Bored To Death: The Complete First Season (2009/HBO Blu-ray Set)
Picture:
B Sound: B Extras: C Episodes: B
It is
slightly ironic that the series is called Bored
to Death, when it is anything but boring.
Jason Schwartzman, Ted Danson and Zak Galifianakis star in the series
created by novelist Jonathan Ames. In a
very postmodern manner, Ames
created the series based on himself (a struggling novelist), but added the
twist that he has taken up being a private investigator. In fact all of Ames’ writings seem to place him in a
fictionalized role of himself, casting himself as someone he wants to be or
someone he could never be in a million years.
Schwartzman
is playing the role of Ames
for this hilarious series. It seems that
this character is Ames
at his worst. As the series opens
Jonathan’s girlfriend leaves him due to his bad habits of drinking and smoking
copious amounts of marijuana; in fairness to Ames he did try to change, switching to just
white whine. Viewers can tell from the
initial personal mishaps that the series is about to take a charismatically
hilarious turn, most likely for the worst.
Life is not shaping up for Jonathan Ames as he had imagined; his love
life is falling apart and professionally he feels stagnant. As Ames
deals with personal struggles the personalities who surround him are of no help
and many times make things even worse.
Ray (Zak Galifianakis) is a cartoonist who is more preoccupied with
himself to ever concentrate on Jonathan; most of the time trying to get sex out
of his long time girlfriend played by Heather Burns. The there is George Christopher (Ted Danson),
Ames on again off again boss who also seems so ‘bored to death’ with his own
life that he leeches onto Ames in attempt to reinvigorate himself. Danson often times steals the show as his
character (a magazine editor) will try anything once and lives to party; but
sadly George’s reckless ways often leave others in much more trouble than they
bargained for.
In a
misguided attempt to bring meaning to his life, Ames places a add on Craigslist
for his services as a private detective; in turn thinking solving others
problems will also help him. He
struggles to find inspiration, but with these cases he may get more than he
bargained for. First he is hired to find
a woman’s missing sister, and then later is hired to spy on a “cheating
boyfriend.” It is hard to say if this is
all working out as Ames
had intended, but if nothing else it is giving him something to do.
I found
the cast’s chemistry very inviting, with plenty of great acting and wonderful
scripts to work off of. Where as the
series is inventive and hilarious, I do think it took a while to get into. By the end of the season I was fully
engrossed, but it definitely took a while for the series to find its
voice. With that said Bored to Death is a wonderful series
that I think will only get better, it once again exemplifies what HBO series
have to offer. It has depth, heart and a
wonderful mix of “slapstick” and dark comedy.
The
picture and sound on this set are more “average” than I was expecting and
whereas they get the job done, it is far from thrilling. Even knowing the series is not full of big
action sequences or anything of the sort I still found the AVC-1 encoded 1080p
presentation well presented with only a few issues. The image is crisp, clean and clear with nice
shadowing and textures. The skin tones
are nicely represented here and there are no light/dark issues to be
mentioned. I do have to say that the
image was soft at times as well as digital noise popping up here and
there. There is a degree of over
saturation I can note, but the colors are well balanced and the crimsons, blues
and browns all pop. The sound is a
DTS-HD Master Audio lossless 5.1 mix for this mostly dialogue based series that
presents nicely, but fails to utilize the rears and add atmosphere to the
series. The locations for Bored to Death vary greatly from busy
cafés to walking down a bustling street, but the soundscape always seems to be
weak and unimpressive. In some sequences
it is there but mostly the track has been prioritized to have dialogue coming
succinctly from the front and worrying little about atmosphere.
The
extras include the following:
- Four Audio Commentaries
- These commentaries are
wonderfully engaging and hilariously funny. Schwartzman, Ames and even Danson grace the tracks
with their presence as they divulge plenty of personal reflections and
trivia about filming.
- The Making of Bored to Death
- Jonathan Ames Brooklyn
- A feature that doesn’t have
much to it, but has Schwartzman and Ames
conversing about the series in a manner that is very much like the
commentary tracks.
- Deleted Scenes
- Several unaired sequences
that add little to the series.
I think
this series has a lot more to say and the First
Season is only the tip of the iceberg… before it sinks the Titanic.
- Michael P. Dougherty II
