angeles
crossover episode.
Speaking
of older shows, we have one classic in Rawhide
– The Fifth Season, Volume One + Volume
Two (1962 – 1963) celebrating 50 years!
We have only sporadically covered earlier half-season sets as follows:
Season 2, V. 1
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/6339/Rawhide+%E2%80%93+Season+Two
Season 4, V. 2
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/11358/Blackthorn+(2011/Magnolia+Blu-ray)/
This
season is as good as the prior ones, demonstrating that the show was a better
TV Western than I realized or that many people give it credit for, but it is
usually remembered for being 5that show Clint Eastwood was on before he was a
star than for the top-rate production it was.
Eric Fleming was the star and besides the memorable theme song, it was
simply a quality production that might have had more money in it than the
average Western. The sets have 16 and 15
hour-long episodes respectively and some episodic promos are the only extras
across both sets.
Finally
we have the Kenneth Branagh in Wallander
3 (2012) which is a hit English language remake of a show we covered from
the start, as you can see with the following links:
First DVD
set
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/8719/Wallander+(2008/with+Sidetracked,+et
Second
DVD set
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/10515/Wallander+(2009/with+Faceless+Kille
The
innovation here is that BBC Video has finally numbered the volume after not for
some reason, as if they did not expect the show to last or maybe Branagh to be
able to stick with it. It is still a
good show, but despite only offering three telefilms at a time, it is also
starting to show some signs of wear.
Still, it is the best and smartest of the new detective shows here and
the mysteries include An Event In Autumn,
The Dogs Of Riga and Before The Frost. There are no extras.
The
anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image on all three CSIs can be soft and have detail, depth and color limits, but they
are all still sharper than the still-too-soft Wallander playback in the same format. Even the 1.33 X 1 black and white filmed-on
35mm film image on the two Rawhide volumes looks better than HD-shot Wallander, but they all take a backseat
to the 1080p 1.78 X 1 digital High Definition image on Five-O, with even better color, but its use of digital graphics and
styling down so many scenes still holds it back.
The
DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mixes on Five-O are also the sonic champion among these releases as
expected, followed by the lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 mixes on CSI and CSI: Miami. The same mix on CSI: NY is somehow weaker and too much towards the front speakers,
pushing down to the level of the lossy Dolby 2.0 Mono on the Rawhide sets (which sound really good
for their age) and lossy Dolby 2.0 Stereo on Wallander.
- Nicholas Sheffo
