Fat Actress – The Complete First Season

 

Picture: C     Sound: C+     Extras: C     Episodes: C+

 

 

A long time ago, even before Cheers, Kirstie Alley received good press and fan attention when she showed up as Lt. Savvik in the 1982 space opera classic Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan in what is still her best work.  After her hit sitcom, which she joined belatedly, she found herself in a second hit: Veronica’s Closet.  Even those silly, lame Look Who’s Talking films inexplicably did business.  So what went wrong?  Except for the rare times something interesting albeit staged happens in her “reality TV show” Fat Actress, her entry into the sad, lame world of bad TV.

 

She is very overweight and determined to make some kind of comeback.  The problem throughout is that we are supposed to believe she just gained 100 pounds all of the sudden and her career vanished without explanation.  The semi-comedy boasts dozens of celebrity appearances, better seen in smart feature films like The Player, Mistress, or The Muse.  The episodes for this first season are:

 

1)     Big Butts

2)     Charlie’s Angels

3)     Holy Lesbo, Batman

4)     The Koi Effect

5)     Crack For Good

6)     Crybaby McGuire

7)     Hold This

 

Overall, you will either like the show or not, but since it is more obviously a set up, some amusement is to be had, just as long as you do not have high expectations.

 

The anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1/16 X 9 frame displays very disappointing color, definition and depth, giving it a cheap field of the wrong kind.  The Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo is no match for the 5.1 mix, but all that can do is the spread around the production sound.  Otherwise, though the sound is a bit better than the picture, rewatchability is questionable unless you are laughing all the time.  Extras include audio commentaries by various cast and crew on the four episodes on DVD 1, while DVD 2 plugs DISH Network and four other Showtime series, then adds more on the show.  This includes on the set footage, over nine minutes of deleted scenes, Showtime shorts and the premiere party for the series.

 

Well, if you don’t subscribe to the Showtime service, at least the show is sold separately.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo