Weeds – Season Three (Lionsgate Blu-ray + DVD-Video)

 

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

 

 

It is summer time, so tell your friend Mary Jane to stop mowing the grass, because there is some all new Weeds to pull out, pop in and light up your DVD/Blu-ray player.  Weeds is a series that just keeps getting progressively better and there aren’t many like that on television today.  If you liked Season One and Season Two, Season Three brings back everything that was great about the previous seasons times ten.

 

Season Two ended with a bit of a cliffhanger that this reviewer will not ruin, but know that it centered on a botched drug deal.  The Third Season picks up where Season Two left off and separates the season into a series of subplots that all manage to intertwine in their own unique way.  The characters are cast into an array of unusual and unspeakable situations that only seem to get more complicated with time.  Nancy finds herself deeper in the drug world than ever, Andy faces the trials and tribulations of war after making some hasty decisions, Silas starts to sell drugs on the side while doing community service as well as introducing to us to a new character (Tara) played by Mary-Kate Olsen.  Olsen did a surprisingly brilliant performance this season and is a character that this reviewer will surely miss (unless she returns?).  The whole series is interesting, well written, and manages to step-it-up with each episode.

 

The series is heavy on the dialogue and is for the most part character driven with little action.  Season 3 manages to pack in more action, drama, comedy, and everything else than any of the previous season and only alludes to more great things to come.  This reviewer highly recommends this series with the twists and turns never disappointing, as you fall in love with some of the shadiest characters that ever graced the small screen.  Just when things start to go good, they get so much worse.  Just when it is time to cut their loses and move on, they dig deeper.  Weeds will surely give you a contact high.

 

The technical features on the third season’s DVD and Blu-ray release are quite improved over season two, but nothing bowled this reviewer over.  The picture on both sets is once again presented in a 1.78 X 1 image, just as originally filmed, and is enhanced for 16 X 9 televisions.  The Blu-ray release is projected in a 1080p High Definition that has better colors and depth this season than either previous Weeds Blu-ray release, though some digital noise is still apparent.  The DVD also has a mostly crisp image and solid colors, but does not live up to the Blu-ray release.  Neither the Blu-ray nor the DVD-Video release of Weeds demonstrates the quality that many HD Network series have established and in some ways Showtime still has to pull its head out of the clouds and get on the ball with this image issue.  The sound is a definite upgrade this time around for the Blu-ray in its 7.1 DTS HD Master Audio track that remains crisp and fluid throughout the entire dialogue heavy season.  Granted Weeds is not an action heavy series, but the sound projects in such a nice way that it is undeniably solid.  It is nice to hear a great uncompressed track.  The DVD once again does not live up to the Blu-ray in its Dolby Digital 5.1 Surrounds, but does have an adequate quality about it as it projects mainly from the front. 

 

The Extras are essentially the same on both the Blu-ray and DVD, but the Blu-ray release has one additional ‘game feature’ entitled ‘Kush Kush and Away’ that this reviewer found neither exciting nor intriguing.  The other features available on both sets are as follows:

 

Gag Reel

Uncle Awol Featurette with Justin Kirk

G.M.A. – Good Morning Agrestic!

Mark-Kate Olsen Bio

‘Little Boxes’ Randy Newman Featurette

8 Commentaries with Cast and Crew

7 Trivia Tracks

‘Little Boxes’ Music Montages

Soundtrack Sampler

 

 

 

Nothing truly stands in the extra features section as fantastic, except the Randy Newman featurette and the 8 commentaries.  There is only so much of Randy Newman this reviewer can take, but the featurette was still pleasantly presented and insightful.  The 8 commentaries with the cast and crew were funny, interesting, and gave a good sense of how much the people who created the series love what they do.  Overall, the extras were not the best but slide by as passable.

 

Weeds is a big hit.

 

 

-   Michael P. Dougherty II