Dallas (2012): The Complete First Season (Warner DVDs)/Enlightened: The Complete First Season (2012/HBO Blu-rays)/Episodes: The Complete First & Second Seasons (2010 – 12/Showtime/CBS DVDs)

 

Picture: C+/B-/C+     Sound: C+/B-/B-     Extras: C+/B-/D     Episodes: C+/B-/D

 

 

Now for a new round of TV shows making their debuts with their debut seasons, including the return of an old hit…

 

 

After 14 seasons (the show ran on way too long), three TV movies and a hideously conceived feature film thankfully cancelled where John Travolta would have played J.R. Ewing and Jennifer Lopez would have co-stared, Dallas (2012): The Complete First Season turned into a hit revival fans have enjoyed and brought back most of the original cast that is still with us.  Even before Larry Hagman passed away, it was a real triumph that he would return to his most successful role (even surpassing his astronaut on I Dream Of Jeannie) and pulls it off.

 

Offering up a new cast of leads, including Jesse Metcalfe and Josh Henderson, the storyline initially offers a new battle for Southfork and (very timely, especially considering the controversy of fracking; drilling for natural gas even if you poison healthy clean water with chemicals flushed in during the process) whether to retain the late matriarch’s wishes not to drill on the oil rich homeland or to drill baby drill.

 

Bobby (Patrick Duffy) wants to sell the place so the family will stop fighting about it, but an ill J.R. (Hagman) is suddenly getting well again and intends to fight for it and get what it is worth.  Sue Ellen (Linda Gray) is out to run for public office in Texas and old enemies and new ones start to surface as well.

 

We get all 10 hour-long shows on 3 DVDs and that includes a shorter new recording of the show’s classic theme song with new footage of the City of Dallas that shows it has only grown further in wealthy, power and buildings.  If not a great return, the show gets back to basics and all the trappings that made the original show work down to dirty, sarcastic, Billionaire cat fighting verbally and sometimes more.  This never gets corny cornball or cornpone to its credit and the makers apparently care about the fans for once.  If you ever liked the show, you should definitely check this one out.

 

Extras include six nice behind the scenes featurettes, an audio commentary track on the pilot episode by the new producers and some fine Deleted Scenes including never-before footage of Hagman back in action as J.R. as if he never stopped playing him.

 

As for the original series, the show was played out by the Ninth Season, but went on for fourteen seasons because fans kept watching and CBS needed the hit on their schedule.  We have actually reviewed all 14 seasons of the show on DVD, plus the 3 TV movies, so you can go to the following Dallas DVD links for more on the show and those releases as we hope a Blu-ray set (like Friends) might surface if this new version continues to be a success:

 

Seasons One thru Eight

http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/6625/Dallas+%E2%80%93+The+Complete

 

Season Nine

http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/7266/Dallas+-+Season+Nine+(Warner+Bros

 

Season Ten

http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/8054/Dallas+%E2%80%93+The+Complete

 

Season Eleven

http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/8515/Dallas+%E2%80%93+The+Complete

 

Season Twelve

http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/9449/Dallas+%E2%80%93+The+Complete

 

Season Thirteen

http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/9828/Dallas+%E2%80%93+The+Complete

 

Season Fourteen

http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/10702/Dallas+%E2%80%93+The+Complete

 

Three Telefilm + Reunion Collection (1986 - 2004)

http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/10892/Car+54,+Where+Are+You?+%E2%80

 

 

 

Next up is Enlightened: The Complete First Season (2012) with Laura Dern as a recovering addict who is trying to get back in the mainstream and has upbeat ideas for her future and maybe everyone else’s.  She was with a very successful athlete (Luke Wilson good in an often thankless role) but they became each other’s downfall and he is still on drugs.  She returns from her successful (so far) rehabilitation and moves in with her mother (the great Diane Ladd, Miss Dern’s real life mom) while she gets her life back together.  Mom is none too happy with the turns taken and is still unhappy with what happened with her own life.

 

To start, Amy (Dern) returns to the corporation that fired her and through some passive manipulation (reminding them of certain employment laws) gets rehired, but in an underground IT unit that is up to no good, though she is not initially aware of that.  She also still deals with her ex, employees who have turned on her, makes some new acquaintances, maybe a few new friends and wants to do something new.  She is also pro-environment and that will quickly cause her troubles at her job.

