New Blu CHUCK JONES!! THE WAR! THE UNIVERSE!! HELL ON WHEELS!! Cheapest GEEKS & TREATMENT Ever!!...

Herc’s Popular Pricing Pantry

CHEAPEST FREAKS EVER!!
$30.49 This Week Only!!
$56.49 Last Year!! $45.99 Last Week!!

Season one of HBO’s “In Treatment,” (all 43 episodes), $59.99 in 2009 and $39.49 in last week, just plummeted to an all-time low of $19.46!! (67% Off!!) Starring Michelle Forbes, Melissa George, Blair Underwood and Dianne Wiest!

Season two of HBO’s “In Treatment,” (all 35 episodes), $56.49 in 2010 and $38.99 in last week, just plummeted to an all-time low of $19.65!! (67% Off!!) Starring Hope Davis, Russell Hornsby, John Mahoney and Alison Pill!

All four seasons of “Battlestar Galactica” on Blu-ray have hit all-time lows of $19.99 or less!!

Season one of NBC’s “Life,” $27.49 in June and $18.99 in March, is now $6.49!! (80% Off!!)

Every episode of NBC’s “Kings,” $53.99 in 2009 and $23.49 in January, is now $12.69!! (79% Off!!)

Season one of SciFi’s “The Invisible Man,” $59.98 in December and $30.99 in March, is for the moment $6.63!! (89% Off!!)

The complete-series set for “Land of the Lost,” $46.99 in 2010 and $31.99 in November, is for the moment $15.36!! (62% Off!!)

The complete series set for “Babylon 5” spinoff “Crusade” (starring Gary Cole and Daniel Dae Kim), $59.98 in June and $37.49 in March, has plummeted to $13.59!! (77% Off!!)

“Birds of Prey,” which depicts the daughters of Bruce Wayne, James Gordon and Dinah “The Black Canary” Lance teaming up to fight evil, was $34.49 in 2010 and $28.99 in October. It’s now $13.22!! (67% Off!!)

New This Week

Long before Burt Reynolds was the Bandit and Darren McGavin was Kolchak, NBC in 1959 launched the 1840s-set “Riverboat.”

“Mike Hammer” vet McGavin played the captain of the Enterprise; Reynolds (in his first regular TV role) was the Enterprise’s helmsman. Guest stars included DeForest Kelly and Ricardo Montalban.

Other guest stars included “20/20” icon Hugh Downs (!) and a pre-Petrie Mary Tyler Moore.

Reynolds quit the show after its first 21 episodes, joining the more established “Gunsmoke” in 1962.

Freak Show: The Complete Series is a 2006 animated epic - from comedy genius writer-performers David Cross (“Mr. Show,” “Arrested Development”) and H. Jon Benjamin (“Dr. Katz,” “Home Movies”) – about heroes with incredibly lame superpowers. The Hollywood Reporter says:

… "Freak Show" turns up on Comedy Central and breaks from the starting gate looking a little bit like a revelation: outrageous, bizarre, effortlessly hip and unsubtle in magically edgy ways. … "Freak Show" is so politically incorrect and disrespectful -- and yet at the same time so brilliantly absurd -- that you can't help but shake your head in a combination of disbelief and awe. May these Freaks live long and freakishly.

Entertainment Weekly gives it a “B-minus” and says:

… Thanks to the voice work of co-creator David Cross and pals like Will Arnett, this superhero spoof's odd humor manages to distract from the shudders...but just barely. You know what that means: College boys, launch those cult websites now. …

The New York Times says:

… since there’s no pressure on this latest outlaw cartoon to be indignant and ideological in a way that pleases, say, Aaron Sorkin, and nor is there any threat that it will offend some phantom moral majority, “Freak Show” is free to be funny. Which it is. It presents the back story of its heroes far better than I can, and that history gives a hearty sample of the show’s humor: “In 1972,” begins the self-important narrator, who sounds like the voice-over gods from, say, “The Incredible Hulk” or “The Six Million Dollar Man,” “President Richard Nixon, Augusto Pinochet, Henry Kissinger and Adolf Hitler met aboard Kissinger’s yacht, the Wet Dream II.” It continues: “After a few hi-how-are-ya’s and several cocktails” — here the men are shown cavorting in a Polaroid, Nixon in fishnets and Hitler relieving himself out a porthole — “it became clear that the galley was desperately out of ice. Frank Mankiewicz, a junior parking attendant at the Pentagon who was moonlighting on the yacht, suggested forming a top-secret elite task force comprised of members of a small freak show that he had recently attended, because there was seriously little ice left. “His plan was agreed to by all, and thus Frank Mankiewicz’s Freak Show was born.” If you appreciate a good Frank Mankiewicz joke, “Freak Show” is definitely for you. I had to Google him, so I might be missing other stuff here. …

Dog Bites Man: The Complete Series is a 2006 mockumentary about a local TV news crew, but the crew interviews real people - real people who don’t know they’re talking to faux journalists. The four leads – including the great Zach Galifianakis (“The Comedians of Comedy”) - also seem to be credited as the writers, but one of the producers is Dan Mazer, who wrote on “Da Ali G Show” and the spinoff “Borat” movie.

Variety says:

… Comedy Central delivers a smart, wry mockumentary about local TV news sexy enough to be a convincing object of Kevin's preoccupation but still goofy enough to fit into the improvised nonsense. That thread also gives the story a pulse beyond the broadcast news satire

The Washington Post says:

… There's no question that "Dog Bites Man" scales heights of hilarity, more than one might have a right to expect. But there's a problem: Virtually all the characters are detestable in one way or another, and partly as a result, the show never seems grounded. Certainly it's not grounded in reality, although even the most fanciful fantasies really have to be.

Entertainment Weekly gives it a “B” and says:

…ends up being too much bark and not quite enough bite. …

Newsday says:

… how did the team behind Comedy Central's "Dog Bites Man" so thoroughly muck the whole thing up? This isn't to say there aren't a couple of funny lines here (there are) or that the characters aren't ridiculously implausible (they are, and that's fine to a point). But it's almost as though the production team - led by Dan Mazer of "Da Ali G Show" - wandered into a candy store and, not knowing what to grab off the shelf, decided to grab everything. In its zeal to zing local TV news, "Dog" loses any flavor of authenticity, which is absolutely essential for effective satire. …

TV Guide says:

…Improv techniques aside, I'd just settle for a funny script. …

AMC’s “Hell On Wheels” was one of last year’s bigger disappointments, a Western mostly about a former Confederate soldier plotting vengeance for the rape and murder of his wife – even as he supervises former slaves building the Union Pacific transcontinental railroad.

It comes to us from brothers Joe and Tony Gayton, who scripted the 2010 Dwayne Johnson vehicle “Faster” (27% positive reviews among top critics on Rotten Tomatoes!). It stars Anson Mount (“Line of Fire,” “Straw Dogs”), Colm Meaney (“Deep Space Nine,” “Get Him To The Greek”), Common (“Terminator Salvation”), Dominique McElligott (“The Philanthropist”) and Ted Levine (“Silence of the Lambs,” “Monk”).

“Wheels” is one of the least politically correct series on American TV. The native Americans are introduced as perfectly despicable bloodthirsty savages, the term “nigger” finds its way into a lot of dialogue, and there’s even a curse word in the show’s title.

The best thing about its first episode is a harrowing Indian attack. The project struggles, though, almost everywhere else, offering bland characters, clumsy dialogue and plotting that holds few surprises.

Its titles are almost desperately evocative of HBO’s much better “Deadwood.”

(It’s slightly interesting to note that AMC sort of got into the original-drama game in the “Deadwood” era with the 2006 Robert Duvall miniseries “Broken Trail.” Duvall told Howard Stern at the time that he hated “Deadwood,” whose pilot was directed by Walter Hill – the same guy who directed the “Broken Trail.”)

AOL says:

It was bound to happen sooner or later: AMC has a dud on its hands. ... 'Hell on Wheels' does one thing well: It's good at being tedious. … The problem is, while 'Hell on Wheels' is clearly trying to evoke Western archetypes and aesthetics, in most respects it displays a startling lack of imagination. The narrative and dialogue contain an almost fatal mixture of blandness and clumsiness, and aesthetically speaking, the drama is pedestrian and derivative. …

HitFix says:

... establishes itself as a show that will spell out everything because it doesn't expect its audience to put in much mental effort. That seems appropriate, in that "Hell on Wheels" itself is a show that puts in the absolute minimum amount of effort to do what it wants to do. It's adequate - certainly no more and probably no less - and seems content with that. Were you to tell me that someone was making a basic cable drama about the building of the Union Pacific Railroad, I could pretty much picture every detail of "Hell on Wheels" in my head - and the ones I couldn't are where the show just cribs from "Deadwood." ...

Time says:

... It does not rethink the Western genre. It doesn’t even think the Western genre too heavily. If you are looking for originality, this railroad drama is not the train you want to board. …

TV Guide says:

Describing Hell on Wheels as "Revenge in the mud" makes it sound a lot more enjoyable than it is. AMC's sprawling but heavy-handed attempt to revive and redefine the Western (a newly hot TV-development trend) is solemn business indeed, with precious little wit or originality. …

USA Today says:

Like a runaway train plowing into a station, Hell on Wheels (** out of four) is all noise and flash and blood and guts — and never mind surviving the ride, let alone enjoying it. ... look close, and you won't see a character who doesn't seem to have wandered in from some stock Western company, from the evil entrepreneur (Colm Meaney, who might as well been given a handlebar mustache to twirl), to the spunky widow (Dominique McElligott), to the lucky-charm Irish brothers ...

The New York Times says:

... “Deadwood,” which was written and created by David Milch and was a critical hit for HBO for three seasons starting in 2004, took all the conventions of the classic western and turned them upside down. “Hell on Wheels” takes many of Mr. Milch’s innovations and flattens them out — “Deadwood for Dummies.” The theme music is startlingly similar, if more muted, and so is the faded sepia and gray cinematography. ...

The Los Angeles Times says:

... Its name notwithstanding, Hell on Wheels is not going anywhere fast. ... As a tale of the transforming American West with a self-serving businessman at its center, "Hell on Wheels" bears some comparison to "Deadwood," but it's fundamentally a different animal, less intellectual or intimate, with all of the mud but little of the domestic detail. … The dialogue runs a gamut from the realistically offhanded to didactic speechifying to the weirdly stiff, and the actors suffer or thrive to the degree they're forced to cart around big ideas or simply to get on with their lives.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette says:

AMC's dull, hackneyed 'Wheels' is a train to nowhere new … it will be interesting to see whether viewers find themselves too easily falling asleep... Likely to earn the nickname "Dull on Wheels" …

The San Francisco Chronicle says:

... While AMC's big new quasi-Western "Hell on Wheels" attempts a pale imitation of the baroque dialogue that made David Milch's "Deadwood" a hit for HBO, its failings go far deeper than the phony words coming out of the mouths of an otherwise able cast. …

The Washington Post says:

Hands down the most intriguing show on the fall slate ... Though imbued with epic sweep, “Hell on Wheels” is a western at heart, even if that heart is cold. Plenty of guns, knives, arrows, scalpings — mixed with the incendiary socio-psychological wounds left in the Civil War’s wake. …

The Boston Herald says:

… Avoid ‘Hell’ ... derails the cable network’s momentum as a dealer of top-notch dramas. ...

The Boston Globe says:

… I don't know if it will catch on - westerns can be a hard sell - but it's another fine AMC choice. …

Variety says:

... will evoke inevitable comparisons to "Deadwood," both for its tone and subject matter. The net result, however, is only fitfully compelling, and for a series about trains periodically runs out of narrative steam in the later legs of the five episodes previewed. …

The Hollywood Reporter says:

... the pilot isn’t very good. It’s flat, has flashes of action, then ends with a thud. Which, in turn, brings up the past. If you’re going to make a Western, you’re going to be compared to Deadwood, the HBO gem, no matter what you do. What Hell on Wheels doesn’t need, at this point, are comparisons to such greatness. It’s not even close to Deadwood. Period. …

TV-on-Disc Calendar

Last Week
The Big C 2.x
Chuck 5.x
Chuck 5.x (Blu-ray)
Doctor Who: Dragonfire
Doctor Who: The Happiness Patrol
Doctor Who: Nightmare of Eden
Drop Dead Diva 3.x
Elvira's Movie Macabre: Wild Women
Fantasy Island 2.x
Franklin: The DVD Collection
Happiness Is Peanuts: Team Snoopy
Tom & Jerry: Around The World
Twilight Zone: More Fan Favorites
Vega$ 3.x Vol. 1

This Week