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Category:    Home > Reviews > Thriller > Horror > Supernatural > Comedy > TV > Millennium - The Complete Second Season

Millennium – The Complete Second Season

 

Picture: B     Sound: B-     Extras: B-     Episodes: B

 

 

Facing a battle for ratings and not holding on as well as Fox had hoped, X-Files creator Chris Carter decided to come up with a big twist for his sister series Millennium.  With Lance Henriksen back as Frank Black, a former expert in crime solving whose special psychic-like abilities jump any case ahead, even cold ones, he discovers that his association with The Millennium Group may not be as mutually beneficial as he first thought.  It was they who got him on problematic cases, and if you have not seen the first season, you should stop now and either read my review for the first elsewhere on this site or see that entire season.  The following will give away too much, but that cannot be avoided.

 

Millennium- The Complete Second Season has Black’s wife (Megan Gallagher)

Kidnapped, his daughter (Brittany Tiplady) needing more protection than ever and Frank staring to realize The Millennium Group has not been so forward with him about what else is going on.  The only problem with this off the bat is, if he can use his psychic powers to sense danger, past murders, future murders, evil spirits and other strange phenomenon, why could he not sense they would be a problem?  This is never worked out in a satisfactory way and though the twist is interesting initially, it eventually hurts the series in the long run.  The supernatural angle eclipsed the detective angle, which in this case did not click as had been hoped for.

 

At the same time again as noted in our look at the first season, the show was experimental and succeeded on that level far more often than not, still remaining far more distinctive and rich than the shows that followed in its wake.  The new set of episodes are as follows:

 

1)     The Beginning & The End

2)     Beware If The Dog

3)     Sense & Antisense

4)     Monster

5)     A Single Blade Of Grass

6)     The Curse Of Frank Black

7)     19:19

8)     The Hand Of Saint Sebastian *

9)     Jose Chug’s “Doomsday Defense” (guest stars Charles Nelson Reilly)

10)  Midnight Of The Century (Holiday)

11)  Goodbye Charlie

12)  Luminary

13)  The Mikado *

14)  The Pest House

15)  Owls

16)  Rooster

17)  Siren

18)  In ArcadiaEgo

19)  Anamnesis (guest stars Brendan Fletcher of Scott Smith’s Rollercoaster)

20)  A Room With No View

21)  Somehow, Satan Got Behind Me

22)  The Fourth Horseman

23)  The Time Is Now

 

 

 

The aspect ratio this time out is an anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image, versus the exception full frame 1.33 X 1 image from the first season.  The show looks even better than before, still considering the dark look the show was produced in and the color is again not so ridiculously desaturated.  As a matter of fact, this may be the best anamorphic 16 X 9 series on DVD we have seen to date.  There continues to be three languages of Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo for each show, all with Pro Logic surrounds that are used better than most shows use them to this day.  The idea of 5.1 remixes were passed on, but we have seen shows have 2.0 to start with, then 5.1 later.  Mark Snow’s scoring is solid as usual.  The combination is exceptional.

 

Extras include commentaries on the two shows marked above with an * mark, with Tom Wright on Hand Of San Sebastian and Michael R. Perry on The Mikado.  The original Academy Group does another stellar featurette called Victimology that runs just over 24 minutes and an exceptional look at the second season called The Turn Of The Tide.  Running about 33 minutes, the latter discusses how Glen Morgan and James Wong took over the show is discussed, for better and worse.  They are obviously very talented, but their comedy style is too distinct, had already been established on X Files, and went way too far on The Lone Gunman.  That would make sense on the latter show, but for Millennium, it turned it too often into something it was not.  The duo turned down participating in the piece.  Even in the shadow of TV imitators still on the air, however, the second season of Millennium holds its own and is some of the best television of the 1990s.  This is one of the highest quality TV boxes on the market to date.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo


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