 

In the first few episodes, the series seems like tales we have seen and heard before, but at least has some humor about her pro-people, pro-environment stance, then the show really starts to kick in by the fifth episode when she is horrified by how a mother of two is deported as an illegal immigrant while the child daughters get to stay behind because they were born in the U.S.A. and from there, the show becomes this really smart examination of values that include pro-liberal views that are starting to become popular again, even if they are not recognized as so.

 

Co-created by Dern and the underrated Mike White (School Of Rock) who also has a nice supporting role here, she becomes a new kind of heroine by default, though the teleplays do great justice to all the rest of the characters (not easy in any TV show) and even lands up in Fight Club territory; all while trying to create a new kind of female narrative discourse.

 

If the show can succeed where it is going, we could see a TV classic in the making, but if not, Enlightened is still one of the most ambitious shows on television and another triumph for Dern, one of our most underrated actors.  See it!

 

Extras include audio commentary on select episodes and Inside The Episodes pieces.

 

 

 

Finally we have what has to be one of the worst pay cable TV shows in the history of satellite technology.  Episodes: The Complete First & Second Seasons (2010 – 12) could have been funny, but manages to make the worst possible choices about every single thing at every turn and is the My Mother, The Car of cable TV and the Showtime Network that paying viewers have sadly funded.

 

The initial idea could have worked in the hands of people who cared, were not endlessly cynical and did not think their audience were or are total idiots.  A British couple (Stephen Mangan, Tamsin Greig) have had a huge hit TV series on British TV and a Hollywood producer (John Pankow) who runs a network desperate for a hit lures the couple to the U.S. to do a “new version” remake of the show for that market.  They are told he loves the show, but has not in reality seen it.

 

They are stuck initially meeting his underlings and from there it gets worse, including an awful audition with the star of the U.K. version (British actor and star Richard Griffiths) being professional enough to re-audition for the role he made a hit.  Then disaster becomes ridiculous when the producer decides the head schoolmaster of the private school on the show should be played by…  Matt LeBlanc.

 

Yes, the tired star of Friends does what he has been doing for pretty much his whole career, playing himself.  He actually does that badly here too, but he is just the red alert to how bad the whole show is.  The makers have next to no understanding of British TV, as well as American TV, show business or comedy.  Everyone is unlikable, the dialogue is as crude as it is cynical, but never funny (down to rape jokes that would make the Tea Party blush) and the result is a total absolute mess!

 

The makers even know they went too far and try to soften things a by the next season, but it is far too late and the show is still that crude.  Everyone is shrill, talking at each other, talking like no one ever does in real like (I though of Tony Bill’s horrid film Crazy People at times) and the sitcom that gets made (called Pucks! since to fit LeBlanc, the schoolmaster becomes a coach, the logo looks like the series Coach, though I wondered if the dumb in-joke was to replace the ‘P’ with an ‘F’ for the would-be sitcom) and ultimately is a show made by dozens of bored people with nothing to say or do.

 

WOW is this one bad!!!

 

See it at your own risk, all 16 hideous half-hours, but don’t say we did not warn you.

 

Extras are thin too, only offering text bios and Photo Galleries.

 

 

 

The anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image on the DVDs are both HD shoots and look a bit soft at times, though Dallas narrowly looks better than Episodes, while the 1080p 1.78 X 1 digital High Definition image transfers on Enlightened can be stylized a bit (save soft dream sequences), it is shot on film and is easily the best looking of the three productions, helped by being here in a higher format.

 

The lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 on Dallas is a bit more dialogue based and more towards the front speakers than I expected, but that is better than the Dolby 1.0 Mono on some of the older shows.  Still, it deserves some better sonics.  The lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 on Episodes is sadly better-sounding with some better surround moments and the ability to hear the idiotic dialogue too clearly.

 

That leaves the DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mixes on Enlightened sounding a bit better, but none of these presentations have consistent soundfields, though the DTS here is the warmest and richest.  I just wish the soundmixes were not so much towards the front channels despite being dialogue and sometimes joke driven.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo