Army Wives – The Complete First Season (Disney DVD)
Picture:
B- Sound: B- Extras: B Episodes: B-
Whereas
you may think that Army Wives: The
Complete First Season is just another trashy, gossipy, girly, drama that
Lifetime put out there to make women hate men some more, you are dead
wrong. The series brings a lot to the
table that will keep men and women alike (odd for Lifetime, I know) entertained
for hours.
The drama
introduced in Season One mainly
centers around four army wives and one army
husband who are all in a constant battle to cope with the lifestyle that the
army has thrust upon them. While Roxy Le Blanc (Sally Pressman) struggles
to adapt to her new way of life after marrying her soldier husband after less
than a week of knowing him, she also has to learn to deal with the gossip
ridden army base (Fort Marshall) that
she must now call home. Unable to fathom what her new life really has in
store for her, Roxy enters a hypercritical world where she is first judged for
her "trashy" appearance but then, of course, makes her new best
friends. The self-coined "anti-Christ" of the base, due to her
clashes with other wives, Pamela Moran (Brigid Brannagh) is the glue to bring
these friends together.
When
Claudia Joy Holden (Kim Delany), the colonel's wife, is throwing her wives' tea
party on the base, Pamela goes into labor with twins and pleads with Roxy,
Claudia Joy, Roland Burton (Sterling K. Brown), and Denise Sherwood (Catherine
Bell) to let her give birth off base in order to hide what is actually a
surrogate pregnancy. This one secret will bond these four army wives, and
one army husband, together as more secrets arise for each of the characters
throughout the season. A surrogate pregnancy may have caused Pamela to
distance herself with many of the wives on the base, but the
"perfect" Sherwood family has their dark own secret, Roland has to
cope with his psychologically altered wife, Joan (Wendy Davis), who has just
returned from war, and Claudia Joy is waging her own war after believing that
her husband was snubbed of a promotion due to the political life found on Fort
Marshall.
As the
plethora of oddities and secrets mount on the base in Army Wives: The Complete First Season, one is somewhat reminded of Desperate Housewives or many other
daytime soaps. This Lifetime show
delivers the drama, gossip, lies, secrets, adultery, torn families, cries, and
laughter that one might often expect from any other show that, sticking to what
seems to be the Lifetime objective,
only appeals to women. The drama is entertaining but some character
development is unsatisfying, in that it fails to convey why some of the
characters would ever really be as close of friends as they turn out to
be. However, Army Wives
chooses to deal with a subject that is able to pull at the heartstrings of most
Americans right now, the war, and delivers a hearty "support the
troops" message to the women in the audience who are more than likely
willing to listen.
The
technical features of Army Wives: The
Complete First Season are strong and up to the challenge. The picture is presented in a clean and
bright 1.78 X 1 full screen that gives the audience what they pay for; though
it could be a bit crisper then what is presented, but Blu-ray will fix up that
issue in the future. The sound is a
solid quality Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround that is mostly dialogue from the
front, but captures the necessary aspects of the series quite well. The extras are nice, though not very
rewatchable in this reviewer’s opinion.
The extra features include deleted scenes, audio commentaries, bloopers,
Behind the Scenes: Deleted Story Line
(with Commentary), Wives on the Homefront
featurette, and interviews (‘Have at it
with the Army Wives’). The extras
were nice for a once through after viewing the entire First Season, but after that they seem very boring.
The only
complaint about Army Wives: The Complete
First Season is that after viewing the 13 episodes you will want more. The series is smart, funny, and
captivating. A true television hero.
- Michael P. Dougherty II
